Green-Eyed Envy (18 page)

The three classes guarded the knowledge of who the current Prime was fiercely, both so no class could manipulate another’s Prime and to prevent other arcanes from striking out against them. Hearing that I’d somehow pissed off
the
Megaera enough for her to send assassins after me sent icy terror skating through my belly.

Oh bloody hell. This
has
to be related to the shit going down with Nan.

Didn’t it?

A little inner voice cautioned me not to jump to conclusions, something I’d been trying to cut down on lately. Came with that whole learning from previous mistakes thing.

“The Megaera’s name, Durra.”

Outright mutiny lit in her eyes this time, and
she
bared
her
teeth. “You know I can’t tell you that, Tisiphone.”

That stung, having her call me by title rather than name. She and I had never been particularly close, but she and Vanessa, on the other hand, had . . . Wait. Vanessa. My best friend had once confided that Durra had made a pass at her after she’d broken things off with Dre Carrington. While Vanessa had been insanely flattered, she was every bit as straight as me. Could it be coincidence that the Fury in love with my murdered best friend just tried to murder me? I didn’t care that
the
Megaera had ordered it—for a Fury to raise silver against another would take either an intense personal grudge or severe crime on the intended victim’s part, and I had committed no such crimes.

“Tell me this isn’t about Vanessa.”

I heard Serise’s breath catch at that name. She’d been held captive and impregnated right alongside my sister, then helped Vanessa escape and protected her until my mother and I arrived. Vanessa had died in my arms soon after, but Serise had done everything she possibly could to help her. One of the reasons I trusted the Harpy where I would no other.

Rage flashed in Durra’s eyes and she sneered. “You deserve to die just like
she
did, in agony and betrayed by a sister.”

I wanted to stagger at the poisonous accusation but couldn’t. She’d just get free and try to finish what she started. “What the hell is
that
supposed to mean?”

Serise stepped forward to murmur in my ear. “Sirens. The mortals will be here soon.”

Great. Just what I needed—a ton of mundane red tape and paperwork over something I still didn’t understand myself. “Explain yourself.
Now.
” Okay, maybe I dug my feet together a little more forcefully than needed. The bitch had just tried to kill me and accused me of betraying my own best friend. Sue me.

“We know the truth, Tisiphone. No
way
Stacia acted alone.”

“So you think that
I
helped butcher my best friend, not to mention hold my mother hostage for twenty years? Are you all out of your ever-loving minds?”

Her lips twisted into a fierce line that indicated nothing I said would make a difference. Serise made an impatient noise, one that said we really
should
get the hell out of Dodge. I stared down at my sister, aching to find something to say that would convince her of the truth and my innocence. I’d been a victim of Stacia’s insanity just as much as Vanessa and my mother. Maybe even more so, considering the fate she’d planned for me from pretty much day one.

“If you can’t give me her name, then tell me how you tracked me here. I haven’t shed blood without burning it properly and I was in disguise just now, so
how
did you find me?”

She rolled her eyes before replying in a silken voice, “Other bodily fluids work almost as well as blood when it’s not available,
sister
dear, especially for powerful Elder Furies.”

“But I haven’t left any of
those
lying around eith . . . ” My voice trailed away as an image flashed into my mind. Me, handing off an empty (or nearly empty) coffee cup to a snot-nosed rookie, and watching him chuck it into the Dumpster as we examined the third Cat victim’s corpse. Jeez, the Megaera could run a tracer spell on another Fury using trace amounts of
saliva
? Holy hell. Now I’d have to be paranoid about destroying disposable cups as well as my own blood.

Rage stirred, insisting I finish choking the life out of the traitor at my feet, but that wouldn’t solve anything. The Megaera—whoever she was—would just send others after me until I either convinced her not to or raised enough political clout that she had no choice but to back off. Both of which were going to be pretty damned hard in my current predicament.

Hell. Now I
really
had to solve this gods-bedamned case and get back to the Palladium—not only to help my mother with my grandmother, but to save my
own
ass.
Fucking Fury politics.
As I’d said before and would no doubt say again, they made mundane politics look like a trip to Disney World.

I hopped back a step, freeing Durra in one smooth motion. “You couldn’t be more wrong about me, Megaera.” Two could play the empty title game. “Not that I expect you to believe me.” I motioned to Serise. “You go back to your murder-happy Prime and tell her trying to off me in the dark is going to piss off a whole hell of a lot of people—not just Furies. Tell her to grow a pair and come at me the right way—and to watch her own back. Vanessa would
never
have disrespected the Sisterhood like this, and she would be absolutely ashamed to call either one of you sisters.”

Durra scrambled to her feet, eyes shooting me even more daggers than Scott’s had thrown Victor’s way earlier. The slightest bit of shame seemed to pass over her face with my last sentence, but it was absurdly short-lived. She spat at my feet and disappeared.

Which left Serise to grab my arm so we could do the same.

 

 

SERISE GUIDED ME BACK THE WAY I’D COME and into a restroom on the subway station’s main level, where she directed me to shift into a less obvious form than my Fury guise. She surprised me by smoothing out her own features into something approaching an average mortal’s: platinum blond hair instead of bone white, brown eyes instead of unearthly yellow-green, and blue jeans and a T-shirt instead of the black leather uniform most Harpies wore. I had no clue that they retained the ability to shape-shift once they’d left behind their lives as Furies. Then again, as far as I knew, I was the first Fury in millennia to enjoy anything close to friendship with one of their kind.

The shape-shifting ability was definitely something to file away for future reference. Pseudo friendship only went so far. Serise had her sisters to protect and I had mine. Well, minus the backstabbing bitch Durra and whoever the hell
the
Megaera was.

Once we could more easily blend in with the chaotic stream of mortals flooding out of the station, we did so, pretending to be as confused and terrified as the people who had no clue what caused the explosion in the stairwell. Terrorist strike, or so most of them assumed, and really they weren’t far off. The terrorists just happened to be arcane rather than mundane, and their weapon of choice had been magic instead of C4.

Serise set a ground-eating—and completely silent—pace. A dozen questions burned in my mind while we put distance between the station and ourselves.
How
had Serise known about the assassination attempt in the first place?
Why
had she risked her own life and the neutrality she enjoyed in order to save my ass?
Who
had sent her to save me, and was that Fury in danger herself? My heart skipped a beat when I realized the likeliest Fury to be in a powerful enough position to learn of such an attack, want to save me from certain death, and trust Serise to send her to do just that was my mother.

I couldn’t bear the silence anymore once fear started eating its way through my stomach. I grabbed Serise’s arm and gave her a pleading look. “My mother?”

Her lips twisted in what passed for Harpy affection. My mother had been through an even worse ordeal than Serise, held hostage by the same crazy-ass mortals led by my even crazier-ass mentor, Stacia, for twenty hellish years until Mac managed to free her. “Is safe. Another of your sisters—also a Megaera—warned her of the attack, but that Fury couldn’t risk angering her Prime.”

“So Mom hired you instead.” No need to ask how Serise found me like I’d asked Durra. If my mother hired Serise, she had also provided enough of her own blood for the Harpy to magically track me with it. Furies, unfortunately, could only use the blood of the person being tracked rather than that of a relative.

Serise’s eyes met my own. “She offered to pay, but I refused.”

That
had me blinking. Harpies were, by their very natures, both avaricious and bloodthirsty in the extreme, something that made them even better mercenaries than Scott’s Shadowhounds. They
never
took jobs for free.

She shot that theory down with her next words. “It seems you Furies are not the only ones with an uprising in the works. Some of my own sisters have made threats against me. Your mother arranged for Rinda to spend time with her half sister in safety until I can execute the ones moving against me.”

We’d discovered via methods both magical and medical that the two infant girls shared the same paternal DNA, although we hadn’t yet identified the Warhound who’d provided it.

I frowned. “No offense, Serise—I appreciate the fact you kept me from walking into that explosion and all—but how can it be safe for Olivia to have Rinda anywhere near her if Harpies are out to get you?” And what was my mother thinking anyway? Neither my brother nor my sister-in-law could channel the slightest bit of magic, and Cori hadn’t yet manifested her Fury abilities. If Harpies came after the infant half sisters, there would be little they could do to stop them.

Serise gave a tight grin as we ducked onto a quiet residential street not too far from Chinatown—and Boston’s magical Underbelly. “Sisters loyal to me are leading the known traitors on a wild-goose chase as we speak, and your mother sent two Furies she trusts implicitly to guard both babes. Once I see you to the safe house, I go to help guard them myself.” One of her hands rested on her barely rounded belly, and I remembered something easy to forget. She carried yet another modern-day marvel inside her—the second Harpy child ever conceived biologically. Before Rinda—and the unborn baby who would likely become Calaeno’s namesake—Harpies had only ever been created magically when a Fury lost control of her Rage, murdered her Amphisbaena, and Turned.

I narrowed my eyes. “Why would Harpies move against you anyway? Not only were you Calaeno’s chosen successor in line after ‘Penelope,’ but you’re carrying a miracle inside you that may well allow Harpies to become a saner, stronger arcane power in their own right. Why jeopardize that?”

Her eyes glinted yellow-green before solidifying into their disguised mundane shade. “Do you not remember Penelope’s plan to murder me and claim Rinda as her own to solidify her claim to the throne?”

“ Ohhhh.” Now
that
made
way
too much sense. “So if they kill you now, while you’re theoretically more vulnerable, they can adopt Rinda and rule in her name until she grows up.” Assuming they
let
her grow to full adulthood.

“Exactly so.”

She nudged my arm and left the sidewalk, hurrying along a private walkway toward a narrow brick row house wedged between two others. I didn’t recognize the neighborhood or this particular home, but the cop in me memorized the address and searched the surrounding area for any sign of threat. All was quiet around us—ridiculously quiet, really, considering it was six in the evening and we were close to Chinatown and the Belly—but that seemed mere happenstance rather than an ambush in waiting. Still, we held our limbs loose and unimpeded, ready to strike out with deadly force should that prove necessary.

Which it usually did.

This time, however, we made it into the safe house without incident. Serise knocked sharply at the front door, which opened before her third knock finished echoing. A man I didn’t recognize ushered us inside. My back itched when I walked past him, making it
really
hard to let him stand behind me. I wasn’t quite sure whether that was residual nerves from being
stabbed in the back
not a half hour earlier or him setting off my Fury instincts all on his own. I decided I didn’t care and whirled around just as he slammed the door closed—only to find he wasn’t himself anymore.

“Hi, Mom.” She had as grand a sense of drama as I did—which explained a lot, really.

Mom—aka Allegra MacAllister Holloway—barely nodded her mortal head in my direction before turning a serious gaze on Serise. “There’s been a change in plans. Our sisters will meet you at the second safe house rather than the first.” I took my cue from her and returned to mortal form myself.

Serise stiffened. “The first?”

“Was compromised. My son and his wife had to evacuate along with their daughters and yours. I realize that wasn’t part of the original plan—”

The Harpy Queen slashed a hand in the air. “Now that I have children of my own to care for, you needn’t explain your actions to me. All will be kept safe until you send for them.” Her lips twisted. “The last place anyone will look for your loved ones is in the midst of Harpies.”

Mom’s body relaxed. “My thanks, Your Majesty.” Apparently my mother was deeper into political mode than I’d guessed. Whether that boded well or ill, I had no clue.

Serise turned back to me. “Try not to walk into any more ambushes, Fury. I may not be there to save you next time.”

I arched my brow sardonically. “I seem to recall saving you
and
your daughter from an ambush not so long ago.”

“Which is the other reason I took this job for your mother without pay.” Damned if she wasn’t starting to develop an actual sense of humor. “For now, I must join the others.”

Proving she hadn’t strayed
too
far off the beaten Harpy path, she left without giving any pesky good-byes. One moment she was there, the next gone, leaving me to turn to my mother and ask the question burning inside my mind.