The moment Leo was gone, Eli closed the box, chuckling evilly. Bruiser knelt beside me. “Jane. Your hand is getting worse.”
“I noticed.” I raised the hand, which felt heavier than it should, and this time I looked at it. It was neither hand nor paw, not the long-fingered, knobby-knuckled version of my half-Beast form. It was more of a club, the way a hand might look if it was stuffed into a paw-shaped and furred mitten. Something a kid might wear trick-or-treating on Halloween.
“You need to shift.”
“Yeah. I noticed that too. What time is it?”
Eli said, “O four twenty-three.”
I had to time to change into Beast and then shift back. But I wanted to be at home, not here. Never here. “I have time to try. Take me home?”
Bruiser knelt beside me and picked me up as if I were a small child. He stood, cradling me, just as the door to the small room opened again. In the hallway stood Leo,Edmund, and Leo’s new secretary, the redheaded scrappy-looking woman, Lee. She was holding a spiral notebook and a pen at the ready.
Leo stared between Bruiser and me. “I have sipped from and read all my scions and my heir and the clan Blood Masters of the city. All are innocent of the disappearance of Ming Zoya of Mearkanis, and her presence in the pit.
“Edmund Killian Sebastian Hartley,” Leo said, and Scrappy wrote. He shoved Edmund into the room. The vamp stumbled and went down to one knee, his eyes on his master, “former clan Blood Master, onceservusminime aestimata, lowest of my scions.” When Leo used titles, it meant serious Mithran business. And Edmund was breathing fast, in fear, the stink of his terror rising on the air. I had the mad thought that Leo was about to behead Edmund, right in front of me, and I had to stop it. I struggled to stand and Bruiser let my feet to the floor, still supporting my weight, the pain in my hand feeling as if I had just thrust it into a furnace. I grunted in pain, but Leo ignored me and went on. “I hereby reassign the last nineteen years of your servitude to Jane Doe Yellowrock of Yellowrock Securities, Enforcer to the Mithrans of New Orleans and the greater Southeast United States, with the exception of Florida. Your status shall be raised to the position of Mithran primo and you will serve her well.”
“No!” I said.
Leo flashed me a grin that was all teeth and fangs and bloodlust. “Yes, my Jane. It is done.” He popped away in a small sound of displaced air and the door slammed.
I gasped and my vision darkened around the edges in reaction to shock and pain. Eli, the evil man, laughed again. To Edmund, kneeling on the floor at Bruiser’s feet, I said, “This is all your fault.”
Edmund, whose face had gone white, and his eyes vamped out, looked up to me, the pupils like pits, staring into hell. With an effort of will, his fangsschinckedback up on the little hinges in the roof of his mouth, and his eyes bled back to human. He bowed his head to me, leaning over his bended knee. “My master.”
I thought that I had avoided this, had actually thought that Edmund’s request to become my primo was a ploy on Leo’s part, something to delude the European Vamps that I had such strong magic that I deserved a vamp primo but was all bombast and no action. But... this had happened. It was serious. And with the little secretary putting it all in writing, there was no way to refuse. But I did it anyway. “I refuse. I don’t want a primo.”
“Then I shall face the dawn one day hence,” Edmund said, his brown eyes on the floor at my feet. “I will have this day to sleep here, in the council chambers, in safety. Then I must remove my belongings and myself. I no longer have the funds to purchase a lair in such a short time period, and banks are notoriously difficult for Mithrans to deal with.”
“Hotels? Boardinghouses? Acton House caters to vamps.”
“I am yours. Send me where you will.”
“Twenty-four hours,” Eli said, sounding as if he was holding in laughter. “We have time to figure out something.”
***
I might have slept, because when I woke, Eli was carrying me toward the sweat house at Aggie One Feather’s place. It was dawn, and the eastern horizon was golden as viewed through the pine trees near her home. Eli pushed open the door with an elbow and knelt on the packed clay floor, sitting me down in front of a fast-burning fire. The sweat house hadn’t been used in a while; I could tell because the air moved with the rising heat and the coolness of the wooden walls. And because there were no coals in the pit, only crackling wood, hickory and pine and cedar. I looked back to the open door to see that the rain had stopped. Mosquitoes buzzed in a cloud, kept at bay when Aggie closed the door on them.
I lifted my left hand. It was shaped like a war club, bones protruding beyond the pelt, bones that had no order or direction, as if they had been built by a toddler with sticks and Play-Doh. My wrist was now involved, the bones bulging. In a normal human wrist, there are twelve main bones. My left wrist looked as if I had twice that many, the tendonsattached in the wrong places, stretching in the wrong ways, pressing apart the bones of my lower arm. I was in agony. Closed my eyes and cradled my arm against me.
“How long before the witch is here?” Aggie asked.
“My brother is bringing her,” Eli said. “ETA twelve minutes.”
“I’ve never allowed workers of magic into a sweat.”
“You’re gonna need them. This is a magical attack on Jane.”
“We need her out of her clothes. It’s going to hurt her.”
“No, it’s not.”
I heard the familiar sound of steel sliding from a leather sheath and then Eli was cutting through the expensive clothing, undies and all. “Perv,” I whispered.
“Totally, babe.” He unbuckled all my hidden weapons and piled them beside me. “Miz Aggie, you got scissors? I don’t want to risk the blade near her arm.”
“I brought a pair,” Molly said from the door.
