Once out, they can’t get back in.
Itmaydo other things against the ones who used the brooch on Ming.
We inserted a... abackatchaworking in the frankincense.
It hasn’t been tested. It hasn’t flown.
I held in a smile. When Molly created a new spell that flunked when tested, she folded it into a paper airplane and few it across the room. “It hasn’t flown” was anattempt at humor. I pocketed the blob and turned my attention back to the rest of the ballroom. Evan was standing near Eli. The witch caught my eye and I nodded once, very slightly. His beard, which he had trimmed short after the burning, moved, suggesting that he might have smiled back.
The Q and A had started and Leo was answering with as much honesty as I had ever heard, though anyone who had ever listened to vamps dicker could hear the places where he fudged or talked around or answered a different question from the one that had been asked. Of course, he was so charming that he got away with it most of the time. As long as he didn’t try to compel them, we were all good and they wouldn’t fry him into a strip of vamp-flavored jerky.
Things moved from boring toward conclusion pretty fast. Until a witch asked, “We understand that a Mithran contingent from Europe is expected soon. If we sign your accord, how would their presence in the city affect us?”
Leo actually offered a small bow to her, in recognition of one who got the political implications. The woman nodded back. She was short and middle-aged, with broad hips and hair dyed in strips of pink, burgundy, cerise, and purple. The hair was braided and hung long, maybe longer than my own. “Madame is wise and politically astute with her query,” Leo said. “There are many ways to consider such a question, and I wish to be perspicuous and candid with this issue, so forgive my verbosity. Such wordiness is frowned upon in these modern times of hashtags and sound bites, but I must offer a complete answer.
“The Mithrans of Europe have no love of witches. The Parisian War between our species in the third centuryADleft the remaining Mithrans with...” Leo smiled. “...anger issues.”
The witches tittered.
I had to guess the vamps had lost that battle.
“There are Parisian survivors among the Europeans,” he continued, “and if they still cherish violent intentions against witches, there might be... difficulties. And if they come with violent intent against the Americas-basedMithrans, instead of peaceful ones, there is the possibility of... shall we say, more than verbal discord?” Leo paused and clasped his hands behind his back. He dropped his head, his posture so professorial that it was disconcerting. I had to wonder if Leo had been an actor in his earlier life. Or a professor. “If they choose violence here, war between the European and the New Orleans Mithran factions becomes more likely.
“It has been my purpose,” he said, staring at the dais and his patent leather shoe tops, shining black in the ballroom lights, “and my intent to keep the humans and witches of this city safe from all discord between the factions.”
“Not safe from the Damours who killed our children?” the woman asked, her soft voice carrying through the abruptly silent room.
“This requires a tale not oft told, of the world as it was in the days of slavery,” Leo said. “And the slave revolt in Saint Domingue, what is now Haiti, and an evil clan of Naturaleza vampires who were also witches.”
An explosion sounded, juddering through the floor. The vamps were instantly holding bladed weapons. Eli was holding a handgun, and his head snapped to me. Bruiser sprinted to the front door, the other Onorios spilt, one Robere twin to the Chaperone’s Alcove and its entrances to the back and side of the house, and the other to the doorway to the Louis XVI Room. Eli tilted his head, listening to the aftershocks and echoes, and said, “Outside the ward. Within a block. Similar to the ones in the yard.” Belatedly the witches began to stand.
“That was outside the ward,” Lachish said. “We are utterly safe.” She looked down her nose at the vamps and said, “Put away your weap—”
Something clattered and thumped upstairs. Overhead. As if falling and landing on the floor.“Alex,”I said. Alex had set up his equipment in a small room off the stairway. I was halfway up the stairs, moving at Beast-speed, when Leo and Bruiser passed me, their bodies pops of air and blurs of color.
Leo was kneeling at the Kid’s side, fingers pressed tohis neck at the carotid. My heart plummeted. “He is not dead,” Leo said, “but I smell his blood.”
“Alive,” I shouted down the stairs to Eli, who was standing halfway down, guarding access to the front entrance, the ballroom, and the stairs, weaponed up like a ninja in his new spelled leathers. Guarding our exit, knowing that we were better able to help Alex right now than he was, when he had to want to be up here with his brother. “Out cold,” I added, watching Leo’s medically proficient examination. His fingers came away bloody. “Head wound, but it doesn’t appear major.”
Eli didn’t reply, but I smelled his relief as if he’d been standing right beside me. I searched out and found Bruiser, who was entering the closed upper rooms with impunity, rooms set aside for family and privacy. The explosion might have been outside the ward, but Alex was inside and down. Something was wrong.
To Leo, I said, “I don’t see magics.” I eased into the room, clearing the closet and window nook and under the tiny desk. I was holding a vamp-killer in my left hand and the blob in my right. “No witches, no magics.”
“A candlestick is the culprit,” Leo said, his fingers growing bloodier as they crawled through Alex’s hair. “When he wakes, I will see that he is fed to mitigate any possibility of brain damage.”
“They hid here,” I said, coming back to the closet and tucking my head within. Something touched my face, like a spiderweb in the dark, a feathery brush of...magic. I wrenched my body out, tripping on my own feet. “Magic!” I shouted. A sneeze slammed through me.Witch magic. A lot of magic. Something thumped my left hand, no more than a fist bump of force.
Everything happened fast. Pain ripped out of my palm and green magics swept out from the closet to me, instantly coating my body, the floor, Leo, and Alex. A fast blur of flaming green. I cursed and shook my hand, but green flames roared up, shaped for an instant like an eye. My left hand caught fire, flaring with green flames. The pain was instantaneous. I staggered back a step, mouth open tosuck in a breath that burned in my lungs. The anti-DNA charm sizzled and died, not built to withstand such intensity.
On pure instinct, I dropped my weapons, pulled the blob from my pocket, and slammed it into my left palm. The flames on my hand went out. The heat in my chest cooled. The painstopped. The remnant flames raced up my spelled fighting leathers and died, but... my hand. I gasped and swallowed back a scream. My hand was blistered and weeping. I opened my fist and the pain flared back, so I closed it on the blob again. But I had seen enough. The flesh was coming off in small wrinkled, water-engorged strips, leaving the muscles beneath visible and raw. My poor hands, hurt again. This New Orleans gig was proving more damaging, more often, than I had ever expected.
Around me, the green magic boiled on the floor, spitting and spattering, like water poured into a red-hot pot. No one but me had caught fire. The spell had been targeted to me. That was a relief and a surprise, but I’d take it. I just had to get out of here before the spell touched my skin again and burned me to a crisp. With my booted foot, I flipped up the vamp-killer, which had landed at my feet, and caught it.
Leo’s fine-boned fingers were still in Alex’s hair. Bloody but unmoving. As if pressed gently against the perimeters of the wound to slow the bleeding.
“Jane?” Bruiser asked. He was standing at the door, weapons out, including a sword I seldom saw him carry. He hadn’t been carrying a sword in the limo and I had to assume he’d secreted one on the premises. “You’re hurt.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I triggered something, but this put it out.” I showed him the hand holding the blob. “Unfortunately it’s still active. Can you see it?”
