Soon, the house and the entire island would be packed. Even with the construction crew gone, there would be too many people, creatures, beings, their scents all mingled and mangled and jarring, merging into an overwhelming pong, though the constant breezes and perpetual gulf rains would blow and wash a lot of it away. The noise of helos and voices and stomping feet and complaining already hurt my ears. Everyone was rushing around getting settled, storing gear. It was a morass of conflicting stinks and sounds and color.
Part of me loved the excitement, looked forward to the fights. I figured that part of me was nutso. The rest of me wanted to hitch a ride back to NOLA. It crossed my mind that I could maybe swim back if I only had a dolphin bone or maybe even a shark tooth. But...
We had been given notice of the beginning of the Sangre Duello. Just a few hours away, at ten p.m., Titus, his first round of fighters, his security, and his blood-servants would all be ashore. There would be no preliminaries, as at a parley. No long titles or jibber jabber. No semipolite or stiletto-sharp discussions. There would be two hours for the seconds to approve of the final arrangements ofthe first bouts, for the weapons of the first round to be chosen and inspected, and for the fighting rings to be assigned. Titus and his minions would be fed a meal and then led up the stairs to the third floor, settled on benches, and given time to armor up and warm up as needed.
At midnight tonight the first bout would begin.
I was not ready, but my gear was all here, including the things I’d told Gee DiMercy to pack and ship. Leo had approved my idea to defeat a betrayal by Titus by involving Ayatas and Rick, though not on the island as PsyLED had wanted. Maybe I was learning how to sneak around and strategize in overlapping layers like the vamps. Or like Beast. Thanks to my one phone call, my final plans were in play.
• • •
I was on my knees beside the bunk bed I’d chosen when I heard a familiartap-tap-tappingof heels on wood floors, climbing stairs. I dropped to my butt, my back to the door. “No,” I whispered. But the familiar cadence was still climbing, followed by athump-thump-thumpingI couldn’t place. I scooted around to the door and spotted Molly, my BFF, taking the last step to the second floor, her red hair already springing into tight curls with the salty moisture. She was dragging a large bag, what I’d heard her refer to as a portmanteau. The bag opened into two parts, and had been designed half for clothes and half for magical trinkets. By the way it thumped on the steps, I knew she had packed heavy on the magical crap.
Molly was not supposed to be here. She was not to have been told the time and date of the Sangre Duello. I’d left orders. Another head appeared over the half wall of the steps as the person attached climbed behind her. This one was familiar as well, with straight long red hair, and pointy nose as seen from the side. Molly’s niece. Shiloh. Technically, as her clan master, my scion.
“My room is one of the windowless rooms. Yours is there.” Shiloh’s hand pointed toward my room. “And we haven’t told—Oops.”
“Yeah,” I said, standing in a single twisting motion that unfolded my legs and pushed me upright, hands free.“My scions, who swore to me. You didn’t tell me that either of you would be here. And after I expressly forbade it.”
Molly’s eyes flashed and I knew I had screwed up. Molly had never liked being told what to do. “Your Enforcer and your primo countermanded your orders,” she said, her words precise. “As did the leader of the witch coven of New Orleans, Lachish Dutillet. Adan Bouvier was not the only witch on that boat with the emperor, not the only one in captivity. You need magical protection from attack from the gulf.”
I stared at her with horror. I hadn’t told her about Adan, about what had been done to him. I’d tried to protect her from the awful truth of what Titus’s vamps did to witches.
“Humph,” Molly said, asperity in the tone. “Yes. I heard about him, from Lachish, Adan the vampire weather witch. She heard about him from someone else.” Her tone said she should have heard about Adan Bouvier from me. She was right. I dropped my eyes. “Jane. You need the witches to keep you safe while you fight. We need Leo’s vampires and the rest of Clan Yellowrock to keep the witches safe and alive. Leo dies and we are all royally screwed.”
My face must have given something away because Molly dragged her portmanteau across the hallway to me, her eyes boring into mine, her voice rising as she continued to speak. “You think the witches don’t know what will happen to us, to our families and our children, if Titus wins this stupid”—she shouted—“foolish”—she shouted louder—“blood challenge?”
I backed into my room, toward the open window. Toward escape. Molly followed, into the too-small room. The heavy, two-door case had little wheels that squeaked and bumped over every uneven place in the floor. Molly was wearing a deep, dark, bloodred winter dress with a little black jacket and black heels. Red wasn’t usually Moll’s color, but this looked powerful on her. And she was wearing a pearl necklace and carrying, in her other hand, a small rosemary plant. “Look at me,” Molly demanded.
Molly is predator,Beast thought, admiration in her words.
Molly is angry,I thought back.And a mad witch is never a good witch.
“Jane!”
I looked her in the eyes. “I’m here not because you need me,” she said. “I know you can take care of yourself. I’m here because my people need me.”
“You’re pregnant,” I blurted out.
Kits,Beast murmured.
“I noticed,” she said, pronouncing all the syllables like cutting blades and hissing snakes. “I’ll be behind the scenes, not up front. Not out in the middle of any witch-magic battle that might take place. My job is to monitor for interfering magical activity and warn the others. Lachish and Shiloh and Ailis are here to fight. And Soul is here, somewhere, to help in case they have another timewalker, to spot any interference of that nature and stop it. I’ll be under ahedge of thorns, the newest one B—” She stopped. She had almost said Big Evan, who wasn’t out of the closet yet. “That I could make.Hedge of thorns 3.0. With other modified, portablehedgesand invertedhedgesavailable to me, all defensive, as stipulated in the Sangre Duello rules, what precious few that there are. I’ll be the safest person on this island. But you need us all to make sure the EVs don’t cheat and use witch magic to attack.”
Cheating wasn’t allowed outside of the fighting rings. Cheating with magic was not allowed anywhere near a Sangre Duello except La Danza. Cheating with weapons and tactics inside a ring and within a bout was a different matter entirely. I was betting all I had, and all I was, on an inside weapon cheat. But Moll was right. The Sangre Duello did need magical monitoring. And in case of magical attack, we’d need someone who could deflect a spell of offense until we could deal with it.
But... Molly. There were things I hadn’t told her.Crap.
My best friend in the world leaned into me and I felt magics on my skin as she initiated a spell of silence tocover up her words. She whispered so softly a fanghead couldn’t have heard it. “And my special magics will save the day if all else is lost.”
Her special magics. Her death magics. Magics that would drain every bit of death and undeath for miles around. I stepped around her and walked out, past people in the hallway.
Behind me, Molly claimed the bunk bed beneath mine. “She’ll be okay,” Molly said to someone in the hallway.
But I wouldn’t. Not if something happened to Moll. What in blue blazes was Big Evan thinking by letting his pregnant wife out of his sight?
I passed through people and vamps coming up the stairs. Dozens of people. I wanted to head outside, but I had a job to do. This one last job. Keep Leo safe, to keep Molly safe. So instead of running away, I walked around the second level, checking out the arrangements, thinking about cheats for inside the fighting rings.
Leo and his scions were sharing one of the tiny central rooms. Koun, Gee, Tex, and Edmund—my vamps—were in a second room. The third room had bunks for Dacy Mooney, Ming Zoya of Mearkanis, and Ming Zhane of Glass. In the fourth room was Sabina Delgado y Aguilera and Shiloh Everhart Stone. I had tried to keep Shiloh off island. She was my responsibility, not that Shiloh seemed to think so. The placement of the vamps had been carefully thought out, the weakest vamp under the protection of the outclan priestess.
