“What?” Bruiser asked softly. I raised a hand to stop him, thoughts whirling through me, images, sensations, memories.
I had taken Leo’s blood at the creation of Clan Yellowrock.
I had taken Gee’s blood at the creation of ClanYellowrock. I had taken Edmund’s blood. I wasn’t a vamp, and calling Ed hadn’t worked before, but...
ButI wasn’t a vamp. Right. Not a vamp.
But Iwasthe leader of Clan Yellowrock, through the blood of Leo. And I was the Dark Queen.
“I need the crown.” Without thinking about it, I pulled on Beast-speed and raced up the stairs toward the bedroom. Pain forgotten, lost in the wash of blood spilled from Shiloh’s throat.
I ripped open the closet door and dropped to my knees in front of the oversized plastic tub of magical trinkets and snapped the lid open. Everything I had brought from New Orleans and everything the Youngers had brought from NOLA when they joined us here was in the tub: charms Molly had made for me, the carved bone coyote that had appeared after a weird dream, the blue Anzu feather Beast had taken from a dead Anzu, lots of stuff in a jumbled mess. I grabbed up the Glob. The lightning-and-angel-created, multi-magical-item amulet was warm to my hand. The Glob absorbed magic. That was the Glob’s magical power, to drain out magic, especially aggressive magic being used against me. It had once drainedle breloquewhen the crown tried to take me over against my will. But it hadn’t stopped the power merge when I hadchosento use the crown.Le breloquewas somehow tied to the position and power of the Dark Queen, not that I knew how that worked. Yet. I stood and carried them both back down the stairs, feet tapping fast, passing Bruiser on the way up.
“Janie?” He whirled and followed me.
“I’m the Dark Queen. I’m the freakingDark Queen,” I ground out. “Not crowned by Leo, but a power chosen formyself. I put the crown on myownhead. The magic in it claimedme. It has to mean something. It has to come with power of some sort. I took Leo’s blood. I have this magical crap.” I held out the two icons. “I have star-shaped scarlet energies in my body that I don’t know how to use, and that are growing cancer, maybe because I can’t use the magic and it has to go somewhere and do something so it settled on disease. Maybe I have to beable tousethe power and the magic, or let its pressure off, like a steam valve. I need to be able to access it. I just don’t freaking know how to do that!”
Bruiser’s eyes went unfocused and his thoughts turned inward as we reached the landing. “The last Dark Queen didn’t end so well. Alex found a record that suggested she vanished and was never seen again.”
“She must have timewalked into danger and died. Or timewalked and caused herself to never be born.”
“Impossible. If she was never born, then she was never the Dark Queen. Time-traveling paradoxes are likely multidimensional, creating new universes or interdimensional pockets, or even opening rifts between universes.”
“Yeah,” I said, crossing the central space, cool air drafts sweeping by, stirred up by the fans. “Like the rifts where the arcenciels fell through to Earth. But the office and power of DQ have to come with more than that. More than just timewalking.”
“I agree. But it might require blood.”
“Sweetcheeks, I don’t care if it requires blood, sweat, and couple of fingers.”
Bruiser burst out laughing. “You’re still calling me sweetcheeks?”
I flushed red. I wasn’t sure I had ever called him that out loud. “You have the best butt I’ve ever seen. Deal with it.”
“Oh, my love. I deal with it every day. It’s good to have you back.”
“Yeah. Depression and grief and dying suck.” We reached the TV room. To Alex, I said, “Update.”
Alex looked relieved and happy instead of like the young, worried kid he had been for weeks. Interesting. All I had to do to restore balance in the house was be demanding. I’d remember that. He said, “Molly said she’d talk to you about the danger when she sees you. She and Big Evan pulled into the drive while you were upstairs. They took the sleep charm off Angie and put it on Shiloh. Then they did some kind of stasis spell on the vamp so she doesn’t go bonkers with bloodlust. Eli put a stake in her belly, just in case, and he’s with her in the back of the van.”The Kid had a familiar—and recently missing—mischief in his eyes. “Clan Yellowrock’s in town and ready to fuck some shit up.”
“Alex!” I said. And then I burst out laughing. My face felt weird, creased up with a grin instead of down with pain. And my belly didn’t hurt nearly so bad.
On the main screen, the Everhart-Trueblood van pulled to a stop at the front of the inn and the side door opened. Angie Baby sprinted from the van and up the steps.
Because of the magic cancer, I no longer bent or bubbled time, but I made it to the front porch before Angie did and fell to my knees as she rushed into my arms. EJ—or Evan Junior or Little Evan, depending on who was talking—followed close behind, though my head was down and he probably didn’t see whom he was hugging as his arms spread out. I had them both.
Kitssss,Beast whispered deep inside me.
“Yeah,” I said aloud. “Kits.”
Eli appeared from the van, still in his cold coat, but now it was bloody. He bounced a sleeping vamp up over a shoulder. Shiloh. She was even more bloody than my partner. Molly stepped out of the van and reached into the back seat, her hands busy with the straps on the car seat. Big Evan stepped out and the van rocked. Molly placed the baby in his arms. The infant looked like a toy against his bulk.
“Love you, Ant Jane,” Angie said, drawing my attention back to them. “Is this your new house?” She pulled away to race into the middle of the inn. Stopped beneath the giant black wrought-iron chandelier in the vaulted high ceiling and turned in a circle, her head back, staring up, around, at the vast space. “I love this place, Ant Jane! It’s magic, right here!”
“Wuv—love—you An’ Jane,” Little Evan said. He popped a slobbery kiss on my neck and rushed to his sister.
“Yes,” I murmured to them, though they wouldn’t hear me, and were now running to see Alex. I stood and walked out onto the steps. Snow was still falling hard and the cold made my bones ache, but I waited there as Eli entered with Shiloh in a fireman’s carry. Dripping blood.
Climbing the steps behind him were Molly and Evan, the baby on his shoulder, bundled against the winter, asleep. My BFF was smaller than when I last saw her. She had lost a lot of the baby weight. Her red hair was longer and less curly. Snowflakes were melting in the waves.
