I’m sorry.
Molly took a seat on the sofa and began patting the baby’s back. Moll was making tiny humming noises in the back of her throat, like half singing, none of the notes in any particular key, but the sound was soothing nonetheless.
Beast is sad. Beast loves kits.
I sent my other half an image of two cats hugging, and when she didn’t respond, I turned my attention to real life in the TV room/office and updates that I knew had to be waiting.
Alex was watching replays. On the big screen, divided into two larger screens, were the spectacles of the fire at the NOLA vamp cemetery, and the encounter with the SOD in the Regal. In NOLA, I watched as the rock itself burned and melted into puddles of lavalike molten stone. I dropped into the heated recliner, threw my feet up, and watched as the chapel whooshed up in flames and swirled into a fire devil, high in the air. In the Regal Imperial Hotel, I watched as vamp pairs fell and Ed bled. On the hotel footage Alex had hacked into, I stood there as if I hadn’t a care in the world, my half-form full of false moxie. False. But I walked away with all my people. I couldn’t help the smile that pulled back my lips and exposed my fangs.
On the security cams recording from inside the Regal, I watched as my party walked away. And the SOD drank two humans down as if they were bottles of cheap wine and tore out the throats of two fangheads. No one died true-dead, as scions rushed in to save everyone. But the SOD was a bloody little bastard. I was going to enjoy putting the rabid dog down.
“Janie,” Alex said. “I got word about the Shookers, that witch family you mentioned. They answered their phone and seem to be fine. The circle you spotted was theirs. They said they’d put up stronger wards. They also checked in with the other witches in the area and all are okay. They’ll notify us if anything changes.”
***
The rest of the morning dragged by. Molly and Shaddock’s human Enforcer—who went by the nickname Bunny, for reasons no one thought to share with me—and Gee DiMercy were discussing options and plans without including me. When I requested, politely, I thought, to be part of the discussions, Gee made a little fluttering motion with his hands, like a bird fluffing his wings. “My mistress, your primo was torn from your mind and from your binding. Has that state been remedied?”
I scowled at them, which was a fearsome sight; I’d seen my half-form scowl. But Bunny laughed, a silly little titter. She stood all of five feet and maybe a hundred poundsfully clothed. I could break her in two with my half-form fingers, but she wasn’t scared of me. Weird. “No,” I said. “Ed isn’t back inside my head.”
“Then we will discuss all our plans with you once they are finalized, my queen.”
I’d been dismissed. I had discovered that my half-form didn’t need much sleep. It was full of energy too, a constant low hum of the need to run, to fight, to do something. I was so tense my shoulders ached, nerves close to fraying. Anything. So I paced like a cat in a cage, my braid whipping around like a snake on a string. A Medusa cat. Which might have been funny under other circumstances.
Through the windows, I caught a glimpse of the two human Everhart sisters, Regan and Amelia, wandering around in the snow, heavily weaponed, chatting, heads together, pointing and gesturing as they walked all around the inn and cottages. I must have missed something while I slept. Last I’d heard, they were in Asheville. I asked and was told that they had been escorted in, by Lincoln Shaddock’s scions Holly and Gerald, at great personal danger, through the storm. I watched as the two human girls—young women—built a fort and started a snowball fight with Shaddock’s humans.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I left word with Alex and raced into the icy world. Snow crunched under me, my back half-paws breaking through the top crusty layer. The cold felt wonderful, and inside me, Beast rose and stared through my eyes.Hunt and eat deer in half-Beast form?
Gack. No. No way. But a hard run, and checking out the grounds. Our nose is pretty good in this form. Let’s see if we can find where the spotted big-cat came onto the property.
Beast is not nose-to-ground hunter,she chuffed.Jane should hold on to tree.
Why?I asked as I gripped the narrow trunk of a young tree.
In an instant, she opened the ancient neurological pathway, the parts of my brain she had augmented withthe stolen sensory ability of the bloodhound we had been several times. Its olfactory system was intense and shocking and I stumbled against the small tree.
Beast chuffed again, amused.Jane is silly puppy falling in snow.She sent me an image of a clumsy pup face-planting in fluffy powder.
Ha-ha. I don’t remember it being this intense,I thought at her. Slowly I caught my balance and breathed in through my open mouth, over the scent sacs that were all Beast’s, letting the myriad scent patterns settle inside me. Pine and oak and maple and rocks and ice and snow and intense smell of the inn, with vamps and humans and witches, each with his and her own individual pattern.
Vamps smelled of herbs, funeral flowers, green peppers, blood, sex, and barbeque.
My people smelled of... clan. Of home. Of littermates.
Big Evan scented of testosterone and ham and magic. EJ of urine and mischief, which I had no idea had a scent until now. Angie reeked of magic so strong it hid any scent of her own from this distance. Molly was the smell of milk and motherhood and anger and death. I/we parsed her scent, able to deduce by scent that she was fighting for control every moment that she lived. She was locked down so tight her scent aura practically squeaked with the nervousness and pressure.
We don’t have KitKit,I thought.She can’t possibly control her death magics for long, not as upset as she is.
Beast can care for Molly,she thought at me.Hayyel made Beast better cat than little mouser KitKit. Beast is better everything than KitKit.
She sounded certain, almost offhand, as if she really could help to control Molly’s magics. And if the angel who haunted my life had given her something, some power...You want to explain?
Beast ignored me.
Fine.Though it wasn’t. I hated it when Beast hid secrets from me. I drew in air and located the spotted-cat scent. Racing through the cold, Beast and I hunted the big-cat. We trailed him for two miles, through the snow,until his scent disappeared at a plowed road. And we lost him. I knew who it was, who it had to be, by the time I lost the scent. And I was all kinds of stupid for not knowing who it was the first time Beast smelled the cat scent. I was an idiot.
It was a long jaunt back to the inn, and I did a lot of thinking on the way.
***
