Leo had tried to bind me and partially succeeded, except that I had bound him as well. Eventually, I had figured out how to throw him out of my soul home and out of my life. Or Beast’s angel, Hayyel, had given me the ability.
I wondered if Aya and my grandmother could be bound. If not, then theBubo buboprophecy might be aboutallskinwalkers because we can’t be bound. Skinwalkers mightbe all that stands between the Onorio /u’tlun’ta/senza onore/ Naturaleza plan, whatever it was, and the loss of our world. I wondered if outclan priestesses knew this about skinwalkers and if that ability, that defensive mechanism, was why Sabina tried to buy a skinwalker child from my grandmother.
I dropped the towel from my hair and finger-combed it, pulling it back from my face. I tried to think the way vamps did, with layers and motivations and intents that made no sense to normal humans. It was like trying to play 4D chess: up, down, back, forth, and also through time.
There had been another skinwalker in NOLA, pictured in a now-burned mural in Grégoire’s home. Ka N’vsita. Who had really brought her here? It was supposed to have been Adan Bouvier, the weather-witch-vampire who was enslaved and forced to try and catch arcenciels in a geode to work time. But...
Fear whipped through me like electricity. Could Sabina have found Ka N’vsita and brought the child to Adan? Had Grandmother sold a skinwalker child after all? If so, Ka? Because Ka was more pliable? Or had my father or mother refused? Had the vamps found a way to bind Ka because they had her from the time she was a malleable child? What had really happened to her?
I didn’t know enough. About anything.
Maybe just as important as how she got to NOLA, had Ka and Immanuel’s liver-eater met? Had they known what each other were? Had Sabina? Vamps worked and laid plans in layers, with twisted timelines, so it was possible that Soul and the arcenciel old ones did too. Somehow, someone had arranged for there to be three Onorios in New Orleans. And Bethany had made all three of them. Had she been planning for there to be three Onorios in the city? Had she planned that far ahead? Of course she had. Until Bethany died, there had also been two outclan priestesses. And Edmund and Grégoire, two of the best swordsmen in the world. And me.The gang’s all here,I thought. Too much power in one place for someone, or many someones, not to be pulling strings. Leo. It had to have been Leo.
I stood and went to the bath, where I combed my hair and left it loose. I did my toiletries and applied a littlemascara and blush, saving the lipstick for after breakfast. Back in the bedroom, I dressed and wondered where my boots and my jacket were. And my weapons. Eli had taken them at the party so I knew they were safe.
As I dressed, a final strange thought hit me. Adan Bouvier had been kicked out of New Orleans and sent back to Europe in disgrace. Later he had been working for Le Batard because some of his people were being held prisoner. Cold shivers crawled over me. Adan had owned Ka at a time when slavery had been legal. Ka was supposed to be dead. Everyone had said so. But... But what if she wasn’t? What if she was in Monique’s hull-shaped soul home?
That was stupid hope talking. But. What if that stupid hope might be true? What if Ka wasn’t true dead? And... what if Adan Bouvier, who had been turned over to Leo for punishment for creating a magical storm that nearly swamped NOLA, was still here, doing someone’s bidding?
I signed in to my laptop. Typing quickly, I created a timeline for Immanuel, Ka, Sabina, and the Trail of Tears. I had a photo somewhere of the mural painted on Grégoire’s wall before the clan home burned. Ka N’vsita was the only skinwalker I ever heard of who lived as a blood-servant in NOLA. But if skinwalkers can’t be bound and the vamps think she died and maybe she didn’t... What happened to her? The local vamps said she was sent away and died. But that was gossip, not fact. Did Ka have any impact on what was happening today? Had I missed something when Adan Bouvier was trapped by a EuroVamp and forced to try and change time? Was Ka still alive and still a prisoner? Monique’s prisoner. Had I missed that?
On the laptop, I found the photo of the mural and studied the vamps, all in a state of undress, some now true dead. And Ka, her face sad and lonely and closed in, as if she existed in a cage of herself.
Everything that had happened in New Orleans since I came had started with Immanuel, Leo’s supposed son, who was really a skinwalker turnedu’tlun’ta. But the layered history of Immanuel and skinwalkers and vampires had begun long before that. It had started with a Spaniard, an invader named de Allyon, who was turned and became avampire and slaughtered the Cherokee skinwalkers by the hundreds, drinking their blood. He took over Atlanta and hid there for centuries, a secretive evil vamp.
When I killed the insane shape-shifter posing as Immanuel in my first few weeks in New Orleans, de Allyon had left the city of Atlanta to try and take over NOLA and had attacked Clan Pellissier. He’d had possession of small iron discs. I killed him. Then soon after, I went to Natchez and came into possession of pocket watches created with iron disks that had been made from the iron Spike of Golgotha. There had been skinwalker blood on the ingots. I still had some of the bloody discs. And skinwalker blood, my blood, went into creating the Glob.
The timeline was chilling. I just had no idea what it meant or what to do about what was essentially history with seemingly little bearing on today.
I texted Alex for the translation ofLa Historia de Los Mithrans en Los Americas. It told the tale of de Allyon, of his exploits, his evil, and had drawings of de Allyon and piles of skinwalkers dead and dying.
The long game.
Leo had been playing the long game against the Master of Atlanta. And because of me, Leo had won. That time. But that win had set others free to work on their own long game. 4D chess for real, with living, breathing humans, holy people, castles, knights, kings... and queens.
All those players included Monique and the Firestarter. I’d had an illusion-to-face meeting with the Firestarter, Onorio Aurelia Flamma Scintilla. I was almost certain Aurelia was one of the women from Monique’s soul vision, but there had been others. Could one have been Cherokee? That frisson of fear expanded inside me.
Was it possible that Ka was still alive? I hadn’t seen the eyes of the people in the bottom of Monique’s bloody-hull soul home. Ka had eyes like mine, the yellow of a skinwalker. I hadn’t thought the bound creatures in Monique’s mind were important, but they might be the most important ones of all. And if Ka had been there, then skinwalkers, some skinwalkers, could be bound.
I was an idiot.
I had left NOLA when I was dying and walked awayfrom the game set in place centuries ago. Now I was behind, and reconnecting to New Orleans’s life wasn’t easy. I had to play catchup and figure out what was going on and fast. I added a request for Alex to track down Adan Bouvier’s location. The nutso vamp and I needed to have a frank discussion. Once upon a time, he’d accused me of not yet tracking down his blood-servants and saving them from captivity. We had tried but never found them. So if Ka had been one of those captive blood-servants, and Monique had her, that made freeing the bound people in the hull-shaped soul home even more imperative.
Finally the smell of bacon drew me away from my research, and I went to the kitchen for breakfast. I had dithered so long everyone else had eaten, and so I was alone with my thoughts, sitting at the table, eating a feast meant to pack some pounds back on me. As I ate, Eli washed dishes, keeping an eye out the front window as an armed guard walked along the sidewalk close by the house. It was so strange to see armed security walking by, keeping us safe. Eli was also armed. Always armed.
I was guarded. That was my life now. I could accept the restrictions and the power and make something good come from them, or I could whine and run away again.
I was done with running.
As I ate the last of the pancakes, my cell rang. It was Jodi Richoux’s number. I sat back in my chair and answered. “Good morning, Jodi.”
“Thanks for the party last night. I had no idea you could move like that.” I started to speak but she rushed on. “You screw up my wedding, and I’ll skin you alive. Got it?” Before I could answer, she hung up.
As I processed that, Bruiser walked in and took the seat across from me. “Wrassler called. Two Mithrans out for a near-dawn walk near the Garden District were attacked and killed in Lafayette Cemetery Number One. Do you want to come?”
“Oh,” I said, staring at the cell with Jodi’s contact info on it. “That’s why the threat.”
“Someone threatened you?” Eli demanded.
