I searched back to the last words spoken and repeated, “Delightful entertainments?” It could have been a compliment. Or not. The reek of dried blood from Blondie’s bloody armor filled the room, both gross and oddly attractive to Beast, who purred inside me. I fought a sneeze and said, “Thank you?”
Ed stood beside me, clasping his hands behind his back, looking deceptively meek and docile, unlike the master swordsman I knew him to be. He wore a sword on each hip, and like Blondie, several other blades. A third boom hit and Edmund scrutinized the room as if taking inventory and finding its lack of cover disappointing. Mildly he said, “My Queen. Grégoire hasn’t had this much fun in weeks.”
I snorted. “How about you? Has Eddie the Great gotten bored?”
“One could never become bored while serving you, my mistress. You stir up trouble like the queen of a killer hornet nest.”
“You make that sound like a compliment.”
“Oh, it is. It is indeed.”
Over the closed channel I heard Alex say, “Got it. RVAC footage with Molly’s spanking-new amulet seeing working on the main screens. Hey, Molly. It worked.”
“Look fast,” she said. “The amulet is only good for another two minutes.”
I turned to the big screen on the wall to my right. On it appeared an overhead view of rooftops. It looked like the French Quarter, buildings chock-a-block, with tiny walledgardens hidden away all over. One such garden was near on Canal Street. This garden was glowing, not with fairy lanterns, landscape lights, or tiki lights, but with magic in a faint silver-black haze. The RVAC dropped lower, the cameras revealing a three-story house, one totally enclosed on four sides by commercial buildings, as if the buildings had been built around it, to hide and protect the house and its small, walled garden.
“Where is that?” I asked. “Whatis that?”
“Alex made a tracking device that looked like a shell,” Eli said, sounding proud in my earbuds. “Lizzie dropped it into the witch circle during the test. Because it was a shell like a million other shells in the state, they didn’t look it over when it popped into their circle. They just kicked it aside. The Kid was able to turn it on and find it. And Molly has this new working she wanted to try.”
“Okay. And...”
“Andthat, babe,” Eli said into my earbuds with satisfaction, “is your enemy’s lair.”
“Coolio. But why are they attacking us here instead of us attacking them there?”
“According to the mic included in the tracking device, they want Molly.”
“They can’t have my mama!” Angie wailed. “Ant Jane. Use your power!”
The clan home was hit with a boom that shook plaster off the ceiling and made the chandelier swing. “We can’t hold thishedgefor long,” Molly said over comms. A crack opened in the tall wall over the doorway to the kitchen.
Somebody was messing with my clan home.
Another boom sounded. The walls shook. Death magics crawled across my skin like fire ants.
I yanked the Glob back out of its pocket. Added three null sticks.
The door opened.
Molly reeled through, coated with death energies.
Behind her walked a woman, her hands filled with glimmering black energies, magics darting with orange and green sparks and black-as-hell motes. She was a grandmotherly type, a late-middle-aged woman with steelgray hair, rounded at hips and butt, wearing a loose dress and sneakers. The witch I had named Ursula. Holding death in her hands.
The world slowed down. In overlapping energies, I felt/heard/saw everything.
Just like in my memory of protecting Billy, I lowered my shoulder. Turned the null sticks pointy end forward.
The witch reared back,
My paw-claws gouged into the floor. I shoved off with all my might.
She aimed at Molly.
She threw.
My body did a cat move, whipping around and forward.
