Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (22 page)

A woman as pale skinned as Kett stood crouched over him, baring her wickedly fanged teeth at me. Her fangs were at least an inch longer than Kett’s. Her eyes were not only filled with blood but swirling with magic. And her magic — a sharp, pungent peppermint — was almost an exact replica of Kett’s.

No. I had that backward. His magic was a duplicate of hers, and nowhere near as strong.

This was Kett’s maker, who also happened to be the Audrey Hepburn lookalike I’d seen on the street that afternoon.

I cradled my left arm in my right, as I staggered to my feet. “I think he’s dying,” I said. No. I pleaded. “I was just trying to feed —”

“Dragon blood,” Kett’s maker snapped. “If he isn’t already lost to me, he would have been.”

“I’m not … I don’t think …”

“That is obvious. Take your friends and go.”

“I can’t.”

“Now.” The power in her voice made me shiver, made me want to obey her unquestioningly.

“He’s my —”

“I swore not to touch you, Jade Godfrey.” She spat my name like it insulted her to even know it. “If he dies, I will suck the marrow from the werewolf’s and necromancer’s bones and make you watch. If he doesn’t die, you have eighteen hours left. After that, if you set even one foot in London, I will take everything from you.”

I believed her. I also believed, as wounded and depleted as I was, that I probably wouldn’t be able to stop her. She might manage to kill Mory or Kandy before I could get in her way.
 

So I left Kett.

I was doing that a lot. Leaving people who might be dead or dying, and saving those I could. I was doing it over and over and over.

I hefted Kandy over my shoulder, hoping Mory could walk just holding on to me, and ran for the stairs.
 

The werewolf was still breathing. Thank God. But I needed to get both her and Mory to a hospital, and then figure out later how to explain what had happened to the human authorities. I was already in epic shit with the Convocation and the Conclave, not to mention the sorcerer’s League. The shapeshifter Assembly would have my head if the hospital took blood samples, but I wasn’t going to let Kandy die if I could help it.

∞

I managed to get Kandy and Mory down to the ground floor without having our hearts ripped out by Kett’s maker. It was slow going, and I kept frantically glancing back. My dragon healing abilities had been seriously tested, and my right foot and left arm still didn’t feel fully under my control. Kandy was heavier than she looked, and Mory just stopped moving halfway down. I had to ferry both the werewolf and the fledgling necromancer one at a time for the last two flights of stairs.

I tucked them both inside the entrance ticket booth — Mory was still conscious but not speaking. Then I drew my jade knife and went to look for Sienna.

The sidewalk was empty — no blood on it or anything. The pavement was cracked, but that could have been due to Kett’s fall.

Kett.

My chest constricted and I stepped back to look up at the roof. The railing was crumpled and hanging off the edge, but the building looked remarkably undamaged from the outside.

‘Clean up your own mess,’ Suanmi had said. But I had no idea what to do now. Everyone I knew in London was either dead or dying.

Call Gran.

I pulled my phone out of my hoodie pocket in pieces. A phone call to Gran was really going to have to wait. I was losing it, starting to shake. My mind was blank … I didn’t know what to do.

“Jade?”

Kandy. It was barely a whisper, but I heard it. I turned back to her and Mory, still scanning with my eyes and my dowser senses for Sienna … nothing. I couldn’t even taste any residual magic out on the street.

Kandy’s phone might have survived the … what should I call it? Fight? Destruction? Triple demon summoning? Getting our asses handed to us?

Her phone hadn’t survived. But that was okay, because just as I was thinking that I was going to need to steal a car, the werewolf cavalry descended on us. Jorgen was back and brought a pack with him. He’d also brought a witch.

Thank God for werewolf hormones.

∞

Jorgen hustled off with Kandy. It was difficult to protest this when I was surrounded by five werewolves who all looked like they could seriously kick my ass. Plus, the green-haired werewolf was in serious need of healing, and I had no idea how to help her.

The witch — who pretty much refused to identify herself to me — dumped a bunch of healing magic into Mory, then started ordering Jorgen’s werewolf buddies around. A couple of them had police uniforms on that looked real to my completely uninformed eye.

The witch was a dark-haired woman in her forties with a charming British lilt. She didn’t offer to heal me. That was okay, because she was pretty magically spent after working on Mory, and I also didn’t know how my magic might react to hers anyway.

“An investigative team is on the way,” she said quietly. She glanced over at me sitting on the sidewalk at her feet, with Mory slumped against my shoulder. “They were nearby. On the trail of the … black witch.” She looked up at the car park for a long moment, then frowned darkly. “Don’t leave the hotel without permission.” Then she walked off without another word.

One of the werewolves hauled us around the corner and flagged down a cab. It was obvious that they wanted us as far away from the scene as possible, and who was I to argue?

My foot sorted itself out before I hit the hotel lobby. This was good because Mory, who still hadn’t spoken, collapsed in the elevator and I had to carry her to the suite.

I tucked her into bed and made a beeline for the en-suite bathroom. One glance in the mirror and I was surprised the cab driver hadn’t refused to take us. I actually looked worse than I felt, and I felt like a pile of shit scraped off the bottom of my sister’s shoe and left to fester on the roadside.

I left the door open so I could hear if Mory woke, then turned the water to hot in the walk-in shower.

I stripped off my ruined leathers. Though they’d somehow held together on my body, they fell to shreds on the bathroom’s black-and-white hexagon-tiled floor.

Every surface of my body — neck to toes — was scored by still healing demon claw marks. My left arm was mangled as if it had been chewed on. The skin was newly pink, but underneath was a knotted mess of muscle and tissue.

Three and a half months of training and a shiny new sword, and this is what I looked like after confronting Sienna. I hadn’t even gotten to use the sword, really. That said a whole lot about how I really didn’t deserve to wield it.

And speaking of blades …

I stepped into the hot shower and tried to not weep over the sacrificial knife that I’d transformed with blood magic into something far more deadly — and then had pretty much handed it to Sienna. A knife that could kill a centuries-old vampire …

“Please don’t be dead,” I whispered. Blood washed down my body and pooled around the drain at my feet. My toenails — unpainted for the first time in years — took on a pinkish hue. “Please don’t be dead.”

But the life debt bond had broken …

I started to cry, great ragged sobs that were violent and involuntary. I hunkered down underneath the hot stream of water and pressed my hands over my mouth, so as not to wake Mory.

And I sobbed.

I sobbed until my legs gave out and I curled up on the tile. I sobbed until I hurt myself, until blood vessels broke in and around my eyes. I sobbed for my stupidity and failure.

I sobbed for my sister.

And I cried for Kett … my mentor, my friend, and my protector, who I’d scorned in the hallway of the hotel not three hours ago for killing in order to live. And then I killed him myself, with my naiveté, stupidity, and recklessness.

By the time I stopped crying, I was unsure of how long I’d been taxing the hotel’s boiler … but I felt guilty about the wastefulness so I turned off the water.

I still sat on the shower floor, soaking wet until the steam had cleared from the room and I began to shiver.

Mory said something in the other room, talking in her sleep. I lifted my head so that my wet hair hit my face. It was far cooler than my skin, and I realized I was running a temperature. My body was probably burning off the residual magic of Sienna’s spells, and also probably whatever crap was in demon spit.

“Rusty, no,” Mory murmured from the other room.

I stood up and grabbed a towel. That was enough uselessness for one evening. I had Mory to look after and Kandy to check up on.

And Sienna. There was no way Sienna was sitting in a shower bawling like a brat. No, Sienna had a new toy she was undoubtedly eager to try out.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Just before dawn, a knock at the suite door pulled me away from watching Mory sleep. I’d been worrying that she hadn’t woken yet, but was also fretting about waking her to feed her if she needed the sleep to heal.

I’d ordered food the second the kitchen had opened, so I thought the knock was room service. Instead, I opened the door to find a dark-blond woman around twenty-five standing in the hall. She was a couple of inches shorter than my five feet nine inches. Her hair was pulled back and up in a French twist that wouldn’t last an hour on me, and every well-tailored piece of clothing on her dripped money — all without my recognizing a single label, because there weren’t any.

“Jade Godfrey?” she asked politely, already knowing the answer. Her slight accent identified her as American.

I met her gaze and flinched. Her blue witch magic curled and coiled behind her eyes so tightly that I couldn’t distinguish their actual color.

She furrowed her brow at my flinch. I transferred my gaze to her hands where her magic also pooled, though not as intensely as behind her eyes.

“I know you,” I said, and I met her gaze without flinching a second time. Her magic was heavily doused in nutmeg — which wasn’t a scent I associated with witch magic — along with the sweet floral tones I would have expected. Sweet nutmeg was an odd combination.

“Yes,” she answered. “I’m Wisteria Fairchild. The reconstructionist.”

Right. We hadn’t actually met during Sienna’s trial, but Wisteria had presented a YouTube cube thing that somehow played back the scenes of Hudson’s and Rusty’s murders. The reconstructionist somehow collected residual magic, and then transformed it into a visual presentation. This was the most damning evidence against Sienna. Until I saw it at the tribunal, I didn’t even know that such magic was possible.

“Wisteria. That’s an … unusual name. I imagine you go by something else?”

“No.”

Chatty witch. Not.

“The Convocation thought it best if someone who knew your magic … and your family was here.”

“I’m confused. You’re here because?”

“An investigative team has been called in to contain, examine, and clean the area of last night’s incident.”

I stared at her. My brain was obviously low on processing power this morning. “That was less than six hours ago.”

“Yes, well. It’s rather a mess, isn’t it? Best to move quickly. Will you be inviting me in? Or shall we continue to discuss such a sensitive topic as the morning newspapers are delivered door to door?”

I nodded and stepped back — still too overwhelmed and naturally polite to take exception to being bullied by a woman not much older than me. The room service waiter turned the corner of the hallway just as Wisteria stepped into the suite.

The reconstructionist settled into a plush love seat in the sitting area, placing a large designer bag on the floor at her feet.

The waiter rolled a tray laden with enough food for five big eaters into the room.

“I didn’t know … I haven’t ordered for you,” I said to Wisteria.

She nodded and addressed the waiter. “Tea. Herbal. Mint if you have it, not chamomile.”

The waiter nodded and crossed to a set of converted antique cupboards. Once opened, they revealed a coffee and tea station, as well as a mini fridge and sink.

He set the water boiling and then stepped back to have me sign the bill. I barely glanced at it closely enough to calculate the tip. He then served Wisteria her tea in a china cup — I assumed the mugs were reserved for coffee — and left. I had a feeling he was still half asleep.

The door clicked shut and I rounded on the reconstructionist. “You were in London?”

“No, Seattle.”

“Six hours ago.”

“The Convocation arranged transportation.”

“Excuse me?”

Wisteria tilted her head and looked at me. Her magic boiled behind her eyes. It was unnerving. As far as I could taste, she was nowhere near as powerful as Gran or my mother, Scarlett. And yet magic usually flowed throughout a witch’s physical body, not concentrating in such specific areas. Wisteria Fairchild was very good at controlling her magic. Brilliant at it. But I really, really didn’t want to be around if she ever lost that coiled control.

Wisteria sipped her tea. It was too hot. She sucked in her breath to ease the pain of the burn. It was the first purely human thing I’d seen her do. Then I suddenly realized I made her nervous. I’d never thought about that before — never thought about how it must feel to be the most powerful person in the room. The extra responsibility made me momentarily heady. I wasn’t sure I could carry more weight right now.

I grabbed the top plate of food, not caring what it hid beneath its warming dome, and sat down on the couch opposite Wisteria to eat.

“I have passports for you, the fledgling necromancer, and the werewolf … Kandy. The Convocation wasn’t sure you still had access to yours. I also have airline tickets. Your flight leaves in four hours. You need to be at the airport in two, but you cannot leave the hotel without an escort.”

“I can’t leave —”

“You will leave. There is a bounty on your head — directly from the vampire elder himself — that goes into effect in less than ten hours. You’re to leave the country and are not welcome back.”

“What? Because of Kett? Is he … alive?” I stumbled over the last word from emotion — but also because I still wasn’t exactly clear on whether vampires were alive or not. To me, they looked like pure animated magic — especially Kett’s maker.