Whispers of the Flesh (23 page)

Seven

Y
OU REALLY THINK I need to use the
liggia spiall
on her?” Elle asked as she and Lili stood in the hall outside Isabel’s room later that night, both of them in silk robes with their wet hair in ponytails. “Why don’t we just explain that I’ve harvested the ‘high-quality spermatozoa’ she’s looking for, and that all I have to do is transfer it to her, and she can have a child who’s not only genetically superior, but gifted, to boot?”

When Elle reversed The Change and became Elic again, the semen he’d captured from Jason would end up in his seminal vesicles in an enhanced form. This
zeru,
as Lili called it, having become infused with certain psychic qualities, would ensure that any child born to the worthy female, or
arkhutu,
who received it, would have the Gift. The only other way to produce a gifted child was through the union of two gifted parents.

With a slightly impatient sigh, Lili said, “Problem is, there’s only one way for a dusios to transfer
zeru
to an
arkhutu,
and that is through sexual intercourse. You know how human women feel about sex, Elle. It always becomes so dreadfully complicated. Do you really expect Isabel to just lie back and spread her legs for you?”

“But if she wants a baby that badly—”

“She does,”Lili said, “and that’s why you need to do this discreetly, without giving her the opportunity to freak out over it. And you have to do it now, because chances are you won’t have another opportunity. Once Emmett is gone . . .” She shook her head, her eyes glazing over with moisture.

Elle took Lili in her arms, kissed her forehead. “I know. I know,
mins Ástgurdís.
” It was never easy, watching a beloved human depart his mortal form.

“Once he’s gone,” Lili said, “and it will be soon, we both know that, it’s quite possible we’ll never see Isabel again.”

Although Emmett still assumed that Isabel intended to succeed him as
administrateur,
she had made it clear to Adrien and the rest of them that she had no intention of doing so, thus bringing the curtain down on her family’s two and a half centuries of devoted service to the
gardiens
of Grotte Cachée.

In contemplating her motives, one couldn’t help but conclude that there was bad blood between Isabel and Adrien. Until her father’s illness, she hadn’t visited Grotte Cachée for nineteen years. She’d been a frequent guest since then, of course, but she and Adrien always seemed a bit standoffish with each other. The fact that he stayed in the hunting lodge during her visits suggested that it was he, not she, who was at the source of their “cold war.”

For whatever reason, Adrien didn’t like her, but out of respect for her father, he had kept that dislike to himself. Nor had he confided as much to Elic, although the two of them had developed a close friendship over the past couple of decades. Of all the
gardiens
that Grotte Cachée had seen during the 2,061 years in which Elic had been living there, Adrien was the most compatible with him in terms of temperament and interests. They often hung out in the library together in the afternoons, reading and shooting the breeze. But whenever Isabel’s name came up, Adrien somehow always got around to changing the subject. Lili was undoubtedly right in thinking that Isabel would never visit Grotte Cachée after her father was gone; why should she?

“Do it tonight, my love,” Lili said. “She’ll thank you later.”

“So you think I should tell her . . . after?”

“Only if she becomes pregnant, and we should know that within a day or two.
Le seigneur
will see it in her aura—he’ll tell us. Since she doesn’t have a boyfriend right now, she’ll be wondering how it happened, no?”

With a sigh of capitulation, Elle crouched on the floor facing away from Lili, who hated to watch this, closed her eyes, and whispered the “return ticket” incantation. Her stomach churned as organs shifted and bones and muscles enlarged; bile rose in her throat, and she was overtaken by violent trembling. The first dozen or so times she’d done this, as a youth, she’d vomited. She’d trained herself to master the Change Sickness by breathing deeply and steadily, but it was still an utterly wretched feeling.

Her skin stretched to fit the larger, more solid body, except for the breasts, which tightened up. The strangest sensation—but the most comforting—was that of her genital organs rearranging themselves into their male counterparts, especially the expansion of her nerve-packed clit into the heavy, less sensitive but far more familiar penis.

Elic rose slowly to his feet, holding on to the wall for support as he reacquainted himself with the altered center of gravity and the extra height. He reached through the opening of his robe to feel his cock and balls. As usual, he was already half erect from the internal pressure of his burgeoning cache of seminal fluid, both Jason’s and his own. He would be even hornier than usual until he emptied his poor, swollen vesicles, which could only happen through ejaculation in a human female.

“They’re still there,”Lili said with a chuckle. “They’re always still there, always the same size and shape, yet every time, the first thing you do is check to make sure you’ve gotten them back safe and sound.”

“If you were male,” he said as he massaged and rotated his shoulders, “you would understand.”

Elic cracked open the door to
la Salle de Pré,
a romantic Victorian-style bower with dark gothic furniture and wallpaper scattered with wild pansies, Queen Anne’s lace, and meadow sage, to find both bedside lamps turned on. It amused Elic that this particular guest room—a suite, actually, with a sitting room and bathroom—was where a self-styled “dazzling urbanite” like Isabel chose to stay when she was at Grotte Cachée.

“Déjà vu,” said Elic as they stood over the high four-post bed with its lacy white canopy and crocheted bedspread, which had clearly not been slept in that evening. “Doesn’t anyone sleep any—”

The door to the bathroom opened and Isabel walked out wrapped in a towel, scrubbing her wet hair with another one. It hung over her face, so she didn’t realize Elic and Lili were there until he said her name.

She screamed and dropped the towel, backing up frantically. Her damp, crazily tousled hair made her panic look almost cartoonish.

“Shh, Isabel. Shh.” Elic seized her wrists and closed a hand over her mouth, hoping she hadn’t awakened anyone.

There came a muffled exclamation from behind his hand that sounded like
“What the fuck?”

“It’s all right, Isabel,”Lili assured her in a soothing tone. “It’s just us.”

Isabel relaxed a bit as she looked back and forth between them, but her expression was one of utter bewilderment. Lili gave Elic a pointed look, as if to say
What are you waiting for?

Removing his hand from Isabel’s mouth, Elic touched her forehead and whispered the Old Norse words that would render her compliant and turn her memory of this night into a dream.
“Láta, liggia.”

“What’s that?” Isabel asked. “What are you saying? What does that mean?”

Elic and Lili exchanged a look. The
liggia spiall
should have made her instantly tranquil, unquestioning, malleable. It always worked on the first try.

Always.

“Is that a spell?” Isabel asked. “Oh, my God, tell me that’s not one of your sex spells.”

Gripping her upper arm, Elic pressed a hand to her forehead and tried a different but similar
spiall
.
“Hlýðni
. . .”

She wrenched away from him and backed up into the bathroom, hands raised as if to ward off his Follet sorcery. “You have got to be kidding,” she said, gaping at them. “I mean, you have
got
to be fucking kidding me.”

He took a step toward her, saying “Isabel—”

“Get the fuck away from me,” she said, grabbing a can of hairspray off the vanity and aiming it at him. “I’ll use this. I’ll spray it right in your eyes.”

“Isabel, have you been crying?” Lili asked.

Elic took a closer look at Isabel, seeing the swollen eyes and shiny red nose. “She
has
been crying.”

“No I haven’t,” Isabel said, but he could hear it in her voice now, that telltale damp nasality.

“Is it your father?” Lili asked.

“No, it’s . . . it’s nothing.”

Lili said, “It’s Adrien Morel, isn’t it?”

Isabel looked at her sharply.

“You shouldn’t be letting him get to you like this,” said Lili, rubbing Isabel’s arm, “especially given what you’re going through with your father right now. Human beings are complicated. Sometimes there’s just no telling why they do what they do or feel what they feel. He probably thinks he has some reason for not liking you, but—”

“Wait. What?”

“We know,” Elic said. “We can see how he acts with you, how he avoids you.”

“Right,” Isabel said with a bitter little chuckle. “Of course. Listen, I haven’t been crying ’cause Adrien doesn’t like me.”

“Then what’s the matter?” Elic asked.

“What’s the
matter
?” Isabel repeated. “As in, what’s the matter with
me
?”

“Well . . .”

“
I’m
not the one trying to use fucking hoo-doo voodoo to get in the pants of someone you have
absolutely
no business messing around with that way,” she said, an edge of hysteria in voice. “Geez Louise, what’s
wrong
with you people? Oh, wait. You’re not people.
That’s
what’s wrong with you. You’re X-rated elves and fairies—sorry,
gods and goddesses
—who have to get your rocks off twenty-four-seven or you shrivel up and die, but never fear, you get your fuckmates delivered hot and fresh right to your door, and you don’t even have to fucking
date,
which isn’t remotely fucking fair. You just hole up here fucking and sucking, sucking and fucking. The fucking Freak Family Robinson.”

She slammed the can of hairspray down, her whole face red now, not just her eyes and nose.

“Not fairies,” Elic said.

“What?” Isabel said.

“None of us is a fairy. Fairies aren’t even that into sex.”

“Well, the rusalki,” Lili said.

“The rusalki aren’t really fairies,” Elic said. “They’re more like psychopathic, sex-crazed water nymphs.”

“What are nymphs but fairies?” Lili asked.

“Can I
please
get out of this bathroom?” Isabel said.

“Sorry,” Elic said when he realized he and Lili had been blocking the door.

They stepped aside so that Isabel could stalk into her bedroom, her palms pressed to her forehead. “I cannot
fucking
believe you were trying to
fuck
me.”

“Your father’s right,” Elic said. “You really do swear like a cutter.”

“I’m trying to do better,” Isabel said as she sank wearily into an ornately carved throne chair, “but my God, when you step out of the shower and find a couple of supernatural sex hounds lying in wait for you . . .”

“I understand how you feel,” Lili told her, “but you should know that we didn’t come here for prurient motives.”

“Oh, like you have any other kind.”

“We came here to make you pregnant,” Elic said.

Isabel cocked her head, narrowing her eyes at him.

Shooting Elic that look that said he was being his usual goonlike masculine self, Lili explained their scheme to extract Jason MacKenna’s superior DNA and use it to impregnate Isabel with a gifted child.

“You were trying to make me
pregnant
?” Isabel said.

“That’s what I
said,
” replied Elic, who sometimes just didn’t get this whole female beating-about-the-bush thing.

Isabel shook her head, smiling as if at some private joke. “Um . . . hate to tell you, guys, but your timing could not possibly have been any worse.”

“It doesn’t matter where you are in your cycle,” Lili said. “The
zeru
tweaks your hormones and triggers the release of an egg, so your chances of conceiving are actually excellent.”

“She’s about to ovulate anyway,” Elic said.

“Wait—how do you know that?” Isabel asked.

He tapped his nose. “Pheromones.”

“Okay,
eeeuw
. So you were just gonna pull the old abracadabra and do the deed while I was in some kind of trance or whatever? I know you guys mean well, but frankly, I’m really glad the spell didn’t work. Are some people, like, immune to that shit? That
stuff,
” she corrected. “I really am trying.”

Lili said, “You don’t know what it means when a Follet’s enchantment doesn’t work on a human?”

Isabel shrugged. “Dad has filled me in on some of this stuff, and I’ve read the first volume of Adrien’s
Secret History,
but that was just about Brantigern Anextlo—what’s-his-name, and the Gallic Wars and all that. Why? What does it mean?”

It meant that Isabel was gifted. She might not realize it, but it was indisputable. The only humans who were resistant to enchantment by a Follet were those with the Gift.

Lili looked to Elic as if to say
What do we tell her?
Isabel must know, having read Volume I of the
Histoire Secrète de Grotte Cachée,
in which Brantigern himself tackled this particular issue, that it took two gifted parents, not just one, to produce a gifted child. Isabel’s mother had the Gift, but Emmett did not. Elic knew this with absolute assurance, having demonstrated some spells on him at his request when he first took over the administration of Grotte Cachée.

If they were to reveal Isabel’s giftedness to her, she would know that Emmett Archer, whom she had grown up calling “Dad,” and whom she was in the process of losing, wasn’t actually her father.

“Some humans are not susceptible to our incantations,” Lili said, her little shrug suggesting that the reason for this was a mystery, when it was anything but. “You, er, probably shouldn’t mention this—our trying to put a spell on you, and so forth—to your father. He might find it . . . disconcerting.”

“He’s going through enough,” Isabel said. “He doesn’t need to know about this.”

Elic said,“You know, even though we can’t use the
liggia spiall
on you, I can still give you a baby, if you really want one.”