Queen of The Hill (Knight Games) (27 page)

“Do you think I was supposed to do something else? Some sort of ceremony or something.”

“I have no idea,” Poe said. “In all of my lifetimes as a familiar, I have never witnessed a witch with two territories.”

“Great. I’m a trailblazer.”

He chuckled. “I can’t think of a more qualified candidate.”

“Let’s see if my qualifications help me find a spell to get my caretaker back.” I flipped open the bark cover and perused the first pages. No table of contents. The spells weren’t even in alphabetical order. “How can a witch live this way?” I asked in frustration.

Poe groaned. “Ask it, Grateful.”

“Oh, I always forget I can do that.” I held my hand over the book. With a clear mind, I stated, “Show me the antidote for persigranate poisoning.”

When I asked
The Book of Light
a question, the whole book glowed and the pages flipped in the wind. Not so with this book. A vine of ivy grew out of the spine and used its spade-shaped leaf to flip through the pages. When it reached the one it wanted, it laced itself along the crease, bookmark style. I leaned over the page and read the spell.

I looked at Poe. “The sun has already set.”

Poe went statue still. “I will obtain the quail egg, my lady.”

I nodded. I opened the front door, and he took flight. Once he was gone, I finally let myself cry.

“Drink,” I said into Rick’s ear. I propped him against my chest and raised the potion to his slack lips. He wasn’t helping me at all. Limp-limbed, he leaned in my arms.

Poe paced on my dresser. “Just give it to him. Time is of the essence.”

I placed one hand on Rick’s forehead and coaxed his head back. When his lips parted, I dumped in a splash of potion, then moved my hand from forehead to chin to hold his mouth closed. After three more times with this procedure, he’d swallowed all of it.

I held him for a minute and then lowered him to the bed, our noses almost touching. As my arms started to cramp, I wondered if he’d ever come back to me. If his brain was fried, would he live out his immortal life in this empty and unresponsive state, until the mountains crumbled and the earth came apart? I couldn’t stand to watch him exist like that.

An unwelcome thought wiggled at the back of my consciousness. I had Tabetha’s spell book. I could make another candle. If I made Rick human again, he could die. Would it be better to let him die than live like this? Without a doubt, death was what Rick would choose if he had the choice.

But could I do it? No. Probably not. I buried my eyes in his chest and gave myself over to the surge of helplessness I’d fought valiantly since my ruined wedding. I dove head first into a sobbing, pitiful, self-indulgent wallow.

“Come back to me. Please, come back to me,” I said in the squeaky, broken voice of a desperate woman.

Time stretched on.

Pressure. A hand rested on the back of my shoulder. I stopped breathing. Poe couldn’t transform into anything with five fingers, and I hadn’t heard footsteps enter the room. Slowly, tentatively, I raised my head from Rick’s chest and tipped my face to see his.

He was looking at me. Soft gray eyes met mine, and the corner of his mouth crawled up his cheek in a jerky, measured grin.

“Hi,” I said.

“How fare thee?”

His lips had moved, and he’d produced words. My heart leapt. I grinned and grabbed his face, melding my mouth with his. He stiffened and pushed me away.

According to Logan, when he came out of the effects of the persigranate he remembered everything he’d done under its influence. Perhaps Rick was remembering what happened. It would be like him to be consumed with guilt over Tabetha as well as leaving me at the altar.

I pulled back. “It’s okay. It’s all okay now.” I smiled reassuringly.

Rick sat up, swinging his legs out from under me and over the side of the bed. The action forced me to do the same, and we ended up shoulder to shoulder on the edge of the mattress. His eyes narrowed. “What have you done to your appearance?”

I snorted. “Nothing.” I looked down at myself.

His eyes darted around the room in confusion. “Isabella?” It was a question, not a statement.

With a small nod of my head, I pressed a palm into my chest. “Yes … Well, not anymore,” I said uncertainly. “Grateful now, remember?”

“I watched you burn,” he whispered.

“That was hundreds of years ago, Rick—”

“Enrique,” he corrected me.

Confused, I looked to Poe, who was watching silently from his perch on my dresser. “What year is it, Enrique?” Poe asked.

Rick startled. “The bird speaks? Is this your doing, Isabella?”

I placed my hand on Rick’s thigh. “What year do you think it is?” I asked again.

He stared at my hand on the denim of his jeans. “It is 1698. You … died.” He furrowed his brow. “I thought they all died.”

I narrowed my eyes and searched his face for any indication he was joking. “Fuck. Me.” I ignored the way Rick jarred at the curse and turned toward Poe. “I think he’s lost more than three hundred years.”

I
walked alone in an alley of questionable repute, looking for a vampire with humans on his mind. This part of the city was populated with strip clubs and massage parlors. My magic mirror told me the happy ending this vampire had in mind had more to do with blood than pleasure.

Silently, I blended into shadow, out of reach of neon lights and beyond notice of the occasional smoker who lit up behind the dumpsters. My boots were enchanted not to make a sound, and Nightshade made me almost imperceptible to supernatural beings.

The thump of bass poured into the alley as the door to one of the clubs opened and a vampire exited, woman in tow. She might’ve been a stripper or a scantily-clad patron. I wasn’t there to judge her, just the vamp.

“Come on, baby,” the vampire said. “I’ve been waiting all night to get you alone.”

She giggled. “In the alley? Wouldn’t you rather take me back to your place?”

He pressed her against the brick wall. “I think here will be just perfect.”

She shook her head. “I’m cold, and I don’t like this.” She pushed him away. “If you want to be alone, take me home.”

Strike one, no consent.

The vampire growled and grabbed her by the neck.

“Hey!” she said.

He forced her to meet his eyes. “This will be fine,” he stated again.

“This will be fine,” she repeated.

Strike two, compulsion.

Maneuvering her behind the dumpster, he brushed her hair aside, and tipped her head to expose her jugular.

Strike three, intention to drink human blood. I drew Nightshade and prepared to move in for the judgment.

A dark fog rolled past me and lifted the vampire from the woman’s body. The vamp was pulled straight up into the air at super speed and then dropped. I took a step back so the body didn’t hit me in the head. When it did land, I noticed immediately that the vampire’s heart had been torn out. In seconds, the body turned gray, then to dust, and became indistinguishable from the rest of the dirt on the pavement.

“Show yourself,” I said.

A wind blew past me, smelling faintly of Scotch, and formed into a sharply dressed vampire sophisticate with chocolate brown hair and Caribbean blue eyes.

“Hello, Julius,” I said. “Didn’t expect to have
your
help tonight.”

“The free coven does not allow feeding on unwilling humans, Grateful. We police our own.”

I shrugged. “Good with me. One less thing on my list. Have a nice night.” I sheathed Nightshade and turned to leave the alley.

Julius appeared in front of me in the blink of an eye. “Why are you out alone tonight?”

“Rick had some things he needed to do.”

The vampire peered at me through suspicious, hooded eyes. “Bullshit. I saw the state he was in at Tabetha’s. He hasn’t recovered yet, has he?” He rubbed his chin.

I couldn’t tell if Julius was smiling. His mouth was a straight line, but his eyes looked a little too happy about the idea of Rick having lasting consequences from Tabetha’s poisoning.

“He’s fine,” I lied. The truth was Rick was far from fine. As the spell warned, Rick had lost something when Tabetha overdosed him with persigranate, namely the memory of our life together with him as my caretaker. At some level, he knew who I was, and he understood I was a witch. He even remembered the scar on his chest and how it got there. But he didn’t remember my previous lives. In his mind, we’d never had sex. We’d never been married. He’d never transformed into his beast.

Julius rolled his neck. He wasn’t buying my denial, but he didn’t push the topic. “Are you done for the night?” he asked.

“Yeah. Heading home. The ward is safe for another twenty-four.” That was an exaggeration. My magic mirror didn’t catch everything. The situations it pictured were premeditated and not tampered with by sorcery.

“Would you like to come back to the Thames for a drink?” Julius arched one eyebrow. For a moment, I had the sense he was trying to be seductive. Julius was attractive by commercial standards, and vampires were predatorily gifted with charm, but I was immune to those gifts and somewhat sickened by his history.

“I’ll pass, thanks,” I said. I kept walking.

“After all we’ve been through?” He gently placed a hand on my shoulder. “Wouldn’t it be nice to be friends? Allies? You might need me again someday.”

I bunched my forehead. The lightbulb came on. Julius wasn’t really asking if
I
wanted a drink. He was trying to offer me a drink because
he
might need something someday. Julius was kissing up to me. This was politics, not seduction.

I supposed it was important to be political, now that I was queen of multiple territories. “Okay. One short drink,” I said. “At a bar. Not in your bedroom.”

He agreed. I strolled from the alley shoulder to shoulder with the vampire, wondering if I was making a mistake. Then again, I had been chosen to rule, and rulers made a habit of knowing their constituents. At one point, I’d kept Julius alive for his political position as leader of the free coven. It was only natural I foster that relationship, vampire or not.

“Here,” he said, suggesting a bar called The Ocean.

“There’s a line,” I said. “And I’m underdressed.”

He took my elbow and led me directly to the bouncer, who let us in ahead of at least fifty waiting twenty-somethings. In the back, in a quiet section called the Deep End, we took seats on velvet blue couches and had our drink orders taken by a girl in a bikini. He ordered Scotch. I ordered a blue Hawaiian.
When in Rome …

“Now that you’re back, how’s the transition going?” I asked. “Anyone giving you a hard time about jumping back in and calling yourself the king?”

Julius placed an ankle across the opposite knee and leaned his head back into a cradle of his fingers. “I’ll answer that question when you tell me how you are faring with the wood witch’s power.”

I shrugged. “The day I signed for her territory, a plant sprouted from my floorboards. I cut it back. The next morning my entire staircase was covered in roses. I’ve tried everything. Chemicals, burning, clippers. There’s no going back. My house is officially a rose garden.”

Julius laughed.

I stared at him expectantly.

“You recently witnessed the death of the last dissenter.” He grinned.

The waitress arrived and handed him his Scotch and me a blue fishbowl the size of my head with a straw sticking out of it. I had to use two hands. I set it down on the small table in front of us.

“Is that how you handle everything? Someone pisses you off and they wind up dead?”

He circled the amber liquid in the bottom of his glass. “Technically, everyone in the coven is already dead, but yes.” He pointed at me. “It seems you have the same strategy.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not like you.”

“No? Marcus crossed you. He’s dead. The nekomata crossed you. The entire clan is dead. Bathory? Would be dead if Tabetha hadn’t saved her by mummifying her under a tree. Oh, and lest I forget, Tabetha … dead.”

I picked up my fishbowl and took a long, sweet drink through the straw. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

“It’s okay, you know, to be like me,” Julius said. “I’ve survived a long time living like I do.”

“I am not like you, Julius. The people I’ve killed tried to kill me first. I was protecting myself.”

“And I kill indiscriminately?”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t begin to speculate on all the reasons you’ve killed.”

He tossed back the remainder of his Scotch. “Oh, I think you probably could,” he said softly.

“What are you getting at, Julius?”

“Despite what you say to the contrary, I suspect your caretaker isn’t what he used to be—”

“He’s fine.”

“Your territory has grown, and you are still learning to use your power.”

“I killed one of the strongest witches alive. I think I’m doing pretty well.”

“I want to offer you help. I’m here for you, if you need me. My coven is at your service.” He looked at me with nothing but sincerity in his eyes.

“And every service comes with a price, doesn’t it, Julius?”

He nodded slowly, never breaking eye contact.

He was right. Poe and I hadn’t been successful in getting Rick to shift into his beast yet, and he’d lost all memory of the supernatural knowledge he’d gained during the last three centuries. Not only had I lost my backup, he was still getting comfortable with indoor plumbing. I didn’t trust Julius, not really. But I had a job to do.

I lifted my fishbowl. “To new beginnings,” I said.

He toasted me with his empty glass.