Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (24 page)

But there was still more. In the bottom was a second box, this one sealed and marked with the name Eli Younger. I indicated that the inverted
hedge
could be dropped and I lifted out the box, holding it up to Eli.

He accepted it, standing over me and my pile of fighting finery. He knelt beside me and sliced through the sealing tape. Inside, wrapped in matching packing paper, was a set of leathers, matte black, as befitted a second.

From the living room Edmund said, sounding droll, “They match mine, which were given to me by Leo before he kicked me out. They are hanging in the storage room, in a garment bag. I do hope they aren’t in the way.” There was something snide in the last line, but I ignored it, my thoughts on the time schedule for ordering, measuring, cutting, sewing, shaping, and spelling so many sets of leathers in so many different colors and sizes.

There was a smaller, bright red cardboard box to the side, one I hadn’t even noticed. It had no address on it, and had been hand-delivered. I looked the question at the boys
and Edmund said, “From George Dumas.” More snide, which I again ignored.

I opened the box and peeled back the tissue paper inside. And I lifted out the thing on top.

“Niiiice,” Eli said. “Custom Kydex holsters for all your gear.” He flipped a card over and handed it to me without reading it. The note said, “Jane. The gift isn’t roses, nor so valuable as a lovely Moghul blade, but they are practical and they match your new leathers. They are custom-made by the Green River Holster Company. George.” There was a business card attached that said GRHolsters.com.

I retrieved three weapons from my room and slid a fourteen-inch-long vamp-killer into a holster shaped like a blade. It clicked when it was seated, a soft snap that said the weapon was secure until I wanted to free it. The nine-mils clicked into place too. “Cool,” I said, knowing there was a silly girly smile on my lips. But a guy who knew how to buy the perfect present tended to bring on a lot of such smiles.

My cell rang and I instantly knew who it was. I met Eli’s eyes, and his squinted just a hint. It was his ticked-off face. He knew too. The time proved that we were being played, part of the vamp politics. I flipped open the Kevlar cover and said, “Leo.”

“You have received your gift, my Jane?”

Toneless, I said, “Yes. They’re beautiful. This stuff is for the Euro Vamp visit, yes? What are you planning? And for how long have you been planning it? And am I supposed to be dead when it’s over?”

Leo chuckled, that silken laugh they do that sends shivers over my flesh, that come-hither sound that makes them the apex predators. “I have known this was coming for a very,
very
long time, my Jane. I have planned this from the moment you killed my enemy, de Allyon, shifted into a puma in my limo, and shredded the seats with your claws.” The call ended.

It’s Too Dark to See, But I’m Rolling My Eyes

Not long after dark, Eli and I drove up to the Elms Mansion and Garden and parked on a side street. I was in street clothes instead of the new gear, because the smell of the leathers was too much for my sensitive nose. I had tried them on, however, and they were luscious, but not luscious enough to wear without a really good airing out.

The weather was cool, the humidity was low for New Orleans, and the sunset had been spectacular, a red wash across the western sky. As we walked up, we saw five witches warding the grounds: Lachish, her gray hair like steel in the garden lights, Molly with her glorious cap of curls, and three others. One was Bliss, and the young woman had changed a lot since she accepted that she was a witch and began training. She was still ethereally beautiful, with very pale skin and black hair, but she no longer lived at Katie’s Ladies, no longer serviced vamps and bigwigs in town by donating blood or other services. And she no longer went by Bliss, but by her given name, Ailis Rogan. I inclined my head, letting her know that I recognized her, but didn’t go over. I wasn’t sure how much of her past she had shared with
others. There were two more witches I had met before, Butterfly Lily and her mother, Feather Storm. Neither was a powerful witch, but they were useful to route magical workings through, when a full coven of powerful witches was unavailable, as for this test.

Big Evan stood to the side. In order to protect his children, he hadn’t outted himself, and he was here incognito, wearing a ball cap and sunglasses, looking like a bored human husband, but watching everything with a keen eye.

The five witches had drawn a witch circle that covered the house, the extensive grounds in back, the large central patio directly behind the house that lined up with a gazebo and a statue, the garden areas, the trees that lined the property, part of the sidewalks, and the curb at St. Charles Avenue. In back, the witches were standing at pentagram points with Lachish at north, and the two weaker witches standing in between the stronger witches. Moving sunwise, it was Lachish, Butterfly Lily, Molly, Feather Storm, and Ailis/Bliss. By pulling on Beast-vision, I could see the working as it unfolded, rising very slowly from the circle and beginning to lift to cover the house and grounds.

Jodi and Sloan Rosen were standing outside the house grounds and the warding, watching the witches work. Jodi was a small, curvy blond, who was the public face of NOPD’s paranormal department, while Sloan spent most of his time in the bowels of the woo-woo room in research. Not that Sloan couldn’t do the same job as Jodi, but he had a huge price on his head, put there by the local chapter of some big gangs. Sloan had been undercover with them and had barely gotten out with his head—and loads of info on the gangs. If it hadn’t been dark, I doubted he’d be in public.

In the middle of St. Charles Avenue, in front of the Elms, Derek and his small, loyal, most experienced team of men were working on issues related to parking and witch safety during and after streetcar transportation up and down the major thoroughfare. Safety for the streetcar was paramount, as so many out-of-towners would be using the streetcar for transportation between the Elms and nearby or French Quarter hotels.

“Jodi,” I called out. She started to reply but snapped her head to the circle. The sizzle of magics interrupted, of a working shattering, swept over me, scorching hot, lifting the hairs on my body and up my neck. I inhaled and caught the stink of ozone, the smell of smoke.

In an instant, everything went wrong, in overlapping impressions and sensations.

Big Evan roared with pain. He threw his head back, spine arching, and cartwheeled
into
the circle, through the rising magics, to land on the grass. Fire flared from one arm and both legs, the stink of burning flesh on the air. Smoke rose in puffs and spirals. The circle and warding began to fall.

And the faint stink of old iron and salt came from all around.

Along with Eli and Jodi, I raced for Big Evan. But the working hadn’t completely fallen and I caught the others, holding them back. “It’s not down yet,” I said. Eli jerked free and sped into the dark, for what, I didn’t know. I pulled Jodi away, and signaled to Derek to keep his men away, watching helplessly as Evan rolled in the grass, trying to put out the flames. Roaring with pain and anger.

I could enter the Gray Between and crawl through the falling energies, but at the thought, my belly wrenched with what I hoped was only phantom pain. I might die before I ever got to Evan. I ground my teeth against the fear and reached inside myself to touch my skinwalker magics, gathering them. Just in case.

Jodi pulled her radio and identified herself and her twenty, which was cop-speak for location, as she gave the Elms’ address. The witches in the working struggled to hold the degrading circle, trying to keep it from exploding or imploding or whatever was trying to happen.

Molly shouted her husband’s name, but didn’t move from her place as she and the other four witches gathered the energies of the circle and the incipient ward, as if pulling huge cables, coiling them on the ground, lowering the power into the earth, grounding the energy. From Evan, broken energies sparked and sizzled and flew into the air. Though he had to be in horrible pain, he was trying not
to use his air magics to put out the fire, which would have been a snap. But not today, not in front of witnesses, and not against the green flames.

“—Medic!” Jodi demanded, and I realized she was still speaking into her official police radio, words fast and clipped. “We need an ambulance at the Elms on St. Charles and Eighth. Single burn victim. Paranormal injury, accidental or criminal, unknown. I want marked cars at Seventh, Eighth, and Harmony streets to keep the public back.”

Someone said, “Ten-four, Detective.” There was a click and to me Jodi said, “Did you see what happened?”

“Something went wrong with the circle, and then Evan jumped inside it, which is either the height of stupidity or something heroic,” I said, trying to figure out why Evan had thrown himself
into
the ward. He had to have seen something dangerous inside, but I couldn’t spot anything.

Evan was still rolling, and with Beast-vision, I could see gold energies cocooning his body as he drew on his personal protection magics, but the flames weren’t going out. Green flames. Green magic, attacking Evan. “The fire has weird green tints,” I said. “It isn’t an ordinary fire. It’s magic.” And it was attacking Evan.

“It’s a targeted spell,” Jodi added grimly, drawing the same conclusion.

I pulled my skinwalker energies out, a gray and silver cloud of my magic, the Gray Between, laced through with darker silver-gray motes of dancing power. I wasn’t planning on bubbling time, but already my guts twisted, a taste of blood in the back of my throat.

The ward fell. Molly dropped the powers she had been holding and raced toward her husband, her hands doing something, too fast to see. Eli sprinted in from the side carrying his medical gobag, a blanket, and a fire extinguisher. He tossed the bag and extinguisher to me and shook out the blanket on the run. He threw it on Big Evan and rolled the much larger man in it, applying his own body weight and slapping with his hands to smother the weird green flames. The purely mundane remedy was working. I let go of my own power, swallowed back the vile taste of blood, pulled the pin on the bright red
extinguisher, raced forward, and aimed carbon dioxide at the burning grass, the white cloud suffocating the last of the fire. It took longer than it should have to kill the flames on the grass, and the stench of ozone mixed with iron and copious amounts of salt hung heavy on the air by the time the last flame died.

Molly and Eli were kneeling beside Evan. Lachish stood at his head and Bliss/Ailis at his feet, already working to dampen his pain and speed healing, which was Ailis’s special gift. I could see the brilliant energies, blues and purples, blending into a dark but vibrant working.

Big Evan sighed as the working descended and his pain began to ease. Tears and mucus glistened on his face. “I’m okay, Mol. Let me see.”

“No! Don’t look.”

He caught both of her hands in his one unburned, catcher-mitt-sized hand, and the blanket slid down. “You know I’m going to look,” he said with a pained version of his old smile. He did. The shreds of his clothes were charred; his left arm and both legs looked like raw meat; the red body hair and outer skin were gone, as if blisters had formed and burst, exposing cooked muscle and blackened, ropy veins. “Well, dang. I won’t look so pretty at the beach next summer, but at least I still have my limbs.” He let Molly go and touched his face, sounding mournful. “It burned off part of my beard.”

“Evan!” Molly was crying, but not tears of fear or worry. Molly was mad. Which was dangerous on all sorts of levels. Molly had death magics to control and hide, and being angry tended to bring them to the surface.

“I’m fine, sweetheart,” Evan said. “Breathe.”

“You breathe!”

Evan laughed, the sound pained and a little wild. “I am. That’s the important thing to remember. I’m still breathing.”

“Nothing a little vamp blood won’t heal,” Eli said. Four of the witches whipped their heads to him, clearly scandalized. “Not that your spells aren’t great and all, ladies, but I know this vampire? And he’ll be happy to heal. He even swore an oath to do anything necessary to help.” Eli
gave me an evil grin. “Perfect time to test out that primo promise.”

“Right,” I said, relief scudding through me. “Get Alex to send Edmund here.” I stopped, thinking about what I had just said. I was treating Edmund like a blood-slave, which made me no better than a vamp. I rubbed my head and drew on the hard-taught manners I so seldom used. I rephrased, “Please ask Alex to please request the presence of Edmund here.”

Eli gave a half-smothered, derisive breath at my polite words.

“Molly, remember what Edmund promised. Evan will be fine. He’ll see it happens. But what we need right now is for you, all of you, to tell us what happened.”

“I’m breathing,” Evan said, his voice tight with pain, “so I can talk.” In the distance multiple sirens sounded as police and ambulances closed in from every direction.

“Okay,” Molly said, though it was a lie. She wasn’t okay at all. But the word meant that she was reining in her anger.

I knelt beside Evan as Molly lent her Earth magics to helping Evan with pain relief, tears drying on her face. “Evan,” I said, “you were outside the circle, and Jodi and I smelled a spell go bad. And then you jumped into the circle. And then we saw that you were on fire. Did you go on fire before you jumped into the circle or after? How do you remember it?”

“I didn’t jump inside. I’d have broken the circle.”

“You did jump,” Lachish said. “The circle didn’t break and it should have.”

“No, no,” Jodi said, her eyes holding a faraway stare. “There was the circle you had already raised, and then the ward you were starting to raise. And there was a third working. Something outside that was activated before Evan jumped into the circle, before he caught on fire. And it wasn’t your workings. I smelled something odd.” Jodi pulled out a psy-meter and started scanning the grounds.

“Iron and salt,” I said. “And here all along I thought that salt and iron were the antithesis to magic.”

“Nothing is ever an absolute,” Jodi said. “So that
means the circle itself may have been a target instead of a bystander. Is that even possible?”

“It’s possible,” Lachish said, drawing out the word, sounding uncertain.

“Explain,” I said.

“There are two ways it might work. One: a group of witches were nearby with a working in process. Then our working triggered it, attracting it to us. The timing and similarity of energies being raised would have to be impeccable, which, to my mind, rules out an
accidental
merging. Two, which is much more likely: there was a booby trap working on the grounds, and when we raised the circle, and triggered the
hedge of thorns
ward, our actions activated the concealed working. The explosion was close enough to Evan to propel him into the circle.”

“That’s it,” Evan rasped. “The magic was under my feet. It exploded upward and threw me inside.”

I remembered the spell that had knocked Evan flat to his back earlier in the morning. That might have made him more likely to be hit again, but I didn’t want to say that aloud. “Okay. Assuming door number two,” I said, “and assuming Evan was an accidental target instead of the intended target, what would be needed for a booby trap?”

“A focus is the easiest method,” Lachish said.

“That’s it,” Big Evan repeated, now sounding dreamy, as Molly’s and Ailis’s magics pulled his pain away. I wondered if the young, untrained, and inexperienced witch could tell Evan was a witch, but she didn’t act odd, so I guessed not.

Emergency vehicles closed in on the Elms, the sirens doing that house-to-house fast echo of a neighborhood in the muggy South. “Yeah,” Evan said. “I saw a green leaf iron . . . focal.” And he was suddenly asleep, knocked out by the healing spell.

I knelt and checked his palms. Nothing there except blisters on the burned one. Eli said, “Jane, my cell just went out.”

“Lachish,” I said, pulling my own cell, “we need to keep everyone away from here, away from Evan, away from the circle. You know that my house has been attacked twice, by
two witches using iron focal items. So was I, personally. Evan got some of the backlash.” I took a surreptitious look at my left palm, which was unmarked, no green eye there. Thankfully. I scrubbed my palm on my pants before opening my phone. “Alex sent you the photos. Did you recognize anyone through the pixelated-out mess?”

“No,” she said. “Their body shapes might have been any of dozens of witches in the state. But there was nothing visible of their faces.” Which I knew.

“My phone’s out too,” I said to them, poking at the dead screen. “Proximity to the broken circle?”

Lachish said, “It could be. Or it could be a multilayered spell with interrupted communications as part of it.” She looked at Jodi, who immediately started barking orders at the officers, to cordon off the whole block. Too many things were going on, going wrong, and I tried to think, while Jodi, standing on the patio tiles, waved the approaching ambulance into a parking spot. I could hear the voices as they explained to the cops and the paramedics what the witches were doing and what the holdup was. The cops checked their cells, to discover that they were out. Even their radios were nonfunctional, though the car engines themselves were seemingly fine. While the human cops cordoned off the area, I walked around the healing working and murmured to Molly, “Where are your kids?”