Barefoot was a bit better, though this close to the tracks I’d have to watch for broken glass and other garbage. At least it was early enough in the day that I wouldn’t have to worry about scorching the bottom of my feet on hot asphalt.
I looked
at the mess of socks and shoe, and shuddered. Was that what would happen to Elias in the sunlight? Would he look like that—so … dead?
I didn’t want to think about it—none of it. Instead, I tried to ignore the wet ick in my hands and watched seagulls circling a barge in the Mississippi. A few wisps of clouds promised the possibility of a cooling rainstorm in a couple of days. Bugs chirped and bees buzzed in the tangle of sandburs, white clover, and yellow alfalfa on the boulevard.
Yeah, I’d almost convinced myself it was a pleasant day.
Except at some point I was going to have to deal with the fact that my dad had slipped a mental gear and was utterly insane.
What I didn’t get was, if things were this bad, why hadn’t my dad done something about it? As the king, he had the authority to call a hunt at any time. It wasn’t as if he had to wait for a blue moon or eclipse or something.
Of course, if he called one, it would mean one of the True Witches would be the victim. Somebody I knew would have to sacrifice his life, which is why I’d fought so hard to stop the hunt before.
Hmm, so maybe I could see his problem.
Except he couldn’t really be scared of me, could he? He’d just tried to have me lunched.
Maybe he was waiting for something, but what? Surely, if he didn’t do something soon, his entire kingdom would be in disarray. They’d all go rogue or nosferatu or whatever.
Perhaps he was hoping for another solution. I know I was. There must be some other way to satisfy the vampires’ hunger. If there wasn’t, my dad and all the local vampires, even Elias, would die.
But what
to do? I had to do something.
I couldn’t believe no one had had to deal with this problem before. Someone must know the answer. Vampires had been around since the Stone Age—literally.
Yeah, but, as I was sure Bea would point out, they’d had someone else taking care of them for most of that time. I tended to forget that vampires had been slaves until only about two hundred years ago. They probably didn’t have much practice figuring this out on their own.
I’d learned another bit of grisly history last spring. In the past, witches not only condoned the hunt; they also supported it. They gave up coven members to the vampires. As much as I didn’t like to imagine it, I could see a certain Machiavellian advantage to that strategy. The hunt became the ultimate boogeyman. If you didn’t play by the queen’s rules, off with your head—or neck, as the case might be—in the next hunt. I supposed if they had some real troublemaker, they wouldn’t need to wait. You could feed the vampires anytime you had someone to dispose of.
I suspected that after the secret war, vampires used the hunt as revenge on old masters. Some bastard used to mistreat you? Nom, nom, nom: no more bastard.
Maybe Mom could help. I mean, normally her solution to any vampire problem was on par with “kill them, kill them all,” but she liked Elias now, right? She’d been making plans to keep him around. That was what she’d said.
Surely, if
there was an ancient witchy spell or solution, she’d share. Witches had made vampires. They must know how to feed them without killing someone, mustn’t they?
Why would the First Witch have made that part of the spell, anyway? The only answer that made any sense was that it had been an accident, something unforeseen.
One of the first things my instructors tried to teach me when I was learning magic was that you needed to be careful about how you worded requests. Asking the Goddess for things was a bit like talking to that genie in a bottle. If you asked for eternal life, you had to be sure to ask for perfect health as well, or you might find yourself feeling every day of your ten thousand years, you know?
Similarly, we were cautioned off hexes. Not that Bea tended to worry overly much about that, but I remembered her aunt Diane telling us that spells bind people together—whether for good or bad. So, if you cursed a bully, you were actually binding your fates together, in a way, on the spiritual plane.
Maybe that was something the First Witch hadn’t known about. Perhaps when she tore open the heavens and dragged through that first vampire slave, she didn’t realize she’d tied herself to hell.
Traffic was starting to pick up a little, though the Caribou Coffee I passed by was still shuttered. I sighed wistfully. I could do with a strong, hot mocha right about now. At least I was able to dump my shoe and stuff into the public garbage can on the corner. I wiped my hand on the thigh of my jeans and wondered what the city would think if they found those. Would they go all
CSI
and trace them back to me? And whose blood was on my clothes anyway? Was it the vamp’s or that of someone they’d eaten, as it were? Would I get the blame for an attack? Or even a murder?
I told
myself I had enough problems without worrying about something that might not even happen, not in this era of budget cuts. St. Paul didn’t have enough people power to deal with the bad guys as it was. A couple of bloody socks probably wouldn’t raise much alarm.
It would probably also help if I didn’t stand around looking guilty.
I moved up the block, past the Children’s Museum and Mickey’s Diner. Mickey’s was open. I could smell the bacon and grease through the vents of the trolley car–shaped restaurant. Frying green peppers made my stomach growl. I felt for the ten I had wadded in my pocket. But, after a moment’s consideration, I put it back. They got a lot of strange characters in Mickey’s, but I still figured my bloody jeans and bare feet would cause a stir. I hurried on.
A city worker blasted the baskets of petunias hung from the streetlights with a hose connected to a tanker truck with
WASTE WATER
printed on its sides. She didn’t even notice me as she moved methodically to the next lamp.
A few blocks down, a couple of homeless guys with heavy-looking army green backpacks called out to me from the courtyard of Catholic Charities across the street. I thought maybe they were harassing me for change or something. When I looked more closely, they were smiling and waving me over, as if they’d noticed the state of my clothes and considered me kin. God, I must have looked worse than I thought. I smiled back at them but kept walking.
The sunlight
glinted on the golden cross on top of the cathedral. I was not too far now from home. The steepness of Kellogg Avenue made my knees ache. Some commuter on a bicycle whizzed by, going downhill.
Boulevard trees started to change from scraggly young ginkgo twigs to majestic, ancient maples. I could smell summer here—freshly cut grass, blooming roses and daisies, warm cobblestone dust. A mourning dove hooted, its low, sad song mingling with the chirps and cackles of the other birds hidden in the canopy of leaves.
I was so tired and emotionally drained by the time I got home that at first I didn’t register the figure sitting on the porch steps. It wasn’t until I’d stooped down to pick up the
Star Tribune
from in front of the gate that I thought I saw a pair of cowboy boots. Blinking, I looked up at Prince Luis.
I probably should have been more polite, but the first thing out of my mouth was, “Oh no, not you again.”
P
rince Luis was the last person I wanted to see right now. In fact, the only thing I wanted to see at the moment was a bubble bath. At least today he’d forgone the cloak. Instead, he wore a T-shirt under a suit coat and jeans. It looked kind of
Miami Vice
, especially with his dark curls, but at least it was a fashion out of this century.
My eyes
were gritty with lack of sleep and tears. I almost told him to come back later, until I noticed that the hand stretched out to me held a paper coffee container. The sleeve displayed the logo of my favorite shop too.
“The barista told me this was your ‘usual,’” Luis said. The coffee bobbed in his hand as he waited for me to take the peace offering.
My mom must have been true to her word and significantly turned down the wards for Elias, because my feet only tingled slightly when I came up to stand beside where Prince Luis sat on our stoop. A little skeptical but too desperate to resist, I snatched the coffee container.
As I
took a deep draft of the chocolaty caffeine goodness, Luis glanced at my feet and jeans. “What happened to you?” he asked.
I didn’t think Elias would be happy if I told an “enemy” prince that the kingdom was completely falling apart because my dad was crazy with hunger and I’d nearly been eaten by a zombie horde of his subjects. Besides, I didn’t think I was up to it, emotionally, so I shrugged and changed the topic of conversation. “Look at you, out in the sun. What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have an army to, I don’t know, command, or something?”
“I don’t suffer from the allergy,” he said. He squinted in the sun to look at my pants legs again. “Do you?”
“No, the blood isn’t mine. Someone else yakked on me.”
“Is everyone okay?”
Of course he’d worry about the vampires! It was strangely refreshing since so many of my friends were witches. “I don’t know. I was too busy—” I was going to say trying to survive, so I took another irritated sip of my espresso drink. My head was far too fuzzy to keep from spilling the beans much longer. All I could think about was the bath I wasn’t taking. “Why are you here?”
He stood up, stretching. Joints popped as he cracked his knuckles. The sound made me want to yawn. I barely held it in check. He said, “I’ve spoken to my advisers.”
Somehow I doubted he’d waited on my doorstep with a mocha if what he had to say was a declaration of war. “And?”
“Captain Constantine is so well associated with the Northern Kingdom that he still makes an acceptable bargain. The other kingdoms will see ours as linked, which is all we need this union to provide politically. Also, my spymaster tells me that she has heard no whispers of his exile anywhere.” He gave me a sidelong glance that lingered on the bloody calves of my jeans. “She also assures me that we negotiated with the correct Ramses.”
I sipped my
mocha, hoping that with enough caffeine, I’d follow all the politics a bit better. I had the feeling my dad had just been insulted or dismissed, but I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to respond to that. I mean, there really
wasn’t
any talking to Dad right now. I didn’t like the idea that Luis’s people knew how little control my dad had. Did he know what the hunger was doing to everyone?
I squinted at him questioningly but held my tongue.
Standing next to Luis, I noticed he wasn’t that much taller than I was. I was fairly tall for a girl, but he was noticeably shorter than most of the boys I hung out with. The breeze rippled the leaves of the maple beside the house, and shards of sunlight danced in the gaps.
“Just to be one hundred percent clear,” I said, taking another swallow of the warm drink, “you want Elias.”
Luis nodded. “Yes. I accept the exiled Captain Constantine in exchange for Lieutenant Khan. Once the ceremony takes place, we will leave your people in peace.”
I didn’t fancy the idea of Elias’s marrying someone else, even if it was this strange loveless confarreatio thing. I mean, I’d never thought we’d make good on our betrothal by actually walking down some aisle, but I liked him. If he married Captain Creepy, he’d leave. I might never see him again.
Weirdly, Elias
would probably be okay with it. He’d be part of a kingdom again, back in service, with a purpose and all that. Plus, he’d probably get regular “meals” again.
“What do you guys do about the hunt?” I asked abruptly.
“The witch queen sacrifices herself every generation. Isn’t that how it’s always done?”
“What, you mean, she goes voluntarily?”
“How else would you do it? It’s an honorable tradition, going back thousands of years.”
“Sure, before the secret war, but—still?”
“Yes, still. Always.” Luis seemed very baffled by this string of questions and my reaction. For the first time since I met him, I heard the barest trace of a Southern accent in his voice. “What else would you do? Draw lots? A queen has a duty to keep the peace.”
His certainty surprised me. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around this scenario. I’d made up all sorts of reasons why covens might decide to give up one of their own, but give up their queen? And, if they sacrificed once a generation, they must run out of queens pretty quickly. Unless they waited for the queen to produce an heir before killing her—but that was just too sad and horrible to even consider.
The whole thing seemed opposite of human nature. If you have power, you fight to keep it, right? I couldn’t imagine being so certain of my duty to my people that I’d be willing to die for it. It seemed antiquated, more like King Arthur than Machiavelli. And from what I’d seen of my fellow witches, their tables were anything but round. We always seemed on the verge of some war or another either with the vampires or ourselves. “So you’re all still friendly with witches?”
“My father is a witch,” he said, then gave a guilty little shrug before adding, “as you already guessed.”
“But he’s not the King of Witches,” I said.
“Good Heavens, no! Whoever heard of such a thing? A witch king! A man couldn’t rule witches. Anyway, how could there be peace if I had to lose a parent to the hunt?”
Yeah, how,
indeed. I was beginning to think my dad’s people were the only ones without some kind of hunt plan in place. “Okay, one more time, with feeling,” I muttered, through sips of mocha. “I’m having trouble really understanding this, so let me see if I’ve got it. In the Southern Region, the witch queen ritually sacrifices herself to the vampire hunt.”
I was getting tired of standing, so I sat down on the cool concrete of the steps. Luis sat down next to me, and, when I looked at him to make sure I’d understood correctly, he nodded in agreement.