A short, dark- haired man with swarthy skin and charcoal eyes came to stand beside her. He too held out a hand for me to shake. I wondered if the elves had a secret handshake and if they were waiting to see how long it took me to figure it out. It was all terribly polite for a kidnapping.
“I am Betony, of the people of earth,” he said, and turned to Mace. “She is definitely one of Vervain’s—look at her.”
I wasn’t one of anybody’s, thank you very much. “I’m a Green Congress wizard. That’s the only cult I belong to.” Well, it felt like a cult. And it was better than an elven clan, which probably had its own Kool- Aid.
“Then let me greet her.” I looked around for the source of the voice and saw a woman rising from a chair in the shadows of a darkened corner I would have sworn was empty a moment before. The elves must have their own type of transports.
She was petite, a bit shorter than me in my overpriced designer boots. Her rich blond hair ran in a braid down her back, and while her skin was smooth, an old wisdom dwelt in her blue-green eyes—very similar to the color of mine. And Rand’s. How whacked was that?
Her demeanor was more imperious than the others, not arrogant like Mace, but regal. She held herself with detachment, showed less curiosity. I couldn’t read elven emotions but I got that much from the set of her jaw and the tilt of her head. She was older than the others.
“You’re Vervain?” I held out my hand to get the secret handshake over with.
She nodded and smiled, and the difference it made in her face was dramatic. Years dropped away, and her cold beauty melted into something warmer and prettier. How much of it was illusion? I got no uncomfortable vibes from her touch, just warmth.
“You’re right, Rand. Her dominant ancestor was of our clan.” My elfnapper had retreated to the corner chair now that his chief was here. The suck- up merely nodded.
I looked back at her, fascinated—we were sort of cousins forty-thousand times removed. I spared a moment of sadness for Gerry that, as enamored with the elves as he’d been, he hadn’t ever met one. They rarely left Elf heim, and for many years the Elders had let people believe the entire species was extinct. “Both of my parents had elven blood. Can you tell which of my parents was dominant?”
Vervain smiled. “We might be able to tell.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “This family reunion rocks it, but I’d like to go home.”
“Sit here.” Mace pointed toward a round table, and I reluctantly followed the others. There were five chairs and six of us. Rand sat in an armchair a few feet away, his eyes glued to me, face tense. His posture and tight expression told me he was uneasy, which in turn made me nervous. The irony that my stalker seemed to be my only potential ally in this funhouse wasn’t lost on me. Although if I got home in one piece, I planned to rip him a new one.
Mace took the seat to my left and Betony to my right. The two women settled across the table. I waited expectantly. This was their show, and I figured I’d do well to keep my mouth shut, although remaining quiet wasn’t one of my stronger skills, elven or otherwise.
“What we must do, Drusilla, is learn about you, about your skills, in order to determine exactly what of our magic you have inherited, and how you’ve used it,” Mace said. “It seems clear you are of Vervain’s people, but it’s vital we be sure. Looks can deceive.”
“Questioning her will take too long, and wizards are notoriously clever at twisting the truth,” Lily said. “We need to do a regression.”
“No!” Rand’s voice was just short of a shout, and we all turned to look at him. He leaned forward, fingers turning white from the pressure he exerted on the chair’s wooden arms. “That wasn’t what we agreed to.”
“What’s a regression?” I might as well have been talking to myself, for all the attention the elves paid me. But if Rand didn’t want this regression thing to happen, it had to be bad.
“You will learn your place, or you will leave,” Mace told him just as Vervain murmured, “Peace, son.”
Son? Was she Rand’s mother?
“Very well, we will learn what we need to know using the old methods.” Mace turned to me. “Then, we’ll talk about how we might be of service to each other, if you’re still able.”
I
was still pondering the words
old methods
when he got to the part about
if you’re still able
.
“What do you mean,
if I’m still able
?” If I’m able because I might be too stupid to understand deep and mysterious elven things, or if I’m able because I might be unconscious—or dead? My heart fluttered as I pushed my chair back. I’d been angry tonight. Alarmed. Concerned. Surprised. But this was the first time I’d felt physically threatened.
Mace grasped my arm. His grip wasn’t rough, but it also wasn’t yielding. “How easily this goes depends on how willingly you allow us to know you.” Mace looked around me at Betony, and the dark- haired man gave a brief nod and locked my other arm in a firm grasp. Mace had said
know
as if it should be epic and biblical. Vervain extended an arm across the table and grasped my arm above Mace’s hand.
Holy crap. They were all touching me. Nothing had happened yet, but I knew what was coming. Whatever mind- scramble Mace Banyan had tried on me last month, he was going to do again—with help.
I tried to wrest myself free, but they only gripped harder. “Don’t struggle, Drusilla,” Mace breathed into my ear. “Let us know you.” Definitely a capital
Know
. His voice grew muted, but I was able to hear one more sentence: “Quince Randolph, if you move an inch closer, I will have you lashed.”
The room grew brighter and I fought for every inch of calmness I could muster. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” My surroundings seemed to melt and run like a warped Salvador Dalí painting. “Just ask your questions, and don’t touch me. I’ll tell you the truth.”
Suddenly, cool hands brushed my temples from behind and Lily’s soft voice whispered across my mind. “Calm down, you stupid wizard. Stop fighting.”
I sank back to the chair with Lily’s voice in my head and her light energy flowing over my skin. Why had I been struggling? It was warm and peaceful here, and when Mace picked me up and carried me to the sofa, I looked in his brown eyes and smiled. He smiled back.
Why had I ever thought he was scary?
On some level, I knew there was something I should be doing, something else I should be remembering or feeling, but I couldn’t seem to focus. I hadn’t felt this relaxed and peaceful since Katrina had thrown my world into disarray.
I felt them around me, occasionally touching me, remaining close. Then in a wash of gray, the room around me disappeared and I found myself sprawled instead on a half- rotted pier next to the river. Rene Delachaise was doing CPR and sending lances of pain through my abdomen from his compressions, but it worked. I coughed out a lungful of water and rolled to my side, where Rand stood in the semidarkness at the edge of a clearing, watching me.
“Wait . . . interesting. There’s something recent we need to see,” a male voice said.
A heave and sickening swirl of my surroundings jerked me to the barroom at the Green Gator, frozen in fear as Jake and I looked at the scratch on my arm, the weight of an unknown future heavy on my heart.
I relived the scene twice—two fights with Jake, two scratches, two initial moments of terror, then finally the scene faded to the front porch of my house, where I skidded in the slippery coating of blood on my porch. Tish lay nearby, her throat cut in a perfect red line, killed because of me. Her face was so clear, so nearby, I reached out to touch her cheek, but my hand passed through it.
The night around me grew darker, and I found myself stumbling through New Orleans’ oldest cemetery, in the Beyond. It was the night of the real full moon, the cemetery dimly lit with a stoked bonfire. The voodoo god Samedi stood before me, a giant figure with a skeleton painted on his dark skin and the glint of death in his eyes.
On some level I knew he wasn’t real, knew this had already happened, but the fear washed over me as it had the first time I lived through it, right after Katrina. Gerry lay dying, and Jake had fallen nearby, a huge red wolf sinking white fangs into his thigh. I looked for Alex and couldn’t find him. He was hurt, out in the dark somewhere. Jean was injured too, after trying to help me. All my fault. All of it.
I scrambled around on the dark ground, looking for the elven staff and when I got it, I pointed it at Samedi and shot red ropes of fire at him, sending him back to his corner of the Beyond, his strength destroyed.
Another gray mist came and went, and ropes of fire flew from the staff as I wielded it in a long, candlelit room with a large wooden table down the center. I was injured, and I faced Jean and some of his men. Alex lay motionless on the floor nearby after fighting with one of the Baratarian pirates. Had he been killed? My anger fueled the fiery ropes from the staff, which wrapped themselves around another of Jean’s people. I watched him die and be absorbed back into the Beyond, and felt a sense of satisfaction as Jean’s expression changed from anger to grudging admiration.
The mist faded, and I jolted back to reality. The room spun like a drunken top, but I remembered where I was—in Elfheim. I had to get out or I might not live through this. I struggled to sit up, but hands held me immobile. Once again, I felt Lily’s cool palms on my temples, and the world grayed.
I stood upstairs in Gerry’s house after Katrina. Black, oily sludge oozed from the carpet on the first floor, and I stared at a voodoo symbol painted on the wall in blood. Gerry was missing, and the Elders suspected me of helping him go rogue. Alex, a stranger who worked for the wizards as an enforcer, descended the stairs from the attic, holding a box containing an old wooden staff. I didn’t know what it was. Sparks flew from its tip when I touched it, and it glowed with a golden energy. I decided to take it home.
Other scenes flitted by, in and out of the gray mist, some in fast-forward, some slowing down as if I needed to relive them in slow motion, each second agonizing because I knew the punch line of each scene, and they were never funny. Using hydromancy as a teenager. Scrying in a frantic attempt to find Gerry after Katrina. Being brought into dreams by Gerry before he died, then learning how to dreamwalk myself using the staff.
It always came back to the staff.
I curled on my side as I was jerked back and forth in time. Lessons with Gerry. Using the staff to trace odd rifts in the Mississippi River back to the Styx. Early runs as sentinel. Every time I fought through the mist and pain, clawed my way back to consciousness, Lily’s cool hands would rest on my forehead, and my ability to fight evaporated.
But unlike the first flashbacks, the more recent events that seemed to transport me away to relive them, older memories razored through my mind at random, as if etching themselves into my aura. Or maybe the cuts were already there, and now they were exposed and raw.
Oh, God, I hated these creatures. I tried to pull away from them and wrap my hands around my head as if I could physically keep them out. My face was wet and I tasted blood. Had they hit me? Was an aneurysm like the one that took my mother also ready to take me?
And behind it all, a plea: God, don’t let them go all the way back.
Another cooling touch, and the gray fog settled over me again. I was seven years old and sat in the backseat of the old Plymouth as my grandfather parked in front of Gerry’s house. My grandparents were getting rid of me, foisting me off on a stranger I’d never seen, and I was petrified.
The drive had gone on for hours, and I’d cried most of the way, bunching my hands up in my stiff pink Sunday School dress, begging them to turn around so often that my gran yelled at me to hush. Why did they want to get rid of me? I’d tried to be good, to do what they wanted. I’d tried to make them love me but I always knew how they felt, that Gran was afraid of me, that Grandpa stayed away from home so he wouldn’t be ashamed of what I was.
Today, in the car, driving over long bridges and past towns with funny names, they were relieved someone was going to take me off their hands.
Blinded, I struck out at the hands touching me, and realized on some level that the voice crying in long, ragged sobs was mine. But the disconnect was too great, like my brain and my body were separate now, and I didn’t have control over either one.
I was five, and heard a sound in my parents’ room. I couldn’t sleep, so I padded down the hall and pushed open the door. Mommy lay on the floor, clutching her head, and Daddy (only he wasn’t really my daddy, was he?) leaned over her, his face white as the paper in my kindergarten notebook. He cried and called her name. Carrie. Her name was Carrie.
I cried out, and when he saw me, he sat heavily on the bed, like a balloon whose air had been released. I tried to run to Mommy but he reached out and pulled me away. She was dead and, without her, he was afraid of me too. My magic grew out of control. I broke the vase. I broke Mommy’s mirror. I broke and broke and broke.
The gray screen that was my mind went blank, and I knew on some level that I’d returned to a place more than twenty years later and a world away. There was shouting and movement around me, but nobody touched me. Maybe if I curled up tighter, they’d forget about me, leave me alone.
I remembered nothing more. Just darkness, and blessed silence.
T
he soothing, steady noise of a ceiling fan droned above my bed. I burrowed deeper into the pillow, wondering why my muscles ached. Faint voices drifted from downstairs. Had I left the television on?
Someone shifted next to me and whispered, “Dru? Wake up. We have to talk.”
I frowned and slit my eyes open to see Rand sitting on the bed next to me, his white sweater smeared with blood. Why he was here, in my house, in my room? Had something happened to Eugenie?
It all came back then, and I scrambled away from him, looking around for some sign of the Synod members. Snatching the staff from its holder and pointing it at Rand, I eased off the bed and edged toward the door.