Jean, Alex, Ken, and I had gone through every scenario we could think of to keep Jean from falling under the necromancer’s true control. Mostly, it consisted of him interpreting the necromancer’s commands very literally.
Kill DJ
could be interpreted as
Kill DJ someday
. Or
Stab the girl
could mean any girl, or a stab wound to the toe.
Rand had made a quick, tense trip to New Orleans before returning to Elf heim—he’d taught me an elven spell that might help me track the line of magic from my attacker back to the necromancer, regardless of whether it was the Axeman or Jean being controlled. He was convinced one of the elves was behind this whole mess, and had gone back to Elf heim to spread the word that I’d be at my house tonight, digging through what was left after the fire.
I’d called Adrian and told him the same thing, explaining why I needed a few days off from my elf lessons. He actually asked if I needed help, which surprised me.
And just to cover my bases, I’d called the necromancer Jonas Adamson and set up a phony meeting with him next week to talk about new potions regulations, slipping in the information about my eve ning plans.
If Etienne, Adrian, Jonas, or a Synod member was either our leak to the necromancer or the necromancer himself, we should be in business.
I pulled the sweatshirt down to cover the grenade and headed down the softly lit, thickly carpeted hallway of the Monteleone’s eighth floor and back through the lobby.
My hand trembled as I hit the remote to unlock Ken’s nondescript tan sedan that had been left on the curb with his NOPD hangtag in view. God, I hoped this plan worked. Prayed the staff would power Rand’s tracking magic and be one of the elven skills I could control. He’d written down the words and told me what should happen, but it was all guesswork.
I also prayed nobody else I cared about got hurt.
As we’d agreed beforehand, I parked on Nashville beside the house instead of in the enclosed parking area behind it, the better to make a getaway if needed. Even in the illumination from the streetlights, the house looked a mess, and for the first time I realized how hard this was going to be—not the necromancer tracking, but seeing my home in ruins.
I fingered the crime scene tape crisscrossed over the back door, then ducked under it and went inside. I let out a whoosh of breath, relief draining the adrenaline from my muscles at the sight of my kitchen, or what little I could see of it from the wash of light coming from the street and the fluorescent lanterns Alex and Ken had set up around the rooms. The power had been cut to the house the night of the fire.
Alex and Ken were here somewhere, watching, waiting.
The acrid odor of charred wood, smoke, and damp burned my lungs and made my eyes water. The old Formica kitchen table with red-covered chrome chairs I’d found at a garage sale sat undisturbed but for a coat of ash from the ceiling above it. It could probably be saved. Dried mud covered the wooden floor.
I swallowed hard and stopped at the doorway into the double parlors. There hadn’t been much left in here anyway since I’d even destroyed my lawn chair, but the old millwork had been water-soaked. Some of it might be salvageable, but it was hard for me to look past the ruin to see the redeemable.
Most of the things in the room— bits of jewelry, a shoe, a seared pan I’d used in my library for stirring charms—shouldn’t have been there. They belonged upstairs, where Alex had told me nothing was left and the floor was suspect. Everything I’d worked for lay mixed in with chunks of plaster or covered in inky sludge, all the more gruesome for the shadows cast by light from the lanterns sitting in two corners of the room.
I knew it was just stuff, but sometimes stuff is important. Sometimes, stuff holds us together. Stuff bookends our lives, and stuff defines them.
I don’t remember dropping to my knees. I was just suddenly there, flashing back to my first look at the wreckage of Gerry’s house after Hurricane Katrina had sent the Seventeenth Street Canal flowing through it. I couldn’t help but go back, the first of the losses that had lined up like macabre dominoes over the last few years. The loss of my house became the final domino that threatened to bring back every unshed tear I’d choked down.
How much loss should one person have to endure? How much
could
one person endure? I’d asked that question before, but the hits kept coming, pressing so hard on my heart I couldn’t breathe, weighing so heavily it seemed as if I should sink through the floorboards.
Arms reached around me and the last voice I expected whispered, “Hush, baby girl.” Eugenie sank to her knees beside me, pulled me into her arms, and rocked me like a child.
If God was listening, maybe He’d sent her as a gift. Someone else I thought I’d lost but who’d made her way back to me.
“I’m sorry.” My voice was ragged with sobs, but I finally choked out that inadequate excuse for an apology. For not being able to tell her who and what I was. For the damage to our friendship. For hurting her and letting it go on so long without finding a way to make it right.
“Shhh. I’m sorry too. I let things that don’t matter get in the way of protecting what does matter. Us. You’re still my best friend, DJ.”
“You too.” I hugged her back. “I will tell you everything when tonight is done. Everything. I swear it.”
And I meant it. I couldn’t pay lip service to our friendship and then lie to her at every turn.
A clatter in the guest room, followed by a curse, reminded me why we were here. Alex came into the parlor as Eugenie and I clambered to our feet, both sniffling and puffy-eyed. Ken remained out of sight. Probably praying for God to spare him from women crying during a stakeout.
“I told her how Rand tricked you into helping him,” Alex said. “But Eugenie, you need to go home. We’re trying to set up the arsonist.”
Good cover story. “We think he’ll come back if I’m here. We’re trying to trap him.” I hugged her and whispered, “Thank you. I’m glad you were here with me when I saw this.”
“Me too.” She looked tired, and I realized with shame I’d been so angry and hurt myself I hadn’t thought about how hard this mess with Rand had hit her. She’d fallen heart-first for a man who didn’t exist, at least not in the way she thought.
“Come on, let me walk you home.” Alex’s gaze met mine over Eugenie’s head, and I nodded. We needed her safely gone.
Before they reached the door to the kitchen, a crash of splintering wood and breaking glass sounded ahead of them. Eugenie was already screaming by the time the Axeman came within my line of vision, swinging his weapon of choice in his meaty right hand. If possible, he looked even more gross than the last time I’d seen him. More burned skin. Fever-bright eyes.
Alex shoved Eugenie toward me. “Get her out of here!”
She’d gone from scared to hysterical, screaming nonsense syllables and pushing me away. “He’s not even human, DJ. Look at him! Why doesn’t somebody shoot him?”
The Axeman had stopped to look at her. “I’m not human, and as soon as I kill her, I will kill you.” With every word, he took a step closer, and Eugenie’s breath came in such short, rapid gasps I feared she’d hyperventilate.
I prayed for forgiveness and slapped her—hard. It worked, at least for the moment, and she looked at me with big eyes and a pink handprint on her cheek. “Is that him? The Axeman?”
“Yes, now go!” I herded her toward the front door. She whimpered, her eyes darting from me to the axe-wielding horror-show now charging at Alex.
“Front door,” I said, shoving her in that direction. “Go home. Lock your doors. We’ll explain later. GO!”
I turned back as the Axeman propelled Alex hard against the fireplace, the mantel cutting him across his upper back and knocking the wind out of him. He slid to a seated position on the slate hearth, wheezing, leaving the Axeman free to lumber toward me with a feral growl and a raised ax.
Fumbling in my pocket, I finally got my fingers on the immobilization charm, thumbed the top off the vial, and flung the contents at him.
Time and movement seemed to slow as Eugenie charged in front of me at the same time the dustlike particles of the charm flew forward. They hit her in the face, and she keeled over with a thud. Where had she come from? She must have circled the room to try again to reach the back door.
The Axeman laughed, spittle running down a chin and lips that were still blackened from our last encounter, with skin hanging in shreds from raw muscle and meat. “You missed, wizard. My turn.”
Great, not only was he a charred undead killer, he was a comedian.
He started toward me again, but former fullback Alex hit him with a kidney shot from behind. They hit the ground, grappling, punching. The Axeman had dropped his weapon, and I kicked the ax away from them. It hit the fireplace and sent up a cloud of dust.
Ken ran in from the guest room with his gun drawn, but he seemed unsure what to do.
“If you can wound the Axeman without hitting Alex, shoot him!” I shouted. “Don’t kill him, though.” I needed him alive, in an undead sort of way, to run the elven ritual.
I pulled the staff from its holster and from my pocket tugged out the paper with the ritual words Rand had told me. I’d written them phonetically and began chanting: “Gan fod-e meister”— Alex howled, and I faltered, looking up and screaming as the Axeman buried a huge knife in the front of his shoulder, exposing muscle and bone. Alex fell to his knees.
Feeling underneath the big sweatshirt, I found the grenade and unclipped it from my belt loop. I needn’t have bothered; the explosion of Ken’s gun was deafening.
The Axeman didn’t fall, but he stopped and shouted a bunch of gibberish at Ken, something about demons and hell and heavenly realms. I bent over my cheat-sheet, holding out the staff, trying to block out the noise, and hoping Ken could handle it.
“
Gan fod-e meister Mahout
,”
I whispered, the words coming out fast and jumbled. “Rowyn-e gal wary pwer o dan I daflu goleuni ar y ffordd ohut.”
As the master of Mahout, I call upon the power of fire to illuminate the way of magic,
Rand said it meant, although I’d have to take his word for it.
I pointed the staff at the Axeman, currently trying to shake off an enormous golden dog whose teeth were buried in his thigh. Alex had shifted, and his alter ego Gandalf ’s shoulder was raw and bloody. Gandalf whimpered as the Axeman shoved him away with a powerful kick of a huge, booted foot into his midsection.
I focused all my native physical energy into the staff, then released it, praying the taped-together staff worked, the ritual chant did its thing, and the Axeman didn’t burst into flames and go back into the Beyond. If that happened, this would all have been for nothing.
Instead of the red ropes of flame I’d come to expect from the staff, a violet glow spread from me to the Axeman. His gaze met mine, and I saw it all in my head—and he didn’t want me there.
“I’ll kill you, wizard!” I was barely aware of Ken trying to slow him down with what looked like a banister off my half-burned staircase while the killer advanced on me. I closed my eyes, focusing on the line of magic, mentally tracing the violet band like a piece of yarn as it stretched out of my house and away, east on Magazine Street. I mentally sped along it, following it through twists and turns until it ended at a spot I recognized. Just a little farther . . .
“DJ, down!” Ken shouted, and I shot my eyes open just as the Axeman wrapped me in a bearhug and took me to the ground. I squirmed underneath him as he pinned my hands and bared blackened, sharp teeth.
I gagged on the stench, and screamed when a gunshot exploded near my right ear and the Axeman’s shoulder burst like a ripe melon, raining meat and hot blood over me. He went limp on top of me but didn’t begin fading, so he still lived.
“Goddamn son of a bitch.” Ken pulled the Axeman off me and slapped a pair of silver handcuffs on him. He disappeared into the guest room and came back with a pair of shackles, which he used to fasten the Axeman’s ankles together. Old Axel wouldn’t be chasing me down again anytime soon. I hoped.
I rolled to my hands and knees, panting. “I think he’s still alive. Good job.”
“Was that fucking thing
ever
alive?” Ken was breathing hard after dragging Axel in front of the fireplace. The killer was regaining consciousness, and bellowed when he realized he’d been shackled.
I approached him cautiously, wiped blood off my elven cheat-sheet, pointed the staff at him, and repeated the charm. This time, I was able to close my eyes and focus harder. I followed the purple trail of magic all the way to the door of L’Amour Sauvage and into the back office.
Etienne Boulard was not at his desk, but Adrian Hoffman was.
I
didn’t have proof that Etienne Boulard was the necromancer since I didn’t actually see him, but the circumstantial evidence was damning. And freaking Adrian Hoffman had sold me out.
Alex had shifted back, pulled on his clothes, and curled on his side, breathing hard. He stared at me a moment, then choked out a laugh. “You look like Sissy Spacek in
Carrie
.”
Good thing red was my color. And my only clothes were ruined. What a cluster. Except I knew exactly where to go, and I needed to get there fast.
“Yeah, well, you look like last week’s hamburger. You gonna be okay? I need to check on Eugenie.”
“Yeah, I’ll heal.”
My friend still lay in the doorway, her eyes wide and shocky. I knelt next to her, and her focus shifted to me. It didn’t seem to calm her any. I stroked her hair. “I’m so, so sorry.” Again. I couldn’t seem to do anything right by her.
I shifted around to look at Alex. He’d managed to sit up, but his shoulder was going to take a while to heal. “Ken, can you take Eugenie home? You’ll have to carry her. The charm should wear off in about another hour.”
He nodded. “She’s gonna have questions. What should I tell her?”
I pulled a chunk of flesh out of my hair and turned my back so I could dry heave in semi-privacy. I might have to go vegan.
Eugenie had closed her eyes, her skin like porcelain in the lamplight. She looked frail. “Tell her the truth.” I raised a blood-encrusted eyebrow at Alex, and he nodded. “Tell her everything.”