Dark Queen (Jane Yellowrock #12)

“Except that we love each other?”

I nodded slowly, feeling all the tension slide from my shoulders, down my spine, out my feet, and into the sand beneath me. “Except that. And that fangheads are evil, no matter whose side they’re on.”

“True.” She tilted her head at me, her red curls flying in the wind off the gulf. “I know you stayed in New Orleans to keep us safe.”

The tension shot back into me.

Molly held out her little finger. “Friends forever. Pinkie swear?”

I hooked my little finger into hers. “Best friends forever.”

Moll pulled her finger from mine and her hand under the blankets. “Quit worrying about me, Big Cat. I’m warm and safe.”

“Even though Titus did something with magic when he crossed over the hedge and onto the property? I just remembered.”

Molly frowned. She hadn’t noticed that. Crap.

“Even though Dominique is wearing a ruby exactly like one I own?” I asked. “And hers might be full of dark magic?”

“Even that. Do you want the evil ruby?” At my expression she said, “Sorry. The ruby isn’t technically evil. It doesn’t contain a curse and the working in it was used up and can’t be renewed.” I didn’t tell her that I had absorbed the working. I trusted Molly completely. But . . . maybe not about Dark Queen magics and what my five-pointed-star magics could do. “It won’t hurt you,” she said. “I can freeze her for thirty seconds and open a passageway into the hedge.”

I watched Dominique from my vantage point, crouching on the sand. I said, “If you can do that, sure.”

Molly squirmed higher on her lounge chair and pulled a hand from the covers. “You’ll have thirty seconds.” Louder, she called, “Lachish? Jane wants something on Dominique.”

The older woman appeared from the darkness, looking grumpy. “Of course she does. Jane always wants something.”

It felt like being slapped in the face. “Have I done something wrong?” I asked.

“No,” Lachish said. But her tone said otherwise.

Molly said, “Lachish. Jane’s trying to save us.”

“We could just incinerate the entire house and be done with it. It might be worth the punishment.”

Or Molly could just use her death magics and drain the life and undeath of everyone here. The words and the thought sent a cold shock through me. I looked at the house. The most powerful vamps in the world were all in one place. “You do that,” I said, my voice reasonable, unemotional, a false calm, “and there will be a power struggle in the vampire world like nothing we’ve ever seen on the face of the earth.”

Lachish blew out a breath and turned her Creole-dark eyes to me. “Think I don’t know that? Leo is the lesser of two evils. If Leo loses and Titus wins, all bets are off.”

I looked at Molly. A death witch. Draining the vamps to death would kill her baby and probably drive her insane and expose what she was to the entire world, but . . . Molly could do it. It was likely that the coven leader of NOLA could do that same thing in a different way. This was why the witches were really here and I didn’t know whether to be happy at the extra layer of protection for the U.S. humans or terrified.

Lachish stood next to Molly’s chair. They both pointed the fingers of their right hands to the hedge, and Lachish said, “Dominique, confuto. Hedge, concesso.”

Dominique went utterly still, her mouth open and her face frozen in a mask of vamped-out fury. The hedge of thorns appeared as a thin, uneven film of light, like a layer of plastic.

“Resigno,” Lachish said. A small thin opening appeared from the top of the hedge to the ground. “Go.”

I raced to the spell of confining, studying it as I moved. Mentally counting off the thirty seconds, I stopped in front of the hedge and examined the gem. There was no active reason to take it. But my gut, the magics coursing through my middle, said it was mine. I reached into the hedge’s opening and grabbed the moonstone necklace. Gave it a strong yank and the clasp broke. I slid it from Dominique’s neck. Stepped back, the magical gem dangling. And caught a vision of an emblem embroidered into Dominique’s undershirt. A lizard eating its tail. Jack Shoffru’s emblem. I looked around, hoping to see something that might be the anomaly that was Cym’s magic. There was nothing.

Moments later the hedge of thorns snapped shut, its energies began to move again, visible in Beast-sight, and Dominique started raving. She saw what I had in my hands and fell utterly still for a moment. Then she threw her entire body at the hedge. Again. And again. Not that it did her any good.

I examined the necklace, its central gem and its energies. The ruby’s magic had changed in the scant moments I’d held it. Instead of zipping all over the place in vaguely round patterns, as they had when resting against Dominique’s undead flesh, the energies had begun to angle in and out. They formed a star pattern, like the pentagram of my energies. The ruby seemed to have the ability to evolve to suit the person who held it or wore it against her skin. It was a battery for power.

Beast thought at me. Like meat. Dangerous prey meat. Eat meat of stone. Beast can be big, best ambush hunter.

It was a boost to existing magic, and it made me feel pretty good. Calmer. Stronger. Which meant there would surely be a backlash at some point, that other shoe dropping, because nothing in magic is without cost. It might also be a mood booster, because I felt more hopeful than I had only a moment past, the weight on my shoulders still heavy, but not full of terror.

Feeling better even though nothing in my life was really improved, I went back to Molly’s chair and knelt on one knee on the sand. Lachish had already moved away, into the dark again. I kissed her cheek and said, “I love you, Molly Meagan Everhart Trueblood.”

“I love you too, Jane Doe Yellowrock. Now go kill bad things.” She shooed me away.

“Yes, ma’am.” Standing, I walked toward the house, shoving aside the small niggling thought that Molly could be passively drinking down all the death on Spitfire Island, just like a moon witch in full-moonlight absorbing lunar magic power. Could be growing stronger and more deadly death by death. No. Not Molly. Not pregnant with a witch child that might die from the death.

Enough of this crap. I can’t suspect everyone I love.

I strode back into the beach mansion and into my shared room. I knelt, pulled my luggage out from under the bunk bed, and rattled around in the bags and suitcases until I found the box of magical trinkets. I left a mess of unfolded clothes, dirty clothes, and toiletries on the floor and I didn’t care.

The ruby was in the box, and I lifted it out, a smoothed crystal of stone, smaller than my distant memory, smaller than the ruby that Dominique had worn. This stone was zipping with scarlet motes of magical power too, racing in a round pattern. I yanked the clasp off the new ruby and let the moonstones clatter from the wire into the bottom of the box, catching the ruby in my other palm. I scrounged around some more and found the necklace I had bought when I first came to New Orleans, one I had worn dancing, and bent the focal stone free from its wire wrapping. Pressed the wires around the rubies to hold them in place on the chain so they were encased together. I hooked it around my neck, centered them close to the gold nugget I always wore, and made sure it all could be seen easily. I made my way to the third floor, straightening my back, firming my face and my steps.

I was partway up when I heard Sabina speak. “Emperor Vespasianus’s weapons master, Salvatrice Bianchi, challenges Pellissier’s Adelaide Mooney to a death match. Are both present?”