chapter Fifteen
For some odd reason I thought Louisiana would be hot. I’d spent only the first months of my life there and had no memories of the place at all, but my brain led me to believe it would be hot. Like somehow it was a magical, tropical place where April temperature didn’t affect the state as it did the rest of the continental US.
We got off the plane just before dawn, the sky a deep, hazy purple. Even though it was much warmer than New York, New Orleans wasn’t anywhere near as sweltering as I’d imagined.
A car was waiting, and Lucas, Dominick and I climbed in. Morgan and Jackson waited for the next one. We left the airport, bound for city center, and the purple of the sky began to take on a distinctly pinkish hue.
I yawned.
“We’re almost there.” Lucas must have sensed my anxiousness about the oncoming sunrise, but neither of us said anything about it. We’d had to tread carefully the whole way here because of Morgan. Even Jackson knew about my connection to the vampires, but Morgan was still in the dark, and that was the only place I trusted her.
The car deposited us in front of a beautiful hotel in the heart of the French Quarter. The building was old, covered in wrought iron and festooned with charming details, giving it a look like it was airlifted right out of Paris and dumped here.
The entire block looked much the same, glowing with warmth and alive with activity even in the predawn hours.
When we got out, the other car was pulling up behind us, perfectly timed for the crew of bellhops who came out to collect our luggage and fawn over us. I guess it paid to travel this way.
Whenever I’d traveled for the Tribunal as an assassin—which hadn’t happened often—it was to budget motels or hotels with bad plumbing. The council didn’t have to stay there, so what did it matter to them?
Our party was whisked inside with a flourish, and I breathed a sigh of relief once we were out of the open air. Not that I didn’t want to see more of the city, but a vampire will burst into flames in the New Orleans sun the same as she will in New York.
Bellhops had already taken our baggage, so all that remained was for us to take our tired selves to bed. Lucas had the penthouse suite booked, naturally, and there were bedrooms on each end of the floor. The larger open-concept king-sized room was intended for Lucas and me, while the smaller but still stately queen room was for Dominick. As Lucas’s bodyguard, Dominick never went far from the king’s side, and now that we’d stuck our hand into a wasps’ nest, he would be on us like glue the entire time we were in New Orleans.
For once the idea of constant supervision didn’t enrage me. Instead I found Dominick’s presence comforting.
When we made our way into the suite, I could have hugged the hotel management for the thick, lightproof shades pulled over the windows. They were probably for the comfort and convenience of dulling post-Mardi Gras hangover headaches, but they’d do the job for a daytime-sleeping half-vampire too.
I made a beeline for the soft, plush white bed and collapsed face-down on it. My stupid pink hood with its goofy, fuzzy ears was still pulled up over my head. Within seconds dawn broke over the old city and I was dead to the world.
I was naked, but not in the good, fun, body-parts-bumping-together kind of way.
Walking barefoot through the forest, I followed a silvery trail laid out by the moon in the fragrant duff. The moonlight made my already pale skin ghostly white, almost pearlescent. I felt like a lunar goddess.
The path descended into a valley, and the trees gave way to lower bushes and spindle-thin saplings. Out here I felt my nakedness more acutely, as though the vulnerability of open space drew my attention to how exposed I was physically.
There was a large bonfire a hundred yards in front of me, and I followed the light. When I got nearer, I expected to feel warmth, but I was only dazzled by its brightness in contrast to the moon.
A woman stood on the opposite side of the pyre, so I skirted the protruding edges until I stood beside her. With the orange flame lighting her face, she looked younger than I remembered her being last. The glow softened the anger in her features some, but the hate-deadened expression in her eyes showed clearly.
“Mercy,” I acknowledged her.
“You never could call me mom, could you?”
“That would require you to act like a mother first.”
Mercy McQueen turned to face me, and at this angle her age showed in sharp relief to the flames, wrinkles I’d never noticed before looked deep. “What is it some mothers say? I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it?”
Alone with her, carrying no weapon except a half-decade of training, I thought maybe I should be frightened. I wasn’t. Mostly I felt a pit of loss in my chest where a mother’s love was supposed to go.
“I have no fight with you,” I said.
“If only it was that simple.”
“It could be.” I stared at her for long enough she looked back into the fire. “You could leave me alone.”
“You’ve taken everything from me.”
“I did what had to be done.”
“And so will I. I will have you dead.”
“I’d like to see you try.” My jaw was so rigid it was hard to speak.
“You will,” she promised. “You will.”
I sat with Lucas and Dominick at the dining room table in our suite and recounted my dream to them. Dominick did his best to hide his disbelief over the validity of clues found in dreams. Lucas, on the other hand, knew firsthand how unusual my resting mind was.
“We never considered the Mercy angle,” he admitted. “I assumed if there was a trap, it would be related to Callum’s attempts on my territory.”
Dominick tore a chunk off a cheese Danish and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. In the meantime, his blue eyes spoke volumes. When he voiced his opinion, he treaded lightly. “Not that I’m doubting you, Secret, but we can’t exactly go to our meeting with Callum and accuse him of luring us here so your mother can kill you. I mean, she almost did it in New York. Why would she need you here?”
“Pack support,” I suggested. “She had none at the end, after I removed Marcus’s pack. Here she’s royalty.”
“So are you,” Lucas pointed out.
I snorted. Very princessy of me.
I began to work up another argument as to why I thought the dream should be considered with more seriousness, but my ringing phone interrupted us. Lucas tried to hide his smirk over my ringtone.
“Hello?” I got up from the table and moved into the master bedroom for some privacy.
“Took a little vacation, did you?” Sig’s tone could have been mistaken for cheerful. I wasn’t fooled.
A shiver ran down my spine and I tried to gather my thoughts before speaking again. “Pack business.”
“Imagine my surprise,” he went on like I hadn’t spoken at all, “when I received a phone call last night…a phone call…from a frantic Oracle convinced you were in immediate peril. In Louisiana.”
Oh my God. Calliope had called him? Not only did the half god, half fairy never use the phone, she also hated Sig more than anyone I’d ever known. Broken hearts will do crazy things to people.
“Sig, I’m sorry. I had no choice.”
“Choice is a lie we tell ourselves when we do things we feel people won’t like.”
I said nothing.
“You won’t come back if I tell you to, we both know that.” He sighed.
“Not until I’m done here.”
“I expected as much. So I sent you something. It took a lot of time, money and favors to get it to you, though I somehow doubt you’ll appreciate the effort.”
Why didn’t I like the sound of that?
A knock at the door sent a shard of fear deep into my gut. “What did you do?” I asked the dial tone. Although he was gone, I still held the phone to my ear as I went to the door and swung it open. “Son of a f*cking bitch.”
“Actually my mother was a lovely woman,” Holden said. “Now are you going to invite me in?”