When Hayne took the last step into my radius, Dashiell exploded with sudden life, taking in an enormous breath and struggling to disentangle himself from Hayne. Beatrice, right behind him, got her feet under her without much trouble, but Dashiell looked undignified and silly for a second, flailing around to get himself oriented without his usual vampire grace. And thanks to the world’s most reliably terrible luck, when he finally got his feet under him, the vampire was about six inches away from me with murder in his eye.
Before anyone could speak, Dashiell raised his palm to slap me—but Will had anticipated this and darted forward, grabbing his hand. “Stop,” he roared at the vampire, and Dashiell froze in surprise. I had never heard Will—or anyone, really—talk to Dashiell like that. “It’s not her fault; I made her,” Will said in a quieter tone. You know things are bad when the unhinged werewolf is the most reasonable person in the room.
Then Will added, very simply, “The Luparii are in town.”
The word hit Dashiell like a blow. He seemed to suddenly forget all about me as he turned around as fast as a human can, managing to arrive at Beatrice’s side just in time to catch his wife as she fainted dead away. No pun intended. Jesse looked at me with his mouth open.
So. That happened.
It took a few minutes, but Hayne got everyone seated and more or less calm. I stayed in my armchair, mostly because it was so overstuffed that I wasn’t sure I could get up by myself. Dashiell and Beatrice were on the adjoining sofa, which was still in my radius. Bea looked pale and shaky, and I suspected that she was only sitting upright because she was leaning on her husband. Will took the hard-backed chair on the other side of the sofa from me, and a wary Jesse had simply sunk down on the floor to my right. I knew he didn’t want to be too far from me in case everything went to hell again, but I didn’t exactly mind. Hayne brought in a chair for Kirsten, who set it between Will and Jesse so we formed a loose oval around the coffee table. Hayne stood guard at the door.
Between the Luparii and Beatrice fainting, Dashiell seemed to have forgotten he was furious with me—although every once in a while he shot me a suspicious look that I didn’t at all like.
When it seemed like we were more or less settled, I jumped in. “Olivia talked about the Luparii once,” I ventured. “I don’t remember her exact phrasing, but I had the impression that they were magical imaginary villains, something older werewolves used to scare new wolves into silence. Like the Loch Ness Monster or something.”
Will frowned at me from across the coffee table. “Oh, they’re very real, unfortunately. And technically they’re witches. A family of witches.”
I looked at Kirsten, whose frown matched Will’s. That explained why the witch queen of LA was here. “What do you mean, ‘technically’?” Jesse asked.
“The Luparii are witches the way Hitler was German,” Kirsten said stiffly. She held a hand up to Will to indicate that she’d take over, and he nodded. “They are a family, a very old French family. There are stories about them going back as far as the Middle Ages.”
I blinked in surprise. Unlike vampires or werewolves, witches pass their magic on hereditarily, not through infection. I knew that there were old witch families, but I’d only heard of, like, Mayflower-old, not medieval. “Back then, they were called the Gagnons,” Kirsten continued. She did the full French pronunciation of the name in a careless, natural way that I envied. “As you know, different witches are skilled differently.”
“Like how Runa finds things,” Jesse said quietly, and Kirsten nodded.
“Different families sometimes pass down the same . . . specialties.” She bit her lip. “Our history suggests that the Gagnons had a gift for . . . twisting things. Changing the purpose of things, usually to something dark and cruel.”
“Example?” I asked. I was feeling very attentive. If it meant I got to sit down and no one was trying to smack me, Kirsten could lecture all day, as far I was concerned.
She swiveled her hand idly in the air, her eyes searching the air above my head for an example. “Like . . . farmers who competed with the Gagnons would suddenly discover all of their crops were poisonous. I don’t mean that the crops were poisoned, I mean they became toxic. Or a young woman who rejected one of the Gagnon men would have miscarriage after miscarriage, and the babies would be born . . . disfigured.” Kirsten shuddered. “Anyway, the Gagnons caused a lot of deaths. Eventually even Charlemagne noticed. Do you . . .” She raised her eyebrows at me, and I rolled my eyes back.
“Yes, I know who Charlemagne is. My father taught history.”
Kirsten nodded and continued. “Well, in the ninth century Charlemagne figured there was no point in arresting the Gagnons. There was never any proof, and anyway every kind of law enforcement that went after them simply disappeared. So instead, he gave them a job.”
“Come again?” I asked, confused.
Kirsten sighed. “It was a tactic. If your two-year-old is about to throw a tantrum, you ask him to help you water the flowers or bake some cookies.”
“I’m guessing the Gagnons aren’t known for their amazing snickerdoodles,” Jesse guessed. I flashed him a grin.
“No,” Kirsten answered, her expression soured. “Charlemagne gave them the office of the Luparii, the official wolf hunters for the crown.”
Will’s lips curled back with rage. “He paid them a reward for each dead wolf.”
“The jaws,” I said softly, putting it together. “They used the jaws to prove the kill.”
“Yes,” Kirsten confirmed. “It was easier to drag around a bag of jaws”—she wrinkled her nose distastefully—“than the complete carcasses.”
“Did it work?” Jesse asked.
“Oh, yes,” Will said darkly, “it worked. The Luparii grew rich slaughtering wolves for the crown. They excelled at it.” He stood up and began to pace the length of the room restlessly again. The pacing took him in and out of my radius with each loop, which was harmlessly distracting, like when a fly keeps dive-bombing your head. I wasn’t about to ask him to stop, though.