I ignored her and stood straight, staring at him. “None of that ‘my master’ crap. Not now, not ever. In fact, you can take that primo idea and stuff it where the sun don’t shine. As to your sleeping needs, I doubt the B and B has a vamp-sealed room, so I guess that, if the bedroom she assigned to you doesn’t make you all jolly, you get to spend the day in my closet.”
Edmund didn’t sigh, as vamps don’t have to breathe, but his body took on a long-suffering posture.
“Don’t worry. I’ll put a pallet in there with a nice comfy pillow from my bed. Meanwhile, why don’t you go see what the vamps are up to and get the lowdown on their point of view. I’m going to catch a couple of hours of shut-eye and head back out at five a.m.”
“Even when I was human that was an ungodly hour. And in case you haven’t noticed, it’s raining outside.”
“You’ll dry.” I pushed him out of the room and shut the door in his face. “Nighty night, Edmund.”
I texted Clermont Doucette that I was in town, put a nine mil on the bedside table along with a stake and a vamp-killer, kicked off my traveling boots, crawled between the covers, which smelled faintly of lavender and vanilla, and closed my eyes. I was instantly asleep. I woke when the single door to the gallery opened and wet air blew in. The nine mil was targeted on the dim outline before I got my eyes fully opened. “It’s loaded with silver,” I said, my voice gravelly with sleep.
“I would die, then, true-dead, if you shot me,” Edmund said, sounding unconcerned.
“Why are you entering my room from a second-story window?” I asked, as the night breeze fluttered the pale curtains into the room. The curtains were new since my last visit, and they had ruffles. I hate ruffles. “All the novels say suckheads can turn into bats and fly around. I thought it was fiction.”
Edmund made a pfft sound with his lips. “There is a tree outside your window with low branches. You need to put that toy away and come see this spectacle.” The guy really did have big brass ones. At the thought, I couldn’t help but grin, and Edmund’s eyebrows went up a notch. I waved the inquiring look away and rolled to the edge of the bed, my aim not wavering, and hit the floor in my sock feet. The bay window was narrow, and I motioned Edmund back with the weapon. He stepped out into the dark of night, onto the gallery, and I followed. The main intersection of Broad Street and Oiseau Avenue was visible between the waxy leaves of a magnolia in the yard of the B and B.
The witches were still standing in a circle in the middle of the crossroads. Standing behind them were two vamps for every one witch. They were positioned to attack and though the witches were outside the hedge circle—which was weird enough on its own—the vamps hadn’t yet attacked. Weird.
“How long?” I asked.
“Since the rain stopped.”
“How long until dawn?” I clarified.
“Perhaps fifteen minutes.”
“I was supposed to be up before this.”
“According to Clermont Doucette, the witches put a sleep spell on the entire town. Once humans go to sleep, they don’t wake until after dawn.”
I grunted. I wasn’t human, so why was I affected? Miz Onie had still been up when we got here. Or had been woken. I had to wonder if Miz Onie was immune to sleep spells or wasn’t human, to be able to be up and about. “What happens at dawn?”
“The Mithrans attack, moving at speed. The intent is to capture every witch and take back the wreath, which may be magical, though no one seems to know what its purpose is.
“When Shauna brought the wreath to her father, Landry decided that it was a religious artifact instead of a witch artifact and took it to the Catholic priest, who then called the bishop of Orleans Parish, St. Tammany Parish, St. Bernard Parish, Plaquemines Parish, and Jefferson Parish, who happens to be the same person, the preeminent religious figure in the southeast part of the state. The bishop sent a spokesperson, who kept it all of one day before deciding to send it Rome for exorcism.”
He paused for my reaction, but I didn’t have one to give, except to lower my weapon.
He inclined his head in recognition of his change in status from prisoner of a sort to gossip artist. “It has a great deal of power. I could smell it on the air. When the Mithrans heard that it was to be sent to Rome, they came en masse to the church. But it had been closed up behind the crosses on the walls and doused in holy water.”
I looked back at the gathering on the street and sighed. “Leo sent me into a mess, didn’t he?”
“To be fair to the Blood-Master of New Orleans, he did not know that things had become so dire.”
“Uh-huh. Go on with your story of intrigue, love lost, and magic crap.”
“Someone, not a Mithran, as he was undeterred by holy icons, stole over the wall to the church grounds, and pilfered the wreath from the priests.”
I started laughing softly, though I wasn’t sure it was from amusement or something more dismal. Watching the tableau in the street, the sodden witches and the hyperalert vamps, was like watching paint dry.
“That person took the wreath to the coven of witches, the female witches of the town, and the coven immediately recognized the power of the artifact.”