I swiveled on my satin-upholstered chair to Alex, standing in the doorway. His skin looked darker than its usual caramel, and his hair was kinked high from the rain and the humidity. Except for the laptop, he looked like a nineties rapper, in boxy pants and oversized T-shirt. “I found it in the new database.”
That meant Reach’s database, the one he was still learning how to use. Alex turned the laptop around, and on the screen was a picture of a marble statue of a man wearing a wreath—laurel leaves standing up at attention—but this wreath was stone, not metal, and it was missing the lower part, the part with the writing. I started to say that, but Alex said, “It’s a statue of Julius Caesar, commissioned in the seventeenth century for the Palace of Versailles. And he’s depicted wearing what was called a civic crown. The civic crown, also worn by Napoleon and other kings, is the laurel leaf part of the corona. The lower part is what I’ll call a band crown, as seen on Greek kings and consorts, like you see on this silver coin, called a silver tetradrachm.” He displayed a picture of a coin with a woman’s face on it and then zoomed in with his fingertips on the touch screen. The crown was a narrow band and did indeed seem to have etchings on it that might—or might not—have been a match to the ones on the corona. “I haven’t actually seen one of the band crowns, but they were worn by queens or consorts in the BC era. And it shows these little marks. See? Here.” He pointed.
“Fine,” I said. “I see the marks and I acknowledge the research, but—”
“Someone combined the two crowns, a laurel leaf civic crown and a band, worn by a consort. A witch took the two concepts and melded them into one. Like this.” He punched a corner of the screen and a picture came up, which matched perfectly the corona in the street, surrounded by witches, standing, dry, in the rain.
Alex was tired, I could see it in his face, and beneath the stench of smoke and blood in the room, he smelled of caffeine and testosterone and adrenaline, a combo that said he had been bingeing on energy drinks. “Okay,” I said quietly. “We have a theory about what the corona was made from. Now we need to know where it came from and what it does.”
Alex heard the word theory and his shoulders slumped. Then his face brightened. “My research says this: ‘La corona does one thing and one thing only. It allows a misericord to attain human form.’”
I stood slowly. “Oh crap.” I looked at the windows. Outside, lightning flashed and distant thunder rumbled. “We might be in a bit of trouble.”
The misericords were Mercy Blades, the creatures who made sure that vampires didn’t keep their children alive after a decade, two at the most, in the devoveo. In other words, they administered the mercy stroke of death to the chained, insane killing machines that never made it through the vamp turning into true vampires. They were also Anzu. Storm gods. And . . . I had recently been struck by lightning during a storm. Holy crap. What am I missing?
“Jane?”
I jerked my head to Alex, who looked oddly concerned. I stood, digging in a pocket for my cell. “Yeah. I gotta make a call.”
I walked outside under the gallery roof into the drizzle that had started again. I pulled up my address list on the official cell, the one that my boss could trace, listen in on, and read texts from. I found the name Gee DiMercy, who was also known as Girrard DiMercy, aka Leo’s misericord, or Mercy Blade. An Anzu. Once worshipped as a storm god. Like a blue and scarlet Big Bird with a bad attitude. A storm god . . . I hit SEND and waited. The cell rang. Rang again. And then I heard a calypso dance number behind me.
I pulled a vamp-killer, spinning on one toe. Ducked the sword strike that was aiming for my head. Threw my body into a forward roll, tucking, landing on one shoulder and sliding under the swing hanging on chains. Gee laughed, and his laughter was exactly as I remembered from the first time I heard it—joyful, like a kid in a park, and I found myself smiling with him, even though I was hiding behind a swing, in the dark.
He didn’t attack again and I saw him sheath the sword, the steel a silver gleam in the porch light. “What are you? Kato?” I accused.