I was all too familiar with Nicole’s intuitive abilities. Even though she seemed tired and spent, I knew she could read my emotional state, and maybe even my thoughts sometimes. I didn’t want to let on just how much it hurt to hear the witches of New Orleans were excluding me from their conversations, so I recalled the catchiest song I could think of and kept repeating it in my head.
“And have you?” I asked, looking down at my own hands.
Nicole paused. “No,” she said. “Best we can determine, a witch must have been helping those vampires.”
“A witch? Someone inside our community?”
“Not necessarily.”
“But we’re talking about inhibiting the power of a mansion full of witches. I can’t even begin to speculate what kind of spell that was, but only someone with immense experience and strength in magick could have done that.”
“Someone like Tamara?”
The way she was looking at me, with her head tilted a little low and her eyes trained on mine, I knew she was listening for my thoughts, or any sudden burst of emotion. I wasn’t a stone. I couldn’t keep everything away from her, and I knew it. Especially anger. Anger was such a raw, explosive emotion. Nicole had pushed my buttons, and it had worked.
“I didn’t say Tamara.”
“No, but that’s what you think, isn’t it? She’s a new face in the city, she’s got experience on us, and she dislikes you.”
“You disliked her when she first rolled into town too, remember? Or have you forgotten?”
“I haven’t forgotten. All I know is, thanks to your event, my mom and a half-dozen other witches almost died that night. One of them did die.”
The anger wasn’t just bubbling; it was coming to a boil. “My event?” I asked, “We organized it together. We thought of it together. And now it’s my event? Has she turned you against me that much already?”
“No one’s done anything to me, Madison. Tamara has just shown me the truth about vampires—they’re killers, and they hold grudges. These people are going to stop at nothing and no one; they’ll slaughter every last witch in New Orleans if we let them.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, looking up at her, boring the weight of my anger into her through my gaze. “They’ll kill every last vampire, too, because they’re monsters driven by one purpose alone.”
Nicole clenched her jaw. “Vampires aren’t our concern,” she said, “Witches are our concern. Can’t you see that?”
“Only the witches, huh? What about the humans, or Jared, or the imps? I guess they’re not as important to you either?”
“That’s not what I said.”
I stood bolt-upright and stared her down from where I was. “You didn’t have to say it,” I said. “Ever since you’ve started talking, its Tamara’s voice I’ve been hearing. This Nicole isn’t the Nicole I made a pact with—she isn’t my kind, generous, caring sister. It’s Tamara wearing a different suit.”
She stood as well and locked her eyes with mine. “Watch it,” she said, pointing an index finger at me.
“Or what, Nicole? Are you going to kill me because I’ve sided with unity instead of with Tamara?”
“I’m not going to kill you, but you can’t say whatever you want and hope to get away with it.”
I stepped up to her, and she backed away like a feral cat, circling the sofa and putting her arm out as if to stop me from hurting her. Seeing that kind of reaction twisted my insides in a bad way. Tears stung my eyes. She was my sister, and I couldn’t even get close to her, let alone get through to her. We had been through so much together, and now Tamara had turned her against me.
Against our coven.
“These vampires,” I said, praying my voice wouldn’t falter, “The ones who killed Remy… I faced one of them last night. They’re vicious and brutal. What they did the other night, they’ll do again, and when they do, we need to be together. You and me. If anyone can figure out how to beat them, it’s us.”
Nicole fell silent, and I thought maybe she could hear my frustration, my desperation, my anger. I thought maybe, if my voice and my argument couldn’t sway her, maybe my emotions could. But she drew a breath and her expression hardened again.
“You chose your side,” she said, “And I chose mine. There’s nothing for us to discuss.”
I swallowed the catch building in my throat. “So… if I protect Jean Luc and his family from Tamara, what are you going to do?”
There was a pause. “I will do whatever I have to do to keep me and my family safe.”
I could feel my pulse racing, blood rushing through me at a dizzying speed. My lips pressed together, and before I could say another word, I started to leave. I had tried my best with Nicole, but she didn’t want to hear me out. But what hurt the most was her refusal to reassure me she would sooner remain neutral than protect me. Hadn’t we been through the exact same ordeal together? Couldn’t she see this was exactly what happened to Eliza? She wanted to protect innocent vampires, and her own witches turned on her.
I left Azure House in a hurry, and kept walking down the street until my house and Nicole’s were completely out of view before catching a ride back to Jared’s place, realizing only when I arrived that I never collected whatever mail Nicole had waiting for me at her house. I didn’t call anyone, didn’t stop to get something to eat or drink, all I wanted to do was go back to the apartment and tend to my emotional wounds.
But I wouldn’t get that chance, because on the doorstep to Jared’s place, sitting there like a piece of discarded mail, was an envelope with my name on it.
The envelope vibrated in my hands and was cool to the touch, refreshingly so. I looked around the landing, wondering if the person who had delivered it was still around, but I remembered once having received a letter almost exactly like this one, in almost exactly the same hand, but it had been sent to me by Remy.
I ripped the letter open, hoping against hope that somehow, by some miracle, Remy was still alive—that he had found another way to cheat death and wanted to work with me to figure this whole mess out. I wouldn’t have put it past him, a man of his magickal aptitude. But the hope turned to bile in my stomach as I read the contents of the letter, and the bile turned to dread when I saw the signature.
The letter wasn’t from Remy; it was from Tamara.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I had been living in New Orleans for a few months, but had never set foot in the infamous Ninth Ward until tonight. It wasn’t that I actively avoided the area, at least, I didn’t think it was. But the more I thought about it as I drove along a neighborhood where the waters brought on by Hurricane Katrina had been so high they tore buildings right off the ground, the less I believed the lie I had been telling myself.