“Whoa,” I mumbled, replacing the revolver in its holster. “Uh . . . hi,” I added, hearing how dumb it sounded. I’d seen Maven away from Magic Beans only a handful of times, and although I knew she wore different clothes when she went hunting, I’d never seen her change her look so completely. She wasn’t even wearing any costume jewelry.
She read the surprise on my face and gave me a faint smile. “It’s a wig, Lex.”
Oh. “What are you doing here?” I blurted. Not a great recovery. At least I stopped myself from asking how she’d gotten in. Vampires do have to get permission before entering a private home, thanks to gravitational magic, but Charlie’s null abilities negated that. Her house wasn’t protected from vampires, although of course they stopped being vampires if they got too close to her.
“Quinn texted me.” Maven crouched down near Clara, putting one hand on the floor for a second to steady herself. It was so odd seeing her without vampire grace. “Don’t bring her any closer, please,” she said to me, holding up a hand. I realized my mistake and retreated a few steps with Charlie, dropping down onto the edge of a rocking chair. Maven seemed to glow with sudden health, and she gave me a nod.
“Clara’s not healing?” I asked.
“She is, but it’s slow.” Maven looked up into Quinn’s eyes. “Did you tell her?”
He shook his head.
“Tell me what?” I asked him.
Quinn winced, eyeing Clara for a moment. “Quinn,” was all I said, and I made sure my voice was level. I wasn’t going to flip out, and I wasn’t going to wake Charlie, goddammit.
He rested a hand on my shoulder. “The people who broke in, they weren’t the ones who hurt John. It was Clara.”
I gaped. “What?”
Maven picked up the knife I’d found and sniffed the handle. She gave a little headshake. “I don’t think Clara used it.”
I forced myself to take a deep breath, nodding. “She was wounded fighting off the werewolves, and John gave her blood to save her.”
“She might have pressed him to donate,” Quinn said quietly.
Maven looked grave, and I realized for the first time what we were actually talking about: whether or not Clara would need to be punished for what had happened here. Vampires were not allowed to kill humans in the state of Colorado, by Maven’s own law. If John didn’t make it . . .
Clara was my responsibility. She was under my protection.
“No,” I said firmly, searching for the right words. “Clara and John respected each other. She wouldn’t do that to him. And I know John. He would have been happy to help the person who’d saved Charlie. He must have cut too deep by mistake.”
Maven and Quinn exchanged another look, then Maven tilted her head to one side, acquiescing. “Let’s drop it for now,” she said. She lifted an eyebrow. “I’m assuming you want to call your friend?”
For the space of a heartbeat, I thought she meant Scarlett Bernard, for some reason. Then my thoughts cleared. “Sashi!”
“I’ll pay her bill,” Maven said calmly.
“I’m a fucking moron,” I muttered as I freed one hand to dig in my pocket for my phone. Why hadn’t I thought of that immediately? True, it had been a couple of years since I’d needed her magic, but we talked once or twice a week. It should have been obvious. Sashi was a healing witch who worked on humans, and John was human.
Not to mention Sashi’s ex.
I perched on the edge of the couch—there was blood on the backrest, but the seat was clear—which freed up my uninjured hand to scroll through my contacts for her name. Quinn and Maven, meanwhile, picked up Clara and took her out the back way, presumably to get her bagged blood—somewhere far away from my null niece.
The phone rang only twice before Sashi answered. She was semi-nocturnal, like me. “Hey, Lex,” came her warm voice over the phone. “How are things? Has Grace said anything about—”
“Sashi,” I interrupted. “It’s John. He’s hurt.”
Three seconds of silence, and when she responded, her voice was businesslike. “How bad?”
“Pretty bad.” My voice quavered, which I hated. “Some wolves attacked him trying to get to Charlie. Clara was hurt and John got cut.”
That was more detail than she really needed, but Sashi absorbed it quickly. “He wasn’t bitten?” she asked.
Jesus, it hadn’t even occurred to me. But I was sure Quinn would have mentioned if there’d been a bite, and from the little I knew about werewolves, his symptoms would be different. “I don’t think so,” I said into the phone. “It’s mostly the blood loss.”
“Okay,” Sashi said. “We’ll be on the next flight. Call you when I get there.”
She hung up the phone. I stared at it for a moment, taken aback. “We?” I said to myself.
Quinn was coming back into the room and overheard me. “She’s bringing the new boyfriend?”
“Apparently.” I shrugged and put the phone away. “John wasn’t bitten by one of the werewolves, was he?”
Quinn shook his head. “I would have been able to smell it.”
“Okay, good.” I looked at Maven. “I need to get Charlie to Katia.”
She nodded. “Of course. Make the arrangements for your family situation. Quinn and I will speak to the witch he captured.” She gave me a smile that was all bared teeth, and the word “predator” flashed through my mind in huge neon letters.
Then her words caught up with me. “Wait a minute,” I blurted. I held up a finger in a let me think gesture, which made Maven raise an eyebrow, but she waved a hand to say be my guest.
Why would Morgan send a witch with the werewolves?
She knew about Clara, who’d taken her down the night she’d tried to use Charlie, but witches weren’t great in a fight against vampires—at least, not compared with five werewolves. So what was the point of sending one?
Maven and Quinn were still looking at me expectantly. Vampires were very good at waiting. “Quinn, can you take her for a minute?” I asked. Without hesitating, Quinn came over and lifted Charlie out of my arms with a tiny oof.
I had to smile. “Not so strong without your magic powers, huh?” He rolled his eyes at me.
“Maven, would you please move the bodies?” I asked my boss. I could drag them around if I really needed to, but I could lift weights for twelve hours a day and never be half as strong as a vampire.
She just looked at me for a moment, eyebrows raised. “I need five minutes to follow a hunch,” I promised. “I want to check their pockets.”
“All right.”
Quinn retreated into the foyer so Maven could scoop up the dead werewolves. Matter-of-factly, she picked up each body and held it as I searched the clothing.
Nothing there.
Maven moved all three bodies through the kitchen and stacked them near the back door. While she was doing that, I squatted down and duck-walked around the living room, scrutinizing the floor for anything out of the ordinary. I could periodically feel Maven’s eyes on me from the doorway, but my five minutes weren’t up yet, and she didn’t comment.
I found it under the edge of the armchair: a tiny vial made out of hard plastic with a screw-on top. The liquid inside was brownish-yellow and had flakes of something suspended in it. I held it up to the light, shaking it slightly.
Fuck. Me.
“Quinn!” I called, and he came back into the doorway, carrying Charlie on one hip. His eyes widened when he saw the vial I was holding. “The witch you found,” I said before he could ask. Maven watched us with interest. “What does she look like?”
He gave a tiny shrug. “I wasn’t paying attention, to be honest. She was fighting like a whirlwind, so I just grabbed her and threw her in the trunk.”
“Did she smell like the Pellar farm?”
“Well, yeah, but I thought half the witches in the state were out there in the last couple of days . . . why?”
“Because this just got even more complicated.” I sighed. “You better go get her and bring her back in here. Don’t hurt her,” I added, though Quinn wasn’t the type for callous violence.
“You know who she is,” Maven said. A statement, not a question.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Quinn laid Charlie on the padded bench in the foyer, and after a few moments he came in through the back door with a woman slung over one shoulder. He had taken a roll of duct tape from John’s kitchen with him, and when he plopped her down on the couch I saw that he’d wound it around her ankles and wrists enough times to stop a rampaging werewolf. A shorter piece of tape was plastered over her mouth. She glared at each of us in turn, then her eyes narrowed on me, specifically. “Hello, Sybil,” I said tiredly.
Chapter 32
I didn’t know Sybil Pellar very well, mostly because she hated me. Most witches did, of course, but with Sybil I didn’t take it personally. From what Simon and Lily had told me, their next-older sister was universally very good with plants, and very bad with people. The few times we had actually interacted, she’d struck me as a sour, resentful woman who was angry about how her life had turned out.
Back when Morgan was the golden child, Sybil had been jealous, but she’d also idolized her older sister, which Morgan had used to her own advantage. On the night that Quinn and I had hunted the sandworm, Morgan knew we were closing in on her, so she’d sent Sybil to Chautauqua Park to perform the complex magical ceremony that would boost the ley lines.
It was supposed to distract us, and it worked—but Morgan threw Sybil under the bus, and if Maven hadn’t been such a careful leader, Sybil might have taken the fall for the entire thing. I wasn’t surprised that Morgan was trying a similar play here—but I was surprised that Sybil was going along with it. Again.
When Quinn stepped back after dropping her on John’s bloodstained sofa, I saw that she was painfully thin, with cheekbones like blades and hungry eyes that made me think of a starved crow. She reached up with her bound hands—Quinn had left her fingers free—and carefully peeled off the tape over her mouth. I let it happen, figuring we were going to need to have a conversation, but before I could say anything, Sybil muttered something under her breath and made a flicking motion at me.
I flew backward into the wall.
The back of my head hit the drywall and everything went loud and dizzy for a moment, while I struggled to get my legs back under me. I could vaguely hear someone talking, but I couldn’t make out any words. A moment later, Maven’s hand was on my shoulder. “Lex. Can you hear me?” I got the feeling it wasn’t the first time she’d asked.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled, blinking away tears of pain. Damn. Sybil could pack a wallop. Maven nodded and retreated to the foyer to keep an eye on my sleeping niece. While Quinn was fetching Sybil from the car, Maven and I had agreed that I would do the talking. Adding the cardinal vampire of the state to the situation would only make it more complicated; using me to negotiate gave us more room to maneuver.