I called Elise, but my parents had already stopped by and picked up Charlie, after giving her an update on John. “You made it sound way worse than it is,” Elise accused. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“You’re right,” I said, smiling internally. “My bad.”
Katia had to stick around the hospital for X-rays, and she assured me she knew how to use my Uber account to get to the cabin. I went back to the Jeep and drove home, where I opened the garage door for Tobias and bade him a bleary goodnight. “Do you want to hang out?” he said hopefully. “I’ve got some time to kill before Maven’s up for the night.”
“No offense, Tobias, but I’ve been up for a very intense twenty-four hours,” I said, yawning. It was after eleven a.m. “Help yourself to food or whatever. Go hiking. Catch a movie. Imma go to bed.”
I waved and trudged into the house. The dogs were ecstatic to see me—except for Stitch, who hid. I wasn’t a detective, but I suspected this had something to do with the new stains on my living room carpet. I let everyone outside to do their business, cleaned up the mess, set out food and water, and even checked on Mushu. Katia had dropped him off in his old tank on her way north to rescue me, and luckily she’d brought along a few crickets. “Hey, grumpy old dragon,” I said as I dropped them in the cage. “Remember me?”
Mushu ignored me. Just like old times.
When the dogs were back inside, I locked up, zombie-walked to my bedroom, and eyed the bed, facing what seemed like the hardest choice of my entire life: Collapse right then, or force myself to shower off the cave grime and dried blood first?
I fell onto the bed without actually making a decision.
Chapter 49
Someone was brushing hair from my face with cool, assured fingers. Quinn.
I smiled, though I wasn’t ready to wake up yet. I rolled onto my back and stretched. I had gotten up twice, just long enough to stumble to the bathroom and pee. “Hey. Come to bed with me.”
“Lex . . . honey . . .”
Even those two words were so solemn and formal. It was the tone you use to deliver bad news.
I opened my eyes and sat up. Quinn had turned on the bedside lamp, and was sitting next to me fully dressed. There were no dogs draped over me, so he must have put them in the back bedroom. I hadn’t even heard them bark. “What happened? Where’s Katia?”
“Asleep in the back bedroom.”
“What time is it?”
“A little after midnight. We just finished at the Pellars’.”
“Crap!” I flipped off the covers. Hadn’t I set an alarm? I’d meant to . . . “Okay, I’ll take the world’s fastest shower, and then we have to go see Maven. I need to talk to her—”
“Lex.” It was his turn to interrupt. “She’s here.”
I froze, already halfway to the bedroom door, and looked back at him. “Here here?” I said. “At my house?”
“Well, outside, at the front door. You have to invite her in.”
I looked helplessly at myself, my room. I smelled . . . I didn’t even want to put words to what I smelled like. “Quinn . . .”
“It’s fine,” he said firmly. “She doesn’t care.”
I dug up clean clothes to wear, at least, and hurried to put them on. Well, I tried to hurry, but I was sore all over, and when Quinn saw my arms and legs, he almost had a cardiac event for real, vampire or not. He helped me get a sweater dress over my head and told me to skip the pants until I could clean out those cuts, for God’s sake. I was too nervous about making the cardinal vampire wait to argue with him.
As I shuffled toward the front door, I could see through the glass that the snow was falling again. Big wet flakes dotted the neon-green hair of my former—and hopefully, future—boss. She smiled tentatively at me through the window, and I tried to move faster.
“Hi,” I said, opening the door. “You changed your hair.”
She touched it, as if she’d only just remembered. “Yes. It was time.”
I opened the door wider. “Sorry—come in.”
Maven stomped the snow off her boots and came in, looking around with interest. “You have such a nice home,” she said.
It was such a normal remark that I fought down a chortle. “Yeah, well, it’s not usually quite this messy. I . . . got in late.” I gave her an apologetic look. “And I haven’t showered. Sorry.”
She waved it away. “I understand.”
I led her into the living room and checked the armchair for dog hair before she sat down. Then I perched on the edge of the couch, while Quinn settled down on the next cushion.
I knew I should really let her speak first, but I was dying of curiosity, and hey, I didn’t actually work for her at the moment. “So you guys were at the Pellar farm?” I said, looking back and forth between them.
“Yes.” Maven smoothed her skirt, a thick denim number that wouldn’t have been flattering on anyone. She had dropped the “corporate human” disguise and was back to her usual look. “We’ve been there since sunset. Things got . . . heated.”
“Is everything okay?” What a stupid question.
“Not really.”
“What happened with Morgan?”
Maven’s face darkened, and Quinn looked away from me. “What?” I asked. “Mary didn’t—”
“No, no, it wasn’t her fault.” Maven sighed. “As you know, the witches had a meeting, which ended up starting early this afternoon given all of the developments.”
“Okay . . . ?”
“I don’t know the details of their meeting, but the leaders of the witch clans left a message requesting that I come out to the farm to parley. I got the message at sunset, at the same time Mary arrived at the coffee shop with Morgan.” A tiny smile. “Who was still rather sedated. At any rate, I asked Mary and her friend—Tobias?—to go ahead to the farm with Morgan so I could eat first.”
There was a look on Maven’s face that I hadn’t seen before. Was it . . . guilt? “I suppose I thought if I made the concession of coming to them,” Maven continued, “and we could get the truth out of Morgan . . .” She trailed off, her hands dropping to her lap.
I looked at Quinn, whose face was grim, but he waited for Maven to speak. “Twelve armed men arrived at the farmhouse just after Mary,” she said in a detached, robotic tone that terrified me. “They wanted to recover Morgan, even had silver shot for the werewolves. I missed them by perhaps three minutes.”
Unable to help myself, I blurted, “Simon and Lily—”
“Are fine,” Quinn assured me. Then his eyes darted to Maven, as if to apologize for interrupting.
She just nodded. “They are.”
“Mary? Tobias?”
“Injured, but alive,” Maven said formally. “Thanks to your friend Simon. He had a spell that pulled the silver shot out of them like a magnet.”
I relaxed a little. Yeah, that sounded like something Simon would come up with in his spare time, especially after Mary had saved his life.
But Maven’s face was still grim, and I realized there was more. “The gunmen almost got away with Morgan,” she continued, “but the Pellars, and a few of the other witches, fought back.”
“Don’t tell me Morgan escaped again,” I said.
“No, she was too wounded to run fast enough. When the witches put up a bigger fight than was expected, the men began to retreat. They shot at Morgan, likely to silence her.”
Maven, who had been a frickin’ queen of some country that didn’t even exist anymore and who had probably seen a hundred thousand people die, was actually too choked up to continue. She gave a little headshake and glanced at Quinn.
“Hazel pushed Morgan out of the way, Lex,” he said quietly.
“Hazel is . . . dead?” Hazel Pellar was an institution. It seemed impossible, like saying the buffalo statue on Pearl Street had suddenly galloped off to greener pastures.
“Morgan, too,” he replied. “Another gunman shot her as they made their escape.”
“Oh, God.” I clapped a hand over my mouth. It was my fault. I’d gotten Hazel to drop her wards to let Morgan back into Colorado; I’d sent Morgan with Mary—hell, I’d sent everyone to a meeting place without stopping to consider how vulnerable they would be.
Jumping up despite my sore muscles, I patted my back pants pockets for my phone—only I wasn’t wearing pants, and I didn’t have any pockets. “I need my phone, I gotta call . . .” I mumbled, looking around.
Maven cleared her throat. “You don’t, at least not at this moment. There’s nothing you can do right now, and your friends need to deal with their dead.”
I stood there for a moment, swaying a little, but dropped back onto the couch. She was right. I would call Simon and Lily, of course, or probably just go out to the farmhouse, but a few minutes wouldn’t make a difference. “I should have let Mary shoot Morgan in the fucking head,” I blurted, looking at Quinn. “God, I’m such an idiot; I should have been at that fucking meeting—”
“And you probably would have been, if you hadn’t quit my service,” Maven finished. “It’s possible that you could have helped, but given the odds, I suspect it’s more likely that you would have been shot. Or lost control of your magic.”
She sounded matter-of-fact, but I flinched. “Maven, I know I crossed a lot of lines the last couple of days,” I began, but she held up a hand to stop me.
“Lex, I’m trying to apologize.”
Well, that brought me up short. “What?”
“I put you in a position where the only way you could do what I wanted was to defy me. That’s a pretty unforgivable thing for a leader to do.”
“I know you didn’t do it on purpose,” I said.
She gave me a weak smile. “But I did.”
I blinked, too surprised to be angry. “Excuse me?”
She was fiddling with her skirt, and I realized with a start that she seemed . . . nervous? Was that even possible? “You know that I am the last surviving member of the Concilium, the council that led the Old World many centuries ago,” she said. “After that group fell, I kept to myself for a long time. I fell out of practice with trust. These last few months . . . I haven’t been engaging you because I’ve been busy gathering allies again. Getting in touch with old contacts, trying to make new ones. I want things to change in the Old World, and I became so focused on my project that I paid no attention to the people I’m supposed to lead.
“When you called me with Ryan Dunn’s problem, I was distracted, and I didn’t think too much about it. Even when Dunn was killed, I thought . . .” She held out her hands, palms up. “I thought perhaps it would be a good test for you.”