Page 47 of Hextreme Measures

Ofelia’s heart sank. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “What do I do?”

“Kill the banshee,” Dora replied. “If you kill the one who infected her before she transitions, the transition will stop.”

Ofelia balked. “I’ve never heard that.”

“It’s not something they spread around.”

“It has to be the exact one that infected her, right?” Sully pressed. “It can’t be anybody else from the pack, can it?”

“No, although I’ve never heard of banshees running around in packs. Sometimes there are three of them because they can better balance their power that way. It’s never more than that.”

“Well, it is now.” Sully crossed his arms over his chest. “There were at least 10 of them at the party last night.”

“One of them is dead now,” Ofelia added. “Sully ripped out her throat.”

“Good for you.” Dora winked at him and pulled some tubing out of her bag. “Tell me the story from the beginning. I need to hear all of it.”

Ofelia obliged, with interjections from Sully, as Dora showed Ben how to get the potion into Angelique’s veins. He would be in charge of that as Ofelia chased answers — or death — hard the next day. When she was finished, Ofelia eyed Dora and waited for her response.

“It’s very odd,” Dora said as she watched the potion drip into Angelique’s arm through the IV. The siren was already sweating less, which Ofelia took as a good sign. “I’ve never heard of banshees banding together like this. They usually don’t have the mental bandwidth to even consider something like this because they’re so caught up in their grief.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that,” Ofelia said. “Maybe they’re evolving. Not all of them — not yet — but this particular group.”

“How did they manage it?”

“That I can’t answer. I don’t know that we have time to chase those details either. We need to accept that they’ve evolved and go from there.”

“Will you kill them all?”

Ofelia didn’t like the question on the face of it, and if the situation were different, she would have tried to save the other banshees. That wasn’t an option as far as she could tell. “If I have to. I saw the one who attacked Angelique. I know what she looks like. If I just have to kill her, I will. If I have to kill them all, I’ll do that too.”

“What do you think they want?” Dora asked. She seemed curious more than anything else. Of course, it wasn’t her best friend suffering in the bed directly in front of her. She wasn’t as emotionally invested in the situation as Ofelia.

“I don’t know, but I do have a question.” Ofelia touched her tongue to her top lip as she pulled up the details of her conversation with Ellen. It had happened only hours before. It felt like days at this point. “There’s a woman in the Garden District who was a banshee for three days but was miraculously cured by a stranger.”

“Ellen Purcell,” Dora confirmed. “I’m familiar with her.”

Ofelia was instantly suspicious. “Are you the one who cured her?”

“No, I am not.” Dora shook her head. “I wish I could take credit for that. Not because I have any great love for Ellen or anything — I only know of her, we’re not friends or anything — but because it was a powerful bit of magic.”

“You must have an idea of who presented her with that potion,” Sully insisted. “You’ve had your finger in every New Orleans magical pie for 70 years.”

“Oh, I had my fingers in magical pies since birth,” Dora countered, grinning. “I don’t know who provided Ellen with that potion, though. I wish I did. I’ve always wondered what sort of being would have that much power.”

Ofelia’s eyebrows moved toward one another. “What do you mean? It was a witch, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t believe so.” Dora shook her head. “That was my assumption at first, too. The more I dug, though, the more I came to believe otherwise.”

Sully shifted from one foot to the other. Ofelia’s angst was making him uncomfortable. “If not a witch, what could we be dealing with?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot over the years.” Dora took on a far-off expression. “I have a theory, but I have to stress that it’s just a theory. I have no proof. It’s just an idea that I’ve played with off and on for years.”

“We’ll take any theory you’ve got at this point,” Ofelia replied. “Angelique doesn’t have a lot of time, and we don’t have much of anything.”

“That’s why I’m leery to tell you my theory.” Dora’s lips pursed in a rueful pout. “If you chase this theory and I’m wrong …” She didn’t finish it out. She didn’t have to.

“Then Angelique may be lost,” Ofelia finished for her. “I get it. I need to know, though. I feel as if there’s an idea somewhere out there, right on the edge of my mind. We don’t have much to chase. We need more information. If you can give us a nudge …”