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“Jeanine,” he growled.
I cleared my throat. “Gabriel, let’s not antagonize the crazy with the stun gun.”
“Jane, don’t help. Wait—she has your stun gun?”
I shrugged my shoulders, my expression apologetic.
“I can make you happy, Gabriel, if you just give me the chance. But now that you have her, you don’t even think of me,” Jeanine begged, her voice reedy and desperate. “Can’t you see what she’s done to me, by coming between us? I need you.”
Oh, Lord, it was Gabriel’s kryptonite, a lady in distress. But instead of reaching out to Jeanine, he simply shook his head.
“I can’t keep living like this,” Jeanine cried, real tears of blood streaming down her cheeks now. “I won’t keep living this half-life. I want the gift of immortality or no life at all!”
“I gave you the gift of immortality,” Gabriel said, his voice cold now. “And you’ve wasted it.”
With a mad cry, Jeanine sparked the stun gun and moved it to the hem of her cloak. “I’ll end it now. I’ll take you all with me.”
“You won’t do it. You’re terrified of death,” I told her. I thought reminding her of the immediate dusty consequences would make her drop the stun gun, but Jeanine seemed to take my words as a challenge. She sneered and pressed it down, the arc of electrical energy combusting the lamp-oil-soaked cloth with a bright orange glow. Within seconds, her clothes were engulfed. Gabriel threw me behind him. But Jeanine stood perfectly still, a shocked look freezing her face in a mask of horrified regret, as if she couldn’t believe what she had done in a toddler’s fit of temper. Her panicked hands beat at the flames as they licked up her clothes, toward her face. There was a horrible scream as Jeanine’s body seemed to disintegrate before our eyes. Her face turned gray, then black, then crumbled into dust. The flaming cloak crumpled to the floor.
I watched as the puddle of oil caught, the fire inching toward the piles of boxes and wooden crates. The flames speared higher and higher, until I thought they might be brushing against the ceiling. We would be trapped. River Oaks would burn. The cellar was going to catch like a Roman candle if—
I shrieked as a blue-white cloud exploded in my face. Dick was standing over Jeanine’s remains with the fire extinguisher I kept near the cellar steps. With tears streaking down his deadened, inanimate face, he sprayed foam over the remaining hot spots, dropped the red tank with a clang, and shuffled back to Andrea without a word.
The cold blast from the fire extinguisher seemed to revive Emery, who slowly pushed himself up from the floor. Gabriel sprang to his feet, putting himself between Emery and me.
“Mistress?” Emery mumbled. His dull, unfocused eyes caught sight of the pile of ashes and the red cape, absorbing what it meant. He howled, “No! No !”
Emery scanned the room for signs of Jeanine, for an explanation of what had happened. Seeing Dick crouched over Andrea, Emery cried, “That is my mate!” When he advanced on them, Dick looked up with what can only be called a predatory snarl and roared. Even I jumped back. Gabriel’s grip tightened around my arm.
“Emery, I think you should back away and sit still until the Council gets here,” Gabriel seethed.
Emery’s brow furrowed, even as he circled Andrea, trying to find a weakness in Dick’s defenses. “What council?”
“The Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead. The governing body of vampires who are going to lower the boom on you after what you’ve done,” I said.
Emery snorted derisively. “We’re vampires, Jane. We’re above the law, the constraints of human society. There are no rules for us anymore. It’s why I wanted to be a vampire in the first place.”
“Actually, there’s a whole butt-load of rules, Emery. The Council has rules for everything, especially when it comes to abducting and forcibly turning humans. It’s bad for our public image. All those months at the bookshop, and you never bothered reading anything, did you? You bought into Jeanine’s promise of a ‘dark gift’ without even thinking about it. And now, you’re going to get the Trial.”
“What’s the Trial?” Emery asked, his bravado suddenly gone.
“What you’ve done to Andrea is going to pale in comparison.”
As if on cue, Ophelia arrived at the top of the cellar with her Council posse: gaunt and grumpy Peter Crown, a Colonel Sanders lookalike improbably named Waco Marchand, and cool blond Sophie. I was never so glad to see bureaucrats in all my life. It was like a pale, elegant cavalry. Emery had lost all nerve at this point and was cowering behind a junk pile.
Ophelia, a 300-year-old teenager who was wearing skinny dark-wash jeans and a Jonas Brothers T-shirt, took in the sight of Andrea’s crumpled body, the pile of ashes on the floor, and my bloodied, chainsaw-massacre-survivor look.
“What did you do this time, Jane?” she demanded, rolling her eyes.
“This time, it really wasn’t me,” I protested.
“You always say that,” she pointed out.
“It was this newborn, Emery Mueller,” Gabriel said, dragging Emery up by the collar and pushing him toward Peter. “He kidnapped Andrea Byrne and turned her against her will. Under the direction of his sire, Jeanine, he also attempted to kill Jane with aerosol silver weeks ago, then assaulted and kidnapped her tonight.”
“That’s quite the rap sheet for a newborn,” Ophelia said, nudging Jeanine’s remains with her toe.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “When Dick … when he’s able to speak, he will corroborate my story.”
