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“Fair.” I scooted up slightly. “Mypoint,Eli, was that I don’t trust easily. I’ve known Jesse my whole life, Sera and Christy for almost a decade. It’s a short list.”
He gave one of those half-shrugs that shouldn’t be charming but was and said, “I waited you out.”
Then he grinned at me.
My tension slipped away as I watched him look less calm, more agitated, more emotional. It was a peculiar thing to know that his calm visage was probably the most obvious signal that he was upset. Seeing him less reserved, less controlled was how I knew that we were both thinking that things were probably going to be fine.
I opened my mouth to reply and felt elongated teeth drop down from my gums. I reached up with one finger and felt them.Fangs.I had fangs.
Eli reached out to me. “Geneviève?”
“Fangs!” I clamped a hand over my mouth and grasped my sword with the other. I had failed. There wasn’t any way to stay safe, to keep my family or friends safe. I jumbled with the sword until I had the point under my chin. I held it there with one hand, and then I took the one that was over my mouth and made a slamming gesture at Eli.
“No,” he said in the calmest voice ever. “I will not shove you onto the sword blade. You’re panicking. Are you still coherent?”
I gave a slight nod.
He pushed the sword away from my throat. “Do you want to bite me?”
I tilted my head, and then shook it. I didn’t. Maybe I just wasn’t hungry. Although I could feel my heart thudding in my ears, I still reached down and checked my pulse.
“Alive?”
Livepeople didn’t have fangs. I had a pulse—and fangs. I had not had them before, though, and I really didn’t want them now. Passing for human was hard enough with often reptilian eyes and the ability toflow. If people knew I was inhuman . . . I blinked tears. I wasn’t sure what was going on, and I stared at Eli and wondered if he had answers. Ideas. Something.
He took my hand in his, unfolding my fingers so I released the sword. He shoved it away and sat close beside me on the bed. He pulled me against him, holding me, trusting me, and stroked my back and arm. “We need answers, love.”
I waited. It was that or uncover my mouth, and that sounded like a lousy plan.
“The only solution I see is to seek the ones who might know,” he murmured. “Beatrice seems to like you—or at the least, want you to like her. Could you reach out to her?”
I watched him warily. This was turning into an awful day, or maybe it was way past that. I’d figured out who the murderer was by accident, been left for dead, and now I had fangs.
“She is the last idea I have,” Eli said. “But if the alternative is losing you, bring the dead, crème brûlée. Call for her because there must be a solution that doesn’t involve your death.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eli’s suggestionwas not one I liked, but my magic felt like it was choking me. There was a ball in my throat, like I had the physical need to vomit but the will to stop it. I wanted to release my call to the dead. My magic pushed out, no longer able to be held back.
“Can you call Beatrice specifically?” Eli urged.
“Maybe . . .?”
I closed my eyes and . . . let go of my restraints. It was a relief to let my magic free, as if too-tight trousers, pinching shoes, underwire bra, and a bitchy neighbor were all removed in one glorious moment. Although I was trying to concentrate on Beatrice, on the unique traits that were her, my magic rolled from New Orleans to the Outs. I could see fields, trees, and for a split moment, I could smell the scents that were home to me. Beatrice wasn’t there. Instead, I could see home and my mother.
“Darius?” Mama Lauren’s voice had a thread of girlish hope. She looked up from her herb-strewn table and seemed to see me. She smiled beatifically. “Baby girl?”
I watched my mother, who was staring into the darkness of her work room and smiling. At me. She was smiling at me, and I had zero idea how.
“Look at you,” she said in a teary voice. “I knew you’d become something sacred. Iknewit. Just look at you.”
Beatrice.
I jerked away, followed the flow of the land, let myself ripple across the air as if the land was too limiting. Air. I was a creature of airandland, of water, of fire. I wasWitch. The fire of life and death was in my veins, and I could end a life or create one from the ashes of death. Small dead creatures rested in the soil. The bones of a wolf scattered on the ground as flowers pushed their blossoms between dried remnants of its ribs. The hunter had become the food. His meat had fed the soil, and seeds had sprouted. I could bring wolf and prey to life again.
I jerked away. My magic usually only sought humanity’s dead. Not creatures. I didn’t want to uproot bone or flowers that grew there.
Beatrice.
