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“I don’t need you to—”
“Christy. I hired Christy.” Eli glanced at me.
And honestly, the man was not playing fair. Christy Zehr was one of my dearest friends, and she worked the pool tables there often. She was a towering Black woman who researched freelance and hustled pool. She was smarter than ninety-eight percent of everyone I’d met, with a two percent margin of error. It was sometimes like having precog, though she swore it wasn’t magic. Whatever made her tick, she was a rock in my life and these days, she was dating my childhood bestie and surrogate brother, Jesse.
“Damn you.” I scowled at Eli. I couldn’t object to him offering her the job. She could run a con, run a table, and possibly run the world without breaking a sweat. Typically, though, she’d vanish for stretches, and no one knew what she did then.
On the other side were Sera and Jesse, who had stores. Jesse had a book shop, and Sera a coffee shop. Small businesses could be risky, but during Carnival season, they’d all turn a profit that would carry them for months.
“It frees me up to be at your disposal.” Eli adopted that do-not-panic-and-run voice. “I will still own and run the bar, but now that I am returned to my family, I have access to my funds. I have no need of work.”
“Then why not sell it?” I asked even though I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer.
Eli lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug that only a man like him could pull off: elegant, careless, and utterly telling all at once. That half-shrug of his was often to avoid discussions—usually for my benefit. “My fiancé is not sure she wants to live as a queen, and I will surrender the throne toElphamebefore giving up on my love.”
My mouth gaped open.
“If I do that, I will need to have an income,” Eli continued.
Nope. Not ready for that answer atall. I didn’t bother pointing out that I would not ask such sacrifice of him. He knew that.
“Obstinant ass,” I grumbled.
“Pot, kettle,” he said cheerily.
I said nothing else as Eli drove us deeper into the Outs and to Beatrice’s small castle. What was there to say? We didn’t agree. It would crush me to lose him, but what other choice did we have? I could not pass on my genetic nightmare—or even carry a child most likely—and hehadto have a biological child with his wife.
We had no viable answers that I could see.
So I held my silence and watched the nature outside as we made our way to the home of the dead woman who had once given birth to a girl who was my ancestor. Beatrice, alldraugr, was human once. My ancestor was a human, Jewish witch, who had become adraugrpowerful enough to rule this region of the world. Her genes were mine via my mother, and mydraugrheritage was a result of the perverse tests once conducted on her when she was human. Those tests led to my father realizing that witches were the key, and so he seduced my mother with the explicit goal of my birth.
Oddly it didn’t make me feel special.
When the car stopped, we were under a towering oak. I had kept my mind busy thinking to avoid the almost irresistible urge to reply to the dead buried all around us. I had to concentrate not to send out a summons to the dead when I was in the Outs, but of late it was a scream in my head I was trying to bury under thoughts, words, and memories.
Details. That was my very mature response to the pressures. I focused on details.
Beatrice’s home was ostentatious even in a place still dotted with plantations. It was vaguely modernized—no drawbridge—but there was a long stone bridge between parking and the massive front doors.
As we were walking toward it, I could see that the bridge was already down, allowing us to cross over the moat filled with resting alligators.
“Hey, Sir George,” I said, waving at the largest of the gators. He was, apparently, a man who had once offended my great-times-great grandmother. I didn’t know if any of the others were alligators of the born-that-way sort, but Beatrice had admitted that she turned men who angered her into scaled pets or pigs.
Sir George flicked his tail, but I couldn’t decide if it was a friendly greeting or a pissed off one.
But even as I tried not to reach out with magic, I still felt absences in pockets of space. Those were either graves or draugr. I’d noticed several of them last time. One, a young girl, bothered me in a different way.
Others felt older, centuries older in fact.
“Bonbon?” Eli said, entwining his fingers with mine again. “Are you well?”
I nodded. The dead wanted attention,myattention, and I wanted to ignore them. My plate was too full to summon the child in the nearby grave who was reaching out to me. She was more ghost than bones, but I’d rather not beckon anyone.
At the door of Beatrice’s palatial home, we were met by two of her guards. All of the guards, staff, and residents here were female. One Caucasian, and one Middle Eastern. Beatrice was without racial, cultural, or religious bias in those she took into her staff. Her only rule was no men.
I looked around the medieval-style castle expecting to see Beatrice’s assistant, Eleanor. I had a suspicion that both thedraugrand the house were brought here from some far away forest. I didn’t ask, though. I was still finding my way with my dead ancestor.
“Granddaughter! What a lovely surprise!” Beatrice’s voice arrived before she did.
