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It sounded formal, as did the slight dip of Eli’s head and murmured, “Nor expected.”
“Great. Well, Iggy cannot kill me, right?” I steered right past that littledraugr-fae drama as quickly as I could. No amount of reading or questions had quite prepared me for the long history of formality between them.
“Do not trust the man, Daughter of Mine.” Beatrice caught my free hand. “Hexen have a long history of patriarchal deceits.”
I sighed. “Great. This is all justgreat. Tell me something good . . .?”
“The grant is not my doing,” Beatrice assured me. With a slight smile, she looked at Eli. “Have you asked your uncle? Fergus is a dangerous creature when crossed, and I doubt that he’s at ease knowing that one of my sort might hold the throne.”
I thought back to my encounters with the king ofElphame.Would he do this as a gift of money? Would he do it to eliminate me from Eli’s life? I wouldn’t be surprised if he had. When I met Eli’s gaze, I saw the same pensive look.
“This is a wise question,” Eli allowed, suddenly sounding more fae as he re-framed the grant not as a threat, but as a boon. “My uncle the king might offer such a gift to my fiancé.”
Beatrice, as diplomatic as the fae, nodded. “Sadly, it could be a dangerous thing as well.” She paused, glancing at me pointedly. “Witches have enemies, as dodraugr.”
“As do the fiancés of royalty,” Eli added.
“Yay,” I muttered. “I guess lots of people want me dead.”
Eli opened his mouth to rebut my gloomy statement, but my grandmother was faster. “You are the only of your kind. Powerful, binding three types of beings, as well as being Jewish and a woman. You are going to be hated by some and worshipped by others.”
I tossed back the rest of my drink. I could practically feel the energy humming in my skin. The mix of ancient blood and aged whisky was doing its job.
“Luckily,Geneviève, being dead will only makeyoustronger. I do not want to hasten your death, but should it come, we will face it. You have allies, dead or alive. The enemies, however, canallbe eliminated.” Beatrice lifted her glass in a bloody toast. “Let us feast on their blood and regrets. No slaughter too much for the sake my granddaughter.”
My ancestor was a terrifying woman, but luckily, she was also devoted to my well-being. A tiny whisper of fear made me wonder if that stance would also be handy to justify acts she would be elsewise unable to take. She had a regard for me, of that I was fairly certain, but she was also adraugrwho had wrested power from centuries of men—and had little patience with those who opposed her.
In truth, I suspected my mother had inherited a number of her qualities. Mama Lauren, however, was human. Alive. She was a witch who was handy with a double-barreled shotgun.
And I was neither alive nor dead, neitherdraugrnor human. I was the closest thing to what Beatrice was, and it was both terrifying and comforting in waves.
Chapter Eleven
After we leftBeatrice’s castle, I couldn’t say that I had any more clarity than before on the pressing matter of the grant. If anything, she’d added to my questions. Why were thedraugrhere from Prague? Why were they at the Hebert house? Was the connection coincidental? Was Beatrice’s paramour involved?
And why the dead crows? That was obviously a threat, and I was glad that my mother was under Beatrice’s protection. However, the larger question was who knew that there were three Crowe women and wanted us dead? Beatrice had claimed me in quite public ways among her kind, and I had been part of the outing of adraugrwho wanted to usurp Beatrice.
“Bonbon?” Eli prompted as we raced the sun to reach the ghost zone at least or the city at best.
“Worrying,” I admitted. “I just want to go home and hide away.”
“If I go faster, we run the risk of damage to the car,” he reminded me.
I nodded. Being stranded in the vast emptiness of the Outs wasn’t ideal. We should be fine on time. I’d made this trip dozens of times. Honestly, the drive wasn’t that long, but in January, the sun set here between 5:00 and 6:00. And we’d forgotten that the gates on the bridge closed thirty minutes before the sun began to set. It was the latest attempt by the New Orleans government to limit how manydraugrwere inside city limits.
Biters gnawing on the tourists was hard to keep quiet, and the city needed tourists. So laws and gates and fences popped up. I wondered if the grant to hire me was along the same lines. I hoped so.
The alternatives were all versions of “make me a target.” And that was already enough of an issue. The timing of the NOPD grant and the box of dead crows made me suspect that there was more to the target theory than anything else.
“Will we make it before the gate shuts?” I asked Eli.
Beatrice had reminded us about the law at 4:00, and the hour plus drive on the barely maintained roads had us far from certain of our return.
“Maybe?”
We were minutes from the ghost zone when a loud thump shook the car.
“Draugr!” I yelled, pointing at the group of three people who hadflowedfrom somewhere else directly into our path. “Swerve!”
