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No one had yet entered the vehicle.
“I’ll just hand you the keys,” the driver suddenly said. “It looks like a fine day for a leisurely hike.”
Eli gave him a thick wad of cash, enough to cover the inconvenience of probably losing his job, and then he slid into the driver’s seat. Heads to sever? I stepped forward. Cars to drive? That was Eli’s domain. We all had our strengths.
I glanced in the rear-view mirror. “Do we need to make a meal plan?”
Beatrice’s diet was more particular than mine, but both of us required blood. Eli was fairly normal, although he was not keen on anything preservative or chemical-laden. Iggy . . . honestly, I had no idea what formerly-dead Hexen ate.
“Ignatius has volunteered to nourish me.” Beatrice frowned so quickly that I was unsure if anyone else in the car would notice.
“But . . . side effects?” I gaped at her.
Iggy’s blood was entrapping. He might be human, but he was a witch. I’d had a few sips and was ready to rip the throat out of most anyone who threatened him. It was not an ideal complication.
“Blackwood and I have an accord,” was all she said.
Iggy studiously stared out the window, though he was smiling as if he’d achieved some great victory.
“In your bag,” Eli motioned.
I opened it and found a giant vat of . . . frozen red dicks floating in what I was presuming was vodka. And though I knew that Eli could be a little raunchy, this was obviously the work of only one possible person.
“Allie!” I exclaimed.
“She was making you meals before she left,” Eli said.
“Of course, she was!” I grinned and opened my blood-and-vodka. I would have offered a slug to Beatrice, but she didn’t ask, and I wasn’t entirely clear on the requirements for liquor in actual deaddraugrlike her. At some point, I suppose we’d have a heart-to-heart in case my death heralded a transition, but for now, I had enough to sort out.
Alongside the jug was a bright twisty straw, the sort one found in boozy drinks sold to tourists in the French Quarter, so I gleefully slid it into the blood and booze. A few sips later, I said, “Marcus has to know Allie will be furious at him.”
“For trying to marry her?” Beatrice asked.
“And for leaving me to die. That woman is loyal.” I slurped my meal and stared out the window.
“Not the alligator nearest,” Beatrice said, parroting my words back at me.
She was right. We needed to survive long enough to deal with that—which meant finding a weapon, slaughtering the oldest living man, and then sorting out the troubles with the king ofElphame.
“First, we explore Orkney. . .” I agreed.
Orkneywasbeautiful. Green, inviting, and best of all, there was a secret weapon somewhere here that we could use to stop Chester.
We just had to find it.
According to the map,the route to Skara Brae from the airport had only two options—cut through the middle or skirt the Southern curl of the island. The Neolithic site was in the mouth of the Bay of Skaill on the west of Orkney’s mainland, but as we drove over the next thirty minutes, I realized that the timeline hadn’t included a faery at the wheel or the fact that he was kind enough to slow down as we drove over a section of road that quite literally looked likely to vanish any day now.
A sliver of road connected two segments of the island, but it was akin to a rope bridge for those of us not used to such narrow paths.
“We are going to end up in the sea . . .” I muttered.
“Loch. Bay.” Eli gestured to his left and to his right. “No sea, bonbon.”
He did, however, also slow down. On the one side the Loch of Stenness—and I was pleased to learn that loch merely meant “lake”—and on the other a bay.
What I was realizing as we drove was that the distinctions were immaterial. The island was carved by lochs and bays, and the roads here were even worse than in New Orleans.
Maybe if my spouse drove at a human pace, I’d feel calmer.
