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Allie flipped her shotgun from her side up to rest in her arm like she was cradling a baby. With a big smile, she announced, “I am here to rescue Geneviève, and the first one of you who tries to take me to his royal ass-pimple before I do so will discover how much spare rage I have tucked inside my handbag.” She looked around at them. “Questions?”
23
GENEVIÈVE
Isat on the floor of my cell. It wasn’t exactly posh digs. For all the fae did beauty, they apparently decided to really lean into the whole dungeon idea. Earth cell, steel bars, and tight space. The cells were damp, and they smelled vaguely of mold. Iggy and Gunnora were in other cells. Iggy was pacing, and Nora was sitting on her cot glaring at him.
Considering recent events, though, I was fairly calm. I had been debating a nap, but when I’d stretched out on the earth, Nora shrieked. “Is she dead? The witch. Is she dying?Dosomething!”
Her panic wasn’t restful—but in fairness, if I was awakened from a magical slumber, told my spouse had basically killed me, and surrounded by strangers, I wouldn’t be too chipper either.
“It will be fine,” I said yet again as Nora started to rock like a frightened child. “These sorts of things happen.”
Iggy shot me a look, but I shrugged. All things considered it was better than I could have hoped. Now I just had to hope that Chester wasn’t going to appear here and take away both my Hexen Master and my weapon.
Or my life.
A clanging sound echoed, and Nora jumped up, poised to fight. “Maybe it’s just a guard,” I whispered.
Then, I heard footsteps. A lot of footsteps.
Iggy met my gaze. He looked as tired as I felt. “Into the breach once more . . .”
I nodded.
“Geneviève? Boss?”
“Thank goodness.” I felt the tension release. Though I can’t say I was genuinely shocked when I heard the angry tones of my assistant, I was relieved in a way that I hadn’t expected.
“Our calvary approaches,” Iggy murmured.
The part that I wasn’t prepared for the last few years: friends who were willing to raze castles or face monsters. I’d kept my lifelong friends—Jesse, Christy, and Sera—as sheltered as much as I could manage. For most of my life, I’d kept the whole “oh hi, I behead monsters” thing as separate from my social circle as I could, but then people regularly started trying to kill me.
I mean, sure,draugrhad tried when I was beheading them, but that wasn’t personal. It was simple survival instinct, which apparently didn’t die even when people did. The moment they started an unlife,draugrwere in full possession of that urge—despite the lack of a pulse.
But it wasn’t just the undead anymore, political assassination attempts or hate groups. Lately everyone seemed to be trying to end my life. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure they could. Being the only livingdraugrmade that question difficult. Still, they could—and did—bring the pain. And my friends, old and new, were still here.
Case in point: Alice Chaddock.
I looked through the bars of the dungeon, which was fashioned after some sort of Wild West jail with steel bars and hard beds. At least it had a partition to allow for bathroom privacy. For that, I was inordinately grateful.
“Allie?” I called out. “Down here. I’m so glad you . . .”
Whatever else I was thinking vanished as she marched toward me, leading what looked like a squadron of fae guards and hillbilly mafia.
Allie was wearing a combination of hillbilly and designer, and her purse was bulging—as were the pockets of the vest she had over her t-shirt. From the back of her purse, the hilt of a knife jutted out. Her entourage was, well, asunexpected as I’d come to expect from her, to be honest.
“Allie?”
“Hi boss! Lady B said you needed a key,” she chirped. Quieter still, she added, “You might want to step back.Wayback.”
I had known her long enough to realize that my assistant-friend-almost-murderer was mild in her words, especially when she was at her deadliest. So I walked to the far back corner, braced myself, and was pleased when I looked up to see Iggy and Nora following my lead in their cells.
Then my sweet, designer boot-clad assistant pulled a stick of what looked like dynamite from one of her vest pockets and jabbed it in the lock. Gleefully, she lit it with one of those bright pink plastic lighters that every gas station used to keep at the front counter.
“Fire in the hole,” she whispered, sounding a bit more like a pyromaniac than I’d heard since our ill-fated “girls’ weekend” at a spa where the menu was more murder and mayhem.
A moment or two later, thepopof the lock exploding almost covered Allie’s gleeful giggle. The guards watched her the way children watched fireworks on the rare occasion that we still had any.
