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“How’s she know that?” Ike asked.
“I cannot smell any blood,” Beatrice said with a flash of fang.
All five men stepped in front of me, forming a wall of camo and shotguns. Honestly, I was touched. . . if not for the fact that my grandmother could rip all their throats out without warning.
“She’s afanger.” Tiny pulled out a stun gun that was buzzing with enough voltage to make me wince. “Harlow? Get the holy grenade.”
“Primed,” a very feminine voice said, and I realized awkwardly that the fifth person wasn’t a man after all.
“Bonbon?” Eli prompted, asking what we were to do.
I threw a hex that caused thedraugrto be behind a wall. “Draugr.”
Then I pointed at Iggy, “Witch.”
Then at Eli. “Faery.”
Then at myself. I stumbled briefly on what to say and settled for “All the above.”
I didn’t know what to call Nora.Dead until recently? Lazarus? Alchemist? Amnesiac? Weapon, hopefully?So, I ignored her briefly and looked back at the five humans and four faeries.
“This is my home,” I said plainly. “Anyone who threatensanyone elsewho is present right now will answer to me, and honestly, I make all of you look like paper dolls.”
Iggy scoffed. “Only if you stop hamstringing yourself.”
Beatrice raised a brow at me, but she didn’t argue. I wasn’t as sure if I could actually best her, but I also had no desire to do so. For all of our awkwardness, she was family now, as my wall of protection made more or less clear.
Suddenly, the tension dropped as Allie’s cousin Ike said, “Heeeey!” With a low whistle, he pointed. “That’s abarin your house, man.”
“Help yourself,” Eli said genially. “You have rescued my wife. I will not begrudge you a drink.”
“I hatethat we had to leave Allie there,” I grumbled as I finished filling in Beatrice and Eli.
“Lady Alice will make the king rue the day he deceived her,” one of the guards said sagely.
The camo-clad person with the high voice said, “Cousin Al will make his guts into garters if he thinks he can treat her like a child.”
“Cousin Al?” I asked.
“Alice.”
The other members of Allie’s family all lifted their glasses. Tiny lifted a bottle of vodka in a toast. “To Cousin Al, long may she reign!”
Beatrice looked at them with a strange glint in her eye, but unless she was plotting a murder, I wasn’t sure I had the bandwidth to ask what thoughts she was mulling over. Honestly, I was more interested in Nora, who was remembering more apparently.
“You!” She crossed her arms. “You were . . . we . . . He’llkillyou if he hears what you said to me.” She slapped Iggy. “I am not that sort of woman.”
Iggy just stared at her for several moments. Then he said, “Liar.”
Nora backed away from him, tears in her eyes. “How dare y—”
“Wait till the next century comes to you, doll.” He scowled. “He did kill me. It was worth it, though. Having you under m—”
She muttered something, tossed what looked like a handful of grass at him, and Iggy froze completely.
Beatriceflowedtoward Nora, but Nora pulled something out of another pocket and again, she attempted to freeze someone.
Iflowednot at Nora but to Eli’s side, just as he moved toward me. I wasn’t going to leave him vulnerable, and he obviously felt the same. The faeries who had come through with us moved toward me, and the cousins looked to me for instruction.
