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Eli nodded once.
“And . . .” Marcus cleared his throat. “You’ll speak to Alice?”
Beatrice and I exchanged a look.
I muffled a laugh and said, “I’ll speak to her and tell exactly what you did here . . . and before. No lies, Marcus. I’m fae now, so I take that ‘no lies’ things very seriously.”
“Let us ready for war, then.” Marcus strode away, leaving us there to follow. He might be willing to join us, but he certainly still seemed to act like he was the one in charge.
Men, unfortunately, weren’t often as amazing as Eli.
30
GENEVIÈVE
Ateenager stood at the fence around our home. I was used to tourists, what with the whole being-fae-royalty thing. I doubted that there had been a declaration from Marcus that we were no longer the royal heirs, and honestly, if there had been a statement, it was likely to draw out more of the lookie-loos rather than discourage their presence.
Rubbernecking wasn’t just for horrific accidents.
Being a witch as well as the fiancé and then spouse ofthefaery prince had meant that tourists were like humidity in New Orleans—always vaguely inescapable. At the best of bad situations, Iggy had simply melted the circuitry in tourists’ phones. At the worst, well, I had a feeling that the worst was yet to come.
“Two days,” Iggy said as he joined me.
“Trapped here?”
“Yes, but also Nora withhimand . . . for the last twenty-two hours, that child has been pacing at our step.” Iggy gestured out the window. “She is here for something.”
I stared at her. She was a thin waifish girl, maybe seventeen at most. Her hair was scarlet, the rich tones that said it was recently dyed, and her clothes were nondescript. “She left a few times.”
“Food and toilet breaks.” Iggy turned away from me and strode toward the door. Since we’d found his lost love, he was surly. I mean, he hadn’t been a barrel of funny drunken monkeys previously, but he’d had a wry sense of humor that had offset his dire proclamations.
My Hexen Master was in mourning. There was no other way to explain it. I wasn’t sure whether it was simply mourning the loss of a chance with the dead lady or the expectation that she—and possiblywe—were all doomed.
Allie’s cousins were rotating in and out of the room, alternately attacking the fight dummies I’d added to the house and playing poker. Beatrice and Eli were plotting with Marcus. I’d tried to be a part of the planning process, but my desire to see peace between them meant that I’d made Beatrice have to pause to assure me she wasn’t really going to rip out Marcus’ throat, whereupon Eli shrugged.
Better to deal with a maudlin Iggy and semi-sober hillbillies than my complicated relatives. I weighed returning to the conversation, but then Beatrice came slamming out of the room,flowingas if she was going to attack someone.
“I swear to Saint Rita I will behead that man if he doesn’t release Alice.” Beatrice glared in the direction she’d come. “I needed to step out or rip out his vocal cords. Eli indicated that the rug in there is a priceless one, so blood was a terrible burden.”
“Saint Rita?”
“Patron saint of mourning wives and abused women.” Beatrice sighed. “Do you know how many of my guards were abused women? Mourning wives? Women forced into marriage? Sex workers?”
I shook my head. I actually didn’t know as much about her past as I’d like. She told me this and that, but what I did know was that my great-times-great grandmother had been forced to become adraugrby Chester, that she was Jewish—so the patron saint thing was a bit odd—and that she had turned more than a few men into alligators and feral pigs.
I wasn’t going to start waving a “draugrare people too” flag, but I had been learning that they weren’t all inherently evil. I’d seen more than enough proof that Beatrice was sort of an unliving patron of women-in-need. Right now, she’d decided Allie was a woman-in-need. I wasn’t sure if she was right, but I did agree that holding any woman against her will wasn’t cool.
“You know we’ll go get her if we have to,” I assured Beatrice. “You aren’t the only one who cares about her.”
“Forced marriage is wrong.”
“Here, here!” The hillbilly brigade lifted glasses in cheer.
We’d need to have a talk about exactly how scarydraugrcould be before they could be released back into the wild. They’d quickly adapted to thinking that Beatrice was their mother duckling or something—unless I was present, at which point I became the duckling-in-charge.
That, however, was a bridge we could build or burn or whatever that saying was once we survived the next few days. Chester hadn’t attacked, but somehow, I was sure that we weren’t going to wait weeks or months this time.
I glanced out the window. Iggy was talking to my teen stalker through the gate. He took several steps back, and the teen stepped up and shoved an envelope through the gate. She looked up, met my gaze, and pointed at the letter.
