I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, like Fred did more than wave the cork over the—”
“—and now you’ve got a beer. I don’t want you yakking all over the place again.”
“I never yak—” A bushy eyebrow went north. “Okay, one time. But that wasn’t from a hangover.”
“And this one isn’t going to be, either.” And he took my beer.
“Hey!”
“Is that coffee I smell?” he asked the girl, going over with a swagger and a grin, because despite all evidence to the contrary, Marco believed himself to be charming. And okay, sometimes he was, in his own big, hairy, swarthy, muscley way. But I didn’t think she was likely to be impressed.
She wasn’t, but not quite in the way I’d feared.
She shoved his outstretched hand away and pushed past, as if she barely even saw him. And maybe she didn’t. Because her eyes were on the witches and I decided I might have been wrong earlier. They weren’t afraid.
They were pissed.
“You . . . you dare . . ” she gasped.
“It’s all right, Rhea,” the Valkyrie said, looking uncomfortable.
“It is not all right! You weren’t there—you didn’t see! She saved us, she saved us all, and with nothing—and you dare—”
I didn’t know what was going on, but the witches were going frowny, and the air was getting tense and things had been bad enough as they were. Marco must have thought the same, because he put an avuncular hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Hey, why don’t we—”
“Unhand me, vampire,” she snarled, harsh enough to make him blink. And draw his hand back. And look at me.
“Cassie—”
“You know, I would like some of that coffee, after all,” I said brightly, not really expecting it to work.
But it did.
The girl curtsied—yeah, that’s what I said—deep and elegant and perfect. The kind Eugenie had always tried to teach me, but I’d never quite mastered. And then she withdrew, fading back through the swinging doors almost before I could blink.
Okay. That had gone . . . surprisingly well.
And then I turned back around to find the three witches still staring at me. And still unhappy. In fact, one was now actively glaring.
Take a guess which.
I sighed.
“Look, if it helps, I’m sorry, okay?” I told them. “I would have invited you to the party, if I’d known there was going to be a party, and I would have greeted you if I’d known you existed—”
“Knew we existed—” the Valkyrie spluttered.
Crap.
“And I’ll make sure there are no more oversights where you’re concerned,” I added quickly. “Not that there’s anything scheduled right now that I know of, but if and when I find out—”
“If?” The Valkyrie turned to look at her companions, spreading her hands. “If?”
“I’ll make sure you get an invitation. Are we okay?”
“No!” she said severely. “Nothing about this is okay!”
I sighed again and leaned on my cue stick, wondering what the hell it was they wanted. And what it would take to get them to go away. And why my hand, which had reached for my beer, had come back empty.
Damn Marco.
“Would it help if I let you win?” I asked sourly. Because Jules wasn’t the only one who had problems with this diplomacy thing.
The Valkyrie puffed up, but Jasmine intervened, her voice a cool river through the heated room. “It would help,” she told me gently, “if you could tell us what your court is doing.”
I looked back and forth between the three of them, thoroughly confused now. Like I’d been anything else all night. And then I said the words that I knew—I knew— I’d regret.
“What court?”
Chapter Twenty-four
That went over about as well as I’d thought it would. The Valkyrie blew up, the others started trying to talk her down, and then the fourth member of their party burst onto the scene again and things really got hot. I was tired and wanted my beer, so I started for the kitchen, only to be intercepted by Marco coming out of the living room.
I hadn’t heard him leave, but then, that wasn’t unusual. Vampires make little cat feet sound loud. “Hey, where did you put my—” I started, only to stop at the look on his face.
It was enough, but if I’d had any doubts, Caleb was right behind him.
“You need to see this,” he told me grimly.
I was moving before he got all the words out.
Jules wasn’t in the bedroom anymore. The living room sofa had been pushed against a wall, leaving a large cleared spot in front of the balcony doors. He was lying in it, on top of a sheet that must have been used to carry him in here.
I didn’t have to ask why they’d wanted the sheet.
“What’s wrong with him?” I whispered, feeling Caleb come up behind me.
“I don’t know.”
I whirled. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Look at him!” I gestured at Jules, who was all but unrecognizable. His beautiful blond hair was the same, just curling a little in the damp from the shower. But as for the rest . .
“I think I’m going to be sick,” one of the vamps said, and sounded like he meant it.
“You’ve seen wounds before,” Marco snapped.
“That’s not a wound. That’s . . . the opposite of a wound.”
And he wasn’t wrong. Instead of fissures opening up in Jules’ body, like a knife or a bullet would have caused, he was . . . closing up. I didn’t know what was going on inside him, but his face looked like a mask before anyone cut any holes in it. His ears were all but gone, melted back into his head. His nose and mouth were mere indentations in the paleness of his skin, which looked like it might have lost its pores, it was so unearthly smooth. And his eyes . .
I shuddered and grabbed Marco’s sleeve.
If Jules had been human, he’d have been dead by now, deprived of oxygen at the very least, since he no longer had openings to breathe through. And that was assuming worse changes weren’t going on inside. But he wasn’t human. Which was probably why that sightless face suddenly moved. And slowly, so very slowly, turned.
To look at me.
I stepped back a pace, staring at the grape-shaped lumps of flesh where eyes should have been, before telling myself to get a grip. He wasn’t looking at me. He couldn’t know I was here. It was random—
“It wasn’t some shoplifting spell they ran into,” Caleb said roughly. “It was one of the special orders Augustine has been doing for the Corps.”
“Special orders?”
“Weapons, essentially.”
I looked up at him. “Augustine designs dresses.”
“And you’ve seen some of the mods he’s put on your gowns. Think that’s standard?”
I tried to process that for a second; then I pushed it away. I didn’t care about explanations right now. “Just call him!”
“I already did. But he can’t help us. The spell wasn’t finished and he doesn’t have a counter for it yet.”
“He doesn’t have—” I stared at him. “Then why the hell did he leave it lying around?”
“He didn’t. It was in his private workroom, which was locked and warded and where no one has permission to go. And he was supposed to be the first one back tomorrow—”
I shook my head violently. I didn’t care. “Caleb! Just reverse it!”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you; I can’t.”
“You—then what happens?” I demanded, gesturing at Jules.
Caleb’s massive arms crossed. “You can try a necromancer, but the whole point of a war spell is that it be debilitating. If it was easy to undo, it wouldn’t help us.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I just stared at Jules, and it felt like the bottom of my stomach fell out. I’d told him he would be okay. I’d told him it was no big deal. I’d told him—
There was a commotion behind me, and I turned to see the Valkyrie pushing her way through the ring of vampires. She walked over to Jules and bent down for a better look. She remained expressionless, but her lips all but disappeared.
“Nasty bit of work,” she said, looking at Jasmine, who was kneeling on his other side.
Jasmine had been reaching out, as if she’d planned to touch him, but her hand stopped just short. “That is one word for it,” she said softly.
“Can you break it?” I rasped.
They glanced at each other, and then at something behind me. I turned to see a rustle in the ring of vampires near the lounge, and then several jumped aside suddenly, possibly to avoid whacks from the stick the third little witch was using to clear herself a path.
“Why are you all so big?” she groused. “You’re vampires. Size doesn’t matter. Why do they never turn normal-sized men?”
Fred, who was standing across from me, started to say something, but then shut up. Maybe because she’d finally pushed through the forest of designer-clad legs and stopped by Jules. Who she proceeded to poke with her stick.
“What are you—”
“Hush,” she told me, and swatted my hand.
The poking recommenced. And then she nodded. “Thought so. Clever boy. He’s perverted a brownie spell, inverted it to harm rather than help.”
“Fey magic,” the Valkyrie explained, seeing my expression. “That’s why the Circle pays Augustine to help them. He’s part fey.”
“Fey?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Couldn’t you tell?”
I thought back to the ethereal creature I knew, tall, blond, and yes, elfin. It was sort of obvious, now that someone pointed it out.
“You’ve seen his gowns,” Jasmine added. “No Arcane magic made those.”
“It has better uses,” Caleb muttered.