She grinned wickedly. “How about a whip? A gorgeous calf-skin cat-o’-nine-tails with tiny sterling-over-steel blades in the ends. Christie taught me how.”
“I spelled them for her,” Bliss said. She shrugged when I looked at her curious. “One part of healing is to decrease the ability of blood to clot, for people having heart attacks or clot-made strokes. There’s a spell for that; Molly showed me how.” She looked down and then back up, holding me with her eyes. “If I push the spell a little, and put it on the metal barbs, then whatever it cuts won’t clot over. Instead it will relax and expand the vessels it cuts, making the person bleed out faster. Vamps would bleed out really fast unless I reversed the spell, or they had help from a master vamp.”
“How fast can you reverse it if needed? Like an instantaneous reversal?”
She nodded, knowing I was going to ask her to use her magic against another sentient being. But to have created the spell in the first place, she had already planned that. So I wasn’t leading a witch into dark magic, I lied to myself.
I pulled a throwing knife. “Can you do that with this too?” She nodded again, reaching out a finger to touch the blade. I felt the hilt go cold. The blade seemed to frost over, a spiderweb of power that vanished as quickly as it appeared. The hilt warmed again, as if it had never been cold. “Nifty.” I grinned at her. “I promise to use it only for good, and to the benefit of mankind.”
Bliss dropped her head, her black hair sliding forward, hiding her face, but I had the feeling that she was pleased with my promise, no matter how silly I had phrased it. “I have a passel of knives that need the spell. And when we get where we’re going, can you keep an eye out for anyone who isn’t trying to kill us as we rescue Eli, and reverse the spell if they get cut by accident?” She nodded again. “Good. And just in case,” I added, holding out a silver stake, “can you make this one already reversed, so I have it as needed?”
Bliss’ forehead crinkled, as she tried to figure out how to reverse a spell that wasn’t there yet. Then she just touched it twice. The first time, the sterling stake iced over and went cold; with the second touch, it heated, fast.
“I can shoot,” Shiloh said. “I used to hunt with my dad.” Her face closed off for an instant as she thought of her dad, who had been killed by her mother. That had to be a tough thing for a kid to remember, even a bloodsucking kid vamp. “Rifle,” she went on, “shotgun. But a rifle is better. I don’t like a shotgun’s kick.”
“Good. There’s probably a hunting rifle with a scope in the SUV. Let’s roll.”
“One little problem,” Shiloh said. “What do we do with the dead Mithran in Katie’s living room? We can’t decapitate her. It wouldn’t be right.”
Why not? But I didn’t say it. Shiloh was still human enough to have morals, not a trait common to most vamps, and a quality I wouldn’t harm.
I looked at Katie, who said, “Such is not my responsibility. It belongs to the Mercy Blade.”
I flipped open my burner cell again and dialed Leo’s new primo. When Adelaide answered I gave her an update and said, “Adrianna is close to being true-dead, but still has her head. Would you be so kind as to send the Mercy Blade to Katie’s to, uh, pick her up? You can have the Council accountant deposit my fee electronically.” I could almost feel Del’s single elegant eyebrow rise. “Just tell Gee DiMercy. He’ll explain it all.”
I closed the cell and looked over my small band of warriors, finding a smile somewhere inside and plastering it on my face. “Let’s go.” I grabbed up my weapons and headed for the car, not arguing when Big Evan shoved the driver’s seat back as far as it would go and turned the key. Not arguing when Shiloh and her vamp blood-servants piled in back. Not arguing about anything, as Big Evan and my coterie of fighters drove out of the city.
We were still on the east side of the river when Shiloh’s cell warbled a punk rock tune from the ’nineties. She looked at the screen, but rather than answer, she held out her phone to me. It was purple and studded with bling. A teenage vamp from the ’nineties. Go figure. I looked at the number on the screen. It was Reach’s number. I didn’t let my face change. I couldn’t. If I did, Evan would rip the phone out of my hand and crash the SUV.
“Hello?”
“Jane?” Molly. The connection was awful, but her tone came through anyway, sounding disbelieving, as if she didn’t really believe it was me. Sounding guarded as if she was expecting me to lash out at her. “How . . . ? Really you?”
“Yeah. It’s me.”
Molly laughed softly, sounding broken, even over the static. “Your voice is coming out of the intercom. I’m either crazy or . . . dreaming.”
“Neither. I have a tech genius who made it work.” I blinked back tears. “We don’t have long, so just listen and let me recap. I have the diamond,” I said. “Everyone wants it, including Jack Shoffru, who used to hang out with the diamond’s owners, the Damours. He scammed you, thinking you had it, and got you here. Then, when you didn’t come straight to me for help, he kidnapped you, found you didn’t have it, so then he took Shiloh, one of the Damours’ scions, thinking she could tell him where it was now that she was sane.” Or maybe vice versa. Whatever.
Big Evan’s face went tight as he realized I was talking to Molly. But he didn’t backhand me or accidentally drive off the bridge into the Mississippi, so that was good. Molly said softly, “How could he know I was in town? I didn’t call anyone. I thought I had time to put my head on a pillow for just a short rest before coming to you. And he was there before I even closed my eyes. I’m so stupid.”
“No. Not stupid. Someone was tailing your cell’s GPS, overriding it. And that same someone is letting you talk to me now.” I went on, outlining Shoffru’s actions. “Jack sent some of his people to look for the diamond at Leo’s the night of the gather.”
“I don’t know,” Molly said. “I’m handcuffed in a room in a house with steel shutters on the walls. And he keeps me . . . he keeps me blood-drunk,” she finished, and I understood. It felt good, so good, when a vamp drank, the lure of seduction, the chemicals in a vamp’s blood making it seem right and good to give everything he wanted. I didn’t know how far the seduction had gone, but I could hear the shame in her voice as she said, “Every time I try to get away, he comes in and he . . . he drinks from me.”
Another burner cell rang and Bliss opened it. “We have an address,” she said softly. “A house on that golf course. And according to Alex, the car with Shoffru is still en route.”
“He isn’t there now, Molly,” I said. “He’s in a car and he’s close. Can you get away?”
“I can’t.” Suddenly she sobbed, speaking through the tears. “I can’t break through the shackles without draining someone. I can’t. I can’t . . .” She stopped, her breath ragged. “I can’t kill—” Her voice stopped and I knew she was about to finish with “anyone else.” I figured it was the first time Molly had admitted to anyone, except Bliss, that her magic had gone bad, and she didn’t want to be talking to me now. She was drunk and ashamed and wanted to hide away until things miraculously fixed themselves or she found a way out of her troubles. Bad thing about that was, troubles didn’t just go away or get all better. They took work and effort and maybe some danger. And unfortunately she didn’t have some sweet, kind, gentle person on the line. She had me. And I didn’t have time to be figure out how to be nice.
I considered what I was about to do, and stared at Evan, telling him with my eyes to keep driving and stay back. “I know about the dead plants and the danger to your family,” I said. She took a harsh breath over the connection. It was a sound one might make while peeling back a bandage to see the wound beneath. “I have a feeling that Jack Shoffru has convinced you that the blood magic contained in the diamond might be strong enough to help you control your own magic. Might keep you from killing your husband and your children.”