Magic Breaks
“What does Jennifer want?”
“She didn’t specify. Would you like me to tell her you’re busy?”
“No.” Might as well get this over with.
He nodded and opened the door. “The Consort will see you.”
Jennifer walked in. She looked haggard. Her sweatpants hung on her and she carried a water bottle in her hand. Judging by her eyes, there was probably something stronger than water in it. If my body processed alcohol as fast as hers, I would’ve found me one of those water bottles as well.
Jennifer’s blond bodyguard, Brandon, the one who’d mouthed off to me on the bridge, tried to follow her. Barabas blocked his way. Brandon backpedaled. Barabas followed him out and shut the door behind him.
“What can I do for you?”
Jennifer licked her lips. “I came to talk about Desandra.”
Right. The People and Hugh d’Ambray were practically on our doorstep. Now was the perfect time to bug me about her problems. “You want to have this conversation now?”
“Yes.”
I leaned against the wall. “Okay. What about Desandra?”
She swallowed. “I want you to expel her from the Pack.”
Umm. “On what grounds?”
“She threatens the stability of Clan Wolf.”
“Do you have evidence of this?”
Jennifer bared her teeth. “She’s trying to force me out.”
I sat down on a bench next to the window. “You are not synonymous with Clan Wolf. She isn’t threatening the clan. She’s threatening your leadership of it.”
“A change of leadership right now will destabilize the clan. We’re still grieving over Daniel.”
Daniel had been dead for over six months now. She was still grieving and I understood that. But the clan had moved on.
“You’re asking me to interfere with the selection of the alpha for an individual clan. I have no authority to do that. Not only would the other clans scream bloody murder, but even if I could somehow influence the process, I won’t. It’s not my place to tell your people whom they should support and choose to govern themselves.”
“They support me.”
“Then why are you here?”
She struggled with it for a second. “I am the alpha. She is . . .” Jennifer squeezed her hand into a fist. “She’s vulgar. One of her sons is a monster.”
Desandra was right. Jennifer had no intention of letting a baby lamassu grow up in her clan. If I were Desandra, wild horses wouldn’t be able to drag me away from fighting Jennifer for the alpha spot.
“Desandra’s child is an infant and a member of the Pack.”
Jennifer kept going. “What happens when he grows up?”
“We’ll burn that bridge after we cross it.”
“I won’t let her push me out. It’s my place. I’m doing it for my child. For Daniel’s child. She’ll grow up to be the daughter of an alpha.”
She had that half-desperate, half-determined look in her eyes. Right. No intelligent life there. “Why is it so important to be alpha? Why not just step down?”
“Because it’s where I belong. Daniel chose me. He chose me out of all the other women in the Pack so I could stand by his side. Daniel didn’t make mistakes. He died, and now I have to lead the Pack in his memory, because otherwise he would’ve died for nothing.”
Oh dear God, she had deified her husband. Shapeshifters were already paranoid, but Jennifer’s grief combined with her pregnancy must’ve catapulted her into a seriously bad place. No matter how many rational arguments I made, she wouldn’t listen, because I couldn’t compete with Daniel’s memory.
“Someone asked Desandra the same question,” I said. “She said, ‘Because I can make the people in the clan safer and happier.’”
Jennifer stared at me, her eyes luminous with green. “You owe me. You killed my sister, my husband died because of the fight you dragged us into, and then you brought Desandra here. If she wins, if you can imagine it for a second, she would tell me what to do. I won’t take orders from that bitch!” Her voice rose. “I won’t! My child won’t call that crude lowlife alpha. You made this mess; you’ll fix it for me or you will regret it.”
Okay, that was just about enough of that. “No.”
Jennifer glared at me, her eyes blazing with green.
“Tone down your flashlights, or I’ll resolve this power struggle right here and right now.”
She drew back. The glow dimmed.
“Let me spell it out for you. I didn’t kill your sister because I felt like it. I killed her because she had turned loup and was in pain. Ending her life was an act of mercy. Daniel didn’t die so you could be an alpha. He died so fanatics wouldn’t detonate a device that would’ve killed every shapeshifter in a ten-mile radius. You’re fighting Desandra for the confidence of your clan and you’re losing. The very fact that you are here now makes you weak. If I helped you, it would only make you look weaker. You have to stand on your own. No bodyguards, no Beast Lord to hide behind, just you.”
She stared at me, her face completely white. I should’ve stopped, but in the past twelve hours I’d run around the frozen city trying to prevent a supernatural war, I’d nearly lost a child who relied on me for protection, and I’d watched Hugh d’Ambray slaughter people and hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it, and all the while, the man I loved was missing. My brakes had malfunctioned and I kept barreling on, right off the cliff.
“Explain to me why I would help you? For the entire time you’ve known me, you’ve done nothing but throw rocks at my head. Last night I had to go into the People’s territory and I didn’t know if we would survive. I went because the future of the entire Pack depended on it. The alpha rat volunteered to go with me. The alpha cat did, too. A member of your clan couldn’t wait to join me. A child from the boudas followed me because he wanted to make a difference. They did this because they felt responsible for the safety of their friends. They did it to protect the Pack. Did you volunteer to help me?”
My voice snapped like a whip. Jennifer flinched.
“Did you come with me, Jennifer? Did you fight with me? Did you sacrifice yourself to draw off four vampires, so I could get to where I was going? Did you fight a knight with a kind of magic we’ve never seen before? Did you throw yourself at a f**king wendigo while poisoned and puking your guts out to save a boy? No. You sat here, plotted, and felt sorry for yourself. And less than an hour ago, when the Pack Council was trying to decide what to do with Dorie, where the bloody hell were you? You sent Desandra in, because you didn’t want to face the heat.”
Jennifer bared her teeth, drawing back.
“Desandra might be crude and manipulative, but you know what, she shows up. She gets into the mud and blood with the rest of us and gets her hands dirty. None of us like it, but we do it. I won’t help her pull you off your alpha rock, but I won’t stop her either. And after what she did, if she needs me, I’ll be there to back her up, because she watched my back when it counted. You are not special. You don’t get to not show up. You don’t get to avoid difficult decisions. You get to climb into the muck with the rest of us. So, if you want to be in charge, fine. Reach deep down, find a backbone, and handle your own shit. Otherwise, step down and make way for someone who would actually matter.”
Jennifer sat frozen, her face stunned. Her hand squeezed the water bottle.
I waited to see if she would explode.
Someone knocked and the door swung open. Barabas ducked in. “I have Gray on the phone.”
Finally. I turned to Jennifer. “Are we done?”
“I can’t do it,” she said quietly, her voice sad. “I should do it, but I can’t. It’s wrong. It would be like spitting on his memory.”
What was she talking about? How was fighting Desandra spitting on Daniel’s memory? I didn’t understand her at all. “You can step down and be a mother . . .”
She got up and fled out of the room.
• • •
BARABAS SHOWED ME to one of the conference rooms. Jim was already there, leaning against the wall, like a grim shadow, his eyes hard. Uh-oh.
“How did you get him on the phone?” I asked.
“I had two of our people walk into his office and refuse to leave,” Jim said. “He was there all morning.”
Gray had been ducking our calls. That was exactly what I didn’t want to hear. I landed in a chair and pushed the button on speaker.
“Detective Gray.”
“Hello, Kate.”
“You’re a hard man to find.”
“What do you want?” Gray sounded tired.
“I want to surrender a suspect implicated in the murder of Mulradin Grant to your custody.”
Silence.
More silence.
I imagined a hole suddenly manifesting under Gray’s feet and swallowing him whole. The way my day had been going so far, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“We are not aware of any murder,” Gray said.
Aha. “I’m making you aware of it now. Mr. Grant is dead, he was murdered by a shapeshifter, and a member of the Pack has been implicated in this murder. I’m reaching out to you and offering to surrender her to your custody.”
“This is a jurisdictional issue,” Gray said. “The Keep is in DeKalb County.”
Are you kidding me? “The murder was committed in Atlanta’s city limits.”
“The alleged murder.”
Argh. I leaned closer to the phone. “We’ve always strived to maintain good relations with the PAD. Last year alone we’ve assisted you on—”
Jim raised nine fingers.
“—on nine cases. I’m asking you to help us.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry,” Gray said. “I can’t.”
The rage swelled inside me like a wave. My voice shook slightly. “I’m about to have a bloodbath on my hands.”
Gray lowered his voice. “This is coming down from above. We can’t get involved in a war between the Pack and the People. We don’t have the numbers or the firepower. We’d be slaughtered. I’m sorry, but this is between you and them.”
He wouldn’t help us. “You had a chance to make a difference today and you stepped back. Your authority is only good if you do something with it, and you chose to do nothing. Do that enough times and pretty soon nobody will acknowledge it at all. The next time you need my help, don’t call.”
I disconnected the call.
“Diplomatic,” Barabas said.
“Fuck diplomatic.”
The phone rang. I picked it up.
“This is a jurisdictional issue,” Gray said, his voice strained. “We have no jurisdiction over the Keep.”
He hung up.
Okay. “Who has jurisdiction over us?” I asked the room.
“Most of our lands are in DeKalb County,” Barabas said. “A little bit of Clayton, too.”
Neither the DeKalb nor Clayton County sheriff would help us. DeKalb didn’t care for us, and Clayton was severely understaffed.
“And Milton too, along the north edge,” Jim said.
Wait a minute. “Milton?”
He nodded.
The last time I had occasion to travel to Milton, it was because Andrea had gotten upset over some floozy flirting with Raphael, pulled a gun, and nearly drowned her in a hot tub. Beau Clayton, the Milton County sheriff, had personally talked her off the cliff and locked everyone up until I got there.
I punched his number into the phone. “Beau?”
“Kate.” A deep voice tinted with Georgia’s brand of country answered. “Funniest thing happened. One of my deputies just saw what he described as ‘a whole mess of undead’ moving in your general direction. Now, I am curious. Are you having a party?”
“Beau,” I said. “I need your help.”
• • •
I STOOD ON the wall of the Keep. The day was beautiful. The sun lit the turquoise sky, tinting it with a pale veil of gold. Before me a clear snowfield stretched to the jagged dark wall of the forest. Wind stirred a loose strand of my hair.
Behind me the Pack Council waited.
Something moved in the distance at the far-off tree line. A single skeletal shape emerged out of the brush, a dark squiggle against the white snow. The undead paused on all fours. Its magic brushed by me, revolting, like a smear of decomposing flesh on the surface of my mind.
Vampires poured out of the forest, their gaunt, grotesque bodies moving ridiculously fast. So many . . . Behind them four armored cars crept onto the field. Painted in fatigue colors and set on eight wheels, they looked like small tanks. And they were probably chock-full of navigators.
“The People got themselves some Strykers,” Andrea said. “Slat armor, full hull protection. These have a layer of steel, then a layer of ceramic armor against armor-piercing rounds, then more steel and then probably reactive armor tiles. You can fire a rocket launcher at that thing and it won’t even sneeze.”
“How heavy are they?” Martha asked.
“Little over sixteen tons,” Andrea said.
“So around thirty-three thousand pounds,” Robert murmured.
Martha shrugged. “Too heavy to roll.”
Prying Ghastek and his posse out of the Strykers would be a bitch.
The armored fighting vehicles rolled into position and stopped. The vampires formed around them.
Where are you, Curran? In my head I had thought he would somehow magically show up. But he wasn’t here. I was on my own.