“Wait. Who is this and what have you done with Jane Yellowrock?”

“Ha-ha. It’s cold and miserable. A massage, a hot rock to curl up on, and some pampering sounds wonderful.”

The hot-rock part had come from Beast. If Del thought it was odd, she didn’t respond to it. “Deal. And I’ll let you know what the priestess says.”

We disconnected and I found myself staring at my back door. Gee DiMercy shouldn’t have been able to get in. The door wasn’t broken or splintered, and the lock hadn’t looked scratched, so either Gee could pick a lock leaving no traces, which was possible, or he had used magic to get inside, which was also possible.

Gee was a bird, an Anzu, a creature once worshiped as a storm god. We had recently hunted together, both of us in Anzu form. I’d had a good long look at Anzu DNA when I shifted into the form, and that DNA was not from Earth, but it did look a lot like arcenciel DNA. Could there be a connection between all the weird stuff? Between Sabina’s bubo bubo prophecy, the storm overhead, the dead female in the small house, the vamp attack on Edmund, arcenciels (rainbow dragons who could shape-shift into human form), and le breloque . . . Nah, I was reaching. Or hoping that I could tie it all together in one lovely package with a bloody red bow. I had learned that with vamps and other paranormal creatures, it was better to be safe than sorry, and nothing was ever easy. So I had lots of smaller problems and not one gigantic problem with a single resolution.

I checked on Eli, who was still smiling in his sleep, trotted back downstairs, and crashed again, sleeping until a rumble of thunder waked me.

CHAPTER 5

You Look Like Shiii—Crap

Torrential rain was blasting the side of the house, and the old structure groaned against the wind. Even brick wasn’t proof against some storms. I checked the weather on my official cell and found that the storm off the coast had moved closer to shore and a second storm that was sliding south along the Mississippi River Valley hadn’t slowed its descent. If one of the weather fronts didn’t change course, we’d have a big one, a storm of the century according to some reports, though no one in New Orleans was panicking yet and no evacuations had been ordered. Since Katrina and Rita, the back-to-back hurricanes that had devastated the state, most Louisianans took evac orders to heart.

I patrolled the house, checking the windows and doors, putting sponges where rainwater was blowing through, and watching for dark rings on the upstairs ceiling that might mean water damage. I pressed my hand to the shelving unit that hid the weapons room and Ed’s bed beneath the stairs and thought about checking on him. But he had made no demands to be let into the house, and if he wanted outside, he had access on his own through the trapdoor. Vamps were unpredictable at the best of times, and silver-wounded vamps were the worst. Most didn’t live, and the ones who did were pretty nutso for a long time afterward. I worried that waking him might send him rogue and force me to have to kill him. Killing a friend wasn’t something I wanted to do. Ever. Especially a vamp bound to me.

He needed time asleep to heal. Chicken, a small, mean part of me whispered.

The wind outside howled. The bushes against the house smacked like finger bones tearing at the walls to be let in. Lightning slammed into the earth nearby, so close I could feel the blast through the floor and a tingle of electricity ripped across my skin. For an instant the Gray Between of my magic stuttered around me, a silver mist shot through with darker motes of power. Deep inside me, Beast padded close, her golden-amber eyes watching. Then the Gray Between closed. Fear pebbled my skin. That had never happened before. I swallowed, fighting to keep my breathing steady, to control my desire to grab a blankie and hide in my closet.

This was the first major storm since I was stuck by lightning—an attack that turned out to be deliberate and not an accident of nature. I forced myself to walk to the kitchen, get a bottle of water, and drink it while standing at the kitchen window looking out at the street and the rain. Dawn and night battled each other in the clouds overhead. Rain fell so hard there wasn’t time for it to run off, and water began to rise in the streets. Lightning struck again. The Gray Between danced through me and vanished.

“I don’t like this,” I muttered to the storm. Then added, “Ducky,” and laughed, the sound strained. “Water off a duck’s back. Betcha that ducks never get hit by lightning.”

A transformer blew, an explosion that would have, should have woken Eli. I heard nothing from upstairs. The power along the street went off, leaving the house and the nearby parts of the French Quarter dark. A car pulled slowly down the street, water cresting before it like a bow wave. The wind was cold outside, and the gusts were strong enough to shove through the cracks and crevices of the house, bringing the wetness of mist and rain that collected into the sponges I had placed at doors and windows. I’d learned the sponge trick from Eli. As long as I cleaned up the sponges before the water penetrated the paint and wood, I could avoid water damage. We usually took care of storm prep together.

Lightning struck, struck, struck, three times close by. I fell to my knees as I entered the Gray Between and my time-altering magic leaped and stretched. Outside, the sound of the rain deepened, its descent slowed to nothing. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but it couldn’t be good. I looked down at myself to see that my skin was shining in a pale, weird pattern, like heat lightning flashing across my skin. Then the place where my magic originated snapped back and time returned to normal. I fell flat, my skin tingling and burning. I felt sick to my stomach and figured I was already bleeding internally from bubbling time. Using that part of my gift was life-threatening and not something I wanted to happen all by itself.

Brute padded down the stairs and moved close to me, snuffing. Then he shifted his body at an angle, blocking my way or . . . making himself a support. That. I put my hands on his back and pushed partway to my feet. His fur was warm and dry and—

Lightning struck again, a flashing, booming explosion of light and sound. Close. The Gray Between skittered through me, lightning fast. Brute leaped away, yelping. I fell again, landing on my backside. “Sorry,” I whispered. “Something’s wrong.” He dipped his big head once and chuffed in agreement, his body a massive brightness in the dark. My own skin was glowing through my clothing in lightning patterns up and down my legs and arms. I lifted my shirt to see them on my belly too, though less bright there. I blinked against the light, and the glow faded to normal skin.

Though there was a pause in the lightning, Brute stayed far back as I made it to my feet, staggered to my room, and opened the closet. Because I don’t believe in coincidence. The Mercy Blade, once a storm god, in my closet in the middle of a late season tropical storm still gathering strength outside. Shaking, I gripped the jamb on both sides and rose to my toes. On the top shelf was the witchy item that everyone wanted, a wreath made of metal, neither silver nor gold, but something in between that looked like a peculiar mixture of hues, maybe white and yellow gold mixed together. The upper part of the circlet was carved or shaped in ascending points in what Alex thought might be laurel leaves, with the base carved or incised with markings that could either be decorative or some unknown early language, triangles and circles and squares and lines in no particular order. There were no stones or other ornamentation.

Le breloque in French, la corona in Latin, the crown was plain by comparison to crowns I’d seen in movies and on the Internet. The wreath was similar to ones the ancient Romans and Greeks used to indicate royalty. But this one was magic. A pale haze of power was glowing in my skinwalker sight. I could smell the energies wafting from it like ozone from a power plant.

The wreath, like the other magical trinkets in the closet, was under a hedge of thorns ward created by Molly. She was part of the Everhart witch bloodline and was married to Evan Trueblood, one of the strongest male witches alive today. Before Molly and her hubs had left NOLA after the witch conclave, she had recharged all my little-to-never-used toys and the ward that protected them from anyone but me. They had once been in a safe-deposit box, but I had a feeling that Leo had access to them there, and I had brought them all home, securing them under magic.

Including the thing I called the Glob. It was a weapon. Or I was pretty sure it was. It had started out as a black-magic, blood-magic artifact called the blood diamond, a spelled gem empowered by the sacrifice of hundreds of witch children over hundreds of years. It had once been evil, but things had changed. The diamond had changed. Now it was a brilliant white diamond, the stone itself transformed through magical means, when it was placed in close contact with a sliver of the Blood Cross, with iron discs from the spikes that had pierced the feet of the three men killed on Golgotha, and with my blood. I had been struck by lightning while holding it. An angel and a demon had fought over it. They had maybe fought over me too. Not sure who was winning that one. Now it was the Glob, a diamond/silver/iron thingamajig doohickey. And I had no idea what it could do.