Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(22)
Del repeated it back to me, I said that was perfect, and she went silent, though I could hear her tapping on her tablet. “The primo will happily pass along the request exactly as worded.”
“Thanks.”
“You still owe me a spa day.”
I always owed Del a spa day. “Find a spa with a steam room, massages, and facials, and we can go Saturday and take Jodi.”
“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.