Demon from the Dark (Immortals After Dark #10)(19)

N?x squinted at the ceiling. “Carrow is in an environment that she hates worse than anything.”

“The woods?” Mari cried. “She can’t stand the outdoors!”

“And yet personal preferences rarely figure in my visions, favorite Wiccan-type person.”

“Tell me, N?x, why was she taken there? Who took her? Has anything like this happened before?” N?x had been around for three thousand years. She’d seen a lot. “Have Loreans ever been abducted like this?”

“Yes,” the soothsayer answered, adding in a whisper, “by the Order.”

“Care to extrapolate?”

“No.”

“Tell me who they are!” No answer. “Is it the military?”

N?x narrowed her eyes at Mari. “Define military.”

“You know, soldiers, army, et cetera.”

N?x squinted again. “Define army.”

“At least tell me if they’re human!”

“Define—”

“Shut it, N?x!” She pinched her forehead, then gazed up at the soothsayer. “I can’t stand the thought of Carrow out there away from the coven.” What if she was somewhere alone and friendless? Because Carrow’s childhood had been so seriously screwed up, she didn’t handle being alone well.

The soothsayer chuckled. “Ah, N?xie plays. The Order, also known as the Deceivers, the Summoners, the Collectors, and the Mortals Who Walk on Two Legs, except I made up that last part.”

“What do they want?”

“They want all the freaks dead. Funny. I don’t feel like a freak. Unless le freak, c’est chic?” She shrugged. “To be fair, they only rise up whenever immortals do.”

“Man, if there’s one thing Carrow hates, it’s being punished for a crime she didn’t commit.” Luckily, that didn’t happen often, as Carrow perpetrated more than her share of crimes. Her last offense? Stealing a cop’s horse to ride into Pat O’Brien’s. Carrow’s defense? She’d needed an accessory.

Mari had once asked Carrow why she so readily got into trouble with the law—the public indecency and intoxication, the vandalism, and so on. After all, Carrow could harvest power without jail time. “Is it just to get back at your parents?”

Carrow had answered, “At first, yes. Now it’s just tradition . . . .”

When N?x said nothing, Mari grew still. “Immortals haven’t risen up, right, Valkyrie?”

“Have we not?” She frowned. “I’ll have to check my inbox. But I’m fairly certain we were going to, maybe, just a jot. Like against industrial polluters and people who take candy from babies. Those who drive slow in the left-hand lane and men who wear Members Only jackets, naturally.”

Mari gaped at the other Valkyrie. Not all of them looked surprised. A couple raised their chins. “Have you all gone as crazy as N?x?”

Though few in the Lore dared to cross her, if anyone would, it’d be her half sisters.

N?x continued, “Things came to a head with this Order a few years back when they overestimated their firearmy might, and made an incursion against us. Even with their technology, all were massacred. ‘Not to be borne!’ they said. So now they study us for weaknesses. I can’t fault them, really. If humans presented any kind of mystery, we’d probably vivisect them as well.”

Vivisect? Mari swallowed. Dissecting while the subject was still alive. Her voice broke when she asked, “How do I get to Carrow?” When N?x merely shrugged, Mari vowed, “I’ll go to the mirror, N?x.”

Mari was a captromancer. She could travel through mirrors, could touch them to focus her powers, and could gaze into them to divine secrets. Slight problem with the latter. Though she could commune with a mirror and have Carrow’s location in seconds, Mari would likely entrance herself into a mystical coma, possibly forever.

N?x quirked a brow. “And what would you tell your overprotective Lykae husband? If he found out your intentions, he’d spank you.”

Bowen would, in fact, go ballistic if he got a single werewolf whiff of this. He’d never allow it—even though the Lykae had begun to fear that one of their own had been snared by the people who’d taken Carrow.

“Because we are friends, I am offering my services as a surrogate spankee.” N?x said this playfully, but she rubbed her forehead as if it ached.

Mari studied her expression, realizing that N?x looked tired. “I won’t go to the mirror if you give me something I can use.”

Suddenly N?x tensed. When her amber eyes began to glow, the other Valkyrie eased forward, awaiting whatever foresight—or insight—N?x was about to divulge.

“They’re on an island, undetectable by our kind,” she said. “It can’t be seen by boat or plane, nor located on any map. To find it, you have to look for something else. To reach it, you have to uncover the key.”

Riddles now? “The key? What is it?” Mari demanded.

“Who.”

“What?”

“Where? Why? When?”

“N?x!”

“The key is a who. Not a what.”

“Then who is it?” Mari said. Oh, gods, please tell me.

“Don’t remember.” Over Mari’s sputtering, she said, “I recall he’s an immortal male. Filled with evil. Obsessed with something as intangible as smoke. Find him, reach the island.” She rose. “I have much to do, young Mariketa. And I can’t tell you anything more, because I know nothing else.” Gazing at the ceiling, she tapped her chin with a claw-tipped finger. “Ooh, oooh, except for the fact that Carrow is soon to die!”