Midnight's Daughter(13)
“That’s his problem,” I said in a normal voice. I didn’t give a damn if the Fey heard me or not. I smiled at the leader. “I’ve always wondered what color you bleed. What say we find out?”
I didn’t get a verbal answer, but the fist he raised to smash my window was clear enough. So was the response to the assault by the house, which didn’t like trespassers any more than I did. The offending Fey ended up in the branches of a mulberry bush, halfway across the yard, an expression of slight surprise on his face. His companions did nothing, but their very stillness seemed a threat, especially when their eyes swiveled in unison back to us, silent and unreadable. The cats screeched on.
Louis-Cesare abruptly turned and headed for the hall, dragging me with him. I didn’t resist because I thought he was about to help me teach the Fey a lesson about name-calling. He stopped just inside the kitchen, and we both stared at the pale face that had appeared in the glass pane of the back door. “Is there another way out?”
“Let go of me and I’ll clear this one,” I told him irritably. I would complain—forcefully—at another time about being dragged about like a doll, but for the moment I preferred to save my strength for fighting Fey.
“Answer the question!”
“The front is impassable.” It had long been blocked by heaps of crumbling furniture that Claire wanted gone but that the house seemed to like exactly where it was. After a lengthy struggle, they had reached a compromise: the furniture stayed, and she kept the door to the entranceway closed so we didn’t have to look at it.
“There are no hidden ways?”
“No.” I managed to swing my pack around to where I could reach the contents with my left hand. The sound of shattering glass let me know that someone had figured out how to get past the ward on the living room window. “Except for the portals,” I added.
“Like the one at the foot of the stairs.”
“Yes. There’s another in the pantry. Claire and I use it to take out the trash the easy way. It lets out in back. And there’s one in the cellar.” I stuffed weapons into easily accessible inner pockets of my jacket, and grabbed a kitchen cleaver for good measure. “I’d take the one in the pantry if I were you.”
I started for the hall, but my collar suddenly bit into my throat and I was yanked back against an unyielding chest. “You are not going to attack the Fey,” Louis-Cesare informed me tersely.
I jerked away from him, glaring. We were going to have to talk about personal space. “That’s not your call.”
The sound of splintering wood whipped me around to see the Fey breaking through the ward on the kitchen door. He looked a little frazzled, with all that silver hair a crackling nimbus about his impassive face, but he was still standing. A second later a sword appeared in his hand as if by magic, which it probably was.
Louis-Cesare plucked the cleaver out of my hand and got a grip on the back of my jacket, pulling me off my feet like an unruly kitten. I dangled there, torn between outrage and discomfort, unable to do much about the interloper. Luckily, the house took care of the problem, deluging him with a hail of pots, pans and kitchen utensils. He staggered backward and fell into the demon hole, which contracted around one of his legs, trapping him. Another Fey, a newcomer with long black hair, appeared behind his shoulder and began trying to tug him out, while two more slipped past him. The last thing I saw before the door to the hall swung shut was the ancient iron stove advancing on them menacingly.
Louis-Cesare headed back toward the living room with me in tow. “I’m not a member of the goddamned Senate!” I said, tugging backward for all I was worth. “I’m not starting a war. “I’m defending private property!”
“You are a member of Lord Mircea’s household and your actions reflect on him.”
I grabbed the edge of the lintel over the living room door and held on for dear life. One of the silver-haired Fey was still at the bay window, muttering something under his breath. It might have been a spell, or a string of expletives. The window’s jagged glass shards had formed themselves into a mouth that appeared to be trying to eat the arm he’d thrust through it. I looked for the leader, but he was no longer sticking out of the bush.
“Dorina—,” Louis-Cesare began warningly.
“I am not letting them trash Claire’s house!” I told him furiously, kicking out with my feet.
He caught my legs and gave a yank. The lintel came off in my hands, along with a good chunk of plaster, and I hit the floor with a thud. He grabbed me before I could scramble away, and dragged me to within an inch of his face. “You will do as you are told. We will inform the Senate of this and demand an explanation from the Fey. But we will not start a war!” With that, he threw me unceremoniously over his shoulder.
I beat on his back, but it was like hitting concrete. He made it to the cellar stairs, but I braced my feet against the sides of the wall, blocking him from going down. “Listen, you crazy son of a bitch! Claire and I sent things through that portal, trying to figure out where it went, but we never found any of them again. What if her bootlegger uncle linked it to an incinerator somewhere? Or a deep pit in the sea? The cellar was his workshop—he might have needed a fast way to dispose of unstable mixes!”
“Why did you not mention this before?” Louis-Cesare demanded.
“I didn’t know you planned to run before!”