Witch's Wrath (Blood And Magick #3)(30)

“What you’re asking to do… without help, I simply do not see how we will be able to achieve it.”

“So, what, we’re supposed to do nothing?”

Jean Luc stood up. “I’m not suggesting we do nothing; what I’m suggesting is that we weigh our options, of which we now have very few. Marie is a clever, ancient vampire. She will not be easily tricked, and there was only one witch with the power to send her away. He is now dead.”

“That’s not true.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”

“Remy… was teaching me.”

“Teaching you what?”

“His magick. I’m not as good as he was, not yet, but I know more now than I did a few months ago.”

“And a few months of knowledge is supposed to be enough for you to kill a four-hundred-year-old vampire?”

“Maybe it is.”

He looked at Delphine, then back at me. “Madison, it isn’t that I don’t trust you, or that I don’t believe in your abilities, but this discussion is moot. I will not help you find Marie until we have a plan on how to deal with her that does not involve some kind of frontal assault.”

I stood up, now, and squared up to him. “I don’t want to argue with you, Jean Luc, but you can’t keep putting me in a box. If you could have done something about Marie, you would have done it by now, which means you need my magick. I’m not asking you to take me to her tonight. You’re right, going up against her now would be insane. What I want is to make sure, when the time comes, you won’t try and keep me away.”

He shook his head. “I have no intention of keeping you away. What I want is for there to be no more deaths.”

“I want that too.”

“Good, now I must excuse myself from you for the night, but Delphine will accompany you back home.”

“I’m not going home,” I said.

Jean Luc stared at me as if trying to read my face, but didn’t ask any questions. “Very well. But I still insist Delphine accompany you; the streets aren’t safe.”

Refusing her would have probably led him to ask the very questions he had clearly chosen not to ask, so I agreed to let Delphine be my chaperone. She wouldn’t appreciate a good burger like I was about to, but I was sure she’d appreciate the company of someone other than Jean Luc. I liked him, but he wasn’t from this time. I was.

She and I had much we could offer each other.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Delphine and I walked along North Rampart Street for a couple blocks before deciding to dip into the French Quarter by way of Saint Ann’s Street. Delphine wanted to avoid the noisy, drunken, Bourbon Street crowd, and I didn’t blame her for wanting that. I didn’t want to deal with it either. What I wanted to do was get to know the enigma that was Jean Luc’s sister. What he had told me about the way she was brought into the night both terrified and fascinated me, and this was the first real chance we’d had to share a moment together, alone.

The initial few minutes of our walk had been quiet, though, and whenever she passed in front of me I caught a whiff of what I thought was perfume, but it had a weird quality about it. The scent itself was sweet and flowery, reminding me of bees and honey, and freshly cut roses. Nature.

“So,” I said, as we made a left turn onto Dauphine Street, “I bet New Orleans is way different than you remember?”

“It is,” Delphine admitted, “Although, in truth, I remember little of my life before I woke up a few months ago.”

“Really?”

“I remember snippets, little flashes of memory that may as well be dreams belonging to someone else.”

I fell silent for a second as I pondered my next question. “Do you remember what you used to do for a living?”

“I don’t remember my living days at all. I’m afraid I’ve even forgotten what the sun feels like on my face.”

“That’s… sad…”

“Not if the sun could kill you. But it does leave me wondering why I’ve forgotten so much.”

“Doesn’t Jean Luc know?”

“He thinks I was too young to go into such a long sleep, that it damaged my mind somehow. I suppose he may be right. Many of our kind experience some type of memory loss when they fall into centuries long sleep. But no vampire my age had ever been forced to go through such an ordeal before, so it’s difficult to say.”

We continued down Dauphine Street where the number of people walking dwindled to zero pretty rapidly, leaving the two of us largely alone save for whoever happened to be listening from a window or a balcony. Luckily, most people wouldn’t have taken the conversation we were having too seriously. To do so would have been to confront the existence of the supernatural, and even if they did accept it, the first person they told would think them insane.

“Jean Luc took pretty well to the modern day,” I said, “But he had been awake before. I guess he’d had opportunities to adjust. Was it weird for you?”

She shook her head. “Having only a scattering of memory from the past, it was as if I had awoken into this century from nothing. Everything was alien to me at first, but I learned quickly. Quicker than the others. The benefits of having a sharp mind.”