Witch's Wrath (Blood And Magick #3)(35)

“She could be…” I said.

“You guys are close,” he said, “If you go over there to talk to her, I know she’ll talk to you. Maybe you can change her mind, or at least find out exactly what she’s thinking by siding with Tamara. She isn’t a hateful person. I know she wouldn’t suddenly start hunting vampires down.”

“She hung me out to dry. I know she’s not going to go after Jean Luc with a torch and pitchfork, but leaving me hanging like that was totally not cool.” I got up from the bed. “I don’t know what she really wants, but I’ll go and talk to her.”

Jared offered to drive me to Nicole’s and back, but I didn’t want him waiting around for me, so I let him drive me over and promised I would make my own way back later. Steeling my resolve, I went through the gate, walked up the short stone path, up the steps, and rang the doorbell. The seconds passed, and passed, and passed. Birds chirped. A wind chime tinkled in the breeze. I was beginning to think no one was home, but then Nicole unlocked the door and opened it.

She peered out from around the door, her face serious and cold, but also a little pale and tired. “You came,” she said, her voice flat and devoid of sympathy or compassion.

Hearing her voice brought more anger bubbling to the surface than I would have liked. I tried to keep it all bottled in. “You said you had something for me,” I said.

“I do.”

An awkward silence hung in the air. I had expected her to say something else after that, but she hadn’t. “So?” I asked, “Are you going to give it to me, or just look at me like that?”

Nicole opened the door fully to let me in. I stepped through, a little apprehensively, and immediately noticed the place was a little duller than I was used to. Jeanette usually kept the place sparkling, and the smell of fresh pine was never far from your nose. Now it was as if all the sparkle had been sucked out of the house, and all that remained was a stale, dusty shell.

She led me into the living room and sat down on one of the sofas there. I sat down on the armchair and looked at her. “I wasn’t sure I was going to come,” I said. “I didn’t think you had anything for me.”

“You thought I was just trying to get you over here to talk?”

“Why else?”

“I think I would have just told you if I wanted to talk.”

“So, you don’t want to go over what the hell happened the other night, at the party?”

“I don’t think I have to.”

“Someone shut and locked the bathroom door,” I said. “I was locked in that room and had to listen to everything go down, powerless to do anything about it. I couldn’t use my magick. If I hadn’t broken the toilet tank cover on the handle, I may have never gotten out.”

“None of us could use our magick.”

“Exactly. People are only talking about the vampires, but no one’s talking about the reason why we couldn’t use our magick. How the hell could they have done that to us?”

“We’re talking about it.”

I swallowed. “We?”

“The witches,” she said, matter-of-factly. “We’re trying to figure out why it was none of us could use our magick when we needed to.”

I was all too familiar with Nicole’s intuitive abilities. Even though she seemed tired and spent, I knew she could read my emotional state, and maybe even my thoughts sometimes. I didn’t want to let on just how much it hurt to hear the witches of New Orleans were excluding me from their conversations, so I recalled the catchiest song I could think of and kept repeating it in my head.

“And have you?” I asked, looking down at my own hands.

Nicole paused. “No,” she said. “Best we can determine, a witch must have been helping those vampires.”

“A witch? Someone inside our community?”

“Not necessarily.”

“But we’re talking about inhibiting the power of a mansion full of witches. I can’t even begin to speculate what kind of spell that was, but only someone with immense experience and strength in magick could have done that.”

“Someone like Tamara?”

The way she was looking at me, with her head tilted a little low and her eyes trained on mine, I knew she was listening for my thoughts, or any sudden burst of emotion. I wasn’t a stone. I couldn’t keep everything away from her, and I knew it. Especially anger. Anger was such a raw, explosive emotion. Nicole had pushed my buttons, and it had worked.

“I didn’t say Tamara.”

“No, but that’s what you think, isn’t it? She’s a new face in the city, she’s got experience on us, and she dislikes you.”

“You disliked her when she first rolled into town too, remember? Or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten. All I know is, thanks to your event, my mom and a half-dozen other witches almost died that night. One of them did die.”

The anger wasn’t just bubbling; it was coming to a boil. “My event?” I asked, “We organized it together. We thought of it together. And now it’s my event? Has she turned you against me that much already?”

“No one’s done anything to me, Madison. Tamara has just shown me the truth about vampires—they’re killers, and they hold grudges. These people are going to stop at nothing and no one; they’ll slaughter every last witch in New Orleans if we let them.”