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“It’s Le Fils,” he said into her ear. His breath was moist and warm. “Esposito’s down there, too. They’re attacking, and they have Sauvage.”
“Le Fils?” Izzy suddenly felt very dizzy. The world canted left, right, as if the fire escape had pulled from the building and was swinging freely. Le Fils, Le Fils…
It was all there, in an instant. Everything they were doing right now could not be happening. If Le Fils was down there, they could not be in New York. And she had never told Pat about Le Fils. Le Fils du Diable—the Son of the Devil—was the king vampire of New Orleans, terrorizing both Gifted and Ungifted alike. She hadn’t known about Le Fils until the day she had left New York…
Oh, my God. I left New York. I never went to the Police Academy. I’m not NYPD.
She felt another wave of vertigo.
The floor beneath them was not metal. It was wood. As Pat shifted his weight, she lifted her swirling head and saw men in tuxedos and women in gowns rushing past the two of them. A leathery creature in a hood bobbed past. It had been at the dinner, when Jean-Marc had presented her to the family.
Jean-Marc…where is Jean-Marc?
Another explosion rocked the floor. She smelled smoke. She heard screaming.
“Let me up,” she woozily ordered Pat.
“No, stay down, darlin’,” he told her. Pat’s face was backlit by a shimmering curtain of blue. The curtain darkened with purple; then another bolt of purple-black burst through and hit the white wooden wall behind them. “He’s attacking.”
He already did attack. Le Fils and his accomplice, Julius Esposito the voodoo bokor, attacked us last night. Here, in New Orleans. Why is it happening again? This is more than a dream. Is this a vision?
With a burst of strength born of determination, she forced his weight off her body and slowly got to her feet.
Surrounded by familiar faces, some standing still as white light poured from their palms, others rushing through the chaos, she and Pat stood on the verandah of the de Bouvard mansion on the outskirts of the bayou—her blood family’s home for nearly three hundred years. She was not wearing her police uniform, but the white satin gown embroidered with flames on the bodice she had worn at her presentation.
The flame-shaped brand in her left palm glowed and pulsed, and she remembered the rest: she was no longer simply Izzy DeMarco; she was Isabella Celestina DeMarco de Bouvard, the daughter of the flames. Her biological mother, Marianne, the guardienne and titular protector of this House, lay downstairs in a coma.
And this was her battle.
Around her neck, Izzy wore protective talismans: the rose quartz necklace Sauvage had given her, and the chicken-foot gris-gris of Andre the werewolf.
Andre…Jean-Marc… She looked for the Cajun werewolf and Jean-Marc, the passionate magic user who had tracked her down and brought her here from New York. The men who should be here. She searched the throng for Sange, the elegant vampire. She saw none of them.
She reached out a hand to Pat and said, “You’re not supposed to be here. You need to go inside.”
“No way,” he replied. Then his sea-green eyes widened and his lips parted in a silent grimace. Silently, he sank to his knees and fell forward, hard, onto his face.
The back of his jacket was shredded, and blood gushed from an entry wound.
“Oh, my God, Pat!” she cried. She placed one hand over the other and pushed to stem the geyser of blood. It was spraying her face. Pat’s blood was spraying her face!
“Officer down!” she yelled. “Officer down! I need assistance!”
No one seemed to hear her. Nor even see her.
You’re on point, said the voice inside her head. Get up and kill Esposito. Do it. Now. Or others will die, and this House will fall.
In a daze, Izzy stared down at Pat. His head was twisted to one side; his eyes were fluttering shut, and his face was a deathly white.
“This isn’t happening,” she whispered. “This can’t be happening!”
But it was happening.
Do it.
“I’m not leaving him,” she said aloud, putting her arms around his broad shoulders. He was gasping like a beached sea creature. His lips were cyanotic.
Shoot Esposito or everyone will die.
“I won’t leave you,” Izzy promised Pat, as she burst into hoarse, wild wails. “Pat! I won’t leave you!”
Chapter 2
P at can’t be dead. He shouldn’t even be here. He can’t be dead….
“Oh, my God, he bit me, didn’t he! That freakin’ vampire bit me!” Sauvage cried.
Izzy jerked awake, tears streaming down her cheeks. Sauvage, in her red-and-black goth attire, was sitting about five feet away on a white plastic chair in the corner of the OR, which was located in the lower depths of the House of the Flames. Ruthven, her boyfriend, knelt before her in black leather pants and a black T-shirt, scrutinizing every inch of her exposed flesh for vampire bites.
“Pat,” she whispered, knowing already that he wasn’t there. That he wasn’t dead. It had been a horrible nightmare—horribly real, but just a nightmare—one of the many that had plagued her of late. New York, Sauvage and Torres, Pat and the apartment building—all that had been a dream—or perhaps another vision of things to come. Since arriving in New Orleans, she had been plagued by dreams and visions. But Sauvage had definitely never been in protective custody, and Esposito had never dragged her through the streets of East Harlem.
But last night, on the verandah, Izzy had shot and killed Esposito. In the melee, Esposito had been about to slit Sauvage’s throat. Izzy had taken aim, and with one clear shot from her Medusa revolver—an enchanted .9 mm cartridge—she had shot him in the chest.
And he had burst into purple fireworks.
He exploded . Thinking of that, seeing it again in her mind, Izzy trembled. Two weeks ago people in her world didn’t die like that; there were no mansions filled with people with magical powers or werewolves or vampires.
Two weeks ago her world had been the borough of Brooklyn, where she lived in a row house with her father and worked as a civilian in the property room of the Two-Seven. Gino, her brother, was studying to be a priest in a seminary in Connecticut. And the little family of three had shared the memory of her beloved mother, Anna Maria DeMarco, who had been dead for ten years.
And then the real nightmare had begun. Izzy had learned that she had magical powers, and that she was the missing heiress of the ancient French magic-using family, the de Bouvards—the House of the Flames. Jean-Marc de Devereaux des Ombres, Regent of the Flames, had saved her life, told her who she was and brought her here, to New Orleans, to take over leadership of her family.
Now Jean-Marc lay a few feet from her on an operating table, hovering someplace midway between life and death. He, not Pat, had been badly wounded during the battle.
“Patient’s BP still in the basement,” someone muttered at the OR table. They moved inside a magical sterile field of white light. Within it, everyone was dressed in white—white scrubs for the surgical team and white gowns and veils for the Femmes Blanches, the legendary de Bouvard healing women, who were as silent as ghosts as they held each other’s hands. The two women on the ends of their line clasped Jean-Marc’s hands as well. They were transferring their magical energy to him.
As the surgeon shifted to the left, Izzy caught sight of Jean-Marc’s sharp profile, and she drew in a sharp breath at the instant, riveting rush of…intensity overtaking her. Jean-Marc had searched for her for three years, and once he had found her, a link—physical, emotional, magical—had formed between them. One touch, one smoldering look, reduced her to a fine trembling. Her engulfing attraction to him frightened her.
And then there was Pat. When Jean-Marc had barreled into Izzy’s life, she had only just built up the nerve to ask Pat over for dinner. Pat had been interested in her for months, but he had given her all the time she needed to respond to his patient, easygoing flirtation. It was the lack of pressure she savored most; he was a little older than she was, more seasoned, less inclined to see each opportunity that came his way as the last one he would ever have. He respected her boundaries. He never challenged her need to go slow.
Before she left New York, fleeing for her life, she had slept with Pat. In some ways, it had been too soon in their relationship for sex. But Jean-Marc himself had explained that for magic users like themselves—known in their world as the Gifted—sex magic was the strongest type of spell they could employ. He had gone so far as to suggest that she go to bed with Pat, to protect him from harm.
Death was all around them, people she cared about going down; Izzy had done it…and making love with Pat had rocked her to her foundations. Never in her life had she experienced such transforming pleasure, felt such joy and completion. She had seduced Pat to protect him, but her Texas cowboy had claimed her as surely as if he had roped and branded her. Pat was in her heart now.
And yet, when she gazed at the unconscious man on the operating table, she knew that if Jean-Marc woke up, she would have to face a decision. Pat was Ungifted—not a magic user—and he was back in New York, watched over by Captain Clancy herself, who knew the score. Izzy had no idea what was going to happen to her old life—could she go back? If so, when? Would Pat wait? When he found out who and what she was, would he want to?
Or did her heart’s destiny end in the path that led to Jean-Marc? He was her mentor, her guardian. She thought she felt his heart beating inside her own chest. Closing her eyes, she smelled the roses and oranges that signaled his working a spell of protection and comfort around her. She half-suspected that if he did die—and she could hardly bear to even think of it—their link would survive the grave.
Jean-Marc , she sent out to him, I still need you here. You can’t go. You can’t die .
She felt a tiny flutter against her mind. She gasped and shut her eyes, waiting for words, for thoughts, for heartbeats.
It came:
Isabelle .
Her throat closed up with emotion as she replied, N’as pas de peur. Je suis ici . Don’t be afraid. I am here.
She waited hungrily for more, listening to the shorthand of the surgical team, watching as they combined traditional medicine with strange magical incantations, powders and objects—crystals, a ritual knife called an athame and candles. Unmoving, the fully veiled Femmes Blanches held his hands through it all.
Then the surgeon sighed heavily, and the women bowed their heads.
“Oh, my God, what’s happening?” Izzy asked, half rising from her chair.
The doctor looked at her over his shoulder. “Please, madame, stay where you are. We’re doing the best we can.”
Retaining her seat, she pursed her lips and fists together. The best had not saved her mother. Marianne had flatlined, and nothing they had tried had restored her brain activity. She remained technically alive, but only technically.
Izzy kept vigil, willing a better outcome for Jean-Marc.
Michel de Bouvard, Izzy’s liaison to the House of the Flames, poked his head in, saw Izzy and entered. He was still wearing his tux from the dinner. Coming up beside her, he crossed his arms over his chest and watched the medical team for a few moments before he asked, “How’s he doing?”
She wiped fresh tears from her cheeks. She’d been crying without knowing it. As steadily as she could, she replied, “He’s still alive.”
Michel wore a poker face as he took that in. Then he looked—really looked—at her and said, “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay. Let’s debrief,” she said tersely.
He held up his fingers as if to enumerate the facts of their situation. “Le Fils got away.”
“Right.”
“Andre is still missing.”
Aside from Jean-Marc, the werewolf was her strongest ally in this strange new world of passion and deceit. “Could he have survived that jump off the verandah?” she asked hopefully.
Cocking his head, he raised a brow. “A leap off the third story? I don’t know. Maybe. He gave you his gris-gris, so he didn’t have that protection with him when he jumped. I assume Jean-Marc made talismans for him, so they would help. And werewolves are uncommonly strong and quick to heal,” he added. “Like us.”
She filed that away, wondering if “us” meant all Gifted individuals or just Bouvards. She wanted Jean-Marc to be quick to heal. She wanted him healed now .
“What about Alain?” That was Jean-Marc’s cousin. He had been MIA since before Izzy’s private jet had landed. Jean-Marc had been terribly worried, sending two security details to search for him.
“Still missing.” His voice was flat, as if he was attempting to sound neutral. She knew Michel detested Jean-Marc; she had to assume he had no love for Alain de Devereaux as well. Was Michel involved in his disappearance?
“What are you doing to locate him?” she asked.
“We’re scouring the battlefield for residue,” he said. “And I sent out an additional search party. We’ve got one in the swamp and two in the city—one in the Garden District and one in the French Quarter.”
“Residue,” she said.
“Emanations,” he explained. “We may be able to read them for clues.”
She still didn’t fully understand, but she said, “Maybe I could help.”
“Madame, please leave these things to us. You need to meet with Gelineau, Broussard and Jackson.” They were the de Bouvards’ Ungifted allies: the mayor of New Orleans, the superintendent of police, and the governor of the state of Louisiana. “You should include Sange as well.” She was the elegant vampire with whom the House of the Flames had forged an alliance.
He took a breath and reached into his left pants pocket. “And you should put this on.”
He opened his hand, revealing the gold signet ring that was the symbol of authority for the House of the Flames. According to Jean-Marc, it was nearly seven hundred years old.
“Where did you get that?” she demanded, flushing with anger. Jean-Marc had been wearing it the last time she had seen it.
“I took it when they stripped him for surgery,” he replied guilelessly. “A reasonable precaution, given its value.”
Did she dare accept it from his hand? According to both Jean-Marc and Michel, innumerable factions sought to place their own woman—or man—on the throne. Jean-Marc spoke of assassination attempts on his own life, and the regent before him might have been murdered. For all Izzy knew, putting on that ring might be signing her own death warrant.
Where would it leave Jean-Marc? If she wore the ring, did that signify the end of his term of service? So many Bouvards hated him for ruling in her mother’s name. He was a Devereaux, an outsider, and though the Grand Covenate, the supreme governing body of the Gifted world, had arranged for his service as regent, the Bouvards had resented his presence from the start.
I don’t know what I’m doing, Izzy thought. She shut her eyes tightly and prayed to St. Joan, the patronesse of the House of the Flames, known to the Bouvards by her French name, Jehanne.
Jehanne, aidez-moi. Je vous en prie. Jehanne, help me. I petition you.
She heard no answer, felt no guiding intuition. She didn’t hear the voice that often counseled and directed her, which had sounded so clear and real in her dream.
“You must take it,” Michel insisted, extending his hand palm up. “I can’t wear it.”
With trembling fingers, Izzy closed her fist around it. It was much heavier than she had anticipated. She turned over her hand and opened her fingers, tracing the dime-shaped circle etched with flames surrounding a B for Bouvard. Then she clutched it in her fist again as she unclasped the gold crucifix that had belonged to Anna Maria DeMarco—the woman she had always believed to be her mother—in preparation for sliding the ring onto the chain.
Michel stopped her with a shake of his head. He said, “We have an agreement with Sange that no one wears crucifixes in the mansion. If you put the ring on that chain, she will be highly insulted. We can’t afford to alienate her.”
The rose quartz necklace Sauvage had made for her also hung from Izzy’s neck. She pointedly reclasped her crucifix—continuing to wear it—and unfastened the string of pale pink quartz. Then she slipped the ring onto the beaded necklace and reconnected the clasp.
A sudden burst of warmth pressed against the satin of her gown. She looked down to see a white nimbus of magical energy emanating from the ring.
Michel de Bouvard sank on one knee, lowering his head as he whispered, “Ma guardienne. ”
“I’m not the guardienne yet,” Izzy protested, as the light faded.
“You’re the closest thing we have,” he replied. His voice was softer, more deferential.
“Now we should go to the private meeting room upstairs,” he continued, rising. “I’ll let the governor and the others know you’re ready to meet with them. Jean-Marc and Alain both have assistants, of course. You should talk to them, as well. They’re very upset.”
“No.” She crossed her arms and stood rooted to the spot. “Tell everyone to come down here,” she said. “I’m not leaving my mother and the regent alone.” Marianne lay in her bed of state in the chamber beyond the OR.
Michel blinked, obviously taken aback.
“Devereaux and your mother are not alone.”
“Without me, they may as well be,” she retorted.
