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“Madame, these are healers,” he reminded her as he opened wide his arm, taking in the other people in the OR. “They honor the code of ethics of healers everywhere—First Do No harm.”
Harm was open to interpretation. One of those healers might decide that allowing Jean-Marc to live would harm the House of the Flames. Or that snuffing out Marianne’s life once and for all might help it.
Izzy clasped the ring dangling from the necklace, its warmth seeping into her bones. She narrowed her eyes a fraction and said, “They’ll come down here or there will be no meeting.”
She caught his answering grimace and handily ignored it. Back in New York, in the Two-Seven’s prop cage, she had blown off the wheedling and blustering of career police officers and detectives who wanted her to bend the rules in order to make their lives easier. No amount of pressure had ever succeeded in getting Izzy to violate procedure.
Here and now she had no set of protocols for what was happening. She couldn’t play it by the book, because there was no book. But she could stand up to Michel de Bouvard and make her decisions stick.
“They come to me,” she said again.
“We’re in a precarious position,” he reminded her. “Now that Le Fils has dared to attack us, the Ungifted will consider us too weak to protect them against the supernaturals in this region.”
Maybe they are too weak, Izzy thought, then corrected herself: Maybe we are too weak.
“You need to be seen,” he continued. “I agreed that we would keep the regent’s condition a secret on a need-to-know basis, but you don’t have the luxury of seclusion. The people have got to know that you’re all right.”
“Then bring a contingent down here to meet with me,” she reiterated. “Would my mother jump if the governor told her to?”
“I have no idea,” he replied harshly. “Your mother’s been in a coma for twenty-six years.”
“You’re out of line,” Izzy said.
“I’m not!” he shouted. Heads turned. More quietly he said, “I’m not. We’re in an emergency situation. Our chain of command puts me in charge after Jean-Marc. But you’re here now, and I’m trying to steer you to the best course of action.”
Her lips parted, but she let him continue. He needed to get this off his chest, and she needed to know where he stood.
“Let’s not mince words,” he said. “I honor your status. I truly do. I’m loyal to you. But you just got here, and you don’t know anything, and we’re practically at war, and not just with Le Fils. I don’t how to explain to you just how tenuous our association with the Ungifted is right now.”
“Got it,” she said.
“So you need to reassure them. Or they’ll abandon their treaty with us.”
“Will they do that today?” she asked him. “Abandon the treaty?”
He shifted his weight as if he didn’t want to answer. “Doubtful,” he admitted. “But with each hour that passes without a meeting, it’ll take that much more handholding to reassure them that we’re still in the game.”
“I’m more than willing to meet them,” she said. “But they have to come down here.”
“All right,” Michel said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
As he turned to go, a deep bass gong thrummed through the air. Izzy felt its vibration in the bones of her bare feet.
Sequestered in her corner, Sauvage threw her arms around Ruthven and cried, “We’re being attacked again!”
Michel closed his eyes, opened them again. He said, “Field agents. And the executive staff. I think they’ve found something.”
“I’ll go with you to the door,” Izzy told him.
She crossed to her chair and picked up her shoes, stepping into them. The clack of her heels provided a counterpoint to the silent tension in the room.
They went out of the OR and into the monitoring room, where the techs watched the readouts of her mother’s life-support machines. Then they went out of that room to the main chamber. The room was dominated by her mother’s elaborate gilt bed. Izzy gazed tenderly at her as they passed. She looked like Izzy—an oval face with freckles across the nose, framed with long, black ringlets. In fact, she looked younger. She had only been twenty when she’d fallen into the coma; Jean-Marc had told Izzy that Gifted aged more slowly than Ungifted. He had assumed that now that her powers had awakened, her own aging process would decelerate, and maybe even reverse.
They walked down the center aisle of the chamber. The Femmes Blanches sat in two rows on either side, hands joined, holding Marianne’s hands.
Michael opened the chamber door.
A man and a woman in black suits and headsets stood on the other side. The male security agent cradled a two-foot-by-two-foot matte gray container with silver fittings against his chest.
Three other people stood in the hallway, well away from the agents. One was a young, dark-haired woman in a sleek business suit adorned with a flames pin identical to the one Michel wore on his lapel. Two men, one in his midtwenties and one middle-aged, also wore suits and pins.
When they saw Izzy, they bowed. She inclined her head.
“Oui? ” Michel queried. “Did you find something?”
“Oui, ” the female agent replied, her eyes bright with excitement. She gestured to the container. “We have some readable fragments of the bokor himself.”
“Of Esposito?” Michel asked, his voice rising with excitement.
“Oui, ” she replied proudly. The man holding the container smiled.
“Wonderful work,” Michel said.
Izzy parsed the conversation. “Fragments? Are we talking residue?”
“Oui, madame, ” Michel affirmed, smiling. “Robert and Louise are two of our best. If they say they’re readable, that means we can get some useful information off them.”
“Readable,” she echoed slowly. “As in psychometry?”
“Yes,” he said. “And we’ll—”
“Psychometry,” she continued, “which I’m apparently good at.” Her training with Jean-Marc had proven that.
His knit his brows and pursed his lips. “I appreciate your offer to help, but this is new to you, and this will be difficult and grisly work.”
“I want to be there,” she insisted.
“You are irreplaceable, and this reading could be dangerous. Esposito was working with very powerful spirits. I’m sure that if Jean-Marc were here—”
“Jean-Marc is here,” she corrected him. But she wondered if he knew something that she didn’t, if Gifted died differently from other people and he knew Jean-Marc would not be back.
“Please, madame, how is the regent?” the middle-aged man asked, stepping forward. “I’m Simon, his assistant. This is Pierre, Alain’s assistant.”
“Sophie is my assistant,” Michel added, gesturing to the woman.
“Any news?” Pierre asked.
Izzy said, “The regent is still in surgery. Alain is still missing. Perhaps we’ll learn more from reading the fragments.” She gave Michel a look. “So let’s get it done.”
“You just agreed to a meeting,” he argued.
“After.”
“Please,” Michel pled. “This will be very unpleasant.”
She shrugged. “It’s like forensics, right? We examine bone fragments, bits of tissue…and we learn things from their vibrations. Or something.”
He blinked. “No, madame, it’s not like that at all.” He shook his head. “It’s…horrible.”
Great.
“No problem,” she told him. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter 3
W hy did everything have to be so complicated?
“I repeat, madame, ” Louise said in the hall outside Izzy’s mother’s chamber, “it would seriously jeopardize both Marianne and the regent to bring Esposito’s remains inside the chamber. They’re psychically toxic.”
So she was back to trusting the doctors and the Femmes Blanches to do no harm.
“We need to take them to the reading chamber, and we need to do it now,” Robert said. “They won’t keep their integrity long.”
She exhaled. “All right. Let’s go to the reading chamber, then.”
The two security agents looked at Michel. He gave his head a tense little nod, and the quartet walked away. The assistants had not asked to come with them, and appeared to be more than happy to let them leave without them.
Izzy and company used the service stairway. The descent was shadowy and narrow. Izzy’s shoulder brushed musty-smelling brickwork; she felt claustrophobic and scared.
Robert, Louise and Michel chanted beneath their breaths; everyone in the party, including Izzy, glowed with white light. Michel’s forehead was beaded with sweat as if the effort were costing him dearly.
“This is a protective shield of light, like armor,” he told her. “In time, one hopes you will be able to create one for yourself. It’s a fairly basic skill for us.”
“I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it,” she replied, wondering if he was trying to insult her or cow her. She stood next in line to rule over them like a queen, and everyone she had met so far was appalled at her ignorance and lack of skills.
After two more flights of stairs, they were in complete darkness. She felt a breeze against her face and heard the squeal of metal on metal. Chains clanked. A chill ran down her spine. Were they going into a dungeon?
Footsteps echoed against what might have been the walls of a cavern, and Izzy could make out the shapes of the two agents and Michel in front of her.
As she followed Michel, a stab of pain cut across the arch of first her right foot and then her left. On the floor, a line glowed with icy white light.
“A ward,” Michel informed her. “Very powerful.”
A door behind her slammed shut, the sound ricocheting around her. Light flared and flames undulated from the tips of torches set into each point of the white stone walls of an octagonal room. They revealed the mosaic floor beneath her feet, tiled in the familiar design of the head of a short-haired woman surrounded by a halo. Jehanne d’Arc, the patroness.
A figure walked from the shadows. It was six feet tall, dressed in a hooded, satin white robe that concealed its face and body. Its hands were moving inside the hood, and she nearly burst into giddy hysteria when she realized it was taking off a pair of earphones attached to an iPod dangling from its neck.
Her amusement died away when she saw its hands—they were leathery purple claws ending in sharp talons. Devilish, to her Catholic eyes.
“Bienvenue, ” it said in a hollow, rasping voice.
“May I introduce you to Felix D’Artagnon,” Michel said. The creature bowed low. “D’Artagnon is one of a clan of gremlins who has allied himself with our Family, in much the same way as Madame Sange.”
“Madame la Guardienne ,” D’Artagnon intoned.
“I’m Marianne’s daughter,” Izzy insisted.
Michel continued, “Gremlin is a general term for a class of beings that aren’t human but also aren’t demon. We don’t deal with demons.” His voice tightened. “It’s forbidden, and it’s punishable by death.”
“Got it,” Izzy said.
“Monsieur D’Artagnon and his clan are allied with us. They had a falling out with the Malchances about a century ago, and we…assisted them with sorting that out.”
D’Artagnon nodded.
“The Malchances. They’re not our favorite people,” Izzy observed.
“No,” Michel replied. “They’re not.”
D’Artagnon led the way toward a long stone altar in the dead center of the room. Now-familiar objects sat on the altar—a marble vase containing a lily, and a white candle floating in an alabaster bowl before a foot-tall statue of Joan of Arc. The Flames’ color was white, the symbol of purity. Above the altar, a chandelier encrusted with opals and moonstones held wax candles that gave off flickering, watery light.
There was no statue of Jean-Marc’s patron, the Gray King, nor of anything blue, which was the color of the Devereaux family. Of the three altars she had seen, this was the first without Devereaux symbols. Were they being written off? Seen as no longer relevant by the House of the Flames?
Izzy stood a few feet back with Michel and D’Artagnon while Robert slid the box onto the stone surface of the altar. As he retreated, he stumbled badly.
Louise caught him, grunting, “Hang in, Bob.” She said to Michel, “He’s had direct contact with the fragments, sir.”
“Then get him out of here,” Michel said. “Check in with me later.”
Izzy said to them, “Thank you for putting yourselves in harm’s way for the good of the Family.”
“Merci, Guardienne ,” Robert answered softly.
The two headed for the door. Once it had shut behind them, D’Artagnon moved to a low wooden table at one of the points of the octagonal room. He picked up a cardboard box of Latex gloves identical to the ones Izzy wore on the job in the property room at the Two-Seven.
“Madame et moi aussi, ” Michel told D’Artagnon, indicating the box.
D’Artagnon used his talons to rip open the box and began pulling out gloves, offering a wad to Michel. As Michel separated them into pairs and held one set out to Izzy, he added, “As you know, we suspect the Malchances are the real forces behind this attack. We do know they’ve been recruiting disaffected members of our own family.”
She waited a beat. “To…?”
“To overthrow the rightful bloodline,” he replied, as if it should be obvious. He waggled the gloves at her. “You.”
She took the gloves and inserted her fingers into the left one as Michel did the same. Then Michel crossed to the right, standing before the wall, and moved one hand in a circle. A door appeared and opened. Inside, several white robes, shimmering with appliqués of flames, hung from a wooden rod on wooden hangers. They looked similar, but not identical, to D’Artagnon’s. Michel snapped his fingers, and two of the robes detached from the rod, floating toward him on their hangers.
He snapped his fingers a second time, and the door, the rod and the hangers disappeared.
The robes magically settled on his and Izzy’s bodies. The robe weighed several pounds, and she wondered if it was actually some kind of body armor.
