Bloodring (21 page)

Jason drew back his arm, hands fisted. Rupert raised his chin and opened his arms, daring him.

“Order. Order, you two,” Shamus Waldroup said, banging a gavel. “This ain't a free-for-all, boys. You done had a chance to talk, Jason, so sit down and get yourself in hand. We ain't having no violence. Go on,” he ordered when Jason paused, his body rigid. “Go ahead, Rupert. Talk. I want to know if you got any proof that you and Lucas was planning a loan. 'Cause if there is, then we might have us a way to salvage the loan even though Lucas is gone. Missing, I mean.”

Jason hadn't moved. “Jason Stanhope, you sit down or I'll have you sat down,” the bald baker said. Two robe-clad elders stood and stepped forward, staring hard at Jason. His hands trembled; his face was beet red, sweat pouring in steady trickles, soaking his collar. He turned on his heel, walked down the steps to the aisle, and flung himself into the first pew.

“I have the documents where we sketched out a plan,” Rupert said. “It's all handwritten, pencil on paper, Lucas' and my handwriting. Of course, if it's proven that my brother really is dead”—he paused, as if surprised to hear the words on his lips—“then his estate goes for the care of his child. It'll be up to Marla Stanhope to decide if the loan goes through. I'll be happy to show the paperwork to the elders and elected officials. Just give me a time and place, and I'll be there.”

“So will I.” Marla stood, smiling. “But I'm not inclined to loan away my baby's money and future unless it's financially beneficial. For her,” she added quickly.

“Fine.” Shamus banged the gavel again. “Any more speakers? No? Meeting's adjourned. Let's get home before full night.” As he spoke, the shadows lengthened and the room fell dark, as if night had been waiting to fall until the last word was spoken.

 
After the meeting, I lingered, waiting on Rupert. Audric and I walked slowly from the old church while my business partner talked to passersby. The delay allowed the entire crowd to walk by me, and I was able to perform a mind-skim on each person. While an aborted attempt convinced me not to try mage-sight, I was still able to do the most basic exam, skimming for use of mage-power and for unglamoured supernats. Audric moved patiently at my side, one hand on my elbow. I didn't get anything I hadn't picked up before, and my head hurt worse, but the skim made me feel better on a purely safety-first level, and the spawn, if that was what I'd sensed from inside the church, was gone, leaving only a faint residue.

Except for Rupert chatting to Shamus Waldroup, the walk home from the meeting was accomplished in silence, small groups sticking close together for protection. The last streetlight had burned out before I was born, so Upper Street was lit only by the moon and by light spilling from shuttered windows onto the street.

“Did you get anything?” Audric murmured.

“Not much. I got a whiff of sulfur blowing in under the doors at the start of the meeting. Marla's hatred has blackened her aura. And I caught power leaking from a hidden amulet on Culpepper the younger.”

“What did you try?”

I grimaced. “A mind-skim and mage-sight all at the same time, a sort of a blended scan, or something.” In the dark I couldn't tell, but I thought he looked at me strangely.

“I didn't know that was possible.”

“I nearly fell on the floor. Nearly hurled on the old biddy in front of us. Nearly made a spectacle of myself.”

“Too bad you found such self-control,” he chuckled. “Headache?”

“Oh, yeah. It's better now. But I won't try blending scans anytime soon. The world is a little too intense that way.”

“I'll bet. You see the two just ahead? Fergus Yardley and Randall Prentice, Culpepper's underlings? Did you get anything special on them?”

“No. Just plain old run-of-the-mill humans. Nothing special about them.”

“Lucky them,” Audric said. He cleared his throat, his tone toughening. “Fergus is a geologist, in town trying to get the remaining feldspar strip mines and surface mines opened up and producing again. Randall is the moneyman behind the plans. Handles investments. Some say he even has a seraph or two as clients.”

“You think?”

“No. I don't. There's no evidence that seraphs understand or care about money. I think he lets it be said because it makes him sound more trustworthy and respectable.”

I thought about the necklace worn by Chamuel, the necklace that had rocketed Thorn's Gems into stardom, had made us a household name. If seraphs didn't handle money, how had Chamuel purchased the necklace? And when? Or had it been bought as a gift? They were questions I had asked myself often over the last few months; I had never found satisfactory answers. The records of the sale showed the purchase had been made by a traveler, a male, for cash. If Chamuel had come in human guise, then clearly I had been out of the shop, or we would have been pawing each other on the floor, my first heat stimulated in an instant. But none of my partners remembered the sale, the man who purchased it, or even much about the day in question. Weird. And where my safety was involved, weird wasn't good.

At that thought I looked into Audric's face, a half-seen dark sheen in the night. “I didn't see any cops tonight. Not even Thadd. Wouldn't you think they'd be there?”

“It crossed my mind. Several times.”

Another weird event. They were starting to pile up.

I
could feel the warmth through the covers and reached across the sheets, moaning as dawn waked me from an amazing dream. I was trying to hang on to its remnants. And then my eyes popped open. Either the streetlights had all been replaced or the sun was shining. I tossed the covers and raced to a window, throwing back the heavy tapestry covering the glass. Friday morning had dawned bright and warm, the sky blue with lacy clouds, the air clear. We had an early thaw!

I raced through a shower, layered on a purple T-shirt over a dark teal one, with turquoise boots and jeans, clothes I could wear indoors or out, added my amulets and a primitive-looking necklace of tribal beads and citrine, grabbed a corduroy jacket, and flew downstairs. At the bottom, I ran headlong into Rupert, bounced off his chest and hit the wall before rebounding into his arms. He set me upright, talking fast. “Early thaw! It's sunlight!”

“I see it! Come on!” I grabbed his hand, pulling him through the shop and out the door into the day. We turned left and stopped in the walkway, blinded by the brightness of the rising sun. Eyes closed, I inhaled, pulling in the scent of sun on snow. I concentrated, feeling the warmth on my face, gentle, like my mother's hands, tender and warm. A sun reminiscent of Louisiana, not the pallid, clouded-over sun of winter mountains at high altitudes, but warm like my childhood, my last memories of complete safety and joy. The sun of spring, so fresh it didn't leech away my strength.

For an aching, heart-wrenching moment, I mourned Enclave, the heat, the humidity, the soft susurration of the Gulf, the night roars of gators and the cries of birds, the scents of salt, fish, rotting vegetation. Mourned the wonderful sense of belonging. Of being loved. Tears gathered and spilled down my cheeks.

“Heaven,” Rupert said. “Pure heaven. Someday I'm moving south, where there's a real summer and heat and rain, and winter is a few months of tepid cold instead of a frozen misery.”

I moaned, the sound close to a sob, eyes still closed, face turned to the sun. “Mosquitoes, gnats, roaches, wild pigs big enough to wreck an El-car,” I said, trying to remember that the South had had its drawbacks for me, the worst of which was a slow death by insanity. “Birds that start screaming before daylight, gators with teeth like razors, snakes—big poisonous snakes with huge fangs—panthers, skunks—You think mountain skunks stink? You have no idea how bad a skunk stinks until it lies dead under a hot sun for a day or two.”

“Sounds like you've been there.”

Heat like the worst of a Louisiana summer reared up in me. Blasted its way up my body, through my muscles, along my nerves, and into my skin. Every cell of flesh ignited. Thaddeus Bartholomew, kylen, a Hand of the Law. Fear followed the heat, a flare of adrenaline making the heat sharper, sweeter.

I angled my face higher and sighed. “Once, for a summer. My mother and father took a cabin on Lake Ponchartrain,” I said. Truth. All truth. “I was about four? Five? I remember everything about that summer. I remember catching fish, the smell of them frying.”
Back when I ate meat . . .
“I remember the crows, the alligators, the lilies. Did you know that flowers can grow in the water? Beautiful flowers.” I opened my eyes and turned to Thadd.
Anael, help me. My body burns . . .

My voice dropped, and when I smiled, it was with all the heat in my eyes, in my voice, in my body language. “It's so warm there, the natives go nearly naked for six months of the year.” I widened my smile, letting my words slow to the pace of life so long denied me. “Baring their toes, their arms and wrists, their necks, to the sun.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Rupert said, voice lazy, unconsciously matching my tone, the pace of my words. “You told me about that place. Remember? We're going there someday, you and Audric and Jacey and her family. All of us. For a vacation.”

I opened my eyes and dropped my arms, which had risen toward the sky. Rupert was watching me, warning in his eyes.
Oops
. “Yeah. I remember,” I said. But I knew full well I had never told Rupert or Jacey a single thing about my youth. Rupert was trying to protect me from whatever he had seen in me just now. Mage-heat was making me stupid. I had to get control or I was in trouble. But I'd rather get hold of Thadd.

He stood bareheaded in the sunlight, dressed in browns and greens—brown business suit, dark green tie, green shirt, green scarf loose around his neck, long brown coat unbuttoned. His hair glistened like polished red gold. His eyes glowed, filled with the heat of the earth. I think my mouth was hanging open. Maybe I drooled.

Beside me, Rupert jutted his chin, the gesture drawing the cop's attention across the street. “Once or twice a winter we have a rare, early thaw, a sun-day. The entire town turns out for a few hours to enjoy it, to appreciate that winter will eventually end, and warmer, better times will come.”

Across the street, the bakers were on the sidewalk in their shirtsleeves, old man Shamus doing a little jig. He danced toward his wife and they linked arms, feet kicking. His wife laughed aloud and the sound of their singing caroled across the street, a song I half remembered from town dances. Her name was Do'rise, I recalled. I'd like to dance with Thadd, a horizontal rumba with lots of turns and dips.

As my awareness of Thadd increased, the mage-heat rose, and the call of the amethyst in the storeroom woke. A purple splendor sang through my blood, begging to be taken.

“What are they doing?” Thadd asked.

“Clogging,” Rupert said. “A dance with its roots in the Highlands of the British Isles. What can we do for you? After two p.m., of course. You couldn't buy an egg or get a newspaper until then.”

“I hear you were at the council meeting last evening, and offered to make the town a loan for mage-help to melt the ice caps.”

Rupert shrugged. “Word gets around. It's worth considering. If the town officials and Lucas and I can work out an acceptable business arrangement.”

Thadd nodded, his eyes following the activity down the street. My gaze followed his. From every doorway, the townspeople emerged, lifting faces and arms toward the sun, some singing, some praising the Most High, some kissing passionately and disappearing inside to reemerge on porches or roofs, then dropping from sight for a session of lovemaking in the sun. Some called out psalms of glory for the sunlight and the warmth; others hugged their children, ran into the street, and started snowball fights with melting snow.

Behind us, Audric stepped from the doorway, dropped a canvas bag, and stretched high before bending and dropping his hands slowly to the ground, knuckles scraping the crusted snow. I wanted to see Thadd do that. Maybe without the business suit.

“The town fathers just hired a plane to take a look at the caps,” Thadd said. “I hear you're footing the bill.”

Rupert shrugged again. “Why should I offer to pay for mage-help if the caps are so unstable there's no time to get a mage here? It's good business. Now, go away. My partners and I need to play.”

“One last thing,” Thadd said, “strictly personal. Should it be proved that Lucas is deceased, what happens to that portion of Grampa's estate?”

“It's complicated. But we'll work something out. Or maybe your mother will make the investment with her portion.”

An elder stepped from a house down the block, his brown robe open, exposing long johns, boots loose on his shins. He began to sing, face raised to the sun, a hymn about all things bright and beautiful. Others joined in, four-part harmony echoing off the buildings.

Rupert and Audric and I clasped hands and meandered toward the Toe River, following a line of people already heading that way, leaving Thadd behind. I tried to turn and go back to him, but Audric put an arm around my shoulders and so did Rupert, effectively trapping me between them.

“See?” Audric said.

“Weird,” Rupert said. “Like she's seraph struck.”

“Yeah,” I breathed. “Sorta like that.”

 
He scooped up water in the dipper and drank sparingly. His thirst wasn't so bad, now that he was being fed. The bread brought by Malashe-el tasted better than any bread he had ever eaten and seemed almost magical in its restorative properties. He could tell, even in the dark, that the flesh of his wrists and hands was healing. The stink of gangrene was almost gone, and he had never heard of anything that could reverse gangrene. The bread had to be responsible. Ergo, it wasn't ordinary bread. It was something new.