“Daughter of the Flames by Nancy Holder

has a unique plot that will keep readers

hooked from start to finish.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews, 4½ stars

Jean-Marc stood alone in a shimmering aura of blue light.

His long, wild hair was caught back in a ponytail. His dark eyes blazed. A terrible anger came off him in waves, and she remembered the first rule she had made for herself when she had met him: Never piss off Jean-Marc.

He gazed down at her. His lips parted and she felt his breath on her forehead. Determined not to betray herself again, she resolutely matched his gaze, raising her chin and tipping back her head. An inch closer, and his mouth would press against hers.

“You can’t be here,” she told him. “You just had major surgery.”

“I heal fast,” he said. “I’m a Gifted.”

“So am I.” And if you had died, I would never have gotten over it.

Dear Reader,

As I write this note, my daughter, Belle, has just finished her third year as a Brownie Girl Scout, and is now a Junior Girl Scout. To mark the occasion, our service unit put on an elaborate bridging ceremony. I watched my daughter eagerly cross a small wooden bridge—Brownie on one side, Junior on the other—with wistfulness and pride. I, too, have crossed many bridges in my life. Some I burned (!) and some I tripped merrily across. But to be honest, I didn’t want to cross a lot of them. I wanted to stay where I was, where I felt safe.

In Daughter of the Blood, Isabella DeMarco must cross a bridge from her old life to her new one. I hope that as you read about her journey, you’ll remember that you, too, have taken that scary first step many times. That makes you a true heroine in my book. In nearly every instance, once I’m across I’m glad I did it. But sometimes that first step requires a tremendous act of faith. Please write me about your own courageous crossings at www.nancyholder.com, and visit me at bombshellauthors.com.

Be bold!

Nancy Holder

Daughter of the Blood
Nancy Holder

www.millsandboon.co.uk

NANCY HOLDER

is a bestselling author of nearly eighty books and two hundred short stories. She has received four Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association, and her books have been translated into two dozen languages. A former ballet dancer, she has lived all over the world and currently resides in San Diego, California, with her daughter, Belle. She would love to hear from readers at www.nancyholder.com.

In memory of Jehanne D’Arc, the Maid of Orleans,

valiant warrior and commander.

To my Gifted daughter, Belle,

bridge-crosser par excellence.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

Acknowledgments:

With sincere thanks to the Silhouette Bombshell team: Tara Parsons, Natashya Wilson, Charles Griemsman and my acquiring editor, Julie Barrett. To all the terrifically talented, bright and courageous Bombards, my deep appreciation and gratitude for all the support, advice and friendship. Deepest thanks to my agent and friend, Howard Morhaim, who has guided my career and fed me well, and his assistant, Katie; and to my most excellent Webmaster and fellow soldier, Sam Devol. Also to Persephone, buffybuds, litvamp, SF-FWs, bryantstreet, novelscribes and JoysofResearch, especially Pat MacEwen, Val and Gerald. To Karen Hackett, Linda Wilcox, Christie Holt, Ashley McConnell, Leslie Jones Ackel, Elise Jones, Sandra Morehouse, Richard Wilkinson, Skylah Wilkinson, Wayne Holder, Anny Caya, Lucy Walker, Kym Rademacher, Susi Frant, Terri Yates, Monica Elrod, Barbara Nierman, Margie Morel and Steve Perry. Deepest thanks to Susan Wiggs and Gillian Horvath. And a deep bow to Andy Thompson and everyone at Family Karate, especially our dear friends Haley and Amy Schricker.

As a grateful citizen, I thank NYPD detective Edward Conlon, author of Blue Blood; and NYPD police officer Chris Florens, who wore the flower my daughter gave him behind his ear, and let her wear his hat. Last but certainly not least, my heartfelt thanks to Special Agent Jeff Thurman, not only for his friendship, but for the many years of hard work he has put into making this world a safer place. REV, o makunda o makunde.

Chapter 1

New York

T he moon was a flickering, low-watt streetlamp threatening to go out any second. Sirens roared in the New York City jungle of burned-out tenements and rusted cars. Bottom-dwelling predators—dealers, pimps, ’kickers and gangbangers glided through the misery and poverty of the urban landscape surrounded by snowdrifts, garbage and needles.

It was the last hour of third watch, the end of Izzy DeMarco’s very first shift as an NYPD rookie. She and her field training officer, Patrolman Juan Torres, were escorting Sauvage, a young goth from Brooklyn, to her boyfriend’s place. The building was not very nice, but at least the graffiti on the bricks was random and crude, lacking the trademark tags claiming the building for some gang. Gang territory was worse news than basic low-rent squalor.

Sauvage had promised to stay here until the department located Izzy’s former coworker, Julius Esposito, and took him into custody. Sauvage had witnessed Esposito, who had worked with Izzy in the property room, shaking down a corner boy—a street dealer—for money and contraband. She hadn’t seen him commit murder, but Esposito was also wanted in connection with the possible homicide of Detective First Grade Jason Attebury, also of the Two-Seven.

Detective Pat Kittrell—what should Izzy call him, her lover? her boyfriend?—had argued that Izzy needed protective custody of her own. Although he had no concrete evidence to back up his case, Pat was sure Esposito was the shooter who had taken aim at Izzy’s father in a burning tenement fire—and missed. If he wanted one DeMarco dead, he might want two. Pat was furious when Izzy was assigned to escort Sauvage to a so-called safehouse, and he had half a mind to go to Captain Clancy and tell her so.

Torn between feeling flattered and patronized, Izzy had demanded that Pat stand down and back way off. The last thing she needed was a gold shield lecturing her boss about how to use a new hire.

I’m a cop. Finally. And I sure as hell knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

Besides, Sauvage had declared that Izzy was the only person in New York whom she trusted. With white makeup, black eyes and scarlet lips, costumed in her evil Tinkerbell finery—black-and-red bustier, lacy skirt and leggings topped by a pea coat, with combat boots sticking out underneath—Sauvage cut an exotic figure beside Izzy, who had on her brand-new NYPD blues. Izzy wore no makeup, and her riot of black corkscrew curls were knotted regulation-style, poking out from the back of her hat. Dark brows, flashing chestnut eyes, and unconcealed freckles danced across her small nose—Izzy had never aspired to fashion-model looks, but some men—okay, Pat—said she was a natural beauty. She didn’t know about that. But she did look exactly as she had imagined she would look in her uniform, and she was very proud.

“Okay, so where is your boyfriend?” Torres thundered at Sauvage as the three stamped their chilly feet on the stoop of the building. Izzy blew on her hands. She had forgotten her gloves. Torres had not. He was bundled up against the night air, and he had a few extra pounds of his own to keep himself warm. And onion breath. Their vehicle reeked of it.

Huffing, Sauvage jabbed the buzzer repeatedly with her blood-red fingernail. About ten minutes ago, back in the squad car, Sauvage had let her boyfriend, Ruthven, know they were on their way, and he’d assured her that he was in the apartment cooking her a big bowl of brown rice and veggies—with a supply of her favorite clove cigarettes at the ready.

“I don’t know why he’s not answering,” Sauvage muttered. “He is so dead.”

Let’s hope not, Izzy thought, a chill clenching her gut, but she remained silent.

From his jacket pocket, Torres handed Sauvage his cell phone and said, “Call him and tell him to get this door open ASAP.”

Sauvage obeyed, punching in numbers. She waited a moment, then looked up from the cell phone and said, “It’s not making any noise.”

Izzy’s anxiety level increased. She turned her head, surveying the street, tilting back her head as she scanned the grimy windows. A few of them had been boarded over.

“Try mine,” Izzy offered, pulling her Nokia out of her dark-blue coat and handing it to Sauvage. Meanwhile, Torres was depressing buttons on his cell phone as he exhaled his stinky onion breath, which curled like smoke around his face.

Sauvage took Izzy’s phone, punched in the number and murmured, “C’mon, c’mon” under her breath. She closed her kohl-rimmed eyes and pursed her blood-red lips as if she were trying to send her boyfriend a message via ESP.

“Nope,” she announced, shaking her head and holding the phone out to Izzy. “It doesn’t work, either.”

Izzy listened to the dead air and frowned.

Torres said, “I just called in. I’m not getting anything. Let’s go to pagers.”

They whipped them out. Nothing.

Torres announced, “I’m going to the car.”

He jogged about ten feet down the block to their squad car. After about half a minute, he was out of the car and looking in the trunk.

He came back with their twelve-gauge shotgun.

“Hijo de puta ,” he groused. “Computer’s out. Radio phone’s not working, either.”

“How can that be?” Sauvage asked, sounding frightened. “You guys are the police. Your stuff is always supposed to work.”

A frisson shot up Izzy’s spine. This all seemed familiar in a way she could not define. The cold, the phones not working…

“I think we should get out of here,” she said. “Let’s take Sauvage to the precinct.”

“No, we can’t go,” Sauvage fretted, hunching her shoulders. She tapped the column of nameplates and jabbed the same button. “He’s here. We can buzz someone else who lives here and get them to let us in.” She ran her finger up and down the list. “Here’s a cool one—Linda Wilcox.”

“No,” Torres said. “It’s his place or we’re not going in.”

Izzy thought about arguing. Maybe something had happened to Ruthven. Something bad. Maybe it was happening right now. Ten—make that fifteen—minutes ago, he had been cooking something for his girlfriend to eat. Izzy sincerely doubted he’d left to go buy some more zucchini.

“I’m going across the street to call for backup,” Torres said.

There was a little mom-and-pop convenience store across the street, signs in the window for Colt 45, cigarettes and lotto tickets.

“Let’s go together,” Izzy suggested. “Something is seriously wrong.”

He said, “I’m only going across the street. You two should keep trying the buzzer.”

Then he split, taking full advantage of the lull in the oncoming traffic to jaywalk between parked cars.

Uneasy and cold, Izzy checked her watch again. Forty-eight minutes to go. She knew that Big Vince, her father, was counting each minute, too, waiting for her call to assure him that she had come through her first tour safe and sound. A veteran patrol officer, Big Vince hated that she had become a cop, which was exactly what she had predicted. He wanted his little girl safe and protected from the cold, harsh world, not out in it protecting others.

As soon as this detail was over, she’d phone Big Vince and assure him that he could go back to bed. Then she’d meet up with Pat, debrief, celebrate. Pat Kittrell, a detective second grade in the NYPD, was the man who had helped her fulfill her dream of becoming a cop. Encouraged her, supported her, even helped her overcome her phobia of guns.

He had bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate. They’d go to his place, pop the cork, toast…and then they would make love. As on edge as she was, her body became energized with the thought of his hands on her body, of how it felt when they started the dance. She could smell his musky scent, feel the smoothness of his lips, hear his voice whispering her name in her ear just before he slid into her warm and willing body.

“What is taking him, like, forever?” Sauvage asked Izzy, jolting her out of her reverie. Sauvage tap-danced against the pavement in her combat boots. “I don’t like this.”

Izzy didn’t either like it, either.

“Let’s check the store,” she said to Sauvage.

“Be careful of the ice,” Sauvage cautioned her, as she herself slipped and slid, grabbing Izzy’s hand.

When they reached the crosswalk, Izzy reached out to depress the pedestrian signal. As soon as she touched it, the streetlight above them flickered a few times and went out, casting them in relative darkness.

“What the—?” Sauvage muttered, gazing upward.

In the same instant, a black panel truck roared around the corner on the same side of the street as the convenience store and squealed up to the curb. Izzy yanked Sauvage back, hard. The front bumper missed Sauvage’s left knee by inches.

Izzy aimed her weapon as the passenger door burst open and a dark silhouette leaped out. She recognized the pomaded hair—Julius Esposito—just as he lunged at her and slammed something against her arm. There was a sharp, painful jolt.

Taser.

Her vision fragmented into gray, shiny dots and there was a scream out in the world or maybe that was the nerves in her ears going haywire. She began to convulse, and she hit the icy sidewalk hard, her arms and legs twitching. For a few forevers, everything shorted out. Then as she swam back, her head began to throb.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought.

It took her a while to wrap her right hand around the grip of her revolver and get to her feet. Her left ankle hurt worse than her head. Bad sprain.

The car was long gone, but Esposito was two blocks ahead of her, dragging Sauvage on foot down the street. She was shrieking and batting at him. Esposito didn’t pay her the slightest attention. Neither did the solitary man staggering drunkenly past them in a pair of earmuffs over a do-rag and a black Mets jacket.

Izzy shouted, “Stop! Police! Torres! Torres, get out here!”

Esposito was hustling out of her kill zone—too far away to shoot. And she might hit Sauvage or Mets.

She was surprised that Esposito had taken Sauvage.

Why didn’t he drag her into the truck and tell his wheelman to take off? Obviously, he wants me to follow him.

Great.

Her best bet was to sic her uninjured partner on him. The mom-and-pop loomed across the street like a journey of a thousand miles. It took her a supreme effort to walk, but she put her pain on hold as she started across the street. She was still holding her gun, but she let her arm drop to her side, concealing it from view.

A bell on the front door of the shop tinkled as she rushed inside. The store smelled of tobacco and floor cleaner, and the clerk, a short Asian man, leaned over the counter at the front and pointed toward the opposite end of the store.

He said, “He go into the alley.”

“Did he use your phone?” she asked, as she made her way down an aisle of canned lychee nuts and Japanese rice crackers. She spread her thumb and forefinger and held them against the side of her face like a phone. “Did he call the police?”

“No call,” the man informed her, shaking his head. “No working.” He held up his white portable unit as if to corroborate his testimony, and shrugged apologetically.

Why aren’t the phones working? What is going on?

“Try again. Call 911! Tell them officers are in pursuit, on foot. Perp armed and dangerous. And tell ’em all the radios are jammed up down here.”

“It no working,” the man insisted.

“Keep trying!” she bellowed.

She burst through the back door into the alley. There were Dumpsters and trash cans, but no Torres.

She whirled in a circle, shouting, “Torres! Damn it! Where are you?”

There was no answer.

Figuring he’d circled back around, she flew back through the store and burst outside again.

No Torres there, either.

Damn it, she thought.

Esposito had put a lot of distance between himself and her. Alone, without backup, she hobbled through East Harlem, one of the more impoverished neighborhoods in all of New York City. Fifth Avenue to the East River, Ninety-Sixth to One Hundred and Fifteenth Street. Night was a heavy lead weight slung across her shoulders, a sudden dumping of snow flurries slowing her pace as surely as the pain freezing up her ankle.

Esposito maintained at least a fifty-yard lead, despite the fact that he was dragging Sauvage and she was fighting him every step. The young goth’s black combat boots kept scooting out from underneath her on the icy sidewalk; now he was screaming at her over his shoulder and brandishing his gun. Izzy wondered how long Sauvage would be able to struggle. Beneath her pea coat, her black-and-red bustier must be constricting her breathing, and her skirts were wrapped around her legs like a shroud.

A handful of curious street people—“skels” in police parlance—materialized on door stoops and alley entrances to watch the excitement. She wondered if she should tell one of them to call for help. Probably the better course was for them not to know that she needed help.

She kept going.

Then a voice inside her head said, You need to hustle. You’re on point. She’s going to die.

And you’ll be next .

Izzy jerked, hard, and nearly fell. She knew that voice. It had whispered to her in her nightmares for over a decade, speaking in riddles, promising death. She’d gone to see a shrink about it; her father wanted her to talk to their priest.

But I’m awake, she thought. I’m awake and I’m hearing it.

She took her attention off Esposito and looked all around herself—at shadows and the icy falling snow.

“Who’s there?” she called.

Allez, vite, it told her. French, which she did not speak. But which she seemed to understand, if her dreams were any indication of her linguistic abilities. For the voice often spoke to her in French. And sometimes she woke herself up, responding aloud, also in French.

Hurry. Stop him. Or they’ll die. And it will be your fault .

Then a gun went off. Izzy ducked behind a row of newspaper dispensers. She felt no compression of air, heard no impact, no telltale ping of a casing. Had someone taken a potshot at her? More important, would they take another? Was that the deal—Esposito would lure her into the line of fire and someone else would gun her down?

She inched cautiously around the dispensers and started back up the street. Her mother’s gold filigree crucifix was wedged between her breasts, flattened by her brand-new Kevlar bulletproof vest. The facing on her polyester shirt itched against her sensitive skin. She was uncomfortable and she was scared and she was mad as hell.

She had no idea how she crossed the next block without being hit by oncoming traffic, but she did it. Then she saw Esposito and Sauvage at the end of the block, racing catty-corner to a high-rise tenement. On the upper floors, flames shot from blown-out windows, licking and curling at the pitted exterior. Smoke billowed like wavy hair from the roof.

Esposito darted inside.

She got to the curb and raced into the building, yelling “Fire!” She limp-ran past the long row of tenants’ brown metal mailboxes and raced down the carpeted hall. There was no smoke yet, and she smelled garbage, marijuana and urine.

“Fire! Call 911!” she bellowed, pounding her fist on the nearest door. She lurched past the cracked, peeling wall to the next door. “Fire! Get out now! Leave the building! The building’s on fire!”

Through an open door to her right, watery light blinked above a wooden staircase topped with an Art Deco rail. She stopped, cocking her head, and detected a distant shuffling noise—rapid footfalls on wood.

She gripped the rail with her left hand and pulled herself up the stairs, her Medusa pointed toward the ceiling. Her ankle screamed in protest.

At the second-story landing, she tried the doorknob that led into the hallway. It was locked. She didn’t know if that meant Esposito had gone in that way and locked it after himself, and she debated for an instant—force the door open, or go up another story?

She decided to stick with the stairway. If he wanted her to follow him, he wouldn’t throw obstacles in her path. He’d make it easy for her.

Just like Torres made it easy for him to attack me. Is he in on it? Where is he now?

Maybe Esposito’s objective was to make sure she died in the fire. Something about that tugged at her. Dying by fire. Dying in fire. That had something to do with her. With her heritage.

What heritage? I’m a second-generation cop and my brains have been scrambled by a stun gun, she thought. I don’t know anyone who’s died in a fire. I don’t even know any firefighters.

As she climbed, she heard people screaming, and she smelled thick, oily smoke. The fire was traveling rapidly to the lower floors.

On the third floor, the hallway door hung ajar. Beyond it, the hall lights were dim, smoke curling around the sconce directly across from her. Then she looked down and noticed a three-inch piece of black lace—from Sauvage’s skirt?—draped across the transom.

Izzy painfully bent down, picked it up and examined it. Had to be. The more important question was, was it Sauvage or Esposito who had left it there for her to find? Maybe Esposito was hiding behind that open door right now, waiting to blow her head off.

Her scalp prickled. Extending her Medusa with both hands, she kicked open the door and darted into the hallway, sweeping a circle. The hallway was filling with smoke. Apartment doors slammed open as the frightened occupants spilled out of their homes. They began running toward the front of the building—toward an elevator, Izzy feared—a very, very bad thing to do in a fire.

Breaking whatever cover she had left, Izzy shouted, “Stairs! Here!” and made broad gestures to get their attention. The three or four closest to her hurried over, and she waggled the flashlight toward the stairs, bellowing, “Move it! Get out now! Go down the stairs and go across the street! Call 911 when you get outside!”

If their phones would work.

She lurched toward the back. As the terrified civilians swarmed past her, she yelled, “This is the police! Stay calm! Walk to the stairs!”

As she moved in deeper, curls of smoke rolled toward her in waves. She snatched off her hat with her left hand and waved it in front of herself, trying to keep her vision clear. A tiny, wizened man with walnut-hued skin ran past her with a barking Chihuahua in his arms.

“Po-lice!” he yelled, smiling at Izzy. “Po-lice done come! Hallelujah!”

“Take the stairs,” she told him, gesturing behind herself. “Don’t take the elevator.”

He gave her a wink and said, “Oui, ma guardienne. Merci. ”

Izzy jerked. What the hell? That seemed familiar too, being called ma guardienne . Part of her life.

She realized with a start that she had seen this hallway before, too. She looked to the left and spotted the fire extinguisher, just as she’d expected to see it in that location. There was the deep, jagged crack in the wall.

Her heart skipped beats as she remembered when and where she had seen it before:

In her vision in the restaurant.

At lunch she had watched her father as if by remote camera, only it was all in her mind. He was on a detail, walking along this exact same corridor—also during a fire. She had been sitting in a deli blocks away, but she had seen him as clearly as if she’d been there with him. She had known someone in the hall was raising a gun and taking aim, and she had shouted, “Hit the floor! ”

In her head.

And Big Vince had heard her in his head, and obeyed. The shooter had missed, and her father had lived to tell the tale, labeling it a miracle from heaven.

Big Vince wasn’t here now, but if the rest of the vision held true, there was a perp hiding at a hallway intersection off to her right, his gun pointed at her skull—and she was certain now that it had been Esposito, and that he had lured her here so he could enact the same ritual execution he’d planned for her father.

She dove to the floor and rolled onto her side, aiming her gun at the appropriate angle, aware that there was no safety on a revolver, and the last thing she wanted to do was shoot an innocent bystander.

There! She saw movement…seconds before the sconce in the wall above her head went out. Now the intersection plunged into darkness, but she still knew there was definitely someone there.

She drew another breath, keeping her arms outstretched. Her muscles began to quiver with fatigue. Her Medusa was heavy, fully loaded with six cartridges in the cylinder…

No, there are five , the voice said in her head. You used it, remember?

She blinked. She hadn’t used it. If she had, she’d be facing hours of paperwork and at least a couple of Internal Affairs interviews. Discharging a weapon while on duty was a huge deal.

Despite the darkness, she glanced downward, in the direction of her gun. Her eyes widened and her lips parted in sheer terror as little sparks wicked off her hands.

I’m on fire! she thought, as she rolled over on her side. But she wasn’t in any pain. The sparks multiplied. She was glowing .

Then the light vanished, and she wondered if she had imagined the whole thing. Maybe it was some kind of taser aftereffect.

A voice called, “Iz?” as a tall, rangy figure stepped from the smoke and shadows, into the light of the central corridor.

It was Pat. He was holding both a flashlight and a gun—a .357 Magnum. His deep-green eyes glittered in the soft yellow light that burnished the planes and hollows of his face.

“Jesus, Iz.” He set down the flashlight as he gathered her up with his left arm. “When I heard it was Esposito…”

“I’m okay,” she said as he laced his fingers through hers, easing her to her feet as he swept the area with his gun. “I don’t know where Torres is. Did he call it in?”

“Must have,” he said. “Captain Clancy told me to get my butt over here. She didn’t need to tell me twice.”

Her leg buckled as she put weight on her injured ankle, and he kept her from falling, his face creasing with concern.

“I’m okay,” she said again, then realized that she had to be honest about her injury. They were on a mission. She confessed, “My ankle’s sprained. It hurts.”

“You stay here, then,” he ordered her as he retrieved his flashlight and clicked it off—a wise precaution, one she would have taken herself.

“No way,” she insisted, coughing as the smoke seeped back into her lungs. “I think he took her toward the back.”

He gazed at her and shook his head. “Don’t go all Jane Wayne on me, Officer. I’m getting you out of here.”

“He wants me to follow him. If I don’t take the bait, he might shoot her,” she argued.

With the stern expression of a detective who could make hardened gangbangers break down and cry after ten minutes in an interview room, Pat said, “You’re out, Iz. I’m on it.”

Coughing harder, she fanned the smoke away from them both with her hat.

“She’s on my watch,” Izzy insisted. “I’m thinking the fire escape. Let’s go.”

As she stepped forward, there was a loud ripping noise overhead. She gazed up, just as an enormous section of the ceiling dislodged and crashed to the floor. The impact threw her into Pat’s arms and he dragged her along the hallway as another section cracked free and smashed inches from her back.

An illuminated Exit sign buzzed and winked about ten feet ahead of them. Pat reached it first and pressed his hand on the metal door beneath it.

“It’s cool,” he reported. Meaning that there was no fire on the other side. Then he yanked it open.

Their feet clanged on metal; they had reached the fire escape, a metal rectangle from which ladderlike stairs angled upward and downward. Reflexively, they both looked up. Far above them, flames danced on the roof.

Then an eerie purplish-black light bloomed from below and streaked toward them like a missile. They both dropped to the floor of the fire escape; as it bobbed dangerously, the black light exploded against the open door and tore it off its hinges.

Bricks broke and flew outward; Pat threw himself on top of Izzy and bellowed, “Cover your head!”

A fragment of brick pelted her forearm. She heard a shower of pieces ringing against the metal floor. Pat grunted.

“Are you hurt?” she cried.

“No, I’m okay.” He gripped her shoulders. “Stay down. Here comes another one.”

“What’s going on?” she demanded, trying to jerk up her head. But Pat was in the way.

“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.

“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.

“If you please,” Michel said, reaching backward and pulling a hood over his hair.

Izzy did the same. She smelled lavender, and she was very warm.

Michel said to the gremlin, “Let’s begin.”

Raising their hands like scrubbed-in surgeons, he and D’Artagnon faced the altar. They took deep breaths, centering themselves; Izzy did the same, trying to let go of all the chatter in her brain—her anxiety, her fear. The smell of candle wax overlaid something more odious; she caught a whiff of a terrible stench and figured it was coming from the box. It did nothing to make her feel better.

D’Artagnon said something in French. Michel replied, then translated, “He’s worried about your being here. I told him you insisted.”

She looked from him to D’Artagnon, whose face was still hidden. He creeped her out. All of this creeped her out. “I’m staying,” she said to him.

D’Artagnon inclined his robed head. “S’il vous plait, Madame la Guardienne .”

“D’accord . Then do as we do, please,” Michel said. “Do not depart from our ritual.”

He and the gremlin extended their arms and began another chant. Izzy copied them, spreading her arms wide and trying to follow the singsong words, which they repeated in a complex pattern.

The chant seemed to go on endlessly, the stench to increase. A thin layer of something white appeared along the floor.

Michel said, “Don’t be alarmed. It’s for protection.”

It was a mist. It curled around her ankles, cool as whipped cream, smelling of lavender. It billowed up to her knees and grazed her hips, then it rushed all the way up to her chest. As it rose to the level of her chin, she backed out of it, although Michel and D’Artagnon remained inside, breathing deeply.

“It’s all right,” Michel said. “Come back in, please.”

She knew Michel would probably be happy if she bailed. But she stepped back into the fog, closing her eyes, and took an exploratory breath.

Despite the coolness of the vapor, it felt warm as it entered her body; it was soothing, like deep-heat rub on a sore joint. She exhaled and took another breath. The gentle lavender scent filled her nose. With a pang, she thought of the mingled fragrance of roses and oranges that had often accompanied Jean-Marc’s soothing spells. Would she ever smell it again?

Michel snapped his fingers, and she started, opening her eyes.

The mist thinned and drifted back toward the floor, condensing into puddles. The atmosphere grew darker, the room, cooler. The shadows themselves seemed braced for whatever came next.

Michael and the gremlin clapped their hands three times, bowed low and knelt on both knees on dry sections of the floor. Izzy’s stomach constricted as she knelt, too, and a cold chill washed over her. She trembled, hard.

“You’re sure you want to do this,” Michel said. “Once we begin, we can’t stop.”

“Yes.” Her voice broke. “I’m sure.”

“Et voilà ,” Michel said.

She and Michel began to glow again. On the altar, the lid of the white container popped open like a jack-in-the-box. From the interior, a curl of bruise-colored smoke drifted toward the ceiling. Another followed, roiling, billowing and folding in on itself.

“This is concentrated evil,” Michel informed her. “Please keep your distance until we take care of it.”

“Not a problem,” she muttered.

Enveloped in white light, he got to his feet and pulled an object from inside his robe. It was a golden athame encrusted with opals. Holding it like a switchblade, he cautiously approached the altar, as if the smoke were a wild animal that could spring at any time.

D’Artagnon also pulled an athame from his robe, his made of some sort of ebony material and free of decoration. Whispering another chant, the two arced their arms over their heads—Izzy saw D’Artagnon’s long, scaly arm—then whipped them downward and began slicing at the smoke. Wherever their knives connected, the smoke solidified into chunks, which then crashed to the floor. The chunks glowed like embers, then sputtered out.

After a few minutes, no more smoke poured out of the box. The floor was littered with purplish-black briquettes that reeked of decomposition, overpowering the lavender scent.

Panting, both Michel and D’Artagnon lowered their arms to their sides. Michel said to Izzy, “Please come to the altar, but don’t touch any of that. It’s still very powerful stuff.”

I’m glad I put my shoes back on, she thought as she cautiously tiptoed on the balls of her feet to his side.

Michel and D’Artagnon genuflected to the altar. She had seen Jean-Marc do the same at any magical altar he encountered. For the first time since her journey into the world of the Gifted had begun, Izzy did, too.

God forgive me, she prayed, feeling blasphemous.

Holding their athames overhead like flashlights, Michel and D’Artagnon approached the box. After a moment’s hesitation, Izzy approached, as well. She didn’t have the athame Jean-Marc had made for her, and she had no idea where it was.

Weaponless, she looked inside.

The container was filled with a black, throbbing mass of goolike substance that stank like rotten meat. She covered her mouth and her eyes watered.

This is what’s left of Julius Esposito? Had he even been human?

As she watched, the center section of the jelly moved, breaking apart, and in the indentation, a round, human-size eye with a deep-brown iris glared up at her. Her gorge rose and she fought hard not to scream. In that single eye she could see life…and evil.

“Stop looking at it, madame,” Michel ordered her.

Sickened, she turned away.

“More than bokor, ” Michel commented, with the air of a scientist examining a microscope slide. “What was he messing with?”

The temperature in the room dipped; it was like a meat locker. Izzy shivered, hard. Every instinct for self-preservation was telling her to get the hell out of there. Michel had warned her that this would be unpleasant, but it was horrible. She could barely tolerate the sensation of menace crawling over her.

Then a voice bounced off the stone walls: “Give me back my soul .” It was a low, terrified howl, and it shook Izzy to her core.

Michel grunted, still peering inside the box. “Malchance magic, I’m sure of it,” he murmured. “They’re good at soul stealing.”

D’Artagnon said, “Oui .”

“Julius Esposito,” Michel said into the box, “I call on you. Who captured your soul?”

“Give me back my soul. ”

“Tell us who has it, and we’ll retrieve it for you,” Michel soothed. “We can do that. We’re Gifted. We’ll help you.” Beneath the warmth of his promises, there was an unmistakable edge. He was lying. Izzy wondered if Esposito knew it, too.

“My soul! ”

Or perhaps Esposito was beyond caring. He was in agony. She had never heard such terrible despair in her life, and that included her father’s pleas to God Himself to bring his beloved wife, Anna Maria, back from the dead.

D’Artagnon murmured something to Michel, who nodded in reply. D’Artagnon extended his athame into the box.

“Stay well back,” Michel ordered Izzy.

There was a terrible shriek. The white candle on the altar flickered. The statue of Jehanne shifted.

New mist billowed from the floor, very white, very concentrated, so redolent of lavender that Izzy’s eyes watered. Neither Michel nor D’Artagnon paid it any attention. But the smell was choking her, making her cough and gag. The mist hung like a curtain between her and the altar.

A second, more horrible shriek followed.

The candles in the candelabra went out. A cold wind whistled around the room.

“What are you doing?” Izzy demanded, stumbling forward. She craned her neck—

A burst of brilliance filled her field of vision.

“Don’t look!” Michel cried.

But it was too late.

Where is your gun, Guardienne? He will take the gun and he will end the House of the Flames. You have to secure your gun. You have to do it now.

Izzy was running in the nightmare forest, dodging branches that grabbed at her as the wolves howled in a ring around her, their hot breath bathing the blood-red moon. The silver wolf at her side darted ahead, diving into the cattails at the murky bayou shoreline. Its tail bobbed like a periscope as the wolf searched frantically, howling and chuffing.

Baying, the other wolves charged in after the silver one, disappearing into the cattails. Water splashed as they all jumped in, and Izzy called out, “No! This way!”

The bayou was crawling with death. It was all around them. They had to get out.

“This way!” she yelled again.

Sharp rocks sliced her feet as she ran to a trio of cypress trees jutting from the water. She heard herself sobbing for breath.

The moon raced across the sky as if hunted like her. Death was coming like a whirlwind.

Pressing her fists against her abdomen as she sucked in air, she glanced up. Her lips parted in terror. Something hung from the center tree…a man…

She saw his shoes, and then his legs…

It was Jean-Marc, gutted, hanging from the tree, his face blackened, worms crawling from his empty eye sockets.

“It didn’t happen!” she shouted. “You showed me this before and—”

And he’s lying in surgery with his chest cracked open, a voice whispered to her. He’s dying, and he will rot, just like this. And it will be your fault.

Get your gun.

Chapter 4

I have to get my gun. I have to stop it.

Thrashing, Izzy sat bolt upright. A damp cloth tumbled from her forehead onto her lap, which was swathed in white satin sheets. Beneath the bedclothes, she was wearing an ivory satin nightgown. The rose quartz necklace, the ring and her crucifix still hung around her neck. Andre’s gris-gris was missing.

“Shh, Guardienne, it’s all right. You’re safe,” a woman’s voice murmured. Annette, her mother’s nurse, leaned over her.

“What happened?” she said thickly, as she tried to pick up the cloth. Two veiled women were holding her hands. “Where am I?”

“You’re in your bedroom in the mansion.” Annette took the cloth from Izzy and placed it on a silver tray on a dark wood nightstand beside the bed. She saw gray stone walls, heavy dark furniture and a massive fireplace similar to the one in the safehouse back in New York. In fact, the room was very like the one Jean-Marc had prepared for her in New York. Perhaps it was to make her more comfortable. The truth was, she found both rooms horribly oppressive.

“Reading the bokor’s corpse was too much for you. It made you very ill. We rushed you in here and took care of you. The doctor left only a few minutes ago to check on the regent and your mother.”

She remembered the agents, the box, the gremlin and the eye. And Esposito pleading for his soul. Everything past that was fuzzy.

Annette gestured to the dozen or so veiled women standing around the bed, holding each other’s hands. One of them was curled up beside Izzy on the bed.

“The Femmes Blanches linked up with you and shared their magical essence with you. The doctor gave you oxygen and ran some tests. Your electrolytes were severely imbalanced. That’s been corrected.”

“Thank you,” she said, and then, “What did we find out from the reading?”

A figure moved from the darkness and approached the end of Izzy’s bed. It was Louise. She said, “I’d like to clear the room before we discuss that.”

The Femmes Blanches moved and shifted. Izzy nodded at Annette, who seemed to be in charge. The woman holding her right hand released her. The veiled woman who was seated beside Izzy gave her left hand a squeeze and slid off the bed, joining her sisters as they walked toward the door.

“Please, if you weren’t on duty in my mother’s chamber, go home,” Izzy told them.

The Femmes Blanches had made a vocation of keeping vigil over Izzy’s mother. They worked in shifts, took vacations, and some of them even had jobs. They didn’t live in the mansion. Some had homes in the garden district, and a few occupied funky bungalows and elegant apartments in the French quarter itself.

Once the women had filed out of the room, Louise said to Annette, “You, too, ma’am.”

Annette shifted, unsure.

“It’s all right,” Izzy told her, although she was equally unsure.

As soon as Annette had closed the door behind herself, Louise said, “First, I want you to know that this is the most heavily warded space in all of Bouvard territory. Nothing gets out, nothing comes in. That’s the only reason I’m going to speak so freely.”

“Okay,” Izzy said.

“Esposito gave up Alain de Devereaux’s location. Devereaux is being held in an abandoned convent on Rue de Gas-connes. Michel took Madame Sange and a sizable security team to extract him.”

“Michel…left? ” Izzy asked, her eyes widening. Abandoned her, her mother and Jean-Marc after a direct assault?

Louise’s expression was shuttered. Izzy couldn’t read her tone of voice, either, as she said, “It was a hard decision, madame. Michel wanted to survey the situation firsthand. If we can prove that the Malchances engineered the attack and the kidnapping, the Grand Covenate will have no choice but to punish them.”

Izzy didn’t know what to make of that. She had been going on the assumption that most members of the Bouvard family distrusted the Grand Covenate, the governing body of all the Gifted families, clans and tribes. She knew that the last time the Grand Covenate had intervened, Jean-Marc, who was a member of the House of the Shadows, was selected to act as the regent of the House of the Flames. The choice of an outsider from a different family caused a great deal of resentment. The fact that Michel hadn’t contacted the Grand Covenate immediately after the attack bolstered her opinion that he would prefer not to deal with them at all.

She asked, “How many people know what happened to me? That I’ve been unconscious?”

“Very few. Michel ordered strict need-to-know,” Louise informed her. She added, before Izzy could ask, “Your mother’s condition is unchanged. The regent is out of surgery and the doctor is cautiously optimistic.”

Izzy reeled with relief. Oh, thank you, Patroness. Oh, my dear God, thank you.

“Is the regent conscious?” Izzy asked. She needed to see him, to touch him, to be sure that it was true. She needed to hear his voice. See those dark eyes flecked with gold.

“No, and we’re keeping that under wraps as well,” Louise told her. “We’ve got our best guarding him and your mother both.” She lifted her chin. “I’ve been assigned to you.”

“Good,” Izzy said. “Thank you.” She spied the nightstand beside the bed and, on impulse, slid open the top drawer. Her gris-gris lay coiled inside. Pleased, she draped it over her shoulders. She could feel its enfolding warmth. She decided to take it to Jean-Marc.

Izzy glanced at a large ebony clock on the mantel. It was exactly twelve.

She pointed to the clock. “Is that noon or midnight?”

“Midnight,” Louise told her.

Izzy was shocked. She’d been out for an entire day.

She rubbed her forehead as pain blossomed behind her eyes. Then a sudden, sharp image hit her—cattails and cypress trees, the bayou—she saw it all. Remembered it all.

“Madame?” Louise said, instantly on alert.

The pain intensified. Izzy rasped out, “Alain de Devereaux isn’t in a building. He’s in the bayou. You need to let Michel know. He’s searching in the wrong place.”

Louise scrutinized Izzy, cocking her head. “Meaning no disrespect, madame, but D’Artagnon assisted with the reading. He’s the best we have.”

“Have him recheck,” Izzy said.

Louise shook her head. “The remains were destroyed during the first reading.”

“I know he’s not there,” Izzy insisted. “You have to contact Michel immediately.”

Louise shook her head. “His team is on silent running. So are the other search parties. They’re so heavily warded we can’t even contact them telepathically.”

“Then you have to go to Michel,” Izzy said. She rethought. That would waste time. “I need to accompany a team into the bayou. I’m the one who can lead them to him.”

Louise demurred. “Please, don’t even think of that. Michel gave strict orders that you were to rest.”

“Michel’s not here. He doesn’t know what I know. No one does.” Izzy threw her legs over the side of the bed and got to her feet.

Izzy said, “I’m in command here. We need to rescue Alain de Devereaux now .”

Izzy could practically see the wheels turning in the agent’s brain. She raised her hand to brush errant tendrils of hair from her forehead, feeling more warmth against her skin as her headache lessened. Her palm was glowing; white heat pulsated in the center of her flame-shaped scar. On impulse, she showed it to Louise.

“Remember, I carry the sign of the House of the Flames,” she said. She touched the ring. “And Michel himself handed over the ring. I need to make my orders stick, or there’s no point.”

Louise appeared to be thinking this over. Ice-water fingers crept down Izzy’s backbone as she wondered if she and Louise were facing off. If she was about to find out what her true status was after all.

Louise made her decision, squaring her shoulders and setting her jaw, saying stiffly, “As you wish, ma Guardienne . I’ll go with you.”

I am not the guardienne yet, Izzy wanted to say. But this most definitely was not the time to remind the agent of that.

She said, “Good. First I’ll go see Jean—”

Go now , said the voice. Or it will be too late .

She paused. Every part of her wanted to check on Jean-Marc first. But she knew she had to listen to the voice.

“What, madame?” Louise asked.

“Never mind. Where’s my gun?”

Louise hesitated, then reached inside her jacket and lifted Izzy’s Medusa out of her own holster.

“I took possession when you lost consciousness,” she said. “You have five .9 mm cartridges left. I’ll get you some more ammo.”

“Thank you,” Izzy said. “Now, we need a plan to rescue Alain without causing more havoc here in the mansion.”

“D’accord, ” Louise said. “Let’s work one out.”

It was a good one, given the short notice. One thing about growing up in the NYPD was that you learned that operations were far messier and more ad hoc than they were characterized in TV and the movies. Improvisation and crossed fingers comprised about fifty percent of a cop’s bag of tricks. So they had to leave a lot of holes that they would fill in as their mission got underway. It was the nature of the beast, and Izzy was good with that.

“Okay. Let’s go with what we have,” Izzy told her.

Louise half opened the door and peered out. “The Femmes Blanches are milling around out there.”

Izzy walked to the door and opened it. Veiled faces turned in her direction. Annette, who had been sitting in an ivory brocade chair beside a white marble statue of Jehanne, rose to her feet.

“Thank you for seeing to me,” Izzy told them. “I’m very grateful to you, and I’m all better now. Please resume your normal routine.”

Annette frowned. “You are our normal routine.”

“I’m fine,” Izzy insisted. “And I need some time by myself. I’ll have some guards. I insist,” she added, pushing.

Annette acquiesced with a bob of her head. “Oui, Guardienne .” She turned to the Femmes Blanches, and Izzy left it to her to disperse them.

From behind her Louise said, “I’ll make sure they leave.”

“Good,” Izzy said. “Meanwhile, I’ll get dressed.”

“Oui, Guardienne . The door will lock behind me. You’ll be able to get out, but no one but I will be able to get back in.”

With a bow Louise left, shutting the door, which clicked with finality. And Izzy wondered, not for the first time, if she had just become a prisoner.

Opening the armoire opposite the bed, she found all kinds of new clothes in her size. She pulled on black cargo pants and snaked a black turtleneck over her head. Jean-Marc, who had arranged for her wardrobe, had probably assumed she’d be wearing these clothes for training, not an actual mission.

Or had he? He had repeatedly warned her about the chaotic state of the House of the Flames. He had told her that blood was running in the streets of the French quarter, compliments of Le Fils. What then, had he been training her for, if not to get in on the action?

She found black wool socks and slipped them on. As she stepped into a new pair of black leather hiking boots, she glanced again at the antique ebony clock on the fireplace mantel. It was almost 1:00 a.m.

Her busy brain ran through worst-case scenarios. If word got out that she had left the mansion, an assassin might take that as his—or her—cue to kill Jean-Marc and her mother both.

I may be the only thing standing between Jean-Marc, Marianne and their enemies. Maybe I should leave Alain de Devereaux to his fate, no matter how awful it might be.

But what could she do to keep them safe? Her presence was not a guaranteed deterrent against any kind of attack on her mother and the regent. She had to play to her strengths: she stood a better chance of protecting them if she had backup she could count on. Allies. Real ones, not just assigned ones, like Michel and Louise. Jean-Marc trusted his cousin. That made saving Alain a priority. And if she could find Andre while she was at it, so much the better.

There was a sharp rap on the door. Louise entered. She was still wearing her suit, and an overstuffed olive-green duffel bag was slung across her shoulders. Sauvage and Ruthven followed her into the room. They had both washed their faces. Izzy had never seen Sauvage without her makeup, and their relative youth and obvious fear gave Izzy pause. Maybe this was not such a good idea….

Sauvage ran over to Izzy, giving her a rib-cracking hug. “One of those chicks with the head scarves said you’d been hurt,” she said, gazing up at Izzy with tears in her eyes.

“I’m okay,” Izzy said, touched.

Ruthven was bug-eyed and frightened as he slid his hands under his arms and bowed awkwardly.

“Hola, Your Majesty,” he said.

“Did Agent Bouvard explain what I want you to do?” Izzy asked Sauvage, dispensing with the formalities.

Sauvage nodded wildly. “Yes, Guardienne, oui-oui .” She reached out and grabbed Ruthven’s wrist, yanking his hand loose and waggling it. “We’re in, right, baby?”

Ruthven swallowed hard. “It won’t hurt her, right?”

“Right,” Louise replied, stepping forward, taking charge. She said to Sauvage, “You won’t feel a thing.”

There was another rap on the door. Louise paused, closed her eyes, then crossed and opened it. Another female agent in a black suit briskly stepped into the room. She also carried a duffel bag. She had flaming red hair, and her green eyes reminded Izzy of Pat’s. Izzy felt a pang. Would she ever see him again?

“Madame la Guardienne. ” She greeted Izzy with a curtsy. “My name is Mathilde. It’s such an honor.”

Mathilde dumped her duffel bag onto the floor, unzipped it and began pulling out black clothing similar to Izzy’s. There were two sets of everything.

“I thought we should wait to change in here. I didn’t want to rouse suspicion,” Louise explained, as she and the redhead took off their suit jackets and began to unbutton their white shirts.

“Yow,” Ruthven said, quickly turning his back.

The two agents quickly stripped down to sports bras and underwear. Their bodies were sinewy. At the base of her spine, Louise sported a tattoo identical to the scar on Izzy’s palm—the flame icon of the House of the de Bouvards—and Izzy hoped it was a sign that Louise was genuinely on her side. It was going to be a real bitch if they got out into the field and these women turned on Izzy.

As Louise slipped on a pair of black cargo pants, Mathilde said to her, “I made successful contact with the others.”

“Good.” Louise slipped what looked to be a pair of brass knuckles into a cargo pocket. To Izzy she said, “We’ll have two more inside, two outside. So we’re six. Plus you, madame.”

“That’s it?” Izzy asked.

“We’re all high-level magic users,” Louise assured her. She was grabbing grenades, some piano wire and boxes of ammo to stuff into her pockets. “And there’s safety in small numbers. We can travel fast, and hopefully stay under everybody’s radar.”

Izzy wondered who “everybody” was.

As Mathilde packed her own cargo pants with equipment, Louise reached into her duffel bag with one hand and gestured to Izzy’s Medusa on the bed with the other. “I’ve got that ammo I mentioned.”

Hearing that, Ruthven turned back around, as if eager to watch. He and Sauvage put their arms around each other, observing in silence as Louise pushed the flange on the left side of the cylinder, then eased the cylinder out of the frame.

“All you need right now is one more .9 mm,” Louise said, pressing a lipstick-shaped cartridge into the cylinder. That accomplished, she held it out to Izzy. “Remember, madame, there’s no safety.”

Mathilde, who was strapping on knee pads, stared at the Medusa and murmured, “Sweet,” as Izzy picked it up. Fully loaded, it was much heavier than before. “May I hold it, madame?”

Izzy hesitated, then handed it to her.

Mathilde hefted the Medusa, whistling soundlessly. Her interest bordered on lust, and she exhaled deeply, like a spent lover, when she passed it over to Louise. Izzy kept a lid on her growing anxiety; these women were crack shots, and they were the only two in the room who were armed. She wanted the Medusa back. Now.

“Did Jean-Marc have this made for you?” Louise asked, tracing Izzy’s portrait etched in the grip. Izzy was surprised that Louise didn’t know that the gun was Marianne’s. The picture of Izzy—or Marianne—had magically appeared during their training session in the Cloisters, back in New York.

Izzy picked up her gun belt and wrapped it around her waist, saying, “It’s my gun.”

She waited a beat. Louise stared back down at the Medusa and said, “If you don’t know how to use it, maybe I should keep it. It’s extremely powerful.”

“I know how to use it,” Izzy said steadily, even though that was pretty much a lie. But she wasn’t giving up her weapon to anyone.

Louise sighed and handed it over. Then she gathered up her hair and pulled on a black knit cap like Izzy’s. Mathilde did the same. They slipped on tight-fitting jackets. Louise handed one to Izzy. When she put it on, static electricity shocks went off like a trail of gunpowder.

Louise and Mathilde reached into their duffels and pulled out heavy-looking, webbed vests. Body armor. As Louise held one out, Mathilde stretched her arms through the armholes. Then she turned around and Louise fanned her fingers. There was a snick and Louise said, “You’re bolted.”

Mathilde did the same for her, down to the “bolting.” Then Louise retrieved a third vest for Izzy.

“If you need to get the vest off in a hurry, say this word. I’ll spell it for you,” Louise said. “T-e-r-m-i-n-u-s. Do you speak Latin?”

“Not really,” Izzy allowed. “I’ve heard a little. I’m Catholic,” she added.

The two women stopped moving and stared at her. Mathilde paled, while Louise blinked rapidly, her lips parting in shock.

Now what? Izzy wondered. They must have their own religion. Maybe I’m supposed to be their pope or something.

The moment passed—or rather, the agents chose to ignore it. Izzy put on knee pads. They checked each other out, running through a verbal checklist as each of them touched their pockets and verified possession of things they described in jargon: les sploders, wire, poprocks, choses, malfacteus .

When they were finished, Louise crossed over to Sauvage and said, “It’s showtime.”

“Oh, my God, I’m so freaked out,” Sauvage murmured to Ruthven. Then she kissed her young boyfriend hard on the lips and minced over to the bed in her heeled boots. She sat on the edge of the mattress. “Do I need to take off my clothes?”

“It doesn’t matter either way,” Louise said.

“Okay,” Sauvage whispered as she lay down on the bed. Ruthven backed away. Mathilde and Louise made motions over Sauvage’s body. White light poured from their hands and spread over Sauvage like a sheet, throbbing and pulsing all over her body. One moment Sauvage was Sauvage…and the next…

She didn’t look exactly like Izzy. She had Izzy’s black cloud of hair, her dark eyes and freckles, but she looked more like a close relative than Izzy herself. Still, if the lights were lowered, and she pretended to be asleep, she could probably pass.

Louise ticked her glance to Izzy. “It’s not as sophisticated as a Devereaux glamour.”

“No one does glamours as well as the Devs,” Mathilde said, an envious half smile quirking her face as she bent down beside her duffle and gathered up a fistful of crucifixes.

“Let me see,” Sauvage demanded, hopping out of the bed and trotting to the full-length mirror at the foot of the bed. She posed, frowned. “Hey. I don’t look that much like you at all.”

“Maybe we should go with a fabricant,” Louise mused as she crossed her arms and followed Sauvage’s gaze into the mirror. “We could probably get a closer match.”

Fabricants were magically created beings. Le Fils had sent a fabricant assassin after Izzy in New York. It had seemed terribly real.

“I’d suggest we stick with the glamour,” Mathilde said. “We’d have better control.” She added, “A fabricant might degrade too fast. We don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”

Then Louise closed her eyes, paused, glanced expectantly at the door and said, “Good. They’re here. Mathilde, let them in.”

Mathilde crossed to the door, opened it, and let two more women inside. They were also dressed in black suits and white blouses, wearing lapel pins and headsets. Both of them curtseyed to Izzy, one reaching forward to kiss her bare ring finger.

“Catherine and Laure,” Louise said, as the two rose and stood at parade rest. “Top agents. Crack shots, magically and otherwise. We’re posting them here to stand guard over Sauvage and Ruthven. They’d rather die than let harm come to the woman lying in that bed.”

Both women stared straight ahead, but color rose in their cheeks.

Louise looked at Izzy. “We should mobilize. We’re pushing our luck.”

Izzy wanted to ask her if she really believed in luck. Where did that fit in, exactly, with people who could use magic? Instead, she arranged her gris-gris over the shoulders of her body armor and patted the Medusa in her holster. The weight of the gun, once an unthinkable burden, was now her anchor.

Izzy turned back to Sauvage. “You’re being very brave,” she told her. “Jean-Marc will be proud of you when he hears how well you handled this.” The temptation rose again to go downstairs and see him before they left. She quelled it.

Sauvage’s eyes were huge as she raised herself up on her elbows. “Unless he dies,” she said mournfully.

“God, Jesse,” Ruthven chided her. “Don’t say shit like that.”

Louise motioned for the others to follow her as she crossed to the stone wall opposite the door. She snapped her fingers. A hand’s breadth in front of her, a larger-than-life-size oil portrait of Marianne in her white gown shimmered into view. Her stance was regal, power radiating from every pore. A tiara of white flames glowed from the crown of her dark hair, and she held a clutch of lilies in one veined, muscular hand and an athame in the other. From beneath her gown, a white slipper was planted on top of a skull with glowing red eyes.

Louise looked from the portrait to Izzy and back again, as if measuring the resemblance. Then she pointed her finger and the entire portrait rose into the air, revealing the entrance to a tunnel hewn from the thick marble wall.

“I’ll take point,” Louise announced.

Mathilde said, “I’ll bring up the rear. Stay in the middle, Guardienne .”

Izzy looked one last time over her shoulder at Ruthven and Sauvage, huddled together on the bed, gaping at them.

“Be careful,” she said. They nodded in silent unison.

Izzy wondered if she would ever see them again.

Chapter 5

I zzy and the two Bouvard agents stepped into the tunnel. A white mist swirled around her ankles and more cascaded from above, tumbling featherlight on her head and shoulders.

Izzy stiffened. Louise said, “It’s for protection, Guardienne . It won’t hurt you.”

“I’m okay,” Izzy gritted.

As they rose off the ground a lavender scent wafted through the thickening vapor. The fog became so thick she couldn’t see her hand before her face. But she did see a white glow below her chin: it was the ring.

They glided forward, or so it seemed. Izzy had no sense of direction.

After a time she said, “What will happen to Esposito’s soul?”

“I’m not privy to that,” Louise said flatly.

“His body was destroyed,” Izzy pressed.

“His remains aren’t necessary for the return of his soul. That’s only the case when the person whose soul is stolen is still alive,” Louise said. It was clear she didn’t want to discuss it.

“Alive…” Izzy couldn’t even begin to follow that.

“D’Artagnon debriefed Bob and me on the reading,” Louise elaborated. “Esposito’s soul was taken at the time of death. He probably had a prior arrangement with the Forces of Darkness.”

“He…sold his soul to the Devil? ” Izzy blurted.

“That’s one way of putting it, madame. Although so far as we can tell, there is no Devil, per se. The Dark Side is far more loosely structured than the Grand Covenate. They don’t even have a governing body, and they don’t work together toward any common purpose. They jostle for power among themselves far more than we do.”

“But there is a Dark Side,” Izzy managed to say. It hadn’t even dawned on her to wonder about it; she’d been having enough trouble wrapping her head around the world of the Gifted. “So do they have Houses or…”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Louise said. “Although a number of us believe the Malchances are in bed with them.”

The Malchances again. Who were these people?

“They’re the House of the Blood,” Izzy said.

“Right. One of the original three, with us and the Devereaux,” Louise put in. “We are the House of the Flames. The Devereaux are the House of the Shadows. We were all founded in the 1400s.”

“When Joan of Arc tried to unify France,” Izzy finished. “And passed her power on to us before she was martyred.”

“‘Martyred,’” Louise repeated, sounding a bit derisive. “We prefer to say that she was murdered. There is no Catholic connection for us.”

“Souls contain mystical energy,” Mathilde put in, as if to smooth over the awkward moment. “Absorbing the soul of another can prolong life, enhance Gifts…” She trailed off. “We don’t do that.”

“We Bouvards,” Izzy said. The implication being that other Gifted Houses did.

There was the merest hesitation before Louise replied, “Oui . We Bouvards.”

Louise’s hesitation hung in the air. Was it an unconscious admission that she didn’t consider Izzy a Bouvard? If that were the case, was this “rescue mission” actually a coup? Was she being hustled offstage to be gotten rid of?

She remembered her NYPD dream, when Esposito had forced her to follow him by taking Sauvage hostage. Was this a mirror of that? Was she being lured out of the mansion supposedly to save Alain…when it was really to take her down?

I’m not liking this, Izzy thought.

As quietly as she could, she eased her Medusa out of its holster and wrapped her right hand around the grip. She felt along the barrel with the fingertips of her left.

They traveled on in silence. Izzy’s pulse raced in her neck, her temple. She kept the Medusa close.

A light rose around them, and the mist thinned. The curved interior of the tunnel was covered with symbols. There were reflective triangles, ankhs, crosses and eyes set in the center of hands. Numerals gleamed in white stonework: seven, thirteen, thirty-three, five. In an alcove, a brass brazier burned before a life-size statue of Joan of Arc holding a banner and a sword. Pungent incense permeated the air.

Izzy glanced backward. The entire length of the tunnel was covered with magical charms. It reminded her of the interior of Andre’s werewolf van, back in New York.

“All these things are for protection,” Mathilde told her. “Most of these charms are centuries old.”

Louise raised a hand and said, “We need to perform a ritual before we go any farther.”

“It’s also for protection,” Mathilde said.

The three sank to the tunnel floor in the rapidly evaporating mist.

Mathilde and Louise breathed deeply in, deeply out. Then the two women swayed left, right, leading with their shoulders, exaggerating the movement until they twirled in slow circles, chanting in a lilting, singsong language.

Without any sort of advance warning, all three were outside the tunnel, on the mansion’s grounds, shrouded in darkness at the base of a high brick wall. Cool night air tightened Izzy’s face.

Louise snapped her fingers, and the wall disappeared. In its place, two black-masked men faced Izzy, Louise and Mathilde, with Uzis drawn and aimed. Solid oaks rose behind them like another wall; above, a bone-white moon stood sentry. Izzy raised her Medusa and pointed it at the taller of the two men.

“Lower your weapons,” Louise said. As both men obeyed, she said, “Masks?”

“We’re on recon,” the taller man replied.

“Take them off,” she snapped.

The men yanked the masks off over their heads. They were both dark-eyed and dark-haired, young and in fighting trim.

“Hugues, Bernard,” Louise said, addressing each in turn. “Any surprises so far?”

“Got out without incident, patrolled, nothing,” the taller one said. Apparently he was Bernard. He looked at Izzy. “Is, this, ah…”

Izzy’s Medusa was still aimed at his chest. She said in French, “Je suis Isabelle de Bouvard, Maison des Flammes. ”

“So it’s true,” Bernard said, his features softening. “La fille de la guardienne .”

Both men sank to one knee.

Izzy considered her next move. Louise had hand picked the security agents surrounding Izzy at this very moment, and Izzy had no idea where their loyalties lay. She concentrated on her gut, trying to feel her way.

Jehanne, guide-moi, je vous en prie.

Go, the wind whispered. Allez. Vite. Hurry.

“Allez vite ,” Izzy commanded them.

They skirted the perimeter of the Bouvard estate. The mansion, magically repaired from the attack, lay beneath a gauzy dome of white beneath the ivory moon. Figures holding Uzis patrolled each of the floors and the roof.

There were more security forces stationed along the wall, within and without, and Louise motioned for the party of five to keep well away as they melted into the bayou just beyond the grounds. It seemed so strange to be hiding from her own bodyguards, but in truth, Izzy had no idea how many of them were “hers.”

The moon watched, an enormous eye in the sky, while Izzy and the others picked up the pace and laid tracks between themselves and the compound. As they penetrated the murky rot of the swamp, Izzy was on high alert. She was inside her nightmare; she recognized the landscape—the uneven paths, the skeletal trees—and she was terrified. Her fright-or-flight response was engaged full force.

For ten years I dreamed about this place. Ten long years. And now I’m here.

Bernard was on point, then Louise, then her. Directly behind Izzy was Mathilde, and in the rear, Hugues.

She listened for the Cajun werewolf pack—surely one of them had let loose with the howl she had heard in her mind. She wondered if they were trying to contact her; she hoped so. She realized then that of everyone around her, Andre was the local she trusted most—even more than she trusted Jean-Marc. Andre’s agenda was far simpler: he was loyal to Jean-Marc because the regent looked out for the wolf pack, and Jean-Marc had asked Andre to protect Izzy. So he had.

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