Well, technically, it wasn’t the house that was magic, but the ley lines that ran underneath it. Rivers of metaphysical power, they crossed and pooled right under the foundation, providing the juice for a housekeeping spell that kept things exactly as they had been when it was laid, lo these many years ago. I think the idea had been to clean the house and then lay the spell, but I suppose the bachelor who had owned the place had thought it looked good enough.
Of course, good enough meant that the stains on my ceiling were never going to go away no matter how many times I painted over them. The scuffs on the hardwood floors were never getting buffed out. And if I tried doing something radical like changing out the yellowed sheers for something that might actually block sunlight, some of my personal belongings would shortly thereafter end up missing.
The house was vindictive like that.
But the spell also meant that I didn’t need to bother with things like scrubbing the ring in the tub, because it was never going to go away anyway, or sweeping the floor, which always stayed exactly as dusty as it always had and always would. Or fixing the wall that I suddenly remembered was supposed to have a hole in it but which the light of a passing car showed to be as solid and depressingly covered with cabbage roses as ever.
A flash of another scene—crimson and black and blinding, incandescent white—blazed across my eyes for a second. Until I shoved it away, along with the damned roses. And got up so I wouldn’t have to look at them.
The dresser had a heap of bras on it, some complete with grassy bits and sandspurs. I spent a few minutes sorting them out to give myself something to do. To drown out Lawrence’s voice screaming my name on the wharf, its tone saying he already knew there was nothing either of us could do.
I swallowed and told myself the usual crap: Lawrence had been a professional. Lawrence had known what he was getting into. Lawrence had taken what he felt was an acceptable risk.
And as always, it was exactly no damned comfort at all. And neither was my usual postmission dissection, going over every missed opportunity, every tiny mistake, every “should have.” Because this time, none of it would have made any difference.
I should have called in. But we’d only been in that other place for a few minutes, and one vampire power I’ve never heard of was teleportation. Even if I’d called for backup as soon as we set eyes on the portal, they wouldn’t have made it there in time.
I should have prevented Lawrence from going inside in the first place, or followed him quicker. Except that there had been nothing tangible to grab onto once he did his disappearing routine, and going into an unknown portal without any idea of what was on the other side was beyond crazy. It was slightly less so for him, given his ability, but I could have been walking into a volcano or off a cliff.
I should have figured out that, yeah, anybody who bothered to set a trap that carefully might have also designed a Plan B. Except that I’d have acted no differently, even if I had known. In the end, there had been more danger in not closing the portal than in worrying about a possible ambush.
I should have…
Done exactly what I did. It had been textbook. And it had failed spectacularly, anyway.
How do you kill a senior master the easy way? By not killing him yourself. By trapping him somewhere with a hostile atmosphere, where if he stays in one piece too long or hits the wrong patch of air, he’ll burn up without anything attacking him at all. And then by making sure that something damn well does attack him by putting your trap right down in the middle of—what? Those creatures’ eggs?
I didn’t know. But something had set them off, something had made them go for him like a stirred-up hornet’s nest. And how do you fight something you’ve never even seen with all of thirty seconds to figure it out? While you’re fucking on fire?
The answer was, you didn’t. You ran like hell, if you had any brains at all, which is what Lawrence had done. What we’d both done, which is what they’d expected. They’d probably hoped those things would catch us before we made it back into our world, but hey, no sweat either way. Even if we got out, we were sure to be weak and hurting and confused, and a much easier target than should ever have been the case.
I felt nails digging into my palm, hard enough to break skin, and didn’t even try to pull them out. It was what infuriated me the most. Not that he’d died—we’d all known that was a possibility on this kind of thing. But to die like that? Not able to defend yourself, or to get away, or to do anything but lie there and be butchered like an animal by some cowardly sons of bitches who didn’t have the guts to face you—
It was the main reason I worked alone. So if I didn’t come back, there was only myself to blame. And there was no partner to leave on the ground behind me.
I didn’t bother with a bath, since the only place I’d gone was inside my head. I ran fingers through my hair in lieu of a brush, changed to a slightly less rumpled tank top and decided to view the rips in my jeans as a fashion statement. Then I went downstairs.
It couldn’t have been too late, because the kids were still up, and Claire was a stickler for a nine p.m. bedtime. They were on the floor in the living room, wedged between two lumps of troll, since no way was the sofa holding all of that. I stuck my head in to say hi, but didn’t get much of a reply because SpongeBob was on and SpongeBob is the shit.
I didn’t join them—my stomach was starting to protest the lack of breakfast. And lunch. And from the shriveled-up way it felt right now, possibly dinner yesterday, too.
I padded into the kitchen, and found Claire at the stove. She was stirring something in the huge pot she used to cook for her fey bodyguards, who loo
ked like lithe young gazelles and ate like starving hippos. She had her hair up in a bright red ponytail, had a fifties-era apron on and the whole scene looked like I Love Lucy in a domestic mood. It was a charming, old-fashioned picture—or it would have been if a vampire hadn’t been perched on the stool beside her.
“What are you still doing here?” I asked Ray, who was scowling into the pot.
“Trying to tell your friend that that’s too much pepper.”
“It’s chicken and rice,” Claire said, pushing his big nose out of the way so she could stir. “It’s supposed to be peppery.”
“Peppery, yeah. Sear your tongue off, no.”
“What would you know about it? Your kind doesn’t eat.”
“My kind eats just fine, and I’m a master, sweetheart. I can even taste it. Not that I’m gonna taste that because you’re ruining it.”
“You’re just tired of grinding the pepper.”