Wilder piped in. “I swear I didn’t think maternal relationships could be this complicated.”
“Lucky you,” Mags said coldly.
Amelia hadn’t once asked after Magnolia while Wilder and I had been back, and Mags never asked about her mother. I’d seen my friend flourish with the distance between herself and her mother, and it struck me as sad that none of us at this table had a nice, normal mother-child relationship.
Made me wonder if there really was such a thing, or if I was basing all my theories on what I’d seen in the movies.
“I’ll tell Secret when the time is right. There’s no sense in worrying her.”
“You mean there’s no sense in turning it into her problem, because you want to deal with it yourself,” Mags said.
Damn, she’d been spending way too much time with me. That was some deep, expert-level Genie insight. Spooky, really.
“Get out of my head, thanks.” I smiled so she’d know I wasn’t mad. “If I decide Secret needs to know, we’ll tell her. Right now she’s better off staying out of this mess.”
“And what about those if us in the mess?” Wilder asked. “I think we’re spending a lot of time talking about who is going to deal with Mercy and we’re avoiding a much bigger issue, which is how the fuck is your headless mother alive?”
This brought the table back to silence, and I chewed on my thumbnail thoughtfully. There were a handful of people I might be able to ask about this. Beau Cain, the man who had sent me looking for Mercy’s skull in the first place, might have some ideas about what could bring a beheaded woman back to life.
Likewise my… friend?... Santiago Medina might be able to help. He was, after all, one of the most powerful witches I’d ever met. If anyone might know how this worked, it would be him. But Santiago was a last-ditch effort. Wilder, whether he wanted to admit it or not, really didn’t like me spending time with the handsome witch, and I had enough smarts and empathy to understand why.
Santiago made no secret of the fact that he lusted after me, only it wasn’t an entirely sexual kind of lust. I was a hereditary witch on my mother’s side, a gift which had bypassed Mercy—thank God—and both my siblings, but hit me full-on when I arrived at puberty.
Imagine, if you will, a thirteen-year-old girl taking the one-two punch of turning into a werewolf for the first time and also getting the massive metaphysical wallop of coming into her natural magical gifts.
It had been such a disaster—picture literal explosions—that I’d been sent away to live with my great-grandmother, an ancient and impossibly powerful witch known only as La Sorciere. In the swamp. For the entirety of my teenage years.
Really, it’s a miracle I’m even remotely as well adjusted as I am.
But Santiago sensed the witch I was. He knew La Sorciere’s power was in my veins, and it made him want me. It made him dangerous.
So, no matter how useful he might be in this situation, it was a risk to ask him for help. I was already in his debt, and I didn’t particularly want to owe him anything else. For my sake and for Wilder’s.
But thoughts of Santiago brought me to thoughts of La Sorciere. Finding her would be an enormous pain in the ass, and I wasn’t sure if she’d actually be willing to help, but she would, without a doubt, know a way to put the dead back to rest again.
Whether or not I was strong enough to do what needed doing was the other question.
I sighed and added her to the “last resort” list alongside Santiago. She would be helpful, yes, but I wasn’t sure it was worth the time and effort it would take to get to her. I might be in the Maurepas swamp for days searching for her, convincing her I needed her, and learning what had to be done. Who knew what kind of nightmares Mercy could cook up in my absence.
The last thing my pack needed was me wandering off and leaving them unattended. That wasn’t Alpha behavior.
Which meant my list was narrowed down to only one option.
Guess it was time to pay Beau Cain a visit.
Chapter Seven
It felt strange being outside a bar called The Dungeon at nine-thirty in the morning on a Sunday. The buzz and mania of Bourbon Street was subdued, with only a few tourists out and about looking at voodoo shops or getting brunch at the variety of eateries in the area.
I saw one brave soul carrying a fish bowl filled with bright blue booze.
Hair of the dog, I guess.
Or the lunacy of college students. I’d seen enough of both to think it could go either way. New Orleans was a hell of a city when it came to making terrible life choices.
I was off Bourbon now, having gone down one of the side streets to where a little hidden alley led those in the know to the front door of the goth-inspired nightclub I was now standing in front of.
The Dungeon was a perfect melting pot of what made New Orleans great. On the main floor was a bar for normal humans looking to get a taste of the supernatural. It was decked out in creepy old Victorian art depicting vampires and other creatures of the night. There was even a full-sized coffin against the back wall where tourists could take photos and pretend to be mi