fingers tingled with the urge to grab the blade hidden at her back, but what were the chances she could get to it before Giselle harmed Lally?
“Now, Sister dear, is that any way to talk to us?” Giselle’s lids fluttered and her eyes once again held the solid black of Ava Mae’s possession. Harlow’s fingers twitched as Giselle kept talking. “We have every right to be angry with you after you left us in that pit.”
“I didn’t leave you there. You were too weak to make it out.” Not that Harlow would have had things go differently. “What do you want with Lally?”
The knife moved dangerously close to Lally’s skin. Giselle smiled, revealing a mouthful of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. “We’re so glad you asked. We don’t want anything of Lally. What we want is for you to come to the tree with us.”
“The tree?” That couldn’t lead to anything good. Harlow turned slightly so that her right hand was hidden. The blade was tempting, but not something she felt secure using. Instead, she eased the compact open. She wasn’t going to get a second chance at this.
Giselle screeched at her. “Don’t play dumb with us. You know what tree we mean.”
Harlow nodded. “The lightning tree, right, of course. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She inched closer. “Put the knife down and I’m happy to go with you. I’ve wanted to get a better look at that tree for a long time but this old woman won’t let me.”
Giselle narrowed her eyes. “Why should I believe you?”
Harlow frowned and stuck her bottom lip out, pretending to be hurt. “Have I ever lied to you before? Give me a chance. I want to know about that tree just as much as you do. Besides, Mother would want us to do this together, don’t you think?”
For a moment, Giselle’s black gaze muddied with uncertainty. “I… guess…”
“Good.” She looked at Lally, prayed she could read between the lines, and made a very cross face. “Don’t you dare tell Fenton or Olivia where we’ve gone, you understand me?”
Lally’s eyes widened and she nodded.
Giselle pulled the knife back and raised her hand like she was about to knock Lally out with the blunt end.
That was the only signal Harlow needed. She opened the mirror as she lunged forward, latched one hand on to Giselle and with the strength of a single thought, took them both through to the fae plane.
Augustine’s last memory was everything going black and a sharp pain in the side of his neck. As consciousness returned, he understood that pain was from being injected with a sedative as soon as Sutter’s men had loaded him into the SUV. The blackness was from having a hood yanked over his head.
The hood was gone now and whatever had drugged him worn off, the remnants of it lingering like ashes on his tongue. But the biting pain of the iron cuffs remained, digging into his skin and making the back of his skull ache like he was in the throes of the world’s worst hangover.
Shadows moved across the wall. It was morning, but not super-early. Still, for him to have been out as long as he had they must have given him an extremely high dosage of something. An animal tranq, maybe.
He kept his head down, and only moved his partially opened eyes as he scoped out his surroundings. From the looks of the place he was in the bedroom of a hotel suite. A nice one if the elaborately dressed four-poster bed was an indication. Nearby sat a desk and chair. He leaned to the side to get a better look at the pad by the phone. The Ritz-Carlton. Hell’s bells. He was in the heart of the French Quarter. Not that he could do anything with that knowledge.
He tested his bonds, but succeeded only in causing himself more pain. The chair he was tied to was pitted metal with a cheap vinyl seat and looked more like it had come from the hotel’s employee lounge than been part of the suite’s furnishings. Judging from the plastic tarp under the chair and covering several square yards around him, there was probably a reason for the grungy chair.
They didn’t want to get blood on anything in the suite.
His coat was in a heap in the corner and from what he could tell, his weapons had been stripped from him. He flexed his ankle. Yep, the blade in his boot was gone, too. Damn it.