Outfoxed (The Fox Witch #1) - R.J. Blain Page 0,127
The New Orleans Voodoo queens are very particular about that. I think they believe if they coerce their husbands, their magic will turn on them? Or they’ll learn enough about New Orleans Voodoo from being married to a queen to dish out some serious suffering. It could go either way with them. And they know it’d be a damned bad idea to cheat on a queen.”
“I learned how to control my magic so I could step foot in New Orleans without being killed immediately,” Sandro admitted.
“I’ll leash you and take you around with me. Pet music mages are permitted, but I’d be the one to get into shit if you caused any problems,” I teased.
He stared at me. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious.”
“There’s something to be said about being friends with one of the queens, Sandro.” I considered the problem of the choir. “We might need to head to New Orleans to deal with that choir. And back to Tulsa for more clues. If I can find some deadfall from the storm, I might be able to get another view of them. But the storms have been ramping up, so I don’t know how long we have.”
“I can get a hold of Mansfield and find out more, and I can let him know I’ll be returning to Asylum. If he’s at all involved, I’ll want to know—and figure out what he’s up to.”
I considered Sandro. “Would he have a reason to get rid of Tulsa?”
“I can think of ten reasons he’d support it without having to work at it. He’s said he’s worried about a general uprising. Asylum can’t support nearly as many people as Tulsa holds, and Tulsa currently doesn’t have the infrastructure to survive through the increased storm activity. He’s hoping people will migrate elsewhere.”
“Is he the kind to hire a choir to encourage them to leave faster?”
“It would not surprise me.”
Sandro’s mother shook her head and fiddled with her straw, stabbing at her green whipped cream. “He wants wealth and power, and he’s learned that he isn’t clever or ruthless enough to get either in the East. A lot of the families and corporations here are so well established it would take a miracle for him to unseat them—or a great deal more money than he has. And since the families with single heirs are smart, they won’t bring him into their family lines. He’s not bad at magic, and while he’s a better mage than he is a witch, he is a dual caster. But even then, most here don’t find that sufficient even for a second-born child.”
“If all of Sandro’s brothers were girls, would you marry any of them off to Mansfield?” I asked his mother.
“Not a chance in hell for the reasons I just listed. He’s ambitious, and he doesn’t strike me as the kind who is ethical while ambitious.”
“Well, there is a way to find out. If you are friends with a Voodoo queen, visit her and ask for help. They hate music mages, and a choir of them trying to hurt an entire city of people? That will get her on the move—and she might recruit the other queens,” Sandro said, and he stretched out in the hot tub, his muscles flexing with his movements.
While I’d put on an itsy bitsy bikini, him in a pair of swimming trunks outclassed me in all ways possible.
A few more good meals and some rest might help with my problems, but they wouldn’t buy me peace of mind, especially if he lured me into places where he’d remove most of his clothing. My fox loved everything about my current situation, opting to ignore the dull throb in my arm and side. In her mind, those would heal soon enough.
When they did, she wanted to hunt the bounty hunter.
I considered letting her, especially now that I’d gotten a good look at him without his shirt on.
“Jade?” Sandro’s mother asked. “Is it possible to get an audience?”
“Well, maybe. I guess I could call her and find out.”
His mother got up, went into the house, and returned with a cell phone. “It’s generally waterproof, although I’ll be spanked if I sacrifice another one to the hot tub’s wicked ways, so please try not to drop it.”
All right. I took the phone, hesitated only for a moment, and tapped the screen, plugging in Ryleigh’s number and hitting the green button to connect the call. As the number she’d given me was for her personal cell, I expected