her fingers through it, from my nape to my hips, long brushing motions. She began to braid my hair, her fingers slow and a little clumsy. Warmth rose from the floor, from the soles of my feet, along my spine, and up to the top of my head. I breathed out, tension leaving my body. For the first time in a very long time, I relaxed.
* * *
* * *
Molly and her kids had taken a nap, and the children were still sleeping when Moll joined us in the TV room/office. Her hair looked like a half-inflated helium balloon, puffy on one side, flat on the other. The baby was over one shoulder and Moll was doing that rocking, swaying, bouncing thing that seemed common to human mothers.
Beast watched Molly as if she was prey but sent me an image of a mountain lion nursing kittens. The mama cat was flat on her back, front and back legs outstretched and milk-engorged teats facing up. On four of the teats were young kits. Kits of Beast kit. Beast brought meat to kit and helped teach young to hunt. Kit and kits left Beast’s territory for place of setting sun. Beast never saw kits again.
I’m sorry.
Molly took a seat on the sofa and began patting the baby’s back. Moll was making tiny humming noises in the back of her throat, like half singing, none of the notes in any particular key, but the sound was soothing nonetheless.
Beast is sad. Beast loves kits.
I sent my other half an image of two cats hugging, and when she didn’t respond, I turned my attention to real life in the TV room/office and updates that I knew had to be waiting.
Alex was watching replays. On the big screen, divided into two larger screens, were the spectacles of the fire at the NOLA vamp cemetery, and the encounter with the SOD in the Regal. In NOLA, I watched as the rock itself burned and melted into puddles of lavalike molten stone. I dropped into the heated recliner, threw my feet up, and watched as the chapel whooshed up in flames and swirled into a fire devil, high in the air. In the Regal Imperial Hotel, I watched as vamp pairs fell and Ed bled. On the hotel footage Alex had hacked into, I stood there as if I hadn’t a care in the world, my half-form full of false moxie. False. But I walked away with all my people. I couldn’t help the smile that pulled back my lips and exposed my fangs.
On the security cams recording from inside the Regal, I watched as my party walked away. And the SOD drank two humans down as if they were bottles of cheap wine and tore out the throats of two fangheads. No one died true-dead, as scions rushed in to save everyone. But the SOD was a bloody little bastard. I was going to enjoy putting the rabid dog down.
“Janie,” Alex said. “I got word about the Shookers, that witch family you mentioned. They answered their phone and seem to be fine. The circle you spotted was theirs. They said they’d put up stronger wards. They also checked in with the other witches in the area and all are okay. They’ll notify us if anything changes.”
* * *
* * *
The rest of the morning dragged by. Molly and Shaddock’s human Enforcer—who went by the nickname Bunny, for reasons no one thought to share with me—and Gee DiMercy were discussing options and plans without including me. When I requested, politely, I thought, to be part of the discussions, Gee made a little fluttering motion with his hands, like a bird fluffing his wings. “My mistress, your primo was torn from your mind and from your binding. Has that state been remedied?”
I scowled at them, which was a fearsome sight; I’d seen my half-form scowl. But Bunny laughed, a silly little titter. She stood all of five feet and maybe a hundred pounds fully clothed. I could break her in two with my half-form fingers, but she wasn’t scared of me. Weird. “No,” I said. “Ed isn’t back inside my head.”
“Then we will discuss all our plans with you once they are finalized, my queen.”
I’d been dismissed. I had discovered that my half-form didn’t need much sleep. It was full of energy too, a constant low hum of the need to run, to fight, to do something. I was so tense my shoulders ached, nerves close to fraying. Anything.