“My family was not big compared to theirs. But we had some powerful practitioners.”
I was going to have to call Stefan and see what he’d found out about Frost.
“Mercy?” Adam asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was woolgathering.”
“I asked if you could describe the witch you saw,” Elizaveta said.
“Tall,” I said. “Dark hair. Big smile that lights up her face. She sounds like she comes from Adam’s quadrant of the country, though maybe not Alabama.”
“And she makes zombies,” said Elizaveta, as if what I’d told her had given her the final bits she needed to make an identification. “Definitely the Hardesty family.”
“Why do you think she’s making so many zombies?” I asked. “We’ve had a werewolf, twenty miniature goats, a cat, and a cow.”
“She can’t help it,” said Elizaveta. “It is the curse of that kind of necromancy, this uncontrollable need to create more. I am told that the euphoria that lingers after you bring the dead to life is more addictive than morphine. That’s why there aren’t many witches who do it. Some of the African-influenced families seem to have a better handle on that, but even they have a limit. She must be valuable if they haven’t put her down yet.”
“So could we track her using the zombies?” asked Adam. “How does zombie-making work?”
“It doesn’t matter how it works,” Elizaveta said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “By the time there are zombies running around, she could be miles away. What matters is that I can track that sort of magic in my territory.” She took a deep breath. “There were two witches at my house, and one of them was this zombie-maker.”
“Yes,” I said. “Would being a Love Talker make her valuable enough to keep around?”
“Ha,” said Elizaveta. “Is that what she is?”
“I’m not sure,” I told her honestly. Then I described the incident with Salas.
Elizaveta nodded. “Your vampire is right. This man— What was his name? This man is probably witchborn—you say that he has left town?”
“Yes.” I didn’t give his name, and Elizaveta didn’t ask for it again.
“Safer for him,” she commented. “And if she is, indeed, a Love Talker, that would explain a few things I have wondered about her over the years.”
“Can she influence people over distance—like when the vampires mark one of the people they feed from?” Adam asked.
Elizaveta pursed her lips. “Possibly. Some of them have been known to do that.” Then her face cleared. “Oh, I see. You think that she might have been behind your explosion?”
“Ford died in custody,” said Adam. “And he died very much like your family did.”
“If they want to stop an alliance between the humans and the fae—and it is my understanding that they would do that—it could be the Hardestys behind the bombing.” She shrugged and waved her hands. “It might be a single incident; there are enough humans who would be appalled by this alliance. But the Hardesty family is famous for using others to do their work when they can.” She compressed her lips and nodded slowly. “It smells like something they would come up with—and given the death of this man who was supposed to be behind it all, I think it very likely to be them behind the incident. It cost them nothing and had the potential to forward their goals.”
“You think that primarily, these witches have come to take over your territory,” said Adam.
She nodded decisively, but said, “It is too soon to tell. Sometimes they come one by one, others two by two.” She spoke that sentence in a singsong, as if it were a children’s rhyme. She shivered a little, looking old.
“Ah well,” she said. “I should find a hotel, do you think?” She had planned on staying here, I thought, until she found she could not cross our threshold.
“How worried should we be?” I asked her. “I mean, should we caution our werewolves?”
She frowned. “From the Love Talker, not much, I don’t think. I’ve never heard of one who could influence a werewolf. The Hardesty lineage has had a few who had the ability to persuade vampires. From the one who killed my family? It takes a lot more power to kill werewolves than it does humans. Adam told me that it was your assessment that all of my family died at the same time, no?”
I nodded. “All of your family, all of the animals—” I wasn’t going to tell her about Sherwood’s cat. She might try to claim it, and that would be bad all around.