The creak of the front gate echoed in my ears. I tore down the stairs, paused at the foyer mirror—just a quick check for blood on my face, my clothes, my hands—sucked back my fangs, and whipped to the door, opening it just as she raised her fist to knock.
She stood before me in the haze of magic under the Flower Moon, her pulse charging. She was damp and disheveled, and she still smelled of river water. It took all my strength not to pull her inside, away from the nightmare swirling the city.
“We’re going to get your father back, bella.” I knew it was the only thing she wanted to hear.
“And we’re going to avenge yours,” she said, her eyes dark with deadly determination. Something had changed.
Everything had changed.
She, too, had shed her skin.
I stepped aside so she could pass. Across the street, almost hidden by a fern on the balcony, Isaac’s wings fluttered. Our gazes locked. I swung the door closed and twisted the lock.
I had been wrong before. She was safest here with me.
CHAPTER 2
Bedlam
Observe. Adapt. Dominate.
I repeated the mantra as I soared down Royal Street, dodging people, cars, and spells, but it was like my synapses weren’t firing. Pink memory powder clouded the humid air, and a sparkle of cyan twinkled in the sky above thanks to the Daures’ protection spell.
My shoulders burned from flying, but I didn’t care. I didn’t feel anything other than the certainty of her last words: “If you follow me, I’ll scream for Nicco, and you better pray he doesn’t hear me.”
I didn’t want to observe or adapt. I wanted to turn back, swoop down to the Medici house, pound on the door, and beg Adele to come with me.
I’d only followed her to make sure she arrived safely.
Keeping her safe was all I’d ever been trying to do.
Remnant traces of the heightening elixir coursed through my bloodstream, catapulting the heartache into the stratosphere.
Nicco was probably telling her how I’d refused to help him. How I hadn’t woken her up or told her his plan. Leaving out the part where I was just trying to protect her. Like how I’d omitted that part after he threw her out the attic window.
Would Adele tell Désirée and Codi about the spell I’d used on her? Codi was going to kill me.
“Whoop! I fuckin’ love this city!” Down below, three bachelor-party loudmouth types staggered down from Bourbon so blitzed they didn’t seem to notice the chaos around them. “Dude, are those fireworks?” “I wanna blow some shit up.”
Before they could even strike a match, the Borges cousins stomped up behind them.
With a giant breath, Remi blew a puff of memory powder, and Manon closed in with a compact mirror. Non-possessed mundane were escorted out of the perimeter of the Quarter while the Possessed were rounded up like zombie-cattle and taken back to the Borges’. I should go back there and help. But I didn’t turn around. I was paralyzed, gliding through the magic-drenched current in the solitude of the sky. Not that you ever really felt alone in New Orleans. The Royal Street ghosts were nowhere to be seen, even by my magical eye, but I could feel their nervous energy vibrating through the dormer windows of the attics they haunted and from the dark alleys where they lurked.
An otherworldly feeling nagged at me—something was wrong. But the first responder protocol pounded through my head louder, instructing me. The voice of my father, commanding me. Adapt, Isaac. Drop to the ground and help. Dominate.
I’d tried to dominate, and I’d failed. Epically failed. I’d pushed Adele into the lion’s den, straight to her family’s sworn enemy, who even Adeline Saint-Germain had warned her to stay away from.
The screams on the street below sounded distant as the memories chilled my bones, shivering my feathers. The flowers releasing from the palm of my hand, the intention of the spell coursing through my veins, the lifelessness in her muscles when I lifted her into my arms.
She’d been defenseless with me. Now she’s defenseless with them.
Olsin’s premonition played on repeat in my head. Over and over. A car alarm sang in the distance. Water gushed from a hydrant where an SUV had crunched into it.
I was just trying to protect her.
“Isaac!” a girl shrieked from a storefront below. “Behind you!” Codi’s cousin Poppy dropped a giant burlap sack with a heavy clank and threw her arm into the air, pointing.
I looked back—a trio of souls were speeding down from the roof of Vieux Carré Silversmiths.
I jerked my wing in fright and knocked myself out of the Air current, cursing as I fell to the street and shredded across the pavement, landing at her feet. I whipped a gust to shield us, but I could barely slow them down. “Run!” I yelled as the bright orbs fought through the Air.
She dug something out of the bag. “Drop the shield,” she said, cranking some kind of ballerina box.
“What?”
A jangling melody began to play.
“Drop the shield!”
I let go, and the orbs hurtled toward us. “Um?”
She flung the dancing ballerina through the open front door of the crashed SUV. It landed on the driver’s seat.
“Nice aim, but unless that thing is an actual explosive device—”
“Shut up,” she whispered, pulling me across the street into the gutter, her hand covering my mouth as we crouched.
I could barely hear the delicate music box over the gushing hydrant and the car alarm screeching in the distance. The orbs slowed, hovering in the middle of the street as if looking for us. The water pooled closer, and the souls turned our way. Poppy’s grip tightened.
But then the car alarm stopped, and the street went silent.
My pulse pounded as the tinkle of the mechanical music rose through the heavy stream of water.
Lulled by the twirling ballerina, an orb floated into the car, and the two others followed. But then, mid-phrase, the music stopped.
“Shit!” Poppy whispered as the souls started to speed back.
I jumped up, whipping a gust, and the car door snapped closed. “I don’t think so.”
The souls bounced off the dark glass window, trapped inside.
As we crept closer to the vehicle, she motioned to the pooling water, and it swirled up off the ground with a sparkle.
“What are you . . . ?” I asked as she glided the stream into the exhaust pipe.
“We can’t leave them for the owner of the car.” She pushed the gold wireframe glasses back up the bridge of her nose, concentrating, and I squinted through the tinted windows. As the Water poured through the air vents, she spun her hands, congealing it into a sphere, and then trapped each of the souls inside it.
Fully focused, she slowly opened the car door. “Hand me the teapot.”
“Teapot?” A bunch of silver pieces had spilled from her sack into the gutter. I grabbed it, removed the lid, and held it out as she guided the bubble our way. I was fully invested in her Elemental magic, but my back stiffened with the souls so close. She poked her finger into the air, and the bubble burst, pouring the stream of magical Water along with the souls into the teapot. It was weirdly mesmerizing until I realized she was pouring people into a teapot. I looked away—it was too much of a headfuck.