“That’s great,” I said evenly, trying not to panic. “What the hell is dreamwalking? And how do I stop?”
“Just recline into your body as if it were a bed.”
I couldn’t quite get the hang of it. I drifted up a few more feet before Isabeau told me to stare at my body and think of heavy things like ship anchors and mountains. Then she shoved me. The feel of her ghostly hand touching my ghostly shoulder was cold and unpleasant and strangely jelly-like.
I reached the top branches of the tree when she yanked me back up. I shivered, cold to my bones.
“Non,” she said sharply, changing her mind. “I am sensing too much strange magic around us. Stay close.” She lifted one of the amulets around her neck. It was round and metallic, the kind people keep perfume in. The same kind I’d kept Madame Veronique’s blood in on a chain around my neck before my birthday. She pulled a long thin thread of white glittering light out of it and looped it around our wrists, where she’d tied the ribbon while she exorcised me. “I cannot wait. The spell must be done now. You will have to come with me.”
“Are you calling up that mystical fog you used the night Mom killed Montmartre and Magda killed Greyhaven?”
She shook her head. “It would only put your humans at a disadvantage.”
Molten silver dripped from tree branches around us, gathering in puddles in the snow. “What is that?” I asked.
“Blood,” Isabeau replied.
Suddenly it was easy to feel the violence below seep into the air, making my spirit vision murky. I shuddered.
“Isabeau.”
I heard Logan’s voice clearly, even though he was whispering in Isabeau’s ear. “Hope is hiding in a pile of boulders southwest of the camp entrance.”
We drifted farther away from the safety of my body, searching through the auras. The boulders glowed with a yellowish-green light.
“Hope,” Isabeau said, sounding satisfied. There were six or seven guards around her position but they couldn’t see us.
Someone else did.
Something magical focused onto Isabeau. The feel of it bled off her onto me, like poisoned molasses, sticky and toxic.
“The Host,” she said darkly, clenching her jaw as she worked to repel it. The magic she was fighting prickled uncomfortably through me, but it wasn’t having the same effect on me as it clearly had on her. She went particularly pale, as if she were made entirely of silver and shadows. She was in pain.
Montmartre used magic against me in the past, and apparently his men were still using it. They hated me for helping to kill Montmartre. And they hated the Hounds, almost as much as the Hounds hated them. They hated Isabeau most of all, particularly for helping to defeat both Montmartre and his first lieutenant Greyhaven.
They’d known she would be here.
Because this spell clearly had only one target.
And it wasn’t my family.
It wasn’t even me.
It was Isabeau.
Chapter 38
Lucy
“Nicholas!” Connor grabbed his arm and nearly got decapitated before Nicholas realized who it was. “We need backup. Now. Because if this works, we won’t be safe anywhere.” He paused, frowning at Quinn, who looked up at his twin with his fangs extended. Hunter crouched over her grandfather, in shock.
Connor took a step forward, but Quinn shook his head. “Go,” he mouthed.
“Wait for me!” I scrambled after Nicholas and Connor and they turned as one. Nicholas didn’t even look back, he just put his arm out behind him so I could grab his hand. He towed me around bloody skirmishes, his firm grip a comforting anchor. I tried not to notice the smell of blood, the moans of pain, the red staining the snow.
We raced between the trees, circling around to the edge of the camp and then up into the mountains. By the time Connor had taken us to one of the caves, my lungs burned and my calf muscles were tight as bowstrings. Inside the damp cave, Christabel was arguing with Saga and Aidan.
And clearly getting nowhere.
“We don’t owe you,” Saga fumed. “Aidan saved you, you ungrateful wretch.”
“If he hadn’t kidnapped me, he wouldn’t have had to save me!” Christabel yelled back.
Saga didn’t even look our way, but the dagger she threw would have caught me right in the stomach if Connor hadn’t reached out to grab it, even as Nicholas tackled me to the cold ground. I landed hard, my breath knocked right out of my already strained lungs. Nicholas turned his head to glare, his eyes a deadly silver.
“That’s my cousin!” Christabel shouted.
I coughed painfully as Nicholas eased off me.
“Oh, Lucy, I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching down to help me up. Her grip nearly broke my fingers. When I squeaked, she winced. “Sorry! I keep forgetting I’m like the Incredible Hulk.”
Nicholas stayed between me and Saga. She didn’t looked particularly sorry, mostly amused. Aidan just looked tired.
“You brought a human to our home uninvited?” Saga asked, her red hair like fire down her back. “You ought to know the consequences.”
“My family,” Christabel snapped.
“We’re your family now.” Saga shrugged.
“Then act like it,” she shot back smugly.
“I thought we’d been through this already,” Aidan interjected, trying to sound reasonable. They both bared their fangs at him.
“If you want to be part of vampire society so badly,” Connor said, “then be a part of it. Especially now that it needs your help.”