Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [70]
I turned in the doorway.
“Tell her the rest,” Gwen said softly.
Sylvie wouldn’t look at me. She spoke staring down at the sheet. “When Vivian refused to hurt me, they called in Liv.” She looked up, tears glittering in her eyes. “She used things on me. Did things to me.” Sylvie covered her face with her hands and rolled onto her side, crying.
Gwen met my eyes. The look on her face was frightening in its hatred. “You need to know who to kill.”
I nodded. “She won’t leave St. Louis alive.”
“And the other one? The council member’s son?” Gwen asked.
“Him either,” I said.
“Promise it,” she said.
“I already have,” I said. I walked out then, searching for a phone. I wanted to talk to Jean-Claude before I did anything. Jean-Claude had taken everyone else to my house. They were boarding up the basement windows so that the vamps could be tucked safely away before dawn. The Traveler had refused to let them take their coffins. Besides, have you ever tried to rent a truck on a weekend after midnight?
What was I going to do about the wereleopards? Damned if I knew.
22
JEAN- CLAUDE’S VOICE FLOATED over the phone, my phone, my house. He’d never been there before. “What has happened, ma petite? Jason made it sound urgent.”
I told him about the wereleopards.
He was quiet for so long, I had to say something. “Talk to me, Jean-Claude.”
“Are you actually thinking of endangering us all for the sake of two people, one of whom you have never met before, and the other who you once described as a waste of skin?”
“I can’t leave them there if they expected me to help them.”
“Ma petite, ma petite, you have a sense of noblesse oblige that does you credit. But we cannot save them. Tomorrow evening the council will come for us, and we may not even be able to save ourselves.”
“Are they here to kill us?”
“Padma would kill us if he could. He is the weakest of the council, and I think he fears us.”
“The Traveler’s the one we have to convince,” I said.
“No, ma petite, the council are seven in number, always an odd number so that a vote may settle a question. Padma and the Traveler will vote against one another, this is true. It has been true for centuries. But Yvette is here to vote in the place of her lord, Morte d’Amour. She hates Padma but she may hate me more. For that matter, Balthasar could persuade the Traveler against us, and we are lost.”
“What about everybody else? Do they represent anybody?”
“Asher speaks for Belle Morte, Beautiful Death. It is her line that I am descended from, as is he.”
“He hates your guts,” I said. “We are sunk.”
“I believe the choice of four was very deliberate. They wish me to take a council seat, so I am the fifth vote.”
“If the Traveler votes with you, and Yvette hates Padma more than she hates you…”
“Ma petite, if I act as a voting member of the council, then they will expect me to return to France and take my place on the council.”
“France?” I said.
He laughed, and it slithered over the phone like a warm touch. “It is not leaving our fair city that frightens me, ma petite. It is holding the seat. If the triumvirate were fully formed perhaps, perhaps, it would be possible to appear frightening enough to force would-be challengers to choose another.”
“Are you saying without the fourth mark, the triumvirate is useless?”
Silence on his end, so long and deep, that I said, “Jean-Claude?”
“I am here, ma petite. The fourth mark will not make our triumvirate functional unless Richard heals himself.”
“You mean his hatred of me.”
“His jealousy of us together, yes, that is a problem, but not the only one, ma petite. His loathing of his beast is so intense, it weakens him. Weaken any link in a chain and it may snap.”
“Did you know about what’s been happening in the pack?”
“Richard has forbidden any of the wolves to tell me anything without his permission. I believe you are under the same restriction. It is, and I quote, none of my damn business.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t force Jason to tell you anyway.”
“Have you seen Richard within the last month?