“Majestic, this is our friend, Tyler. Tyler, meet Madame Laveau.”
Marie’s gaze flicked over Tyler with polite disinterest. “Bonjour.”
Tyler stared at her, his mouth opening and closing. For a few seconds, he didn’t even breathe. The only time I’d seen him close to this enraptured was when he met Ian.
“Madame,” he finally choked out. “It is an honor.”
Marie’s mouth quirked, and she threw me a look that, had she been anyone else, I would’ve sworn was a humorous version of, At last, someone who appreciates me.
Then she held out her hand. Tyler grasped it but didn’t shake it. He bowed over it with more formality than I’d thought him capable of.
My queen, his thoughts said reverently.
My ass, I didn’t reply out loud.
To my surprise, Marie squeezed Tyler’s hand, her expression turning thoughtful.
“You have power, so you must be the medium I heard about.”
Tyler’s beam was instant. “You’ve heard of me?”
She pulled her hand free. “I make it my business to know about anyone who can successfully summon spirits.”
If he’d won the lottery, I didn’t think Tyler could look any happier. Bones, however, got right down to business.
“Do you need anything before you proceed, Majestic?”
She cast a glance around the parlor, pausing at the urn Tyler placed on the coffee table.
“Does this contain your uncle’s ashes?”
At my nod, Marie let out a light snort. “Then this will be simple.”
She went over and sat on the couch closest to the urn. Bones and I remained where we were, but Tyler began to unload his suitcase.
“Here, Madame,” he said, pulling out his Ouija board.
She gave it a dismissive glance before reaching into the urn. “That’s not necessary.”
As soon as her fingers touched the ashes, an icy current tore through the room, as sudden and sharp as if we’d been dropped into the center of a blizzard. Before I even had a chance to shiver, my uncle stood in the center of the room, materialized enough for me to see that his gray hair was tousled, as if he’d been yanked so hard from wherever he was that it mussed his trademark style.
“What the hell?” he demanded of Marie. Then he saw me, Bones, and Tyler.
“Not this again,” Don muttered, starting to fade at the edges.
One moment, Marie was sitting on the couch with nothing more than silk furnishings surrounding her. The next, she was haloed by shadows that let out bone-splitting howls as they converged upon my uncle. I didn’t see her draw the blood that was the catalyst for summoning the Remnants, but that’s why she had a needle concealed in her ring. One small puncture was all she needed to wield her deadliest weapon.
The power the Remnants emanated ripped across my skin, making me take an instinctive step backward. I barely heard Tyler’s gasp over my uncle’s shouts as those diaphanous forms began slicing through him as though they were steel, and he was liquid.
“There.” Marie’s voice changed, the Southern drawl replaced with an eerie echo that sounded like thousands of people speaking at once. “Ask your questions. He’s not going anywhere with them holding him.”
I spoke through the shock at what she’d done.
“Call them off. This isn’t what we wanted.”
Marie’s brow rose. “How else did you think I’d secure your uncle? Ask him nicely to stay put?”
“We didn’t tell you to torture him!” I burst out, guilt slamming into me at the fresh set of screams from my uncle.
“I made a bargain to ensure that this ghost answered your questions, and I always keep my word. The longer you wait to ask them, Reaper, the longer your uncle suffers.”
Further argument would be useless. Now the only person who could stop this was Don. I gave my uncle a pleading look as I approached.
“Tell us what you know about Madigan. Please.”
His body bowed and shuddered as those forms pitilessly continued to rip through him. Bones glanced away, his mouth tightening. How well he knew what my uncle was going through.
“How could you do this to me, Cat?”
The anguished accusation tore at my heart. I didn’t mean to! was too useless to utter. Besides, though this wasn’t what I’d wanted, Don had admitted to condemning Tate and the others to certain death. If he’d only told us the truth, none of this would be happening.
“That doesn’t matter,” I forced myself to say. “Answer the question, or the Remnants will keep ripping into you until there’s nothing left but ectoplasm.”
That was a lie. You couldn’t kill what was already dead, as I’d often lamented while going after Kramer, but Don didn’t know that.
“Then I’ll die,” he rasped, the words broken from pain. “Better . . . that way.”
Even now, he wouldn’t spill his secret? Frustration made me bite my lip to keep from screaming at him. I hadn’t felt my fangs come out, but from the instant taste of blood, they had.
“Don’t be a fool,” Bones said sharply. “Remnants feed off pain, so as your suffering increases, so does their strength to inflict more.”
“Noooo.”
My uncle drew out the word with such despair that my control snapped. I couldn’t stand to see him like this, and I couldn’t make it stop, as Marie’s flinty expression reminded me.
“Tell me what the f**k Madigan did, Don! Right now!”
“Genetic experimentation!”
My mouth dropped at the reply. Don’s did, too, before another scream contorted it into a maw of agony. Aside from pain, something else flashed across his features. Surprise, as if he couldn’t believe he’d answered me with the truth.
“Genetic experimentation of what? Humans?” Bones pressed.
A groan followed by a stream of curses was his only response. Once more, I found myself biting my lip out of frustration. Damn Don’s stubbornness.
“Answer him,” I snapped.
“Not only humans,” Don said before another What the hell? expression crossed his face.
Marie began to chuckle. “Ah, I see.”
I didn’t. The only time I’d been able to force ghosts to do what I wanted was when I had Marie’s grave power coursing through my veins, but I’d run out of that long ago.
“Care to inform the rest of us?” I asked tightly.
Her glance was equal parts impatience and amusement. “How did so many of my kind fear you when you are so naive?”
Before I could bark out a response, she went on. “He died while you still possessed my powers, didn’t he? And you wept as his spirit left his body?”
I didn’t appreciate her isn’t-this-obvious? tone. “Doesn’t everyone cry when a loved one dies?”
“Mambos don’t,” she said, using the word she’d called me when she realized I absorbed powers after drinking undead blood. “Not unless they want the person to stay.”
“But he didn’t stay,” I said, anger at Don’s pain sharpening my words. “He died.”
“Yet here he is,” Marie replied with a flick of her fingers toward Don. “A ghost. Or more precisely, your ghost.”
Six
What do you mean, her ghost?”
The same question resounded across my mind, but Tyler asked it first. Maybe I was still too shocked to respond.
“It’s the blood,” Marie replied, nodding at my red-smeared lip. The unearthly echo had left her voice, and she spoke with her normal sweet Southern drawl.
“Blood unlocks the power of the grave. With it, a Mambo can raise Remnants and transform the newly departed into a ghost if the Mambo draws her blood when that person dies.”
I racked my brain to remember the last moments of Don’s life. Had I inadvertently drawn some of my blood, as I’d done now by biting my lip? No, I’d been crying too hard—
Bones’s pitying look coincided with a flash of understanding. Vampire fluids were pink due to the limited water-to-blood ratio in our bodies, but when Don was dying, I’d cried so much that my tears had turned scarlet, staining my blouse and the floor by Don’s bedside where I’d knelt, not leaving even after his heart had stopped beating . . .
“You can turn people into ghosts?” Tyler sounded almost afraid.
Guilt made my voice a croak. “Not anymore.”
Then I met my uncle’s gaze. If I lived to be a thousand, I still wouldn’t forget the anguish I saw there—or the anger.
You did this to me! his expression screamed, and he no longer meant the Remnants’ pitiless assault. That would end, but his suspension between this world and the next wouldn’t. He wasn’t a spirit who’d held on because he still had one final task to accomplish, as we’d been hoping these past several months. No, he was one of the cursed few who could never cross over, and it was because of me. The fact that I hadn’t known what I was doing when it happened was almost moot by comparison.
“I am so sorry.”
The words vibrated from the depth of my emotion. Bones took my hand, his grip conveying both strength and comfort, but I felt neither beneath the crushing weight of my culpability. No apology could fix this, and everyone here knew it.
That’s why my next words weren’t to beg forgiveness and why I also held my tears at bay. Considering what they’d done before, they would only be salt in the wound now. Instead, I dug my fangs into my lower lip, glad at the pain that led to an instant trickle of blood.
“You said not just humans, Don, so what else did Madigan do his genetic experimentations on?”
Tyler’s look of surprise coincided with his thinking, You are one COLD bitch. He didn’t realize that all I had left was saving my friends, and Don had proven that he wouldn’t willingly give up the information.
“What else?” The noise Don made was more agonized bark than laugh. “Anything. Everything.”
I held my uncle’s stare as I spoke the next words. “I command you not to leave until I’m finished with my questions. Understood?”
His head jerked in the affirmative. My next stare was directed at Marie. She stood, and a flick of her fingers later, the Remnants left Don, to surround her like a writhing, ethereal halo.
“By everything do you mean ghouls?” she asked my uncle in a silky voice.
Don didn’t reply. Bones glanced at me. I gritted my teeth, bit my lip again, and repeated the question.
“Probably.”
“How are you not sure?” From me this time.
Don leaned forward, hugging his arms over his torso as though trying to shield himself from the Remnants who were no longer there.
“When we worked together, we were only able to retrieve bodies, but those dried-up husks were useless for Madigan’s purposes. None of our operatives were capable of bringing back a live specimen . . . until Cat.”
My guilt took a backseat to that information. Bones’s expression tightened, and I didn’t need a mirror to know my own face must’ve hardened into equally flinty planes.
“You and Madigan were still working together when you brought me on.” A statement, not a question. Don answered it anyway.
“We didn’t think you’d stay, so while we had you, we tried to learn as much as we could about your species duality—”
“Oh, I remember,” I cut him off. “You did blood work on me every week, plus I had more MRIs, X-rays, CT scans, cell scrapings, and needle biopsies than I could count.”
Don looked away, his outline wavering for a moment.
“Hey.” I snapped my fangs into my lip, bloodying it. “No leaving, I am so not done. Tell me more about these genetic experiments.”
Don glanced back at me, his mouth thinning into a slit.
“They were Madigan’s doing. Once he had captive vampires and ghouls to work on, his scope broadened, but he hit a dead end trying to combine the genetic codes. Human cells could handle incorporation with one species or the other, but not both . . . until you. As a half-breed, your cells were the only ones compatible with vampire and ghoul DNA. Madigan was convinced that mapping and duplicating your genetic code could create a safer, synthetic version of both the vampire and ghoul viruses in order to turn regular soldiers into superweapons. I didn’t believe him, but then he synthesized Brams–”
“Wait. Brams came from vampire blood, not mine,” I interrupted.
Don said nothing, yet with the shame washing over his expression, he didn’t need to speak.
“You lying, manipulative sod,” Bones snarled, striding over to him. “If you were solid, I’d beat the treachery out of you though that would take all of my considerable strength.”
Don ran a hand through his gray hair, looking as tired as I’d ever seen him.
“Madigan tried making Brams first with vampire, then ghoul blood, but it failed. Full alteration from human to undead changed the genetic code too much for him to manipulate. Only Cat’s blood, with its human and vampire DNA entwined on a cellular level, yet not fully transformed, was suitable.”
Marie glanced at the Remnants still framing her, arching a brow. I gave my head one angry, negative shake. No, I wouldn’t sic those creatures back onto my uncle even if he had let a megalomaniac use my blood to formulate a secret drug that healed broken bones and bleeding wounds like magic. When Don first told me about it, he said it came from filtering out the components in undead blood, so we’d called it Brams in honor of the world’s most famous vampire writer.
Seems we should have called it Cats after the world’s most gullible half-breed. I’d thought all the blood extractions and tests were because Don was paranoid about my “going evil” by drinking vampire blood. Little did I know Don was the one secretly making deals with the devil.