The Witch's Thirst

Only a few days ago, when they opened their Grimoires, the sisters had been shocked to find that the mirrors no longer showed the apocalyptic vision. They only reflected gray swirls. Nothing more.

“When did your absolutus turn gray?” Gilly asked.

“I told you,” Evee snapped. “I don’t know. I’d probably still be oblivious of it if you hadn’t noticed it. It’s not like I check on it every day.”

Gilly turned to Viv. “What about yours?”

Viv glanced around the foyer as if to confirm that no one was around but her sisters. Then she unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans. She wiggled her jeans down just enough to bare her right hip, where she carried her absolutus infinitus.

It, too, had turned gray. Viv’s hands shook as she pulled up her pants, zipped and buttoned them back into place.

“What the fuck?” Gilly blurted. “It’s gray, too.”

“You think I didn’t notice?” Viv snapped.

“You didn’t notice the change before?” Gilly asked.

“No.” Viv looked up at her sisters blankly.

“But you shower every day, right?” Gilly said. “Wouldn’t you have seen it in the mirror?”

“Well, I didn’t,” Viv said. “This is the first I’ve seen it like this.”

Evee and Viv looked at Gilly simultaneously. “What about yours?”

Gilly’s eyes widened, and then she nodded. She leaned over and lifted the right leg of her linen pants and twisted her right foot slightly inward. Her absolutus infinitus sat right above her right ankle as usual, its color unchanged—charcoal black.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Evee said. She shivered. “I’m freezing here. I’ve got to dry my hair before I get pneumonia. You two go back to the kitchen. Get something to eat. I’ll dry my hair and meet you back there in a few.”

When Evee got to her bathroom, she saw Hoot perched on the counter near the bathroom sink.

“I told you,” Hoot said.

Ignoring him, Evee opened a vanity drawer and pulled out her blow-dryer. She plugged it in, turned it on and aimed a blast of warm air at her familiar.

Hoot screeched and flew off the counter and out of the bathroom, all the while yelling, “Told you, told you. See what you get for being a hussy?”

“Shut up,” Evee said, aiming the blow-dryer at her hair. If Hoot snapped back a reply, she didn’t hear it. Blessed be the dryer.

By the time she finished with her hair and made it back into the kitchen, her sisters were seated around the small kitchen table, each with a steaming bowl of gumbo in front of her and a cup of tea.

Gilly motioned for Evee to sit next to her, where another bowl of gumbo and cup of tea had been set out for her.

Evee sat and picked up a spoon, ready to dig into her food. The first bite drew a sigh from her. “This is so good,” she said, and quickly dug in for another spoonful.

“Thanks,” Viv said. “Made it a couple weeks ago. Put it in the freezer for a rainy day. Or shitty day, whatever works.” She shrugged.

“Uh, by the way,” Gilly said to Evee. “Before I forget to tell you. We’ve been summoned by the Elders. I’m sure they’ve heard about the humans and want an update from us.”

Evee felt her shoulders droop. “When?”

“This evening. Before the feeding.”

“That late?” Evee said. “Don’t they usually go to bed around seven or something ridiculously early like that?”

Viv shrugged. “It’s not usual times right now.”

“Oh, and something else,” Gilly said. “We were wondering...” She looked at Viv.

Viv arched a brow at her sister while spooning more gumbo into her mouth.

“What were you doing here showering when you were supposed to be out looking for your Nosferatu earlier?” Gilly asked.

Evee stared down into the bowl in front of her. “I, uh... I had a situation with a Cartesian.”

Viv and Gilly dropped their spoons into their bowls simultaneously.

“When? Where?” Viv asked.

“What did you do?” Gilly asked.

“Were you hurt?” Viv asked anxiously. “You don’t look hurt.”

Evee held up a hand to stave their questions. Ate one more bite of chicken and sausage gumbo, then readied herself for the inquisition.

Finally, she said, “We split up. Me, Ronan and Lucien each went separate ways to cover more ground and look for Nosferatu. I was headed downriver, Lucien upriver, and Ronan took the Quarter.”

Her sisters stared at her bug-eyed.

“Anyway, I was walking riverside when a rift opened in the sky out of nowhere and a Cartesian hung out of it so low it could have scooped me up in one grasp. Luckily I caught him out of the corner of my eye and took off running. Only ran the wrong way. Right into the river until I couldn’t feel the bottom anymore.”

Gilly gasped. “You can’t even swim.”

Viv reached out and touched Evee’s arm. “You must have been terrified.”

Evee nodded, her eyes brimming with tears again as she recalled the event. “I didn’t know what was going to happen first. The Cartesian attacking me, or me drowning.”

“Obviously neither happened, since you’re sitting right here,” Gilly said, sounding grateful. “What did happen? The Cartesian, you stuck in the water...?”

“Lucien showed up,” Evee said. “Must have doubled back, because the next thing I knew the Cartesian was gone, and Lucien was pulling me out of the water.”

Gilly cocked her head. “And did he bring you back here to the house?”

Evee swirled bits of chicken and sausage around in her gumbo with a spoon, knew what was coming next. Finally, she said. “Yes, he brought me here.”

“What about Ronan?” Viv asked. “Where was he during all this?”

“I told you,” Evee said. “In the Quarter. He wasn’t anywhere near the river.”

“Where are they now?” Gilly asked.

“Who?”

Gilly rolled her eyes. “Lucien and Ronan.”

“Far as I know, Ronan’s still in the Quarter,” Evee said. “Lucien may have gone after him, I’m not sure.”

“In soaked clothes?” Viv asked.

“Yeah,” Gilly chimed in. “You said he pulled you out of the river. Surely he’d have gotten soaked doing that, right?” Suddenly, Gilly’s head popped up and she sniffed the air, turning her head slowly from left to right, sniffing the entire time, like a cat tracking a mouse. A few seconds later, she got up from her chair, following her nose into the utility room at the back of the kitchen.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Gilly said, which caused Viv to jump up from her seat and head to the utility room.

Evee took off right behind them.

“What’s wrong?” Evee asked when she finally caught up with her sisters.

Gilly twirled about and faced her. “You had sex in here, didn’t you? I can smell it.”

Evee felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment. “I did not have sex,” she proclaimed.

“Oh, yeah?” Gilly said, then reached for an object on the washer and handed it to Evee. “Then what’s this doing here?”

Evee turned Lucien’s watch over in her hand, wondering how it had gotten there. Then suddenly remembering him taking it off before stripping out of his shirt.

“Fess up,” Viv said. “What happened?”

There were too many other things going wrong now for Evee to start playing fifty questions with her sisters. “Okay, all right, but I didn’t have, like, real sex with Lucien. He helped me home so I could shower and get into dry clothes. We happened to kiss. He sat me on top of the dryer, then put his hands...his thumbs between my legs, and before I knew it fireworks happened.”

Gilly’s mouth dropped open, as did Viv’s.

“What were you thinking?” Gilly asked. “We barely know these men, and you let one of them touch you like that? You should know better—”

“I knew better,” Viv interrupted. “But it still happened.”

Now it was Evee and Gilly’s turn to stare at their older sister.

“Except we went all the way. Nikoli didn’t just touch me.”

“You mean like the real deal?” Evee asked, feeling a bit envious.

“Yeah.” Viv nodded, and a small grin spread across her face. “And more than one time.”

Gilly placed a hand on her forehead and groaned.

“What?” Viv said to her. “You mean nothing’s happened between you and Gavril?”

“No,” Gilly said gruffly. “Nothing.”

Viv looked over at Evee. “Why Lucien? Why not Ronan? Convenience?”

“Not really,” Evee said, feeling slightly offended that her sister had made the question sound like she screwed everything in sight every chance she got. “I mean Ronan is a really nice guy. Good-looking, too. But there’s something about Lucien that...well, draws me to him. I couldn’t have stopped that first kiss even if I’d have wanted to. Couldn’t have stopped him touching me.”

Gilly slapped her hands on the table. “Maybe that’s why your and Viv’s absolutus infinitus turned gray. Because of what happened between you and Lucien, Viv and Nikoli. You know the curse says we can’t marry or live intimately with any human.”

Evee and Viv looked at Gilly simultaneously before Evee said, “I didn’t marry Lucien.”

“And I’m not living intimately with Nikoli,” Viv shot back. “We simply had sex.”

Gilly sat back in her chair. “I think the both of you are working with semantics here. It’s all in the interpretation of what the curse actually meant. Do we know that for sure? I mean, we’re talking the 1500s here, when the curse was cast. What if the original Elders considered living intimately together to mean just having plain old sex? Back in that day and age, the only women who screwed just to screw were harlots in bordellos. If that’s the case, wouldn’t that mean that just having sex without being married was part of the curse, as well? What if the two of you having sexual encounters with those Benders caused all this chaos to happen? The missing Originals, the attacks on humans?”

Viv scowled at her. “Man, oh, man, you really stretched that one out of your butt. Regardless, it’s not like I can take it back now, right? We didn’t oppose the curse. We didn’t defy it by marrying those men, and we’re not living intimately with them. Period.”

“As I said,” Gilly said. “Semantics.”

Despite the reprimand coming out of Gilly’s mouth, Evee could’ve sworn she saw envy and longing in her sister’s eyes. Had she had the chance, she’d have slept with Gavril. Evee knew it as well as she knew her own name.

“Not,” Viv retorted.

Evee put the tips of her fingers from her right hand against the palm of her left, calling for a time-out. Viv and Gilly stared at her, anger still popping in their eyes.

“Who did what, when and where is not what’s important right now. Dying humans are. We’ve got to find our missing Originals and get them confined, and the ones who are confined need to be protected from the Cartesians.”

“That’s all we’ve been trying to do,” Viv said. “With not much success, I might add.”

“Maybe once we fill the Elders in, they’ll have some ideas. Especially about why our spells are weakening. Hell, we can’t track our own behinds, much less our own broods. We need backup. Serious backup.”

“No way on the Elders,” Evee said. “The sex part with the Benders will come out, and that’s the last thing we need.”

Elvis, Gilly’s familiar, suddenly raced into the kitchen, tittered, then let out a short screech as if in agreement.

“Hush,” Gilly told him, then turned to Viv. “I don’t think it’s going to do us any good to go back to the Elders. They were supposed to contact the others from the Circle of Sisters to help with spells from different locations. If they did, I certainly haven’t seen any evidence of it. Have you?”

Viv and Evee shook their heads.

“Look,” Evee said, “we have to keep our heads and hands about us, and no more panty play with the Benders.” Even to her own ear, the last part of what she’d just said sounded flat, unconvincing and regretful. “I think one of the biggest challenges we’ve got coming up is feeding time. It’ll be here before we know it, and I have a feeling that the Cartesians are going to attempt a strike while we’re transporting our broods to the North Compound.” She turned to Viv. “Your Loup Garous are already there, but I don’t know how we’re going to get the Nosferatu and Chenilles out there without a Cartesian attack.”

“Maybe there’s a different way for us to set up the feedings,” Viv said. “What if I had my ranch hands drain the cattle’s blood and then we can pick it up and bring it to the Nosferatu instead of bringing the Nosferatu to the compound? The corpses will be there for the Loup Garous, who are already in the compound to eat. When they’re done, I can have my ranch hands, Charlie, Bootstrap and Kale, gather up the bones...damn, never mind. I’ve never allowed the ranch hands to go into the North Compound, and I can’t have them go there now. Too big a risk. Can’t chance a Loup attacking any one of them.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.