Chapter 7

Ihadn't ever experienced the humidity of being in the earthen lairs, and I had to say that I wasn't loving it. New Orleans, admittedly, was damp in various ways. Humid air. Wet drizzle. Hurricane season. Bayou waters. There were plenty of ways that water was inevitable. In this pirate cave of Iggy's, the air felt thick. Moldy. Musty. But without the benefit of corpses of any sort that I could summon to me. The absence of the dead felt like a sudden loss of one of my primary senses. For years, I'd wished I could "turn off" my necromancy, but when it was gone after my bonding with Eli, I was miserable. Having it cut off now made me feel panic when I woke up in the same quiet darkened room. My magic was silent. I was still a captive.

This time, at least, I had a much longer chain on my ankles. My hands were free, and I was resting on a mound of blankets. They didn't smell terrible, but there was a damp earth scent that permeated them and the air itself.

At least I wasn't sleeping standing up. That was progress. My hands were free, too. I'd like to think that this meant Iggy was a fool, but he was obviously able to knock me out to change my restraints, so I wasn't arrogant enough to think he was foolish.

He'll make a mistake sooner or later. He has to.

I studied the rest of the room where I was caged. For a literal hole in the ground, it had its upsides. There were barrels that may or may not be filled with booze, crates of centuries' old liquor, and in the darkest corner, tucked behind the rest, a few free weights.

Who said you couldn't teach a dead man new tricks?

It appeared that my captor spent a not-insignificant amount of time here.

I'd always said that there was nowhere else I'd rather be than New Orleans. Plagues, floods, monsters. New Orleans didn't give up or give in, and I was proud of that. I hadn't meant that I wanted to be entombed under the city.

I tried again to reach for the dead, to reach for some sort of nature. I was inside the earth. That was nature. My magic was silent.

"Can you hear me?" I called to Beatrice, Eli, the dead.

No one answered.

Whatever Iggy had done when he bound my magic, it was damned effectual. I drifted back to sleep on my pallet of blankets. I might not be as strong as the Hexen Master who'd kidnapped me, but I wasn't going to stop fighting. That meant sleep.

And food.

That part wasn't as easily handled. Thanks to recent events, I was pretty reliant on my Bloody Allie drinks, and without regular access to fresh blood, I was going to get weaker and weaker.

Not helping.

I shoved that line of thought away. Sometimes in this world, all a girl could do was bop the gators that swam closest to the pirogue—or in this case, the kidnappers in the pirate tunnel.

On my next wake-up,I was greeted by the sight of my kidnapper draining blood from his wrist into a coffee mug that looked as old as the crates of liquor.

"Good morning, Hexen."

I said nothing, but it hit me then: I'd slept. Twice even. Since I went multiple days without needing even a catnap, I was sure that this was his doing, too.

"How long have I been here?"

"Two weeks." He glanced at me. "Fifteen days to be precise. I could tabulate hours, as well, but—"

"Why?" Muttering even that one word took more energy than seemed rational.

Cut off from Eli.

Cut off from the dead.

Cut off from nature.

The reasons were there, and I could think of them, but I couldn't understand why Iggy was doing this.

"Eli kill you," I swore blearily. "Bea…trice…too."

"Yes, yes, your calvary would try. And yet"—he made a point of looking around the cave-like room—"here we still are."

I glared at him, fighting to keep my eyes open long enough to do that.

"Bourbon?" He held up a bottle that looked almost as old as I thought he was. "There's port and sherry. Rum. You seem more like a bourbon-for-breakfast kind of woman."

I raised both middle fingers in his direction.

"Two fingers of bourbon it is!" Iggy gestured and the cork popped out the bottle.

Despite every bit of willpower that I knew I had, I looked at that bourbon splashing into the antique cup, twining around the blood in there, and I salivated like a starving dog.

Iggy walked over to me and crouched down.

I was too weak to reach the cup, too weak to sit up without his help, and I hated him just then.

He put the cup on the floor and pulled me upright. "Vow on your magic that you will not try to escape, Geneviève of Crowe, and I shall offer you an equal vow that no harm will come to you while you are here."

I coughed like I couldn't speak, and he brought the cup to my lips.

Ha! Fooled you! I thought as he tipped the cup and poured that beautiful elixir into my mouth.

Too slowly I realized that I was the fool in this situation. This was more than simple blood. I'd watched him, believed my eyes in my state of weakness and exhaustion, but Iggy had put other blood into the cup before I'd woken—and that blood was infused with his own magic.

"Mine to protect," Iggy murmured.

He held the cup to my lips, tipping it and me back so it poured down my throat even as I tried to close my mouth.

"My vow to you, Geneviève of Crowe, my apprentice. I Ignatius Blackwood, will guard your life and teach you." He stared at me as I grew stronger, watching his own magic enter my skin and bone. "To Death, we are committed. To this city, we are born again."

I jerked away, reaching up at the same time to grab the cup from his hand. In the next moment, I pulled back and smashed it into his throat.

Iggy fell backward, blood and bourbon dripping across his face, and as he reclined there, I rose up and kneeled down on his chest, pinning him.

Whatever binding he had placed on me was gone.

Geneviève! My grandmother's voice was a roar in my mind.

And louder still was Eli's: Bonbon! Wife! Geneviève of Stonecroft!

I am here, I thought-spoke to both. Come to me. Please.

I was not expecting them to arrive so quickly, but in less than five minutes, the wall bowed in. Dirt and rock and dust billowed in like a cloud.

And I was kneeling over a bloody, laughing man. In that flicker, I saw Baron Samedi again, winking at me as if the whole thing was a grand game. His hand—Iggy's hand or Baron Samedi's, I wasn't sure—grabbed my hip as if what was happening was something other than the truth.

To a lot of men, I suspect it would look like infidelity.

I was atop Iggy. Admittedly we were dressed and filthy, but Iggy looked pleased as a cat who'd already had more than a sample of the cream.

"Geneviève!" Eli plucked me from where I kneeled and moved us across the room in the same instant.

His hands were all over me, seeking injuries, verifying that I was there and real.

"You're alive," he said. "I knew you had to be. If not, I'd have died, but . . . fear does things. If anyone could find a way to spare me death despite being soul-bond, it would be you, bonbon."

My grandmother was less effusive, but her affection was equally obvious. She currently had my captor by the throat. "Daughter of Mine," was all she said to me. Her attention was on revenge.

Beatrice shook Iggy like a child's doll. "You dare touch my family, Iggy?"

I watched, and for a flicker of a moment, I thought that Iggy was about to die. I could summon his ghost and ask what in the name of—

"Hexen," he croaked. "Stop her."

And at his order, I was out of Eli's embrace and snarling at my grandmother as I jerked Iggy free of her hold. I wasn't fool enough to grab Beatrice, but I pulled him free of her grip.