Daughter of the Blood. Nancy Holder
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Louise closed her eyes, paused, glanced expectantly at the door and said, “Good. They’re here. Mathilde, let them in.”
Mathilde crossed to the door, opened it, and let two more women inside. They were also dressed in black suits and white blouses, wearing lapel pins and headsets. Both of them curtseyed to Izzy, one reaching forward to kiss her bare ring finger.
“Catherine and Laure,” Louise said, as the two rose and stood at parade rest. “Top agents. Crack shots, magically and otherwise. We’re posting them here to stand guard over Sauvage and Ruthven. They’d rather die than let harm come to the woman lying in that bed.”
Both women stared straight ahead, but color rose in their cheeks.
Louise looked at Izzy. “We should mobilize. We’re pushing our luck.”
Izzy wanted to ask her if she really believed in luck. Where did that fit in, exactly, with people who could use magic? Instead, she arranged her gris-gris over the shoulders of her body armor and patted the Medusa in her holster. The weight of the gun, once an unthinkable burden, was now her anchor.
Izzy turned back to Sauvage. “You’re being very brave,” she told her. “Jean-Marc will be proud of you when he hears how well you handled this.” The temptation rose again to go downstairs and see him before they left. She quelled it.
Sauvage’s eyes were huge as she raised herself up on her elbows. “Unless he dies,” she said mournfully.
“God, Jesse,” Ruthven chided her. “Don’t say shit like that.”
Louise motioned for the others to follow her as she crossed to the stone wall opposite the door. She snapped her fingers. A hand’s breadth in front of her, a larger-than-life-size oil portrait of Marianne in her white gown shimmered into view. Her stance was regal, power radiating from every pore. A tiara of white flames glowed from the crown of her dark hair, and she held a clutch of lilies in one veined, muscular hand and an athame in the other. From beneath her gown, a white slipper was planted on top of a skull with glowing red eyes.
Louise looked from the portrait to Izzy and back again, as if measuring the resemblance. Then she pointed her finger and the entire portrait rose into the air, revealing the entrance to a tunnel hewn from the thick marble wall.
“I’ll take point,” Louise announced.
Mathilde said, “I’ll bring up the rear. Stay in the middle, Guardienne .”
Izzy looked one last time over her shoulder at Ruthven and Sauvage, huddled together on the bed, gaping at them.
“Be careful,” she said. They nodded in silent unison.
Izzy wondered if she would ever see them again.
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