“I thought you’d never been physically close to her.”
“Only in dreams and nightmares,” I said.
Music started-“Wild Boys” by Duran Duran-and it still took me a minute to realize it was my cell phone. I fumbled it out of my pocket, vowing to pick a different song for Nathaniel to put into the phone so I could get rid of this one.
“Anita,” Wicked said, “are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you being coerced?”
“No, no, I’m fine, really.”
“I cannot get inside. I cannot even step on the doorstep.” Wicked’s voice sounded afraid; other than for his brother’s life, I’d never heard him afraid.
“You don’t have to, Wicked, just wait outside. I’ll come to you in a little bit.”
“I felt the Mother of All Darkness, and then I felt…” He seemed at a loss for words.
I almost helped him out, but he was a vampire, and it had been angels. I wanted to know what he’d sensed.
He finally spoke again, “When I first arrived, I could have entered the house with an invitation, but now I wouldn’t dare. It glows like something holy.”
“The priestess had to redo the shields,” I said, “to keep out Marmee Noir.”
“If anything goes wrong in there, I cannot help you.”
“It’s covered, Wicked, honest.”
“I know you have Edward with you, but I am your bodyguard, Anita. Jean-Claude charged me with your safety. If I let you die here, Jean-Claude would kill me and my brother. He’d probably kill Truth first and make me watch, and then he’d kill me. And right this second, I can’t reach you. Shit.”
“Isn’t that usually my line?” I said.
“Don’t make a joke of this, Anita.”
“Look, I’m sorry you can’t enter past the wards, but we are all right, and you couldn’t have kept me safe from Marmee Noir even if you’d been with me.”
“And that is another problem. I could see her like some black storm towering over the house. She ignored me as if I didn’t exist, but I felt her power, Anita. All the weapons training in the world won’t stop her.”
“Apparently, magic does,” I said.
“Would the wards you are behind keep her out?”
“Maybe.”
“But they would also keep out every other vampire, and Vittorio has wereanimals to send for you, so Jean-Claude tells me.”
“I’m pretty sure of that, yeah.”
“Then we need to be with you,” he said.
“Agreed.”
“But we need to keep the Mother of All Darkness from you, too. How do we do both?”
That he was asking me was not a good sign. “Wolves,” I said, finally.
“What?”
“Wolf, she can’t control wolf, only cats.”
“What about the werehyenas?”
“I don’t know, I’ve only made wolf work for me.”
“We have Graham.”
“Any other wolves would be helpful,” I said.
“I’ll call Requiem and see what we can find.” Then he hung up. I was left to turn back to the room and say, “Um, nope, no idea how to explain it, so I’m not going to try.”
Phoebe said, “You are wearing something that was supposed to help you against the Darkness.”
I almost touched the medallion on its chain with the cross, but stopped myself in midmotion.
She smiled.
“Fine,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter, since it seems to have stopped working.”
“If you will permit me to look at it, I believe it only needs to be cleansed and recharged.” There must have been a look on my face because she added, “Surely whoever taught you to shield well enough to keep Michael outside taught you this as well.”
“She tried, but I don’t put a lot of stock in jewelry.”
She smiled again. “Yet you believed in the piece of metal around your neck.”
I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the cross or the medallion, but either way, she had a point. “You’re right, my teacher has talked to me about stones and stuff. I just don’t believe in it.”
“Some things don’t require your belief to make them work, Marshal.”
“I’ve got stuff on me,” Bernardo said, “that just works, Anita.”
“Stones?” I made it a question.
He nodded.
Phoebe said, “It is supposed to help you see your prey, but when you removed your cross, you had only things that made you see more into the spirit world and nothing to protect you from it.”
He shrugged. “I got exactly what I asked for; maybe I just didn’t know what I needed.”