16. Sixteen
SIXTEEN
Sully sat in the corner of a dark room and tried to get his bearings.
It had all happened so fast. One second, he’d seen the woman seemingly appearing out of nowhere, and then the next, he was in a different space, and it was one where he didn’t have a lot of options.
Shirley Castle had dragged him through the mirror, through a portal, and immediately shoved him into some sort of cage. Maybe it was a dampener of some sort; it was hard to tell. All he knew was that he couldn’t shift or leave his corner of the room.
As for the space, it was small. The design had him assuming it was a Creole cottage of some sort.
He couldn’t be entirely certain because the windows had been covered with heavy drapes and there was no light filtering into the room.
The only reason he could see at all was the fixture overhead.
It was an antique, and it didn’t offer a lot of illumination.
His panther eyes were better than most, but he could still only make out vague shapes around the room, pieces of furniture, and old takeout bags.
He even tried to focus on one of the takeout bags to get a name of the restaurant — that would at least give him an idea where he was, if he was even still in New Orleans — but he couldn’t read the name.
As for the woman who had taken him, she continuously paced on the other side of the magical cage and muttered to herself. She was alone — no other banshees — but he knew she would have backup when the time came.
He spent the first hour of his incarceration watching her. Then he spent the next thinking. He didn’t say a single word or ask for her demands. He simply watched and waited. When the two-hour mark passed, and she didn’t speak to him, he decided he had no choice but to take the initiative.
“So, what’s the plan here?” he asked, giving the space a dubious look. “Are we just going to sit here in silence for the next few hours, or what?”
Shirley stopped pacing and turned to face him. Her long hair looked straggly in the limited light, and even though he didn’t know the woman, Sully’s first inclination was to assume she was sick. He didn’t ask her that straight away, but filed the information in the back of his mind to use later.
“What is it that you want to talk about?” she demanded. “Oh, I know. How about we talk about you breaking into my house? How about we talk about your girlfriend stealing my book? How does that sound?”
“Fiancée,” Sully corrected out of habit. “She’s my fiancée.”
“And she’ll never be your wife if you don’t shut up!” Shirley went back to pacing and muttering to herself.
Sully watched her, debating, and exhaled heavily.
Ofelia would find him. He didn’t have a doubt about that.
Right now, she was probably losing her mind and wondering what had happened to him.
She would regroup, though. She would come for him.
He didn’t want to wait for her, however.
If he could find a way out of this himself, he would.
“We need to talk,” he insisted.
“Oh, really?” Shirley had an animated face despite the pronounced lines around her eyes. There were shadows there too, telling him she hadn’t been sleeping well. “Sure. Let’s talk.” She marched over and sat on a chair facing him. “Tell me why you thought you had the right to break into my home.”
“I’ll answer your questions,” Sully said. “You have to answer mine in exchange.”
Shirley’s eyes narrowed.
“Do we have a deal?” he prodded after a beat.
“Fine,” she growled. “You answer mine first.”
“Fair enough.” Sully shifted. The only place to sit was on the floor, and he couldn’t get comfortable no matter how hard he tried. “We broke into your house because you were one of three people on our list.”
“And what list is that?”
“A list of individuals who have lost their husbands in incidents that included claw marks. Since we were searching for banshee activity, your husband’s death fit the bill.”
Shirley was silent for a moment, then nodded. “I guess we should have thought of that.”
“I guess so,” Sully agreed. “Now it’s my turn.” He leaned forward. “The banshees that attacked our party, they work for you, correct?”
Shirley made a sneering face. “I guess that’s fair to say,” she confirmed.
“Did you send them for Angelique because Biff wants her?” Sully didn’t know when the picture had become clear to him — sometime in the last two hours when he’d been silently working things out as he watched her pace the room — but it was the only thing that made sense when he looked at all the facts.
“My son will make a good mate,” Shirley replied. “He needs a strong female to keep him in line, however. The siren is strong. She’ll provide strong offspring.”
Sully’s stomach twisted, but he didn’t give the banshee his true opinion on the subject. “I see.”
“You don’t have the right to be disgusted with me,” Shirley snapped, correctly reading his reaction. “This is how it’s always done.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.” Her anger burst forth, and she threw a bolt of magic at the cage wall. It reflected back and died almost immediately. “You picked a strong mate. My son deserves one, too.”
“Your son deserves a lot of things,” Sully said dryly. “Angelique is not one of them.”
“She was supposed to pick him, not the weak warlock.” Shirley rolled her eyes. “She didn’t follow the script.”
“Maybe that’s because she thought she should write her own script.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.” Shirley shook her head and went to the window. She moved the drape, looked out, then let it fall. “The sun is setting. Angelique will finish her transformation before midnight. Then it will be over.”
“You can feel her?” Sully asked.
“No, but I’ve done this more than once.” She turned back. “I am not the sort of banshee that you’re used to. I am in control of what’s happening. I make the decision. I draw the lines of how my family will look when colored in.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing?” Sully kept his voice level. “It feels … odd to me that you would be wandering around turning random paranormals into banshees. That’s what you have been doing, right?”
“I wouldn’t say they were random.”
“No?” Sully cocked his head. “What would you say they were?”
“I researched each and every single one of them.” Shirley puffed herself out. “I made sure that they would have strong enough genes to anchor my family going forward.”
Sully didn’t know why he said the next part, but there was no stopping him, given the look on her face. “Because you’re dying and want to make sure you have control of your legacy?”
Slowly, Shirley tracked her gaze. “Who …” She stopped herself and seemed to reconsider. “How …” She didn’t finish that one out either.
“You look sick,” Sully offered, easing the conversation along. “You smell sick, too.”
“I do not smell sick.” Shirley reared back. “How dare you!”
“It’s the truth.” He rolled his neck and checked his internal clock.
He’d seen how much sun was outside the window when Shirley had opened the drapes.
Whatever plan Ofelia was going to launch would involve Pascal.
That meant they weren’t coming until the sun set.
He would have to drag things out until then.
“How about I tell you what I believe happened, and you tell me what I’ve got wrong? ” he suggested.
Shirley narrowed her eyes. “There’s no way you can understand my story.”
“Let me try. We’re not doing anything else but waiting for Angelique to transition, right?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it. Ultimately, she nodded. “Fine. Tell me my story.”
Sully ignored her sarcastic tone. “It starts with a slave who wanted freedom and saw what she referred to as a wailing woman,” he supplied.
“She was familiar with banshees and couldn’t understand why this one was different.
She made it her mission to find out why that banshee was different, and it turns out, she was born that way. ”
Shirley’s expression was immovable.
“The slave made a deal with the banshee to turn her,” he continued, choosing his words carefully. The story had coalesced in his head. “She wanted to take control of her destiny, and this was the only thing she could come up with.”
“It worked,” Shirley fired back. “It worked, and Claudette was the steppingstone our family sprang from.”
Claudette. Sully filed the name away. It likely wouldn’t be important, but just in case. “It did work,” he agreed. “She got her family out of slavery because of what she became after the transformation. I’m guessing she killed the monster who had bought her.”
“Him and all of his sons,” Shirley said smugly.
“They had it coming. That massacre allowed her to build a mystique for her family. Respect came from her story, and when slavery was abolished, her family was in a unique position to take advantage of the new world.”
“The new world.” Shirley laughed, but it turned into a cough. The more Sully looked at her, the weaker she seemed. “It was the same world. Down here, it was still the same.”
“If you expect me to say that slavery was okay, you’re bound for disappointment,” Sully replied. “I’m just trying to understand your family tree.”
“There’s not much to understand. Claudette was the first. Every baby she birthed after that was different. Even from each other.”
“Meaning — at least I’m guessing — that the girls were more magical than the boys,” Sully surmised.
She nodded, and now she actually seemed interested in the conversation. “The boys could father magical children, but they themselves never had powers. They were expected to pick proper mates to keep the line going.”
“How many banshees are we talking here?” Sully asked. “How big is your line?”
“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know?” Amusement took over Shirley’s features. “There are a lot of us.”