Daughter of the Blood. Nancy Holder

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СКАЧАТЬ off like a trail of gunpowder.

      Louise and Mathilde reached into their duffels and pulled out heavy-looking, webbed vests. Body armor. As Louise held one out, Mathilde stretched her arms through the armholes. Then she turned around and Louise fanned her fingers. There was a snick and Louise said, “You’re bolted.”

      Mathilde did the same for her, down to the “bolting.” Then Louise retrieved a third vest for Izzy.

      “If you need to get the vest off in a hurry, say this word. I’ll spell it for you,” Louise said. “T-e-r-m-i-n-u-s. Do you speak Latin?”

      “Not really,” Izzy allowed. “I’ve heard a little. I’m Catholic,” she added.

      The two women stopped moving and stared at her. Mathilde paled, while Louise blinked rapidly, her lips parting in shock.

      Now what? Izzy wondered. They must have their own religion. Maybe I’m supposed to be their pope or something.

      The moment passed—or rather, the agents chose to ignore it. Izzy put on knee pads. They checked each other out, running through a verbal checklist as each of them touched their pockets and verified possession of things they described in jargon: les sploders, wire, poprocks, choses, malfacteus .

      When they were finished, Louise crossed over to Sauvage and said, “It’s showtime.”

      “Oh, my God, I’m so freaked out,” Sauvage murmured to Ruthven. Then she kissed her young boyfriend hard on the lips and minced over to the bed in her heeled boots. She sat on the edge of the mattress. “Do I need to take off my clothes?”

      “It doesn’t matter either way,” Louise said.

      “Okay,” Sauvage whispered as she lay down on the bed. Ruthven backed away. Mathilde and Louise made motions over Sauvage’s body. White light poured from their hands and spread over Sauvage like a sheet, throbbing and pulsing all over her body. One moment Sauvage was Sauvage…and the next…

      She didn’t look exactly like Izzy. She had Izzy’s black cloud of hair, her dark eyes and freckles, but she looked more like a close relative than Izzy herself. Still, if the lights were lowered, and she pretended to be asleep, she could probably pass.

      Louise ticked her glance to Izzy. “It’s not as sophisticated as a Devereaux glamour.”

      “No one does glamours as well as the Devs,” Mathilde said, an envious half smile quirking her face as she bent down beside her duffle and gathered up a fistful of crucifixes.

      “Let me see,” Sauvage demanded, hopping out of the bed and trotting to the full-length mirror at the foot of the bed. She posed, frowned. “Hey. I don’t look that much like you at all.”

      “Maybe we should go with a fabricant,” Louise mused as she crossed her arms and followed Sauvage’s gaze into the mirror. “We could probably get a closer match.”

      Fabricants were magically created beings. Le Fils had sent a fabricant assassin after Izzy in New York. It had seemed terribly real.

      “I’d suggest we stick with the glamour,” Mathilde said. “We’d have better control.” She added, “A fabricant might degrade too fast. We don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”

      Then 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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