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“Got her.” I take point, leading our group to the end of the hall with a loud clacking of shoes against polished tile.
Josephine pushes ahead of me when we slow at the threshold of the dark room, anger boiling just under the surface. “Where are you, you officious, meddling, stupid bird?”
My mistake. Her anger is very much above the surface.
Ignoring the pitch-black void ahead of us, she storms forward. “There’s no use hiding. Get your feathery ass—” Josie breaks off in a grunt, cursing in French.
I flick the light switch and wince against the sudden brightness that leaves me blind for a second. When I blink away the spots, Josie is half bent over, hobbled as she hops while rubbing at her shin, where she banged it against the wooden frame of a chair.
The room is dedicated to a grand piano that sits in the center of the space, with two plush loveseats and a matching chaise lounge pointed towards it.
Ah, and there’s the guilty party.
Phi jumps from the piano bench, flapping her wings once to boost herself up onto the shiny lid, her talons scraping the polished lacquer.
“Are you insane?” Josie demands, recovering and getting in the raven’s face.
“Nope, just dying—painfully slowly,” Phi responds, though no one but me can understand the squawk and half-hearted clack of her beak.
She seems tired. Exhausted, really. Whatever Elara and Tavor did to stabilize her earlier won’t be enough to sustain her for long. Her magic is fading fast, and performing that last spell to enter Josie in the running for high priestess likely didn’t help.
“You know this bird?” Finn asks, arms crossed as he looks over the raven. “Who’s familiar is it? It must be a Moon Witch’s; there are only four Sun Witches in all of Nola with raven familiars. And none of them would mistreat their companion so severely.”
Fintan tsks as he leans in for a closer look at Phi. He reaches out to run his hand down her dull feathers, and jumps when Phi snaps her beak at his reaching fingers.
“Poor thing.” Finn clasps his hands safely behind his back where temperamental demons are less likely to bite them. “Its magic is so faint it’s bordering on abuse.”
“She’s dying,” Josie tells him, a hint of sympathy creeping in despite her anger at Phi.
“You won’t die, though,” I say before I get caught up caring about a freakin’ demon in a raven’s body. “I mean, not really. You don’t stop existing—you just go back to hell.”
The bird fixes me with a beady-eyed stare, but when she speaks, there’s no heat behind her words anymore—no emotion at all. “That doesn’t mean I don’t feel the way this body is falling apart on me. I’d still take this over being trapped in hell.”
“No kidding.”
“What’s she saying, Rune?” Josie asks. “Will you play translator for us?” She tilts her face up at me, long lashes fluttering through her sparkling mask.
How can I say no to such a glorious sight?
“Since when can you talk to ravens?” Sebastian asks, brow creased behind his own dark mask as he looks me over. “That seems like a change I should have been informed about.”
Fuck, he’s pissed. I am so in trouble.
“It’s new,” I shrug, trying to play it cool and turning my attention from my sire’s angry gaze back to the huge raven. “It’s a unity bond thing.”
Sebastian grunts.
“Why did you follow us here?” I ask Phi. “Josie already gave you her answer back at Adelaide’s. Is this your way of making her regret not taking you on as a familiar? Are you really so bitter that you’re hoping to take her out on your way down to hell?”
Josie’s eyes go wide. “Woah, wait a sec—take me out? Hell? No one actually dies during these things, right?” She looks with wide, pleading eyes from me, to Finn, to Sebastian, then back to me, but none of us has an answer for her. Not one she would like anyway.
“You can talk to animals,” Finn says slowly, looking between me and the raven like the whole thing is beyond him.
What’s so hard to understand? Vampires, and witches, and magic crystals, sure—those are within the realm of possibility—but communing with a raven is impossible?
“C’mon, Fintan,” I goad. “Since when are you slow on the uptake?”
“I’m playing catch-up, as it seems you’ve left Sebastian and me out of the loop.”
