Supernatural fantasy audiobook - feisty Southern heroine
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EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
French (General) North American (General) North American (South West - Texas) North American (US General American - GenAM)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
"Leif. I have two questions for you."
He glanced my way. "A question from the lovely Honir?"
Okay, that was the oxymoron of the century. Lovely - and Honir? He had complimented and insulted me in the same breath. Not that he'd ever accepted I was truly Honir. I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up a hand, as in hold on.
"Is it related to joining my house?"
"Well, yes, sort of."
"What's the first question?"
"Why don't you need me to show up on July 31st instead of August 29th?"
"Blue moons don't count for us. I've answered your first question free of charge. In the house world, Goldie, it's *** for tat. It's called vinata, or friendship. You want to ask another question? I want something in return."
It was general knowledge that if you were a friend of a house descendant, it meant you owed him or her something. Friendship, vinata in Old Icelandic. He used friendship with me as if I were part of his house.
"Forget it." I swivelled away from him. When I stole my effing passport from right under his nose, I'd brag about it for months. Okay, if I stole it. Make that if I was able to even enter his gate to steal it. Damn. What were the odds I could get Jack to help? And where was Angel? The sinking answer was that she'd probably seen Leif and wanted to give me the chance to make a move, or Godzilla had arrived or the bodyguards weren't letting her near.
I swivelled to Leif. He stared past me.
"How many Brohav do you see?"
"What are you talking about?" I said, wondering how we got on the topic of discussing the different Fenriss clans.
"Six or seven," a masculine voice replied.
"How long has she been in there?" Leif asked. His mouth hadn't moved.
"Over five minutes," the same masculine voice said.
I searched for the speaker who'd answered him and found him a few feet away, wearing a similar gold chain with an odd rock pendant. It was just like Leif's and Miss Swimsuit's. The stones and all three pendants were a dull white and sort of washed out.
They continue talking, and I was hearing their conversation without spoken words. I clutched my head in my arms and pressed my temples, thinking I might have imagined the entire episode. No, I hadn't. "Would you two stop projecting so strongly? I can hear everything you're saying."
Leif's brows snapped up. Then he peered behind me. I whirled around. The guard's jaw hung open - catching flies, as Meemaw would have called it. I rotated to Leif and he seemed totally disconcerted.
"Would you fetch my darling niece from the ladies' room, Goldilocks? Then I'll answer that question."
If you say please, I might, I thought. Leif stared at me. "You can't hear me?" I asked.
"We'll talk about this later. Either you go and win a question, or I go now."
I stood up and plopped my useless clutch on the counter. "Fine, master manipulator. Watch my clutch."
I headed for the bathroom, the better to escape his lunacy, wondering how I'd heard them talk in my head. If the answer was that I was gonna become furry ... Nah, have faith, self.
A word of caution. She's rather rebellious. Her father sent her to me because she was becoming unmanageable, Leif thought. There's a surprise - his brother was stupider than he was to have his self-important Gauti watch over her.
I spun around. "Gotcha! It must run in the family."
"What?" This from the royal P.I.T.A. A pain in the ***.
"Never mind," I said, waving a hand over my head in dismissal.
I passed a bulletin board with lots of postings about rooms for rent. Yet another listing offered arbitration counselors for house disputes at a reduced price. There was no escaping houseship, no matter where you looked. The greatest boon of recent memory involved a conversational break with Leif while I earned a favor. So sad. He seemed rather intent on bothering me tonight. I hoped it was temporary. There were plenty of other women in the bar here to capture his attention. His bodyguards needed to give him more leeway to make a move. I wasn't going to get involved with a man, contrary to what Angel and Millie wanted.
I shuffled down the long hallway, muttering to myself, forgetting how unsteady I was in the shoes. After a near fall, I resumed a careful walk. Leif had probably witnessed the entire scene. Oh, well, better he concluded I was awkward and irreverent than easy and pliant.
I passed the men's room first. Figured. They must have installed the ladies' room at the end of the hallway to allow space for a line to form. At the restroom door, I twisted the handle, but it was locked. The freaking door was locked. I pounded on it. There wasn't a single woman's toilet in this joint. There had to be several stalls. I frequented enough bathrooms in my job to give the Zoning and Planning Commission advice.
"Deidre, your uncle sent me to check on you. Now open the door," I called. Nothing. I tried the knob again, but the door was still locked.
Leif's guard strode down the hallway toward me. "Need any help?"
I needed to do *** to ask tat, and having him do it for me would not win me the right to ask. I paused. Was this the **** I needed to get help with? Nah. Millie had said it referenced my chest.
"It's OK. The door's stuck." The guard retreated, and I positioned my lips at the crack of the door, sure that Deidre would hear me with her werewolfy sonic hearing.
"Deidre. Your uncle is sending a guard down here now. So do us both a favor and open the door so Leif will leave me alone." Still nothing.
What else had I expected? Stubbornness ran in that family. I stepped back, brought my leg up, and kicked. But before my foot made contact, the door flew open. Momentum, along with the tug of a black clad arm, had me sailing inside. I careened forward and the door slammed shut as I lurched into a sink.
Through a half-fallen hairdo. I spied Deidre in the mirror, lying face down, unmoving, inside a circle drawn on the tile floor. The black clad figure who tugged me inside wore a ski mask and he was coming straight for me. I spun and whipped off both shoes, throwing them at him fast. And as he blocked the sharp heels, I dove into the circle. I'd erased about two feet of the chalk line with my elbows before Blackie grabbed my feet and dragged me away from the spell. My skirt rode up my thighs as I skidded across the dirty floor, flailing to free myself. I kicked hard with both legs simultaneously, and he lost his grip on my hose. I shot up lightning fast and yanked his feet out from under him, screaming, "Leif!"
Blackie landed on his butt, lunged toward me and punched me in the head. My legs gave way, and I slammed to the tile, hair pins scattering and braids unwinding. The masked man planted his face in front of me and put his hands to my mouth, feeling for breath. I surged up and tugged his nylon mask, almost ripping it off his head. He yelped, then head butted me.
Stars swam in my vision. My perception became distant and my body went limp. I tried to move, but fog filled my brain. He dragged me across the room and settled me in the circle beside Deidre as the world faded.
When I next opened my eyes, Blackie had redrawn the line of the spell and was throwing sacrifices of hair, fingernails, and skin inside the circle near my feet. Skin grafting sacrifices cost megabucks and were used for high level spells. And a small vial of each wasn't enough to cast a high spell on two women, not by a long shot.
I tried to lift my hand, shake my head, anything to tell him to stop, but could only watch helpless as he dipped his sigil in an inkwell of blood and stamped it onto the circle.
After lighting a match, he threw it inside the circle and chanted. Fire swept the perimeter and extinguished seconds later, and the hair, skin, and fingernails disappeared.
Someone banged on the door. "Goldie? Deidre?" It was Leif. The mage's brown eyes met mine and he genuflected. "That's for the jewels." His voice sounded squeaky high. He gathered his belongings and headed behind me, and soon glass shattered and I heard scuffling noises. Then silence descended over the room.