Magic Rises

was mad out of his mind. Those four guys that follow my father around? They are killers. Two wolves, a rat, and a bear. They do whatever he tells them to. They have no . . . consciousness.”
    “Conscience?” I guessed.
    “Yes. That. They’d been by and told him they would be taking me. Gerardo said the only way we could win this would be to fight my father.” Desandra looked at me. “You have no idea how bad my father is. I’ve seen . . .” She bit her lip. “I’ve seen people die in ways you can’t even imagine.”
    Her nostrils flared. She hunched over slightly, hugging herself. Green rolled over her irises, emerald against the black of dilated pupils. She seemed to unconsciously shrink away from me, putting more space around herself. I’d seen this emotion enough to recognize it. Desandra was scared. She was remembering something and the memory petrified her.
    “I used to like this cute computer guy. He had glasses. He worked for our pack. He did something—I don’t even know what—and my father stuck his head on a pike. I could see it from my bedroom window. I had to move my bed so the dead head of the cute guy I’d kissed wouldn’t be staring at me in my sleep.”
    If I had a chance to kill Jarek Kral, I would take it. I didn’t even need proof to know she was telling the truth. One could fake fear, but not the body’s involuntary responses to it.
    “I told Gerardo it was suicide. He wasn’t good enough to take on my father with me or without me. He said I was weak and if I wasn’t willing to fight with him, I should just go back. And then he picked up my clothes and threw them in the hallway.”
    Everyone this woman knew treated her like garbage. She made no effort to fight or to take off. She simply accepted it and tortured herself and others in revenge.
    Desandra shrugged. “I couldn’t believe it. We’d just had sex that morning. I thought he loved me, but instead he threw me out. I had to get out of there. We were staying in this huge hotel, so I hid on a balcony. I just wanted to cry. Radomil found me. I felt really alone and he was nice to me. He held me and he told me that it would all work out. I wanted to stick it to Gerardo, too, so we did it right there on that balcony. There you have it. The whole ugly story.”
    Raphael walked through the door.
    Desandra sat up straighter and put one leg over another. “Hey there, handsome.”
    Every time I managed to scrape up a shred of sympathy for her, she did something to set it on fire.
    Raphael glanced at her. “Not interested.”
    “It’s the stomach, isn’t it?”
    “No,” Andrea said. “It’s me. What’s up, honey?”
    “We’re going on a hunt.”
    “What?” I asked.
    “A hunt,” he said. “On horses.”
    What the hell . . . ? “Are we going to joust next? Maybe arrange our tables in a circle?”
    Raphael shrugged. “If we do, I’m not wearing armor. We’re all invited to the hunt and I’m pretty sure it’s mandatory.”
    “Great!” Desandra jumped off the bed. “Anything to get out of here.”
    I pointed my finger at her. “Hush. The entire castle is going?”
    Raphael nodded. “Everybody is going.”
    If we stayed behind, we could be ambushed, and with the castle empty, nobody would know or care. Hugh was up to something. “They do know that she’s eight months pregnant?”
    “It seems so. Apparently there is a prize if you win.”
    Going hunting in the middle of the mountains or staying in an abandoned castle with a hysterical Desandra and no assistance in case of an imminent attack? Choices, choices. “Hunt it is.”
    * * *
    The road curved in front of me, following a shore of a sea-foam-green lake to our left. It lay placid, licking gently at the bottom of the mountain protruding into it. Tall Mediterranean cypresses lined the road, each perfectly straight, like a conical candle, and between them laurel trees spread their branches. On the right, grapevines lined the slope of the mountain in long, gently curving rows.
    My horse was a bay, sturdy and wide-bodied, with short shoulders and a clean head. She stepped with calm surety, picking her way up the old paved road, untroubled by smells of shapeshifters on all sides. I had a feeling I could ride her straight into the lake and she wouldn’t twitch an ear.
    Shapeshifters walked and rode all around me. Desandra had her own horse. At first she wanted to walk, so I argued against her walking, and then I argued against the horse, but