“Want coffee?” I asked.
He nodded.
I poured him a cup and set it on the bar. “Okay, this is backwards,” I said. “We’re on the wrong sides of the bar.”
He nodded again, and we switched positions. I sat on my usual barstool. He poured a second mug of coffee and slid it in front of me, where it sat untouched. I didn’t want coffee. I wanted Juliet to be okay.
Axel sipped his coffee and waited.
“Juliet’s bad,” I said. “I think she’s dying. Mab’s trying to save her.”
A large hand appeared on the bar, millimeters from my own. It was a strong hand, with square nails and long fingers. Axel wasn’t the touchy-feely type, but I knew what he was trying to say.
He finished his coffee, and I helped get the bar ready to open, carrying in trays of washed glasses and setting them on shelves, scrubbing some of the customary stickiness from the tables. As we worked, I strained to listen for any sign of what Mab was doing, but the only sound was the clinking of barware. Axel didn’t scrimp on soundproofing.
Time dragged its feet through half an hour. I could almost hear the minutes shuffling slowly along—until I looked up and saw Mab in the hallway, leaning against the wall. The shuffling footsteps were hers. She looked exhausted.
I ran to her side. Axel was right behind me. Together, we helped her into the main room and made our way to a table. Axel tested a chair to make sure it didn’t wobble, and we got Mab settled in it. I pulled around another chair and sat next to her. She slumped, one hand over her heart as if checking to make sure it still beat. Her face drooped; her skin was ashen and papery. Whatever she’d done downstairs, it had taken a lot out of her.
I clasped her hand. “Are you all right? How’s Juliet?”
“Juliet’s alive. Or undead—whichever’s appropriate to say about vampires. At any rate, she hasn’t dissolved into a pile of dust.” She took a long, shaky breath and attempted a small smile. “Although that’s rather an apt description of how I feel at the moment.”
Axel looked inquiringly toward the coffeemaker.
“Do you have tea?” I asked. “She doesn’t drink coffee.”
“Downstairs,” Axel said. He went to get it.
Mab closed her eyes and inhaled a long, slow breath. She raised a hand to pat her hair into place. It scared me, seeing how badly her hand shook.
“How about some of that aquavit?” I tried to make my voice bright. “Water of life, right? Sounds like just what you need.”
Mab shook her head. “A sip of tap water, perhaps.” Her tongue darted across parched lips.
“Coming right up.” I squeezed her hand and went behind the bar. As I took down a glass and filled it at the sink, I wondered what saving Juliet’s life had cost Mab. Despite her age, my aunt was a strong, vital woman. I’d never seen her so weak.
Mab accepted the water glass in both hands. She gulped down a couple of swallows and set it on the table. She licked her lips again. “Better.”
“Mab, what did you do down there? What’s the bloodstone?”
She fingered the chain around her neck and pulled out the pendant. The bloodstone looked different, duller and shrunken in its setting. The green and red coloring had faded to a drab, flat gray.
“This stone,” Mab said, “is my talisman. My object of power. It binds me to the land, and the land to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The bloodstone possesses three qualities: it’s sacred, it’s powerful, and it’s personal. Centuries ago, the stone was chiseled from an ancient altar—that’s the sacred part. It was buried deep in the soil, where it absorbed power from the land. And it’s personal to me, infused with my blood—the blood of numerous lifetimes.”
Was she kidding? I knew the ancient druids believed in reincarnation, but I thought that particular belief had been put away in the filing cabinet of wacky ideas, somewhere between
“The bloodstone is what gives me longevity,” she said. “You might say it’s the source of my power.” The corners of her tired mouth twitched upward. “And I used that power to heal a vampire. You have some second cousins in Carmarthenshire who’d argue I should have staked her instead.”
It was good to see Mab smile a little, because her appearance frightened me. Her skin was dull and sallow. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. The creases in her face had sharpened, and her jawline sagged almost into jowls. The past half hour had aged her twenty years.
“Can the bloodstone’s power be renewed?” I asked.
“When I return to Wales, yes. I’ve drawn on it too much recently. First there was the injury to my heart”— Pryce had nearly killed her a month ago in a swordfight in a Welsh slate mine—“and then I used the stone to find you. And now this. I’m tired. The stone has dispensed much of its power without replenishment. When I get home, I’ll bury it deep in good Welsh soil for a few weeks, give it time to regenerate. And we’ll both be good as new.”
“We could find a place to bury it here.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid that won’t work, child. The bloodstone’s power, and my own, is tied to the land of Wales.”
“Then you’ve got to go back.” Mab’s passport had arrived in the mail. Carlos could forge an entry stamp, and everything would be in order for her to leave. If being away from Wales weakened Mab, she needed to go home, and as soon as possible.
“I have business to finish here. With Myrddin. The bad blood between us goes way back.”
Way back. Myrddin was a fifteen-hundred-year-old demi-demon. “Have you really lived multiple—” I began, but Axel’s heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. Mab stuffed the bloodstone back inside her shirt and shot me a look that warned me not to talk about it now.
Axel reappeared, bearing a tray. He’d gone all out. Tea steeped in a delicate porcelain pot decorated with pink and white roses; a matching cup and saucer waited beside it. He’d put out cream, sugar, sliced lemon, and even honey in a plastic, bear-shaped squeeze bottle. I tried to picture Axel sitting downstairs in his lair, sipping tea from that cup. I failed.
As he set down the tray, Axel must have noticed me gaping at him. His face turned two shades redder and he disappeared behind the bar.
I poured a cup of tea, stirred in some honey, and handed it to Mab. She raised it, trembling, to her lips. She drained the cup and returned it to me for a refill. When she handed me the empty cup a second time, her hands were steadier.
“Ah, much better.” She did look better. Some of the color had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes had reclaimed some of their sparkle. But she still looked much older and more frail than the woman who’d entered Creature Comforts with me an hour ago.
How much of Mab’s vitality came from the bloodstone—and how much was left?
She stood, putting a hand on her back as though it pained her. “Now,” she said, “there’s no time to lose. We must speak with your roommate. Lives depend on it.”
She set off toward the storeroom, moving with the awkward gait of someone trying to hide a limp. Axel came out from behind the bar, said something in his troll language, and offered his arm. Mab accepted it, and together they went down the hall.
JULIET HAD BEEN SO CLOSE TO DEATH THAT I EXPECTED TO find her limp in bed, awake but weak. So I wasn’t prepared for the bundle of energy that paced the room like a tornado trapped in a box.
I was on the bottom step when Juliet ran over and threw her arms around me. She saw Mab behind me and cried, “‘O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you’!” And then she hugged Mab, too. My aunt stiffened, her face an almost comical picture of consternation. It was a pretty safe bet that Mab had never been hugged by a vampire before.
“That’s Shakespeare,” Juliet explained. Mab nodded and didn’t reply, although she knew the Bard’s plays as well as Juliet. “There’s more to it, of course. The line is from my play, from a speech by Mercutio. I’m afraid he’s not
