Free Brighid's Mark by Cate Morgan

betrayal, demons and Maeve, Liam seemed to be the only stability at the center of her very rocky equilibrium. If he kissed her again it would be the point of no return. And she couldn’t afford it. She had a job to do, one she wasn’t certain she’d make it out the other side of. She had rules for a reason.
    “Wondering when you’d make your way here.”
    Callie stopped in front of Saturday’s. She’d reached Royal Street without realizing.
    The Baron turned a page in his newspaper. Callie wondered where he’d gotten it; hard copy had been virtually nonexistent since the war. Then she remembered who she was dealing with. “Baron.”
    He didn’t look at her, though the white fedora on the bench beside him looked almost pert. “Took you long enough.”
    “I’m a slow study.” Callie leaned against a gaslight, crossing her arms. “Humor me.”
    The Baron folded his paper back horizontally, then vertically. He repeated the motion until he had a neat square of cheap newsprint before him. Then he removed a fountain pen from the inside pocket of his white blazer.
    “Most folk do the crossword in pencil,” she observed. “At least, they used to.”
    “I ain’t most people.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “And neither are you, I might add.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    “All right. What if I told you there was no way to save your friend?”
    “Eva?” Callie swallowed. “I know.”
    “You know it, but you don’t believe it. Knowing and believing, they be two different beasts. One is in the head.” He tapped his forehead with two long fingers. “The other, in the heart.” He tapped his chest. “They be not in the order you think. And I did not mean your Eva.”
    He meant, of course, her betrayer. “I only want to know why.”
    “The wound you thought healed has festered. There be only one way to be rid of the infection.”
    “And the demon?”
    “Only one way to be rid of that too.”
    Callie’s mouth twisted at the corner. “You trapped us here.”
    “You trapped yourselves. Asked my permission and everything, as I recall.”
    “So we did.” Callie cocked her head at him. “Do you really think I can kill this thing?”
    “Alone? Not a chance. With him?” A single index finger, lifted to the sky. “One chance.”
    “You trapped him here too. You knew this would come.”
    The Baron had expressive hands. He fluttered one in midair, grinning. “All things are connected.” He laced his fingers with those of his other hand, and the newspaper and fountain pen inexplicably disappeared. “Our boy made a Crossroads bargain, and Brigitte called him here. The city has been doing its work on him—getting under his skin, into his blood. He’s as part of it as the Loa, now. He cares. And now he has you.”
    Callie didn’t respond. Instead, she let the city around her seep into her senses, as she imagined it had done to Liam. The Baron’s words rolled around in her mind like dice. “It’s not Liam Yshotha fears. It’s both of us, together.” She chewed her bottom lip. “But I can’t ascend.” Her distant gaze swept back to him, abruptly focused. “Or can I?”
    The Baron merely grinned.
    Callie’s mind continued to tumble over and over, examining what she thought she knew from new angles. “Brighid isn’t here,” she mused. “But Brigitte is.”
    The Baron clapped his hands and laughed.
    The sudden idea took her breath away. Was it possible—just possible—she could stop Yshotha and survive? Had Eva realized the truth too late, and sacrificed herself to bring Callie here? Knowing, that it had to be one Keeper, and one…whatever Liam was, because he was tied to this city as the Loa’s guardian?
    Two champions. One chance.
     
     
    Thunder rolled and rumbled in the distance, the Louisiana sky hot pink bleeding into lavender, darkening to indigo. The occasional white-hot flash lit the world into a photographic negative, the air thick with the humid, desperate need to