Raiths are safe

"Why?" Thomas asked. He then added, "And how does this have anything to do with me?"
"They're using her in a bloodline curse," I said. "When they sacrifice her, the curse kills her brothers and sisters, then her parents, then their brothers and sisters and so on."
"Wait. Maggie has brothers and sisters? Since when have you ever gotten that busy?"
"No, dammit!" I half shouted in frustration. "That's just an illustration for how the bloodline curse works."
His eyebrows shot up. "Oh, crap. You're saying that it's going to kill me, too."
"Yes, that is exactly what I'm freaking saying. You tool."
"Um," Thomas said, "I'm against that." His eyes widened again. "Wait. What about the other Raiths? Are they in any danger through me?"
I shook my head. "I don't know."
"Empty night," he muttered. "Okay. You know where she's going to be. You want me to saddle up and help you get Maggie back, like we did with Molly?"
"Not unless there's no other choice. I don't think we would survive a direct assault on the Red King and his retinue on their home turf."
"Well, maybe you and I couldn't, naturally. But with the Council behind y - "
"Way behind me," I interrupted, my voice harsh with anger. "So far behind me you wouldn't know they were there at all."
My brother's deep blue eyes flashed with an angry fire. "Those assholes."
"Seconded, motion carried," I agreed.
"So what do you think we should do?"
"I need information," I said. "Get me whatever you can. Any activity at Chichén Itzá or a nearby Red stronghold, sightings of a little girl surrounded by Reds, anything. There's got to be something, somewhere that will show us a chink in their armor. If we find out where they're holding her, we can hit the place. If I can learn something about the defensive magic around the site, maybe I can poke a hole in it so that we can just grab the girl and go. Otherwise . . ."
"Yeah," Thomas said. "Otherwise we have to take them on at Chich¨¦n Itz¨¢. Which would suck."
"It's a couple of miles beyond suck."
Thomas frowned. "What about asking Lara for help? She can command a lot of firepower from the other Houses of the White Court."
"Why would she help me?" I asked.
"Self-preservation. She's big on that."
I grunted. "I'm not sure if the rest of your family is in any danger."
"You aren't sure they aren't, either," Thomas said. "And anyway, if you don't know, Lara won't."
"Don't be too sure," I said. "No. If I go to her with this, she'll assume it's a ploy motivated by desperation."
Thomas folded his arms. "A lame ploy, at that. But you're missing another angle."
"Oh?"
Thomas lowered his arms and then brought them up to frame his own torso the way Vanna White presents the letters on Wheel of Fortune. "Incontestably, I'm in danger. She'll want to protect me."
I looked at him skeptically.
Thomas shrugged. "I play for the team now, Harry. And everyone knows it. If she lets something bad happen to me when I ask for her help, it's going to make a lot of people upset. And not in the helpful, 'I sure don't want to mess with her' kind of way."
"For that to work as leverage, the stakes would have to be known to the rest of the Court," I said. "They'd have to know why you were in danger from a bloodline curse aimed at me. Then they'd all know about our blood relation. Not just Lara."

Changes Chapter 24, Page 231-233


I growled at him and aimed his eye at the altar.
"Oh," Bob said. "Oh, my."
"What is it?" I asked.
"The ritual curse they're setting up," Bob said. "It's a big one."
"How does it work? In ten seconds or less."
"Ten sec - Argh," Bob said. "Okay. Picture a crossbow. All the human sacrifices are the effort you need to pull back the string and store the energy. This crossbow has its string all the way back, and it's ready to fire. It just needs a bolt."
"What do you mean, a bolt?"
"Like the little girl hiding back behind it," Bob said. "Her blood will carry the stored energy out into the world, and conduct that energy to the target. In this case, her blood relatives."
I frowned for a second. Then I asked, "Does it have to be Maggie, specifically?"
"Nah. One bolt is pretty much like another. Long as you use a compatible knife to spill the blood, it should work."
I nodded. "So . . . what if we used a different bolt?"
"The same thing would happen," Bob said. "The only difference would be who is on the receiving end."
"It's a loaded gun," I said quietly. I frowned. "Then why'd they leave me alone with it?"
"Who you gonna kill to set it off?" Bob asked. "Your little girl? Yourself? Come on, boss."
"Can we disarm it then? Scramble it?"
"Sure. It'd blow this temple halfway to orbit, but you could do that."
I ground my teeth. "If it goes off the way they mean it to, will it kill Thomas?"
"The girl's human," Bob said. "So only the human bits. His body, his mind. I suppose if he got lucky, he might wind up a vegetable in which his Hunger demon was trapped, but it won't spread any farther into the White Court than that."
"Dammit," I said. I started to say more, but caught motion out of the corner of my eye. I stuffed Bob all the way back into the sack, admonishing him to shut up, and turned to find Alamaya entering the temple with a dozen of the full-vampire jaguar warriors at her back.

Changes Chapter 44, Page 467-468