by Liz Schulte
****
The next morning, everything was like it always was with Sy. He smiled and gave me breakfast before he took me back to my car. Not a single word was mentioned about us or the case. Just like I hoped it would be. The engine roared to life with the turn of a key, and I hit the road.
My mind immediately went to the new case. What in the hell was killing people in New Orleans? No matter how I tried to twist it, a werewolf didn’t make sense. The first sign was that no more wolves were popping up. Sure, you could say the wolf was a crazed monster, because that’s what they were, but growing their pack would be instinctual. They always, without fail, made more wolves, which was why they were easy to hunt.
Even if it were true, though, that this one was the sole surviving wolf, then why do all of this now? To have survived this long meant the wolf would have evolved and would be more than the rabid dog we all knew them to be. Why expose your existence if you were just going to devour all of your potential pack? There was no long-term gain in that, and any wolf that had been smart enough to survive would have been smart enough to figure that out. Either it’d leave enough for regeneration, or it’d eat the whole person to keep from being noticed.
Really, the only thing that made any sense at all was that someone else was doing this. They wanted the attacks to look like a wolf, but the question was why? What did they have to gain by that? It also wanted attention, or it wouldn’t have gone after bounty hunters. That alone was asking for a nightmare of trouble. Had the council not gotten involved and Sy hadn’t broadcast the news to the bounty hunters, any suspicious creature in a two-hundred-mile radius would have been taken out. We may not like each other, but we also took care of our own. Maybe that was what the council had been trying to avoid by sending me here.
Obviously the rest of the hunters came in like it was a werewolf, which meant they tried to hunt it. They would have followed its tracks, learned its patterns, and then, just when they thought they had it, it killed them. Taking on an aware bounty hunter was no small feat. Killing two working together was impressive. Whatever was out there wasn’t just good at what it was doing. It was exceptional.
I parked the car a couple blocks from my hotel and hefted my bag out of the trunk. The air was warm and filled with smells I couldn’t quite identify—for better or worse. However, the city had energy, a life force of its own that seeped beneath my skin and eased away the hustle I usually felt in Chicago. I strolled toward the hotel, listening to the faint sounds of jazz that carried through the air from somewhere in the distance. I could already tell I was going to like it here.
The closer I got to the hotel in the French Quarter, the more I felt the unbridled enthusiasm of the people around me. Humans were mostly just a blur of nameless faces for me, but they were far from being the only residents in a city like this. Vampires were simply everywhere, which was odd. In most cities they pretty much kept to themselves, but here they were out and thick in the evening crowds. All types of fae wandered the streets, and plenty of jinn too. It was a mecca of decadence. One that was almost impossible to resist. I definitely needed to come back here when I didn’t have to work.
I caught sight of my hotel entrance. It wasn’t the typical Abyss establishment I would have normally stayed in. Some of the Abyss was parallel to the human world, and some of it simply overlapped. The establishments that didn’t want to deal with humans at all usually had a spell on them that kept them obscured from sight. Usually those were tucked into the alleys and cracks in the walls, places most people wouldn’t look at twice. This was a human hotel, which was strange. Humans were far more concerned about what other people were doing than we were. All it really did was add another layer I would have to be aware of during this investigation. Why would Sy book me here?
I rang the bell and was buzzed inside. After a quick check-in, I took the elevator up to my room on the fifth floor. Inside there was square box wrapped in matte black paper and tied with a shiny black bow sitting on the bed, and a manila envelope beneath it. I wrinkled my nose. Could this case get any stranger?
I pulled the ribbon off and opened the box. Inside was a wrinkled sheet of paper that looked like it had been crumpled and smoothed multiple times before it was folded and placed into the box. I reached down and plucked it out, unfolding the soft sheet of paper. It was a bounty, an old one from the case I was working on when I met Thomas. I’d hunted down a vampire named Ambrose who was accused of taking a little girl. He didn’t make it and he turned out to be innocent, mostly. It was one of those cases that would always stick with me.
Sy wouldn’t have sent this to me. Corbin might have, but he didn’t know—no one did except Thomas. I stared at the paper in my hand. It was subtle, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who could possibly have this besides him or Sy. Maybe Corbin was right and Thomas was coming out of hiding again, but why now, and why in the hell would he come to me? The last time he was here he’d betrayed me for a second time. I was literally the last person he should try to see.
I refolded the paper. I should have called Corbin to let him know, or at the very least told Sy, but instead I slipped the paper into my back pocket and picked up the envelope. This was definitely from Sy. I recognized the writing on the front. Inside there were four hotel room keys, with the names and addresses of different hotels on them. And there was a stack of cards with a rubber band around them. I flipped through the cards: a human driver’s license, a credit card, a private detective license, a library card, and a random assortment of other crap I didn’t understand. Underneath was a note from Sy.
The other bounty hunters stayed in the Abyss and out of the human eye. I thought you might want to check out their rooms, but wear the necklace. Be as human as possible.
I touched the flame agate on a silver chain around my neck. So he was thinking the hunters had been targeted too. Was it because they caught the killer’s eye, or was it because they were onto something? There was really no time like the present to find out. I tucked my own key into my back pocket, and took theirs too.
Chapter 4