by Faith Hunter
“Starving. Where’s the nearest fast food joint? I could eat a buffalo.”
“If I ate like you, I’d be big as a house. There’s a Bojangle’s near here. Chicken okay?”
“Long as it’s fried protein, I’ll be happy.” My stomach punctuated the statement with a growl. I ate as Rinaldo drove, putting away three Cajun filet biscuits, two egg and cheese biscuits, a sausage biscuit, and three servings of Potato Rounds, all washed down with a gallon of sweet iced tea. I treated Rinaldo to a biscuit and let him watch me eat, which always seemed to give him enormous pleasure and cost me next to nothing. It paid to keep my emergency transportation happy. The meal was wonderful. Half asleep, belly rounded out against the thin fabric of my T-shirt, I lolled all the way to my front door while Rinaldo listened to zydeco music on the radio, his fingers banging out the African rhythm on his steering wheel. I handed him thirty bucks, which was my standard payment, and made it inside just as Molly and the kids came downstairs, Angelina knuckling her eyes.
“Morning, Aunt Jane.” She held her arms up, and though Molly had been telling her she was too big to be picked up all the time, I hoisted her to my hip and nuzzled her hair. She smelled of sleep and pillow and safety. “Did you and the ladies have a nice swim?”
Molly met my eyes over Angie’s head as we maneuvered the kids into the kitchen, and she took in my damp hair. I nodded. At this further demonstration of her daughter’s rare and potent gift, a gift she was trying to keep under wraps from the human media and government, Molly’s reply was carefully neutral. “Sweetheart, how did you know Aunt Jane went swimming?”
“Biscause she did. And they were all naked.” Angie yawned, her mouth open wide, face scrunched. “Mama, we can’t go home yet. Aunt Boadacia and Aunt Elizabeth is fighting a big bad ugly that showed up in their circle last night. It was purple and red and had big teeth and it wanted to eat them, and Aunt Boadacia says to stay gone, that it would eat Little Evan. Mama, would Little Evan go crunch? Like the deer bones Aunt Jane ate this morning?”
Molly closed her eyes and mouthed what looked a prayer, maybe for guidance and protection for her gifted children. Or maybe she was cussing silently. I couldn’t help it. I laughed and squeezed Angie.
Molly’s sisters, both the witch sisters and the humans ones, owned Seven Sassy Sisters’ Herb Shop and Café near Asheville. Business was booming, both locally and on the Internet, selling herbal mixtures and teas by bulk and by the ounce, the shop itself serving gourmet teas, specialty coffees, breakfast, brunch, and lunch daily, and dinner on weekends. It was mostly fish and vegetarian fare, whipped up by Mol’s oldest sister, water witch, professor, and three-star chef, Evangelina Everhart. Her sister Carmen, an air witch, newly widowed and newly delivered of a bouncing baby, ran the register and took care of ordering supplies. Two other witch sisters, twins Boadacia and Elizabeth, ran the herb store, while the wholly human sisters, Regan and Amelia, were waitstaff in the café.
Boadacia and Elizabeth, the youngest and most adventurous of the bunch, were always trying new incantations and spells, and had been known to get into trouble with the results. It sounded as if they had a minor demon trapped in a circle and weren’t quite sure how to dispel it.
Usually, they spent quite a while trying to extricate themselves from the messes they made before calling in the big guns, their elder sisters. I could imagine the ruckus when they admitted to Evangelina that they had messed up again. The eldest often had assisted with the cleanup and her tirades were legendary and generally ignored by the twins.
“Angie, how did you know that Aunt Jane went swimming this morning?” Molly dropped Evan Junior into the highchair that had appeared at my table with my guests. “Did you dream it? Were you awake and just thought it? What?”
Angie shrugged as I sat her into her chair, the table nearly to her chin. “I want oatmeal like Aunt Jane fixes it.”
“It’s important, honey,” Molly said. “How do you know things like that?”
“I just do. I see Aunt Jane a lot. But sometimes other people. And Aunt Elizabeth sometimes talks to me inside my head. Can I have oatmeal?”
Molly’s mouth formed a thin line, and I knew what the expression meant. Visions and mind-speech were new and troubling indications of her daughter’s power, which shouldn’t have manifested until she was sixteen, and which should have been tightly bound beneath the magical constraints applied by Big Evan and Molly when the power came upon her too potent and far too young.
“I’ll fix it,” I said, meaning the oatmeal. Pans banging, I turned on the gas and began making oatmeal the way my housemother had taught me so long ago. As the water heated for oatmeal and tea, I flipped on a light switch and realized that we had power. I plugged in the refrigerator and adjusted the AC down to a bone-chilling seventy-four, making a circuit around the house to close all the windows. It was already a sweaty eighty-five degrees inside. Thank God for air-conditioning.
While my guests ate, I asked Molly, “Why would the big bad ugly eat Little Evan?”
Molly touched her ear and gave a warning glance at her kids that said she couldn’t say much in front of big ears. “Some things think witchy X and Y chromosomes are tasty.”
Witchy X and Y chromosomes meant the things that made Little Evan a male witch, or what some called a sorcerer. I nodded. Demons like to eat male witch babies. Ouch.
“Comosos are tasty,” Angie repeated, trying on the words. “Like Aunt Jane thinks deer is tasty. Would Little Evan go crunch?” Angie wasn’t going to be deterred.
I grinned and poured hot water over tea leaves, a strong gunpowder green that had a good caffeine kick. “Probably. But we love Little Evan.” When she tried to interrupt, I said, “Even Beast loves Little Evan. But we don’t talk about Beast or big bad uglies, right?”
“I can’t even tell Uncle Ricky-Bo? Biscause he’s wanting to know stuff.”
“Especially not Ricky-Bo,” I said dryly. “He’s nosy. Speaking of Mr. Nosy, I need to go to NOPD and do some more research. You okay today here, Mol?”
“We have power, and I can wash clothes over at Katie’s, including the stinky diapers piling up on the back porch. I’m fine.” Molly was a firm believer that diapers were the most dangerous disposable item ever invented, to be used only in emergencies. She used cloth with old-fashioned pins. Before I could ask who would watch the kids, she smiled into her teacup without looking at me and said, “Bliss will watch them.” Angie wasn’t the only Trueblood who could read minds upon occasion.
After a long shower to wash off the bayou stink, I multibraided my hair with lots of beads that clicked pleasantly when I walked, dressed, and made several phone calls that required me to leave messages this hour of the morning. I kissed the kids, strapped on Beast’s pack in lieu of a pocketbook, made sure my cell and camera had battery power, tied my braids back, powered up Bitsa, and roared into town.
My first stop was Audubon Park, at the Audubon Trail Golf Course, one of the sites in the city where there had been young-rogue attacks on humans in the past, and the only one I had never visited. The last attack on record had been in 2001, and I quickly discovered why. The golf course had been redesigned in that year, and there was no place suitable for a grave site. That left me only two locations to worry about, which made my life easier. Able to cross it off my list, I gunned Bitsa and headed for NOPD.
I had a lot of questions and not much info. I needed to see if there was anything in the history files about the last vamp war. And I wanted to see if I could find out what Innara had been talking about last night, the devoveo. It sounded as though it had to do with the madness of young rogues. Mad young rogues was what the city of New Orleans had on its hands. And maybe I would try to get a handle on what the Sons of Darkness were. They had come up twice now; if they had something to do with young rogues, I needed to know it. And then there were the witches I’d seen across the street, likely standing in a pentagram. What could their connection be? What had seemed like a simple contract to t
rack down a vamp breaking vamp law was turning into a bewildering investigation into vamp history and politics.
The wind in my face was damp and heated, like a warm, wet blanket, and Bitsa purred beneath me like Beast when she slept. With the world flashing by, I was feeling peaceful, rested, and strangely calm, even without any sleep. I was pretty sure the emotion I was experiencing was serenity, though I’d never felt that before. I didn’t expect it to last. Cynical, but true.
I parked at NOPD, signed in once again, and waited for the armed guard to look over my credentials and make his phone call. This time, Rick came to meet me.
Like the last time I was here, he was in street clothes, but not the jeans, T-shirt, and boots from his undercover days. Today, Rick wore black slacks, a black jacket, and a white button-down shirt. With a tie. I started to grin. The tie had little orange kittens scampering over an aqua background.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve fallen so far.” He propped a hand on his hip, pushing back the jacket to reveal a shoulder-holstered 9 mm, and flicked the offending tie with his fingers. “My niece gave it to me.”
“It’s . . . cute.”
He laughed, a breathy, disgusted sound. “My captain came down on me hard yesterday about NOPD dress code. They won’t let me wear jeans now that I’m not undercover, so I had to buy some stuff. The tie’s revenge. He hates it.” He plucked the pants and jacket. “You know how long it’s been since I wore clothes like this? Catholic school, grades one through six. I had to go shopping.” He looked pained. “But no one specified what had to be on the tie. Yanks their chains, you know?” He flashed me a grin, revealing the little crooked tooth at his lower lip. He was just too dang pretty. “I have another one with pigs on it.”
The casual business look suited him. But then, I had a feeling that Rick LaFleur would look good in anything. Or nothing. “You gonna yank their chains until you hang yourself? Pardon the mixed metaphor.”
“Something like that. Entering the real world sucks when it comes to wardrobe. But there’s good things about it. My mom is overjoyed to discover that her degenerate son isn’t a reprobate after all. When she’s not being pissed that I didn’t tell her.”
My brows rose. “Your mom didn’t know you were a cop?”
He lifted a shoulder in a what can I say gesture. “Mom can’t keep a secret.”
I nodded, though I had no idea what it would be like to have a mother. “So. You gonna let me in or keep me out here with the cons and the reprobates you’ve left behind?”
“I’m guessing you want to see the woo-woo files again. Come on in. You’re not armed, are you?”
“No guns, no blades.” I handed off my fanny pack to him, which wasn’t heavy enough to contain a gun. He didn’t bother to search it or me; I passed through the metal detector without a beep.
Beads clicking softly, I followed him. In the bowels of NOPD in room 666, he tossed the file cabinet keys onto the table, lifted one finger in good-bye, and locked me in the tiny cell. Before I could call out, he was gone, and there still wasn’t a phone to call for my release. I thought about the possibility of being trapped down here if a fire broke out, or if Rick forgot about me and I was left overnight without food or water. The door wasn’t steel or barred, and its hinges were within easy reach. If I could find a sturdy piece of wood or metal, I could beat or pry the pins out and use some of Beast’s strength to rip the door off that way. But the next time I was down here, I was going to bring a picnic lunch.
Now familiar with the filing system, I found the key marked 666-0V, opened the vamp cabinet, and started looking for history, specifically for info on the devoveo.
Instead I spotted the bio of a certain near-rogue named Bethany. There wasn’t much to go on—Bethany hadn’t exactly hogged the limelight in the City of Jazz.
There were no photos of her, but someone had compiled a breakdown of vamp-clan hierarchy back in the seventies, and at the bottom, Bethany and Sabina Delgado y Aguilera, the priestess of the vamps, were listed as “out-clan.” That word again. Interesting. I’d have to ask a couple people what it meant, as I couldn’t trust the vocabulary of just one person, not about vamp stuff.
I’d seen both Sabina and Bethany in action, and they were vastly different. Bethany was slightly unhinged, African, and full of that icy shaman magic I’d never encountered before. Sabina was Mediterranean, nunnish, and sane. The only thing they had in common was power. A lot of it.
I took photos of the file to download later, and settled a folding chair close to the file cabinet. I went through it methodically, and quickly found something I hadn’t seen before, a red file folder marked Legends. It consisted of unverified reports about vamps, all gathered through unnamed sources, paid informants, and by debriefing blood-junkies who had gone through rehab and tried to keep straight. The folder had been compiled by the same cigarette smoker, and handled by Jodi.
There was a lot of wacky stuff in it, things I discounted or knew had been disproved at one time or another, but there was a snippet about the Sons of Darkness, the term Bethany had used for the vamps who had turned her. The Sons were supposed to be the first vamps in their own recorded history. The very first. And according to blood-junkie scuttlebutt, they had been feral for a few days, not ten years. Somehow, they’d been able to skip the curing process. At least one of them was purported to be still alive, sane, and had visited in this country in the last decade, as guest of Clan Pellissier. It might not be true, but Bruiser had blanched at the mention of the Sons. I had no idea if any of this had anything to do with the vamp I was hunting, but he’d been raising young rouges for a long time. And almost anything could be evidence pointing to him.
I pulled my pad from my fanny pack and took notes from the Legends file, things that might help me find the rogue maker, things that caught my fancy, and things that might lead me in a new research direction. I found a mention of feeding frenzies, which had been on my mind since last night, but it was from a source the cop in question doubted. The blood-junkie had told him that “Clan Desmarais went nutso crazy and killed half their servants and all their slaves. I barely got out alive.” No bodies had ever turned up, and the report had been buried. Like so many of the reports in this room.
I glanced at my phone for messages before I remembered where I was. One of my calls before I left the house had been to Bruiser, who hadn’t answered. If he called back, I wouldn’t know until I got out of here.
I returned to the file, deliberately hunting for red folders, and I found a slim one containing a stack of police reports written in the same distinctive handwriting as the cigarette smoker, the cop who had been investigating the vamps and the disappearances of witch children: Detective Elizabeth Caldwell.
In the red folders, I found dozens of small scraps of paper, each smelling of old smoke and containing terms, names, questions. Little made sense until I found a scrap that read: A few sips of witch blood brought the devoveo back to sanity for nearly an hour. On another I found one that said devoveo: the Curse of the Mithrans. And young rogue: the cursed.
I sat, holding the two scraps of paper, my gut telling me that something important was contained in them, but my brain couldn’t see it. So I copied down the phrases and went on with my hunt.
I wanted to read more about Caldwell’s investigations, and remembered Rick’s key ring. No door keys on it. But there was a key marked 666-0W. I tried it on a file cabinet I hadn’t been able to get in to last time I was here. With a metallic click, the drawers loosened and the top one eased out an inch. Every file was red. Every single one. I opened the drawer and let my fingers do the walking through the tabs. It was a file on area witches, compiled by Elizabeth Caldwell. And there was one file marked Devoveo. Inside were reports of young rogues who had also been witches. Which made no sense at all. Vamps would turn shamans, but not witches, yet I was pretty sure they were collaborating with witches. Nothing made any freaking sense.
Settling down with several files, I spent another hour doing rese
arch and trying to find a common thread in Elizabeth Caldwell’s investigations before thirst drove me to put everything away, lock it all up, and again bang on the door. And bang and bang. And bang. Eventually I heard the lock click; the door opened to reveal Rick himself, hiding behind two drink cans. “Sorry. I forgot about there not being a phone in here. Coke truce?”
I propped a hip against the doorjamb, took an icy, sweating can, popped the top, and drank. Wryly, I said, “There isn’t a bathroom either.” Without a segue, I said. “Who is Elizabeth Caldwell?”
Rick’s expression went instantly to cop face as he shut down his reactions. “She was a good cop, killed in action in 1990. By vamps unknown. She was also Jodi Richoux’s aunt.”
My mind went into overdrive. Jodi had pointed me to red files, all belonging to Elizabeth. Jodi had a reason to hang around me, other than friendship. I had a strong hunch Jodi had secretly taken over her aunt’s research, an aunt who had died by vamp attack . . . I’d gotten Jodi into vamp HQ. I had contacts with the vamps. I was research.
I don’t know why it hurt, to learn that she was maybe using me for a case. It’s not as though we were bosom buddies. But it did.
Rick didn’t seem to notice my reaction. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you out.”
Silent, we took the stairs, and Rick let me stop off in the ladies’ room, where I didn’t bother to e-mail the photos; instead, I checked my voice mail. One was from Bruiser, and unexpected relief flooded me. If there had been a feeding frenzy, he had survived it, sounding bland, factual, and surprisingly helpful. I hadn’t expected to get anywhere with my latest request.
Back on the main floor, Rick stuck his hands in the pockets of his black slacks and casually asked, “So. Want to get dinner on Saturday? My treat.”