by Faith Hunter
I went still. Bobby. I hadn’t thought about him in years. Bobby Bates had been a special kid a couple years younger than me, with an IQ of 74—too smart to qualify for federal help. Like me, he’d fallen between the cracks and only the charity of Christians had given him a place to live. Bobby had been picked on at school, and I had protected him when I lived there. I had gone back a few times in the years before he turned eighteen, making sure he was left alone by the kids who might otherwise have made his life miserable. Then he’d gone to live with an aunt or his grandma or something and I never saw him again.
“Why does she have Bobby with her?”
“She didn’t say. If you want to know, regular rates apply.”
I shook my head and checked the time. “No, thanks. How did she know I’d be in Natchez?”
“She didn’t. She called me for an intro to the Louisiana and Mississippi vamps for her research, and your name came up.”
That made sense. Anyone doing research into vamps would contact Reach. And that same anyone would hear about me sooner or later.
“She could have e-mailed me for an intro to them,” I said.
“She tried. No reply. Which is a sloppy way of doing business,” he said.
His statement stung, but he had a point. I couldn’t remember the last time I checked my business e-mail. Weeks probably.
“Camilla Hopkins is already in Natchez,” he said, “staying at the Grand. I told her you’d be taking a gig there and she wants to renew old acquaintances.”
I had no doubt Misha had paid him to arrange a meeting. Besides having compiled the largest vamp database, Reach was also a master planner and manipulator, merging multiple job opportunities and always managing to make money. “Where do I meet her?”
“I’ll text you all the details. Oh, and check your frigging e-mail.” The connection ended. In disgust, I tossed the phone on the mattress and started packing in earnest. If I was going vamp hunting, I’d need all my toys.
CHAPTER 2
You Might Have to Kill Something
I was standing outside when the blasted cell rang, and I knew who it was without even looking. Not by a ringtone, but because Beast started purring. Her hyperawareness of the MOC was one big reason why I hadn’t let her out to hunt. I stared at the phone, considering not answering. It was daylight and that meant Leo was up past his bedtime and likely cranky.
I sighed and answered. “Yellowrock,” I said.
“It is my understanding that you have accepted a job with Hieronymus.” Leo’s heated, silk-velvet voice caressed me, the voice vamps use when they want to seduce for sex or dinner. Or both. Once upon a time that compelling tone had very little effect on me. With Beast bound to him, I wanted to strip naked and hop on Bitsa for a quick roll in the Master’s bed. Beast sent me an image of Leo and me on silk sheets, all hot and sweaty and bloody.
Not. Gonna. Happen. I took myself under firm control. Not. Gonna.
“Yep. I took the gig.” I was pleased when I sounded normal—professional and calm, with just a hint of snark that always came out when I talked with Leo. “Big H pays even better than you do.” I talked while securing my gear to the back of Bitsa. The guys were stowing weapons and our new underground com unit—UCU—in the SUV out front, so I had privacy to needle the MOC.
“You are on retainer, and you are my Enforcer. You may not leave the city without my direct order.”
“Whoa. Not the way retainers work, Leo. Get one of your minions to bring you the paperwork. My retainer with you doesn’t preclude my taking other jobs when you don’t need me. If you fall under attack, you can send your helo and I’ll be back to New Orleans in a little more than an hour, well inside the two-hour window required.” Leo started to say something, so I interrupted and talked fast to keep him from getting a word in edgewise—as a matter of principle. “Besides, as your Enforcer, this gig fits under that umbrella. Big H has Naturaleza vamps running around loose, vamps with the vamp plague, likely infecting other vamps. It’s your job as Blood Master of the Southeast USA to address that issue, your private lab in Texas that found a cure for the vamp plague, and therefore it falls under the umbrella of your responsibility to provide treatment.” All it took was one dose of the medicine—like a vaccine. The syringes were packed up in my supplies; the doses were easy to administer to vamps in civilized surroundings, requiring a shot to the arm muscle; to treat vamps in the wild, I had a dart gun and one of the specially made darts used by vets for sedating wild game. Of course, I expected to stake any sick vamps I met in the wild, not cure them, but at least I had the option.
Stretching my desire to needle the MOC, I said, “As Hieronymus’ blood-master, you should have gotten up off your blood-sucking butt and made sure your people were treated. Since you didn’t, this is now a loose end that needs tying up in order to”—I took a breath and put on my best lawyer voice, quoting from the retainer contract—“protect the security of the territory, hunting grounds, and territorial borders claimed by Leo Pellissier.” I let the legalese tone drop away. “Big H’s problem is directly to your north border, he is still legally sworn to you, and therefore he is your problem—and mine.” Which was absolutely the truth, and I felt all righteous having come up with it while I packed.
His voice took on a more demanding tone. “You will not speak to me in such a manner, my Enforcer. I require you to remain in New Orleans.” The MOC wasn’t used to people saying no to him.
“Hmmm,” I said. While I decided how difficult I was going to be, I checked the straps on the gear. Nice and secure. And I was feeling difficult, so I decided to go with that flow. “Yes, I will, and no, I won’t. The safe room at Katie’s is finished. The safe room in your new clan home is standing in the middle of the construction like a vault. You have more than sufficient security twenty-four/seven at vamp HQ, plenty of privacy, and no problems securing ample blood supply. You do not need me, and I got nothing to do here until it’s time to install the security in your new house, and that won’t be for another month. I’ll give Big H your regards.”
“You will not,” he hissed. I hit the END button, grinning happily. I did so love yanking his chain. I walked through the house one last time and picked up a boot box from my closet, the one that held my paltry jewelry collection and my neck protectors. Locking the house, I added the box to the stuff bungeed to the back of the bike, pushed Bitsa around front, and swung on. The guys were sitting in the oversized SUV, idling in front of the door, waiting. I lifted two fingers to Eli as I motored past and headed for Highway 61and Natchez. The phone buzzed madly in my pocket and I laughed happily as I motored away from Leo.
• • •
The roads in Louisiana are on the far side of horrible. They had been constructed with expansion joints, a necessity because of the weather, but somehow when the road surface expanded into the open spaces of the joints, it all rose a little. Riding on Louisiana highways was a constant, unpleasant, thumpty-thump that dulled the mind and wore out the backside, and with the state’s current financial crisis, none of the potholes had been repaired, further adding to my discomfort. It was a miserable trip made worse because I was in a hurry and wanted to get to Natchez as quickly as possible, so I didn’t stop for anything. I didn’t want to talk to Misha Hopkins, I didn’t want to take that trip down memory lane, but all I could think was that Misha had Bobby with her, and Bobby was on my personal list of people to protect. Always had been.
Near two p.m., I pulled up at the mansion where we had stayed last time. Rich people wouldn’t have called it a mansion, of course, maybe a cottage or something, but to me it was huge: three stories; set off the road; the grounds planted with live oaks, magnolias, pecan trees, and azaleas, with an eight-foot brick wall enclosing the large backyard. The house was maybe a little over ten thousand square feet, not counting the servants’ quarters under the eaves on the third floor or the multicar garage out back, with rooms over that. The last time we were here, Eli had originally declared the house difficu
lt to secure, but the walls were two feet thick, the windows were easily shuttered, and four shooters had held off an armed attack, which made it mighty nifty in my opinion.
I pulled Bitsa into the shade and studied the facade. The bullet holes had been repaired and the place looked good. The guys pulled in behind me and, just like last time we were here, I left them to unload while I took the three low steps to the door, which opened before I knocked. The owner stood there wearing a huge smile, a bizarre mixture of colors and fabrics, and her trademark string of pearls wound around her neck and resting across her little rounded belly. Esmee was a skinny, wrinkled woman with shocking red hair and no fashion sense. Today she was wearing purple velour elastic-waist pants and a frilly shrimp-toned blouse with full, pleated sleeves, bright red lipstick that had bled into the creases of her mouth, a stars-and-stripes scarf, and a pair of emerald green ballet slippers with feathers on the instep.
Hands clapping joyfully, she rushed through the door, saying, “You came back.” She held her arms out to me for a hug.
Crap. I’m not a hugger. I don’t like to be squashed up against a stranger. I’m not even real fond of back-slapping handshakes. I took a quick step back, but Esmee was fast for a tiny elderly woman, and she caught me. She was also stronger than expected. Her grasp on my elbow stopped me in my tracks and she wrapped her arms around me, her head stopping about midchest on me. She rocked me back and forth in a fast little shimmy. “My son said you’d never come back, but I’m so glad you did.”
I managed a startled, “Huh?” Son?
She pulled away to look up at me. “I hadn’t had so much fun in years as when you were here last. Not even when Ronald and his charming wife stayed here.”
She was talking about President Reagan and his wife, Nancy. Esmee’s home had been a B and B for years. “Um.” Succinct. That’s me. I added, “We got the place shot up.”
“I know,” she said, as if that was the best thing in the world. “I hadn’t shot my gun in years till that day. Since then, I’ve been target shooting several times, and the sheriff and I even shot some skeet. I beat the pants off that girl. Come in! Come in!”
I looked back over my shoulder to see Eli watching, one corner of his mouth tilted up. I was reasonably sure he was laughing at me as I was pulled inside.
Esmee’s grasp on my hand was like the talons of a hawk as she pulled me through the living room, past the dining room, butler’s pantry, wine closet, and coffee bar. Off to the side were the wet bar, billiards room, music room, TV room, servants’ toilet, powder room for guests, and a coat closet bigger than a small garage. The downstairs was exactly as I remembered it, sans holes in the ancient plaster. The place had copper-coffered twelve-foot ceilings and tricolored wood parquet floors covered with silk rugs. Her family had been rich for centuries and the place was full of antique wood furniture. It was decorated in generations of treasures, stuff you might see on Antiques Roadshow that was worth tens of thousands of dollars. Each.
A maid and the three-star chef lived upstairs, which meant we would have to do no cleaning and someone else would keep lots of food on hand, which always made me happy. Esmee stopped in the small nook off the kitchen, where there was a table and four cozy chairs, probably a breakfast room. A roast piglet—still steaming from the grill—lay on a cast-iron tray on top of a trivet, the kind that whirls around for ease of serving. My mouth started watering as if I hadn’t eaten in days. To the side of the trivet were small bowls of condiments and a loaf of homemade bread with several slices already cut. There was also a bowl of fruit and a tray with cubes of different cheeses, each stuck with a toothpick.
“I asked Jameson to put together a small repast. Now let’s see. You take tea—am I right? Sit, sit.” She pushed me into a chair and I sat. It was that or fall over from her shove. The little woman was wiry and strong. “Jameson?” she called. “We have guests.”
The nearly unflappable man appeared in the doorway, a white apron over his khakis and button-down white shirt, a white linen towel over one arm. In the other was a teapot, the spout steaming. He didn’t look quite as happy as Esmee did to see me, which was not a surprise—the last time I was here he’d ended up under a table during the gun battle—but he didn’t try to scald me with the tea or stab me with the knife beside the piglet, so I was okay with that.
“Good day to you, Miss Yellowrock.” Turning to the side, he said, “And to you, Masters Younger. We have water for the elder Younger and cola for the younger Younger.” Which made me grin, but the brothers had obviously heard it before, because they ignored it.
Esmee pointed to seats and took the one that Jameson pulled out for her. The brothers sat as Jameson poured tea and brought drinks and passed out plates before taking a big, two-pronged sterling silver fork to the piglet and pulling meat off the bones. The smell was heavenly, divine, fabulous—all the words that meant “good.” Beast watched the fork pull on the succulent flesh and thought about catching a wild piglet in the forest.
Esmee said, “So, my dears. Who do we need to kill this time?”
My appetite went into hiatus.
Esmee clasped her hands before her like a little girl waiting on Santa. Jameson’s brows rose so far that they nearly sandwiched into his hairline. The Kid snickered. Eli’s lips twitched and he leaned back in his chair as if watching a show. I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again, and realized I had no idea what to answer.
Eli snorted softly and said, “Miz Esmee, we’re just here to reconnoiter and for Jane to do an interview. The press, you know.”
Jameson gave a small nod of approval, but Esmee’s face fell. “But . . .” She looked woebegone, as if we’d stolen her favorite doll and cut off its head, but then she smiled, showing off dazzling new white teeth. “Once you reconnoiter, then you might have to kill the vampires taking our people. Yes? And I get to help.”
Carefully, Eli said, “If we find something to kill and have time to come get you, we will.”
“What fun!” She clapped her hands, and Jameson looked at her fondly, as if she were a dotty favorite aunt. “But the press was awful to the Reagans when they were here. The media is not allowed on the property. I hope you don’t mind, dear,” she said to me, “but you will simply have to meet with them elsewhere.”
“I don’t mind at all, Miss Esmee. That privacy—and your ability with firearms,” I added quickly, “are the very reasons we wanted to stay here with you.”
“Aren’t you sweet?” She patted my hand and said, “Serve these charming young people, Jameson. They have reconnoitering to do.”
To Eli I mouthed a silent thank-you. His lips quirked up on one side and he gave his attention to a piglet sandwich, heavy on the pork, light on the bread, with a plateful of fruit to the side that might have satisfied a troop of monkeys. Eli ate healthy, while his brother’s sandwich was heavy on the sauce and bread, with an apple slice and three grapes to the side. Mine was more like a plateful of pork with no bread and no fruit at all. I groaned with delight at the burst of roast piglet flavor and said, “I may have to marry you, Jammie.”
“I’d rather be married to a cobra, Miss Jane,” he said gently in what might have been a Boston accent. “No offense.”
Miss Esmee gasped and Eli chuckled. I sipped my tea to hide my smile and said, “No offense at all, Jammie.” I pointed with my fork. “Good pig.”
“Thank you, Miss Jane,” he said, sounding serene.
After a meal fit for a carnivorous king, I took my personal gear upstairs and picked the tiny bedroom I’d napped in the last time I was here. The mattress was that memory-foam stuff and no way was I giving that up to one of the guys. The upstairs had eight bedroom suites and five baths and slept sixteen easily, more in a pinch. They could make do with whatever other room they wanted, and if it didn’t have the memory foam, well, too bad.
Tossing my bag on the bed, I cleaned up in the attached bathroom, braided my hip-length black hair, and let it hang down my back. I put on fresh blac
k jeans, ironed by one of the girls at Katie’s Ladies, and a tailored dress shirt created for me by Leo’s fashion designer—of course the MOC of the Southeastern states had a fashion designer on retainer. It was a shirt that worked well with any of my jackets to hide my weapons—in this case, my Walther in a spine holster, a six-inch silver-plated blade, and four stakes. I tossed extra magazines for the .380 into a fanny pack and pulled on the green snakeskin boots. Western boots might be more ubiquitous in Texas than in Mississippi, but not by much. Everyone wore them in this part of the country when they weren’t wearing Gucci, Ferragamo, or Prada stillies—or cheap knockoffs of same.
With time to spare, I dropped to the bed, because what else was I going to do for half an hour? And the mattress was so tempting, all fluffy with a down comforter to keep off the chill. Arms above my head, the backs of my hands against the inlaid headboard, my boots crossed at the ankles and dangling off the mattress, I was instantly besieged with memories, images that had been dredged up by my subconscious to ambush my mind the moment I stopped.
Misha as a thirteen-year-old girl, her long chestnut hair in a ponytail, the tip pulled around front and held between her lips. She had been delicate, shorter than me—though that wasn’t odd, because even at twelve I’d been tall—and held herself, arms hugging, shoulders hunched, eyes wide. She had a habit of standing against the wall, where her back was safe. Like prey. She had watched and listened as the other girls in the group house tormented me. Not helping. Not defending. In my mind’s memory I studied her, my eyes closed against the winter light pouring through the blinds. And with the hindsight of years, I realized that she had probably been an abused child, maybe for years. Scared. Scarred. Memories holding her down.
That abuse explained the cautious and nearly compulsive way Misha went about her life and studies, always working bent over her desk, always finished with a long-term assignment a week early. Her tiny room was always spotless and neat, with nothing at all on the bureau or desktop. Compulsive—that was the word for her. Watchful, worried, fearful, and compulsive. Needing control over her life.