It only took a couple of hours to catch up on work—whoever had been handling this had done a better job than it’d appeared on first glance—and now that he was done, Ashton sat at the dining table, turning a beer bottle in circles and watching Zachariah bustle around the kitchen. The smell of tomato sauce and cheese and cooked chicken filled the air, and the sound of Zachariah singing along to a song on the radio as he made a batch of sweet tea accompanied it. His leg hurt, and he had a mild headache coming on, but he was sure he’d be fine once he actually ate something more substantial than a sandwich.
Zachariah was spreading homemade tomato sauce over the plates of noodles and chicken, still singing. Suddenly, he dropped the spoon in the pot he’d been scooping sauce from and turned the radio up—fortunately, not too loud—and a bright grin crossed his face. Ashton didn’t recognize the song, but then again, this wasn’t a station he usually listened to; he mainly stuck with the classic rock stations. Zachariah picked up the two plates, carried them to the table, and plunked one down in front of Ashton. “Sorry it isn’t the manicotti I planned to make,” he said. “I didn’t have the right kind of pasta.”
“What, you didn’t make that from scratch, too?” Ashton teased.
“I would have, but you look half starved, and I didn’t want to leave you waiting too long,” he answered. He dropped into the chair across from Ashton and dug into his plate of pasta.
Ashton didn’t hesitate to dig in, too, twirling his fork’s tines into the pasta to wrap the noodles around the fork and lifting them into his mouth. His eye practically rolled into the back of his head as the sauce hit his tongue, and he groaned and attacked his pasta more enthusiastically. The chicken Zachariah had heaped onto the top of the perfectly cooked noodles was grilled to perfection, with just the right amounts of seasoning, and the sauce—homemade as always—was wonderfully tangy with a hint of garlic. “Jesus, I forgot how good of a cook you are,” he said when he managed to come up for air. By that point, half of the food on his plate was gone.
Zachariah was grinning; he’d barely touched his own food, at least compared to Ashton’s plate. “Hungry much?” he asked.
“You have no idea.”
Zachariah gestured to the computer workstation with his fork. “What were you working on so intently when I came home earlier?” he asked. “It didn’t look like your email account.”
It took Ashton a second to remember, and when he did, he gently slid his plate away, even though he wasn’t quite done eating yet. He wiped his mouth with a napkin then got out of his chair and limped to the workstation. Dropping into the desk chair, he nudged a mouse to wake the screens up then turned one of them to face Zachariah, who’d followed him.
“The camera I hid in Brandon’s office before the demon—” He broke off as the word caught in his throat, and he closed his eye for a second as a surge of something resembling fear surfaced before he could quell it. Shaking his head as if to rattle the sensation loose, he cleared his throat and continued. “The camera I hid in Brandon’s office during our last assignment was still operational,” he explained, “and still dumping footage onto my servers. At least, until yesterday, when it suddenly lost its signal. No idea what caused it, but I think the camera is fried.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I can’t reconnect to it.” He clicked the mouse a few times, bringing up the videos in question, and added, “And then there’s this.”
It was the last few seconds of video captured by his hidden camera before it cut out in a shower of snow. In that split second, just before the snow descended, the camera caught a glimpse of a woman, darkly beautiful in a creepy sort of way, entering Brandon’s empty office with a cold smile on her face. Ashton got chills down his spine just looking at her. There was something wrong about her, though he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
“Who the hell is that?” Zachariah murmured. “I don’t recognize her. Do you?”
“Not at all,” he admitted.
Zachariah grabbed a dining chair and dragged it over, his plate of pasta in hand. “So that raises the question,” he said, sitting and twirling noodles around his fork, “who the hell is she and what’s she doing in Brandon’s office?” He offered Ashton a forkful of noodles, and he accepted, leaning forward to wrap his mouth around the tines of the fork and chewing and swallowing before replying.
“Well, maybe we need to find out,” he said. “Because I’d just about bet my life on it that it’s something to do with you and Riley.”
“I agree,” Zachariah said. “The last thing any of us needs is for some of her minions to pop out of the woodwork when we’re not expecting it.” He offered Ashton another forkful of pasta and added, “Do you think we should call them and give them a heads up?”
Ashton shook his head. “No, not yet,” he said. “I think we should figure out what might be coming at them first so we can give them advice on how to handle it.”
“Good idea,” Zachariah said. “So in the meantime…?”
“First, you can feed me more pasta,” he said. “Then I’m going to do some digging to see what I can find out about this woman and who she might be.”
Zachariah set the fork on the plate and gently squeezed his knee. “And then what?”
Ashton gave him a crooked smile. “I’m sure you have a few things in mind.”
Riley and Scott waited until after they’d had an early dinner before setting out for Bourbon Street again. The crime scene had been removed in the intervening time, and the street was busy and loaded with obnoxious drunken frat boys and tourists. Strains of jazz music filtered out of a bar as Riley led Scott past it, and beyond, near a corner of a cross street, another bar blasted loud rock music. Even this early in the evening, revelers and tourists peppered the street, ducking in and out of bars and shops. A beefy guy stumbled out of a bar and almost fell on top of her; she gave him a hard, swift shove to put space between them before continuing on, muttering to Scott, “I fucking hate Bourbon Street.”
“Well, that’s not very Marti Gras of you.”
“I don’t like Marti Gras, either,” she added, hitching Linus up a bit higher on her shoulder. “It’s turned into an excuse for a bunch of idiots to get drunk and act like damned fools in public while encouraging girls to flash their breasts for fucking beads. Beads, of all things.”
“You got something against beads?” he asked, a chuckle under his voice.
“No, I have nothing against beads per se. But if I’m going to pull my shirt up, it’s going to be for something better than beads.”
“Like?”
Riley cut him a dirty look that didn’t quite mask the grin she felt trying to slip onto her face. “You didn’t honestly think I was going to answer that, did you?” He laughed out loud at that, and she punched him in the arm, hard. He winced and shook his arm to work out the soreness.
They were approaching their destination. There weren’t any people near the doorway to the shop she was angling for, which was a small blessing, because the fewer people who saw them go in, the better. The woman inside wouldn’t take too kindly to unnecessary people being privy to the inner workings of her shop; it was going to be hard enough not pissing her off by bringing Scott along.
“Come on, there it is,” she said. She crossed the street and went to the door, pushing it to enter. A bell above the door rang out as the edge of the door hit it, and she stepped into a cool, dim store with worn wooden floorboards and the heavy scent of incense riding on the air. Behind her, Scott sneezed.
A woman called from somewhere in the back of the shop. “Just a minute!”
A little less than a minute later, a woman appeared from the bowels of the shop, her face lighting up when she saw Riley standing near the checkout counter. She was a beautiful woman, shockingly tall, proportionately slender, with high cheekbones, dark eyes, and a warm, café au lait skin tone. Riley was pretty sure the woman was at least partly Haitian, but she didn’t know for sure and
had never been certain how to broach the topic. The woman was almost breathtakingly gorgeous, though her beauty was something that could fool anyone into underestimating her: she could probably kill a person without batting an eyelash.
“Riley!” the woman exclaimed, and she walked to her with her arms spread wide for an embrace. Riley grinned and stepped into it, hugging her tightly.
“Marie, it’s so good to see you,” she said.
Marie took a step back from her, holding her at arms’ length and looking down at her. Riley shivered; it was like the woman was studying her from the inside out. “Lanmou mwen, you look so tired,” she said, caressing her cheek and tilting her head back to get a better look at her face. “You haven’t been getting enough sleep.”
“It’s the nature of my job, Marie,” Riley said.
“Yes, but this is a different kind of tired,” Marie replied. “It’s a soul tiredness.” She brushed Riley’s hair away from her face and looked into her eyes then took her hands and examined the markings on her hands and wrists. “You’ll have to tell me the story of how this happened,” she said. “But first, you should introduce me to the gentleman that came in here with you.”
Riley gently tugged her hands from Marie’s and looked at Scott. He still stood near the door, watching the scene between her and Marie with an intrigued expression. Aw hell, she thought. He’s going to start asking questions here in a minute. “This is Scott,” she introduced before Marie asked. “Scott Hunter. He’s my partner.”
“In the interesting or the uninteresting way?” Marie asked.
“Most likely the uninteresting way,” Scott spoke up. He moved forward and offered Marie his hand. “And who might you be?”
“You can call me Marie,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it gently, almost demurely. Riley had to stifle a laugh; she knew from personal experience that the woman was anything but demure. “Marie Gautier.”
“Marie Gautier,” Scott repeated, completely mangling the pronunciation.
Marie smiled and repeated her name, slowly, carefully enunciating it until he got it right. She looked admirably patient, probably more so than any other time Riley had seen her, save when…
No, she wasn’t going to think about that right now. It would raise too many questions in Scott’s mind that he’d want answered, and she wasn’t going to begin to attempt to answer them in front of Marie.
“This is my ‘voodoo’ shop,” Marie was saying when Riley clued back into the conversation. She made air quotes around the word “voodoo.” “Well, the tourist side of it, anyway. The real stuff is in the back. Follow me.”
As Marie led them to the back of the store, Scott murmured in Riley’s ear, “You two have a history or something?”
“You could say that,” he said.
“Care to explain?”
“What, now?” She shook her head. “Hell, no. You can wait until after we get out of here to get titillated.”
If anything, Scott looked even more intrigued. She wanted to punch herself in the mouth for that. Why couldn’t she just shut up for once in her life?
The room Marie led them into was small and a bit cramped, the only seating a love seat and a single overstuffed armchair. A coffee table rested between the two seated positions, and it was covered with jars and bottles and other assorted things that Riley could neither identify nor determine the usage of. She probably didn’t want to know, either. After a second’s hesitation, she sat on the love seat and dragged Scott down to sit beside her. Marie settled into the armchair and smiled.
“This is cozy,” she commented.
“Can we not do this?” Riley asked.
“What do you want to do then, Riley?” Marie replied. “I thought you were here for a friendly visit.”
“I’m not,” she started. Then she shook her head and tried again. “I mean, I am, but I’m not. I came here for a reason.”
Marie settled back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other, clasping her hands around her knee. “And what reason would that be?”
“I need to know what you know about werewolves,” Riley said.
The effect of the words on Marie was instant. She sat up straighter, dropping the leg she’d crossed onto the floor, her heel striking the floorboards with a bang. “You come into my shop to ask me about loup-garou?”
“Did I just offend you?” Riley asked. “Because believe me, that wasn’t my intention.”
“No, I’m not offended,” Marie said. She wrinkled her forehead and sat forward, resting her elbows against her thighs. “I’m just confused. Why are you asking me about loup-garou?”
“I’m assuming by loup-garou, you mean werewolves,” Scott said, massacring the pronunciation admirably. “And if so, I have a suspicion that there might be at least one here in New Orleans. That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw the victim’s body this morning.”
“So somebody got killed, and your first thought is werewolf?” Marie asked. “I pity you that you live in a world where that’s your initial instinct.”
Riley’s mind went back to the meeting she and Scott had been a part of, the one where Zachariah and Ashton had extended the invitation for them to join The Unnaturals and Brandon had assigned them the case of the twenty-seven murdered agents. She remembered how they’d reacted when told about vampires, and she was surprised that Marie wasn’t acting with the same astonishment. No, she acted as if she wasn’t surprised by the existence of werewolves so much as by the fact one of them might be in New Orleans.
“It was the condition of the body,” Scott explained. “It was shredded up, and…well, the heart was missing.”
Marie’s dark eyes widened. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Are you absolutely sure the heart was missing?”
“Positive,” he assured her. “I triple-checked, because I wanted to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.”
Marie rocked back in her seat, settling against the cushions and pressing her hand against her lips. She stared into the middle distance for a long moment, thinking, then sighed. “A loup-garou,” she murmured. “A loup-garou in my city.”
“I take it this isn’t a common occurrence,” Riley commented.
“Are you kidding me?” Marie said. “This has never happened in the entire time I’ve lived here. In fact, I’m not certain it’s happened in decades.” She pushed out of her chair, adding, “Let me grab something. I’ll be right back.” She left the room, the expression on her face frazzled for the first time since Riley had met her.
Scott looked at her quizzically, and she shrugged. “I’ve never seen her like that,” she admitted. “She’s usually a lot more…together than that and doesn’t let panic or worry show.”
“How do you even know her, anyway?” he asked. “I thought you said you didn’t have any ties to New Orleans.”
Riley felt her cheeks flush as she considered how much to tell Scott. Finally, she settled on, “I kind of…wasn’t fully honest about that. I’ve been here before—obviously, or I wouldn’t have had that weapons and cash stash on the other side of town—and I know Marie from that previous visit.”
“Know her how?” Scott asked. “Because if I had to guess by how hot and flustered you got around her in the shop, I’d say it was ‘knowing’ in the Biblical sense.”
“I’m not sure I want to talk about this right now,” she said. “It feels kind of personal.”
“I’m not asking for details,” he said. Yeah, I bet, Riley thought, wrinkling her nose. “I just want one question answered: did you meet her on an assignment, or was it on vacation?”
“Why do you need to know that?”
“So I can be sure that no one else besides her has any idea you have a connection to New Orleans.”
Riley sighed and resisted the urge to yank her hair out in frustration. “I was on vacation. I’ve never been here for an assignment, and no one knows I’ve ever traveled here, so you can rest easy.”
“Good.”
&nb
sp; “In an effort of full disclosure, though,” she added, “you should probably know that she’s a freelancer.”
“Freelancer…?”
“Agent. Sort of. Like us.” She sighed again. “She deals with…monsters. Like us. Though I never really believed her when she told me that last time I saw her. It sounded so damn…ridiculous.”
Scott scowled and sat back in the love seat, not looking very happy about her admission. He clearly wanted to inquire further into Marie and into Riley’s past activities in New Orleans, presumably to ensure that nothing would track back to them and bring problems knocking on their door. Riley fingered the edge of the folded business card in her pocket. She too was hoping for a lack of trouble, though she had a feeling trouble had already landed on them without their even realizing it.
Marie came back into the room, carrying a thick, heavy book with a cracked leather cover. She sat back in her armchair and set the massive tome across her lap, folding the cover open. The pages were yellowed and obviously aged, and Marie turned them with care. Her forehead was drawn into a frown as she thumbed through the pages, and when she finally found what she was looking for, she cleared a space on the crowded coffee table between them and set the book carefully on it, the text and images on the pages facing Riley and Scott.
Riley sat forward for a better look. The pages were hand-drawn and handwritten, and the first thing to catch her attention was an incredibly elaborate drawing of a figure that appeared to be half man and half wolf. She raised her eyebrows and studied the drawing closely. The beast’s lower half, from his mid-chest down, was all human; everything else was fur and teeth and wolf, but larger, proportionate to the scale of a human. “Is this real?” she asked, reaching to touch the page but thinking better of it lest she damage it.
“It’s very real,” Marie said. “My grandmother drew it after killing a loup-garou in Baton Rouge over sixty years ago.”
“Look at the claws,” Scott murmured, pointing to the illustrated man’s hands. Riley hadn’t noticed it on the first look, but the loup-garou’s fingers terminated in a set of wickedly sharp claws; they looked like they could take someone’s face off effortlessly.
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