Black Arts

by Faith Hunter

  I bent over Alex’s chair, my weight on one arm on the chair back, and asked softly, “How’s it going?”

  “Same thing I’m telling him.” He pointed a finger at Evan. “So far, nothing. Leave me alone.”

  “Yeah. No.” I swatted him on the back of the head for the rudeness. “My friend, his wife, we’ll ask as much as we want.”

  “Whatever,” he grumbled, sounding like the teenaged boy he was. My plate was still on the table, covered in plastic wrap. I picked up a fork and my own electronic tablet and carried them, my cell, and my plate to the stairs, far enough away to not be bothered by the sound track of Lucy roping Ethel into some kind of mischief, but close enough to keep tabs on my extended family.

  I shoved in a mouthful of cold steak, chewing while I opened a file and typed in the pertinent info on the case, which I listed as KATIE’S GIRLS. When it was all in and documented, I located Reach’s name under contacts on my cell. I hadn’t called the intelligence specialist in months, not since we got back from Natchez. The reprieve had been good for my pocketbook, and with the Younger brothers as my new partners, I wouldn’t be needing his services nearly so often. But somewhere inside, I had missed Reach’s snark. I pressed the SEND button.

  “Speak to me, oh Mistress of the Dark,” he answered.

  I let my mouth curl into a smile. “Mistress of the Dark? You used to call me Money Honey.”

  “You went for a much Younger man.”

  I chuckled at the play on words because it was expected, not because it was funny.

  “Alex isn’t as good as me, but he isn’t bad,” Reach said.

  “Well, the Younger man is tied up in a search. Are my rates still current?”

  “Vamp search rates?”

  “No. Two missing twentysomethings, working girls who didn’t come home from a party that was most likely a totally human sex party, but could have been a sex-and-blood party hosted by vamps. I have no data on that yet.”

  “Your rates on nonvamp stuff is good. Give it to me.”

  “First girl is a witch in hiding, Ailis Rogan, aged twenty-four, looks fourteen, street name is Bliss, Caucasian with black hair and blue eyes. Sending her DOB and numbers via e-mail.” I double-checked the data from Troll’s piece of paper and my tablet as we talked. “Next girl is Rachael Kilduff. Twenty-two. A new tattoo and multiple ear piercings. I’m expecting pics of both girls shortly. I’ll forward them when I get them. The party was at Guilbeau’s.” I spelled it for him. “They called for their driver at exactly two twenty-two this morning. When their driver arrived four minutes later, there was no sign of them.”

  “Yeah? Nice place. Five stars and just as many dollar signs. Your party host had money, lots of money if it was a large party.”

  “Good to know. I’ll check out the place tonight. Gotta go.” I tapped the END icon and closed the cover. It was one of the newer models, part cell, part tablet, part movie theater, part reader, with more computing power than I would ever need, and with a built-in armored shell, designed by a tech company owned by Leo. The cell was designed for the military, but it came in handy for other violent lifestyles too—like vamp hunting.

  I scooted over as Big Evan carried his two children upstairs to their room. Over his shoulder he said, “You can come up for story time.” It was a grudging offer, but it was better than anything else I had from him lately. I sent the e-mail file to Reach and scraped the last of my cold supper off the plate and into my mouth.

  “Yeah. Thanks,” I said, satisfied that he didn’t sound more irritated or tell me to choke myself, and followed him up the stairs. Whether he liked it or not, he needed my help, but that didn’t make Evan Trueblood like me much. I settled onto the foot of Angie’s bed, shoving the guns I still wore back and out of the way, and waited while the children said their simple nighttime prayers. After the “Amens,” Evan pulled a padded wingback chair between the beds and sat, opening a thin copy of Little Red Riding Hood. The book looked ancient, the corners bent and worn, and the cover real leather, embossed and stained and dyed decades ago. And the author’s name on the cover was Eldreth Everhart. Dang. An Everhart had translated Grimm’s Little Red Riding Hood. How cool was that?

  “Once upon a time,” he read, “a little girl lived in a pretty village near Derbyshire, close by the forest, on the edge of a flowing stream. Her name was Philomena Everhart, but because she wore a red riding cloak, everyone in the villages nearby called her Little Red Riding Hood. One morning, while the dew was still on the roses, both red roses and white roses, Little Red Riding Hood asked her mother if she could visit her granmama Theodosia Everhart, because Theodosia had been visiting the queen for a long while, and Philomena had missed her granmama.”

  “Daddy’s a wolf-ees!” Little Evan shouted and giggled.

  Wolf? Beast asked. Hate pack hunters. Thieves of meat.

  This wasn’t the first time the toddler had called his daddy a wolf today. Just to be on the safe side, I took an exploratory sniff. No. Big Evan hadn’t been bitten by a werewolf. He smelled witchy. I curled up around Angie Baby’s feet as Big Evan continued to read.

  “‘That is a splendid idea,’” he read, in a high-pitched voice, “her mother said. Philomena’s mother packed a nice lunch basket for Little Red Riding Hood to take to visit her granmama.”

  The children giggled, and I laid my head on my arm, listening. No one had read me stories as a child, so this was . . . amazing. Really amazing. Big Evan reached the line about Granmama. “The wolf crept up to the door, lifted the small latch, and raced inside. Poor Granmama screamed, but the wolf gobbled her up!”

  “Our gramma woulda put a spell on him!” Little Evan said.

  “She would turn him into a frog!” Angie Baby said.

  “A spider!”

  “A ant!”

  “Shhhh,” Big Evan said, sounding stern, but with poignant laughter twinkling in his eyes. I knew without asking that the poignancy was because Molly was missing.

  Both children giggled and some foreign, incomprehensible emotion bubbled up from deep inside. I batted tears from my eyes. When had I become so freaking weepy?

  “The wolf burped, a full and satisfied burp, and patted his tummy where Granmama poked and pushed and kicked in his hairy belly,” Evan said.

  “He burped!” Angie said. Little Evan made a fake burping sound, long and gross-sounding. And I laughed through my tears, caught in the good humor of my favorite people in the entire world. And knowing it was up to me to find their mother.

  “But the wolf was wily, and he knew that Little Red Riding Hood would never come inside if she saw a wolf. So he looked through Granmama’s chifforobe to find a nightgown and bed jacket that he liked. He added a lace sleeping cap to hide most of his ears and, to hide his wolfish scent, dabbed Granmama’s lavender perfume behind his pointy ears and under his paws.”

  “’Cause wolf-ees stinks!” Little Evan shouted.

  “Yes, they do,” his father said. “Wolves smell stinky like wet dogs and rotten meat.” Which wasn’t far wrong for the smell of werewolves.

  Big Evan went on reading and reached the last line. “Little Red Riding Hood and her granmama opened the basket packed by Philomena’s mother, and shared a lovely lunch with the huntsman. And then they had a long chat.”

  Little Evan looked at me said, “He vomicketed her up. Buuurrrpurp.”

  “Yes, he did,” I agreed. “Gross, huh?”

  “Gross. Night, Aunt Jane.”

  “Night, Little Evan.”

  “Mommy and Daddy call me EJ.”

  “Short for Evan Junior,” his father explained.

  “I like EJ,” I said. “It’s a big boy’s name.”

  EJ rolled into the curve of his arm and mumbled what sounded like “I’m a big bo.” And closed his eyes. He was asleep. That fast.

  I uncurled and kissed Angie Baby’s cheek and left the room to their father. Standing just out of sight, I watched as Evan pulled out his flute and played a soft melody; he was
setting wards on his children for protection and health, a form of prayer and power for an air witch. The notes were plaintive and melancholic and held all the need and loss he was feeling for his wife, the mother of the children he loved to distraction. When he was done, he stood for a moment, before leaving the room. In the doorway, he blew a last note, a minor key of longing. And stepped into the hallway.

  He turned and saw me, standing there, watching. And stopped as if frozen. Before he could react, could tell me to get lost, could fuss at me for being some kind of desperate, childless Peeping Tom, I stepped into him and laid my head against his chest. My body rested against his huge torso, his heartbeat hard and steady on my ear, his breath arrested in surprise. My head was tilted down. It was a pose of submission, the nape of my neck exposed. I held my position until he exhaled, his breath warm on my neck. And his arm lifted to wrap around me. It was like being hugged by a heated brick wall.

  After a long moment he said, his voice a rumble through his chest, “You are going to find her. Right?”

  I nodded, his shirt rough on my cheek

  “The wards are set to keep them safe and to augment their immune responses. If Angie wants to sleep with you . . . she can. I’ll know when she gets up and where she goes, but I left the ward on the room open.”

  I sobbed once. Totally unexpected. And wrapped my arms around Evan. “I missed you too.”

  He laughed, the sound like logs tumbling over one another. “Yeah. Well . . . Oh. Once I go to bed, if you want to open the doors, come get me first.”

  “You’ll set a big honking alarm?”

  “Like the Fourth of July and the Blitz all at once.”

  There wasn’t a human-built security system made anywhere by anyone that equaled one of the Truebloods’. They had started out as works of art, and then gotten better with time.

  CHAPTER 3

  She Calls You Sugar Lips?

  It wasn’t quite nine p.m. when I tapped on Eli’s door and heard my partner laugh, his voice a soft caress. “Come,” he said louder.

  I opened the door and stuck my head in. His room was spotless, so well organized I wouldn’t know anyone lived there if not for the slender, muscle-bound man stretched out on the bed and the e-reader on the bedside table next to the nine-millimeter. I looked at the gun and at him and he shrugged. “I know. We have babies in the house. It’s locked up when it isn’t on me.”

  I wanted to fuss but decided not to comment. I said, “We have a paying job—missing persons. I need to check out a restaurant. You wanna come along?”

  “Gotta go, Syl. I love you. Yeah, tomorrow.” He laughed, his face changing, going all soft and romantic. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had never seen Eli laugh, not like that. And I love you? When did they go from I’ll show you my gun if you’ll show me yours to I love you?

  Eli shut off the cell and grinned at my dropped jaw. “What? Never seen a man fall head over heels before?” I blinked as he holstered his weapon, strapped a small .32 above his boot, strapped a short-bladed knife to his inner arm, and grabbed a jacket. “We looking for vamps?” he asked.

  I clicked my jaw shut. “No and no. Rachael and Bliss went missing this morning just after two. Looks like they were at a party, working without Katie’s approval.”

  “Let’s go. You can fill me in on the way.”

  We informed the other two adults where we were going, with orders to call us the moment any news about Molly came through, and went out the duct-taped front door. “The replacement windows and door glass will be here tomorrow,” Eli said. “And I’ve been thinking about ordering some of the vamp shutters. What do you think?”

  “Estimates would be nice,” I grumbled as I strapped in and Eli started the motor. “But don’t forget we’ll have to go through the Vieux Carré Commission. And I promise, it’ll be a pain.” Dealing with bureaucrats always was, and every upgrade we made to our base of operations was a permanent loss, unless covered by Leo or Katie. We didn’t own the building and I was iffy on tax law about real estate upgrades. And I hated that I had to even think about such things. Business. When did I become a businesswoman? Eww.

  The SUV was nondescript and slightly battered, its internal lights worked only when you flipped a switch, the engine was powerful enough to drag several hundred horses behind us, and the back was modified to hold an abundance of weapons under lock and key. The blades and firepower were intended to kill rogue-vamps, Naturaleza vamps, and vamps who didn’t abide by the restrictions set up in the Vampira Carta—the legal code that the Mithrans had lived by for centuries. Tonight, the SUV was carrying only us and the weapons we wore, nothing special. Well, that I knew of.

  Guilbeau’s, pronounced G’bo’s, was in the French Quarter, a new restaurant in an old three-story brick building, replacing a business that hadn’t survived the dearth of tourists after Hurricane Katrina. There was valet parking, and a red-vested boy who looked as if he were twelve years old raced out into the damp night and took the keys, driving away as we pushed through the revolving door. The restaurant had a venerable air, as if it had existed since Jean Lafitte’s time, with deep burgundy carpeting and a roped-off area for patrons awaiting a table. The place smelled heavenly, if God were a carnivore and liked his meat seared and bloody. I had just finished my supper and my mouth was already watering.

  Piano music played in the background; just ahead I could see a black baby grand and the black pianist, also wearing black, his fingers running lightly across the keys. Another man, wearing a tux, stood behind a little desk, like a pulpit poised at the wider entrance to the restaurant proper. I started for the guy, but Eli held me back, a hand on my upper arm. “Let me,” he murmured.

  I shot him a glare, but waited. Eli approached the guy, who I guessed was the maître d’, and moved his jacket back as if to display something. They murmured for a bit, the words obscured by the music, something classical and springy that made me think of bunnies hopping through tall grass, before Beast swiped them with her claws and chomped them with her killing-teeth. Eli stepped back and whispered into my ear, “The general manager has been notified that we’re here, and would like to see last night’s and this morning’s security footage. He’s remarkably agreeable.”

  “Uh-huh. You wearing a fake badge?” I asked.

  “You want to see the footage or not?” There was laughter in his breathy comeback and I shook my head, smothering my retort. I mean, yeah. I wanted to see the footage, but not by impersonating a cop, which was illegal. A lot of cops in this town didn’t like me much. Go figure.

  I pasted a smile on my face that attempted to look trustworthy and surely didn’t succeed, but the manager, a small, lithe man wearing black, natch, and an ear wire, walked through the restaurant and, without introducing himself, motioned us to the side and up a narrow stairway. He must have wanted to get the big, bad, dangerous-looking people out of his lobby, pronto.

  The stairs were not standard height—not even matching, nonstandard heights, each an inch or two off from the ones above and below, and I stumbled twice as we switch-backed up constricted landings to the second floor. The manager’s office was small but tidy, with an old PC and flat-screen, some closed, leather-bound books, a small adding machine, pencils and pens in a green glass cup, a sturdy, scuffed-up desk that looked as if it had been there since World War Two, and had probably been put in place then, by a crane, through the window, since the stairs were so narrow. For sure they’d never move it any other way.

  He sat in the desk chair and motioned us to the guest chairs, all three with low arms and narrow seats that made my knees stick up in the air. The chairs had been made for short, thin people, not tall, long-legged people. “I’m Scott Scaggins, general manager of Guilbeau’s, and I had no idea anyone had gone missing. Give me the times you’re interested in, and about ten minutes, and I can have the digital footage up, copied for you, and a list of employees who were on last night.” He pulled a pair of spectacles out of his breast pocket, p
erched them on his nose, and punched keys on the keyboard. “We’re in. Time?”

  “We appreciate your assistance in this, uh, delicate matter. We’d like to see from two twenty through two thirty a.m.,” Eli said, leaning back in his chair as if he owned the joint. “We’ve been told it was a private party. We only need to talk to employees who served for the party.”

  Scott didn’t look from his fingers as he typed. “Which party?”

  Which left me stymied, but Eli didn’t even hesitate. “The governor’s daughter and her friend didn’t say, but from her recent interest in vampires, we’d assume the one hosted by the local vamps.”

  The manager snorted, again without looking up, which was a good thing because my eyes were bugging out of my head. The governor’s daughter? Did he just imply that we are looking for the governor’s daughter? I looked at Eli, thinking, Are you insane? He just smiled, if you can call that little twitch of lips a smile.

  “I would hate to be raising a girl in this vampire climate,” Scott said. “Everyone thinks the vamps are all sparkly and pretty, and forget that they drink blood. Human blood. The vamps throw a party and every teenager within miles is all over the place. We have to hire security to keep them out.”

  “Who did you hire last night?” I asked.