by Faith Hunter
I thought about losing Rick to Paka, to the magic of black-wereleopard heat. To the bristly and powerful magic of the African continent, and the were-taint, and the mating needs that had claimed him. And I smiled, my teeth baring with Beast’s fury.
My mate, Beast thought. Mine!
Oh yeah. Ours, I thought. I could tell by the way he fought against Paka. Not.
But before I could deal with Beast’s claim and Ricky Bo, I needed to go discover what had happened to Bruiser, find Molly and the missing girls, Rachael and Bliss. And make sure that Beast understood that she and I were . . . the I/we of Beast.
Yeah. That.
Deep inside, Beast lifted her head and screamed, the shriek that planted terror in the hearts of the Tsalagi long before the white man came. I/we are Beast, she cried. This is our place! Our hunting grounds! Our mate for as long as we choose him!
I heard a soft sound and turned my head as Aggie stripped off the unbleached linen and balled it up in a plastic container that smelled of other people’s sweat and a little of mold. Naked, she turned on the spigot and stood under it. I had figured out that, to Aggie, being naked in ceremony was not the same thing as being naked in public. Tsalagi had no shame of the human body in ritual.
I stripped and stood beneath the other spigot. And as the water rushed over me, I at last discarded the guilt and the grief. I was a lot easier than I had expected. More a thing of letting go, releasing it, rather than cutting something foul out of my soul. I would grieve no more for Evangelina. No more for the death of my first human. No more for the loss of Rick. I was Tsalagi. I was washed in the blood of a redeemer and in the blood of my enemies. And I no longer needed to take back what had been stolen. I dipped my head beneath the rush of water and felt it sluice me clean.
When we both were sweat free, Aggie handed me a towel and I dried off with it, then took another of the linen drapes and shook it out before wrapping it around me. This one was free of spiders, thank goodness.
Aggie looked at me, curiosity on her face. “Where are your clothes?”
“Last time I saw them, on Royal Street.” I met her eyes. “I was attacked by something. It was a coil of energy, like a snake, pulsing with power. It landed on me from overhead, though if it came at me out of the sky or had been waiting on a rooftop, I don’t know. It wrapped around me like a big snake, like an anaconda, and constricted around me. I’ve seen something like it before, but I still don’t know what it is.”
Aggie’s eyebrows nearly met her hairline. “You didn’t think it important to tell me this before I took you to sweat?”
“Do you recognize the thing I’m talking about?”
“Maybe. How did you get away?”
“I changed into my Beast, which should have saved me, but the snake followed me into the place of the change and kept squeezing. George Dumas was there, and he was pulled into the change. I ran away. Or rather my Beast ran away. I don’t remember it.”
Aggie blew out a breath, pursing her lips like a bird’s short, thick beak, wrinkles around her mouth making her look older. “Jane Yellowrock went from telling me nothing to telling me more than I can understand.” She tied the fresh linen around herself with a jerk on the ties, gathered up her clothes, and canted her head, again like a bird, but not the weird bird-neck-twisting thing vamps do. She said, “I can find out what the elders know of such a creature. But it sounds as if you left a battle. You should deal with that first, Jane Yellowrock.”
I let a smile pull up my mouth and it felt weird, the way it did when I hadn’t smiled in a while. “Thanks, Aggie. I will. Um. May I use your phone?”
Aggie chortled and jerked her head at the house. “I smell coffee and bacon. Mama’s up and cooking. You come in. Call your people. Eat. By the time they get here, you will be full and ready to fight any battle you must. And Lisi might have a gift for you, something in that regard.”
Lisi was her mother, and a shaman like Aggie, maybe more powerful and knowledgeable than Aggie herself. But—for reasons I had never been able to articulate—Uni lisi was much more scary. “Oh. Goodie,” I said, meaning Oh, crap, but one did not refuse the gifts of an elder.
CHAPTER 18
We Never Found the Body
“What the—” I jumped back from the table, standing, knocking over my chair, sending it crashing to the floor, and nearly exposing myself to Aggie and her uni lisi in my haste. There were long bloody scores down my thigh, and something hanging from my linen drape. “What is that thing?”
Uni lisi said, “Oh, you don’t be silly, lil’ girl. That’s just a tabby kitten.” With a gnarled hand, she reached over and removed the kitten still dangling from my sweathouse dress and cuddled it with the other, much bigger cat in her lap. “You a good kitten, ain’t you, KitKit? And you a good mama,” she said to the larger cat in her lap.
To me she said, “KitKit is a adventurous li’l thing. Gonna be tiny, but smart. Good mouser. Already litter box trained. And goes outside most times.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. I knew a pitch when I heard one. “No.”
“Oh yes. I see in a vision. You gonna take KitKit. She gonna save your life, she is.” Lisi tittered a laugh, happy as could be.
“No.” I backed away from the table. “I leave home often, and she’d be alone. I don’t have a car. I can’t take her places, like the vet. And I don’t have mice. I do not want a cat.”
The old woman squinted her eyes and met mine full-on. She was determined in the way only the old ones can be, and it was like being pinned on an insect board, steel through my wings and legs. I felt my shoulders draw in in defense. “Hmmpf. You taking this KitKit. You don’t fight it. She yours.”
A knock came at the front door, and I raced away to answer it. Eli stood in dawn’s dark, blinking against the porch light, and I jerked the bag from him, hoping it was my clothes. “Wait out here,” I demanded, and slammed the door in his face. Buying time, I hoped. I was doing a lot of hopeful things, but I had a feeling things were not going my way.
I raced to the tiny powder room and slammed that door too. It wasn’t the first time that Eli had come to my rescue with clothes and a ride, but it was the first time he’d been to the One Feathers’, and I’d just as soon keep them all separate. But I could feel disaster lurking.
I shoved my legs into my panties and jeans and my old, worn black boots, not bothering with the socks in my haste. Yanked on bra and shirt and raced out. And was too freaking late. Eli was sitting at the kitchen table, the Kid to his left, chatting with the two women. And the dang kitten sat on Eli’s lap.
“We do not have time in our lives for a pet,” I said.
“He’s cute,” the Kid said.
“And one does not turn down the gift of an elder of the people,” Eli said, obviously quoting information he had just been given, and not bothering to hide his evil twisted grin. He stood, cradling the kitten in his arm. “Thank you for the gift, Mizez One Feathers. We’ll take good care of her.”
I rolled my eyes; it was childish, but I couldn’t help it. Yet I still remembered my manners, the ones pounded into me at the Christian children’s home where I grew up. I forced out the proper words. “Thank you for the sweat and the dreams, Egini Agayvlge i. And thank you for the hospitality of your home and food, Uni lisi. You have been most gracious hostesses. And”—I plastered a smile onto my face and lied through my teeth—“thank you for the kitten.” If it sounded as if I was cussing instead of offering thanks, who could blame me?
“You welcome,” Uni lisi said, standing, patting my face. “You a good girl.”
• • •
“You’ll need to buy a litter box and cat food,” I said as we crossed the Mississippi River on the way home. Rain splashed at the windshield, and Eli turned on the wipers and the heat. I slouched against the front passenger door and shoved the kitten off my thigh and into the backseat. “And don’t look to me to feed it or clean the box. I’m not gonna.”
“I’ll take care of it,�
� the Kid said. “And hey, call Jodi.” He handed me my official cell, which seemed to have survived the accident. I checked my messages and saw that Jodi had called four times. I hit the button and the fancy cell dialed her private line at NOPD. I knew that Leo and any of his people would now know I was back in service, as he kept tabs on me through the electronics he paid for, but there was nothing I could do about that. Leo was like a big black spider spinning his web into everything, even my soul home.
“Detective Richoux.”
“Yellowrock here.”
“So you aren’t dead.” She didn’t sound happy about me being alive.
“No. Sorry about the mess.”
Jodi laughed roughly, and I could nearly see her rubbing her head as if she had a headache. “Yeah. Well. Your good-looking roommate cleaned most of it up. He taken?”
“Yes. By a cop in Natchez. But if they have a spat, I’ll send him your way. He likes crappy coffee and guns.”
“My kinda guy.”
Eli slanted his eyes my way. “You pimping me out, Legs?”
You should be so lucky, I mouthed at him.
“I told you last night that I have info for you. I started a search on your missing working girls, something I could do because of Bliss’ connection to witches,” Jodi said.
“You found Bliss?”
“No. Just info. I discovered that she was adopted at the age of two, and when she reached puberty and her gifts started to express themselves, her parents kicked her out. I have an address for you if you want.”
I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see the gesture. “I’m not interested in talking to people who would kick out a kid for being who and what she is. Even if the kid is torturing cats, she needs help, not kicking out.”
“Okay. So anyway, just today, when researching Bliss’ connection to other witches, I found a link to somebody you might be interested in. Someone who relates to Molly. Shiloh Everhart Stone. Name ring a bell?”
I sat up slowly, fingers tightening on the cell. Shiloh was Evangelina Everhart Stone’s missing daughter, a runaway who went missing, here in New Orleans ages ago, and who had been dead for years. She was also Molly’s niece. Shiloh? Pieces started dropping like dominoes falling, but I couldn’t quite see the picture they made. “Tell me,” I breathed.
“We thought we had identified her body back last decade. We were wrong. The dentals didn’t match and we didn’t catch it. Change of investigators. It fell through the cracks.” Her breath made a moaning sound over the line, an electronic, mournful noise. “We never found her body.”
I hadn’t known they had an ID. I hadn’t known they were wrong. But it all fit the picture that I couldn’t quite see. “Okay.”
“She might be alive.”
“We’ll be right there,” I said, closing the cell. To Eli I said, “NOPD. Yesterday.”
The SUV pulled off the bridge and headed for the main police department building. As we drove, I texted Rick’s Soul about the thing that had attacked me in the street. It was short and sweet. “Something like you attacked me in the street in NOLA. Call for details if interested.” Duty done. Now I could stop thinking about it. Then I checked the e-mails from the vamps who had responded to my query about the party at Guilbeau’s. And came to a stop on one.
According to a vamp from Clan Arceneau, Jack Shoffru had been there. At the party. So had Adrianne. And they had gotten together then. Hooked up was the phrase the vamp used, and while it felt all wrong for a vamp to use the modern phrase, it also felt all kinds of right. Jack and Adrianne had met at the party. And everything since then had gone wrong for the rest of us.
I was still putting things together when we reached the woo-woo room. “You look awful,” Jodi said to me. “And is that cat hair on your clothes?”
I looked down. “Yeah. Sadly.” I looked back at her. “Thanks. You look awful too.”
She was still wearing the shoes she had worn to the vamp shindig, her body smelled of exhaustion and anger and sweat, mascara was smeared under her eyes, and if she had started out wearing other makeup, it had succumbed to the hours since, all of which led me to believe that Jodi hadn’t been home yet to shower, change, or sleep. She looked at her watch, which was odd to see. So few people wore watches these days, using their cells to keep track of the time. Cells that didn’t work down here. Right.
“Long day. Long two days,” she amended. “I need sleep.” She looked over my shoulder, which was difficult for a woman so much shorter than me. “You have no social skills, so I introduced myself to Eli and Alex this morning, after the party, when they came to pick up your busted bike, clothes, and other assorted crap strewn all over the streets. And let me tell you, that is not my job, keeping track of you. You made a huge mess, and tied up traffic in the Quarter for two hours. . . .”
Yada yada yada. I tuned her out, set a hip on the table edge, and let her rant for a while. Eli leaned against the wall and took in the woo-woo department’s war room, the room with all the whiteboards and the pictures of missing witches. Alex sat in a chair, head bent over his electronic tablet in the typical geek way of avoiding contentious situations.
When Jodi ran down, I said, “Shiloh?”
“She was turned shortly after she disappeared,” Jodi said. “She’s still in the devoveo, in a lair somewhere. Probably.”
Now, that I didn’t see coming. A peculiar icy distance flowed through me, crackling with surprise, as I tried to fit that into the picture of vamp history and politics I had put together when I talked to Leo and Del and—
“Made by who? Leo?” Eli asked.
My head wrenched around so hard I feared my neck would twist right off. “Leo?” Something else I hadn’t considered. Heat raced through me, furious, blazing anger. “That lying, evil bloodsucker,” I growled. “I shoulda staked him after I wiped the floor with him.”
“That sounds like something I would like to have seen,” Jodi said wryly, “but no. Not Leo. A vampire named Renee Damours, formerly of the Damours blood-family and of Rousseau Clan, now presumed deceased.”
The anger racing through me had no place to go, and I took a breath, trying to calm it, but deep inside, Beast was growling. Showing killing teeth. Kitssss, she hissed inside me.
My fists bunched and my fingertips burned with pain. I had killed Renee, as Jodi well knew. She had been there the night when I killed several Damours at the same time and place where I had staked Adrianna. And taken the blood diamond. And if Adrianna hadn’t been crazy as a loon ever since, Leo would have known I’d had the diamond because he’d brought Adrianna back from her second death. Which meant that Leo had done the Vulcan mind-meld thing with her to bring her back from whatever insane and broken place she had been in, but the shattered shards of Adrianna’s brain had clearly not given him that info. However, maybe he had learned from her that that Shiloh was a fanghead, chained to a wall somewhere. But he hadn’t told me.
And Adrianna had hooked up with Jack Shoffru. Which meant that what Leo knew about all that stuff, so did Shoffru. The vamp Leo had subjugated and drunk from. Full circle.
Leo knew about Shiloh. And he hadn’t told me, even when he held me, comforted me. But then Leo was nothing more than a cruel, sick suckhead.
My head started throbbing as anger heated my blood and all the domino pieces began to form a pattern. I had been about to put it all together when the soul-thing hit me in the street. And I had forgotten. Memory loss? Maybe part of the head-banging I’d taken in the wreck?
If Adrianna knew about the chained vamp-scions and who they were, then that also meant that Jack Shoffru had learned it all at some point. Jack, who had possibly taken the Damours to Louisiana from their island hell, who might have known about the blood diamond from way back when. I’d bet every dime in the business account that he had been in New Orleans off and on long before he applied to Leo for a safe haven. Leo might not have known that before he drank down Jackie, but he surely knew it now. Which was why he gave me tacit permissi
on to kill the pirate or his people if I thought it necessary.
“Alex?” I asked, my unfocused gaze on the ceiling tiles. “The party where Bliss and Rachael disappeared, trailed by Jack Shoffru. It was a coming-out party for vamps newly released from the devoveo. How many newly risen vamps were there?”
He started keying on his little tablet, his head bent so low I could only see his crown and his curly, lank hair. “Not sure how many actually showed,” he said, “but it looks like twelve were invited,” the Kid said, his tone telling me that he was putting it all together too. “No names on the info we have yet, but young vamps.”
Like the ones turning to dust. The falling dominoes, which had been creating a pattern, stopped dropping. What if Jack Shoffru had been there? In the building. Not just tailing Bliss and Rachael. But in the building itself. And what if Shiloh had been there too? Without Leo’s permission.
“The tail car with Jack Shoffru in it, following the car Bliss and Rachael were in. What if it didn’t lose them? What if the car caught them and took them and then went over the bridge?”
“Checking,” the Kid said.
“And I’m going for a cola,” Jodi said, when she caught a glimpse of the screen on the Kid’s tablet. “There are things I do not want to know.”
I gave her a halfhearted wave as she left the room.
If Shiloh was at the party . . . what if Jack had taken her on the way home too? I took a slow breath, remembering the unknown vamp in the car. What if Shiloh had been the redheaded vamp? “Holy crap,” I whispered. And who was the other vamp? The one with the nose ring?
And Molly? If she knew her niece was in the city and newly risen as a vamp, and if someone had told her Shiloh was in danger, would she have come here? Yes. And without telling Big Evan, in order to protect him. She would have come to New Orleans, and come to get me, just as her note to her husband said she intended. But Molly hadn’t called me.