by Faith Hunter
“She’s got dead stuff all around her. And she’s scared. She’s talking to God and you gotta help her.”
Molly was talking to God? Molly hadn’t really believed in God for a long time. “Okay. I’m trying really hard.” And then I grinned. “Your other birthday present? Is this.” I reached over and picked up the kitten, depositing her in Angie’s arms. “Her name is KitKit.”
Angie’s eyes went wide as saucers. “I been holding her! I love her!” She hugged the kitten close. “I always wanted a kitten for my own! Hi, KitKit! I love you already!” Angie Baby threw her arms around my neck, squishing KitKit between us. “Thank you, Aunt Jane! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
I glanced up from the floor to the Kid, sitting at his table, working, and shamelessly listening in. He shook his head at me slowly, perplexed, baffled. Or maybe amazed. It was pretty brilliant of me.
I opened my cell and checked my e-mail to find one waiting from Del. In it were three addresses, all of them out of the city, west of the river. I dipped the cell at Alex, indicating I was sending him info. He nodded, and I hit SEND. “Directions, sat maps, anything you can get,” I said to him. “We have a couple of hours before sundown and we need to be done before nightfall.” Or Molly might not make it.
He nodded once and bent over his tablets. I caught another glimpse of black and gold graphics, dark and bold, which seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before, and I shrugged, pushing my way off the floor. I lifted Angie up in my arms and headed up the stairs, the kitten hot on my feet, managing the steps with clumsy determination. “So. I’m guessing that you’re supposed to be in your bed for a nap,” I said to her, “and that EJ is in his bed asleep, and your daddy’s exhausted from healing Bruiser and he’s in his bed. Would I be right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She crooked a tiny hand around my ear and whispered, “Don’t tell Daddy.” I felt a tingle of magics from her words, a compulsion that she was not supposed to know how to use.
“Stop that,” I whispered.
Angie jerked back, her eyes wide. She covered her mouth with the fingers of one hand. “You felted that?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I whispered as I reached the second-floor landing. “I felted it. Don’t do it again.”
“Okay. I promise.”
I squinted at her, seeing her magics recede into her fingers. “Hey, can you use that on your parents?” If Angie’s eyes had gotten wider, her eyeballs would have popped out and rolled around on the floor. “If I ever see you using that on your parents, I’ll turn you over my knee and spank the living daylights outta you.”
Angie’s mouth went as wide as her eyes. “You would hit me?”
I paused on the landing, my feet coming to a complete stop, considering my godchild and wondering just how mischievous—and how dangerous—she was and might become as she got older. In a normal voice I said, “If EJ was about to touch a hot stove, would your mama and daddy grab him and spank his bottom to keep him safe?”
“EJ wears trainer-diapers,” she said, her face going mutinous. “He wouldn’t feel it if they spanked him.”
“Don’t dodge the question, Angie.”
Her bottom lip poked out and her eyes narrowed to slits. She huffed a breath, thinking. “Mommy and Daddy would spank him.” She frowned hard. “And they would spank me for doing magics.”
“And would you deserve it for sneaking around and doing things they told you not to? Things you knew they would disapprove of?”
Angie took her arms off my shoulders and crossed them, her curls bouncing, and I was reminded of an old black-and-white movie with a little girl actress. Shirley somebody. Mutinously, as if the words were dragged out by pincers, she said, “Yes. I would deserve it.”
“I’m proud of you, Angie,” I said, letting my face soften.
“Why?”
“For taking the high road. The hard road. For being honest and for having . . . honor. Not many people in this day and age have honor.” The corners of her mouth pulled down farther, quarrelsome and confused. “And I have honor too,” I said. “Which is why, because I’m your godmother, if I see you using magics without the knowledge and permission of your family, I’ll spank you.”
Angie huffed, watching me.
I smiled fully. “I’ll spank you to keep you safe and alive, the same way I’d spank EJ to teach him about hot stoves. The way Beast would swat a kit to keep it from falling out of the den and to teach him to stay away from the mouth of the cave.”
“Spanking babies is wrong,” she stated. But she uncrossed her arms and waved them in the air in front of us. And I felt the magics that had crisscrossed in front of us and under my feet vanish. I hadn’t even noticed them until she dispersed them. I heard Big Evan roll over in bed. Angie had been keeping him asleep while she healed Bruiser. Good heavens. What was this child gonna be like in ten years?
“Soon I’m gonna be smart and all growed up and using my magic,” Angie said, anger darkening her face. “Damn it.”
Without even thinking about it, I swatted her. It didn’t hurt her, but it got her attention. I schooled my face to neutrality. When had my godchild started cussing? I had to talk to Molly about this. But Molly isn’t here. “I won’t beat you. Yes, beating kids is wrong. But now you’ll have a time-out and no movies and no dessert after dinner. Because you knew what you were doing was wrong. And you know language like that is not accepted in my house.”
Tears welled up in her gorgeous eyes, wavering and pooling. Horror and guilt welled up in me, but I swiped the kitten off the floor and into Angie’s arms, gathered the little girl and her new pet close, and carried Angie to her bed, laying her on top of the covers. Emotion made me gruff. “One-hour time-out. No dolls, no TV, no nothing but the kitten.” Tears rolled down her cheeks and I forced my voice to soften. “I love you, Angie Baby. I love you with all my heart.”
“I hate you,” she said to me, and rolled over, presenting me with her back.
“No, you don’t. And if I die tonight, saving your mama, it’ll be too late to say I love you.” With that, I turned on a heel and left the room, going back down the stairs. Some life lessons are hard. They just are.
Big Evan followed me down the stairs, his face creased in sleep. Instantly I was reminded of the time I saw him sleeping and I shook my head, trying to make the picture memory go away. “What?” he asked. When I just shook my head again, he said, “I’m hungry. Who wants food?” and moved sleepily to the kitchen.
“Jane?” Alex called softly from the living room. “I found footage of Molly leaving the hotel.”
Big Evan was instantly awake and standing behind the Kid. I didn’t even see him move. Sometimes Evan was just plain scary.
On the Kid’s largest tablet was a still shot of an empty hallway. “Put it up on the big screen,” Eli whispered from the doorway. We were all talking quietly, to allow Bruiser to stay asleep.
The empty hallway appeared on the wide-screen TV, looking blurred and pixilated. “This is why it took so long to find in a search of security footage. Nothing really shows up when you’re looking fast, with multiple screens running at once,” Alex said. On the screen, a blur appeared, like four swishes of color caught on old-fashioned, regular-speed film when something fast happened. But it wasn’t fast, it was just swishy. “That was them leaving.”
“Magic,” Evan said, frustration in his tone. “Someone hid them leaving.”
“Yeah,” the Kid said, something odd in his voice. He tapped his screen. “This is the vamps arriving.”
Movement appeared on the screen again, moving in the opposite direction. Three forms, this time. Still all swishy.
Big Evan said, “That’s active magic, not something canned. One of the vamps can use magic. One is a witch.”
“Angel Tit sent you some footage captured during the gather,” I said. “He said something was odd on the digital feed. Put it up.”
“Yeah,” the Kid said. “I haven’t had a chance to lo
ok at it.”
The security footage was just as blurred as the hotel footage. In fact, it looked so similar it had to be the same kind of spell, if not the same practitioner. “Okay. Run the hotel footage again.” The blurred footage ran: three forms in and four forms out, looking much like the footage sent by Angel Tit.
“Huh,” Alex said.
“Same magic worker?” I asked Evan.
“No way to tell,” he said. “All low-level magic would look like that on a digital camera unless you had a really good camera.”
“Oh.”
The Kid looked at me. Eli and Evan looked at me. I breathed out in resignation that sounded suspiciously like a long-suffering sigh. I hadn’t wanted to tell him this way, because the big guy had a temper to go with the red hair and the big magic, but I saw no option now. “Evan.” I stopped, not sure how I wanted to say this. There wasn’t an easy way that I could see. I heaved a breath and took the plunge. “I found out this morning that Shiloh is alive. Well, undead. She’s been turned.” At his blank look, I said, “Molly’s missing niece. Shiloh Everhart Stone, the one presumed dead? She’s a vamp. And I’m pretty sure Molly came here to rescue her.”
I saw gears shifting in Big Evan’s eyes and the silence stretched out. He propped his meaty fists on his hips, and his face darkened from red to slightly purple. I wasn’t sure he was breathing, and his heart was suddenly pounding so hard that I was afraid it would explode—things I notice when my Beast is close to the front of my brain. He took a slow, whistling breath, and there was compressed magic in that minor key note.
Musingly, thoughtfully, Evan said, “I wonder what Leo looks like without his head.” The words rattled around in my brain searching for meaning, but before I found it, he went on. “Because no way did that chief fanghead not know that Shiloh was alive and that Molly was with her. This is his city. Nothing happens here without the MOC knowing.”
Oh, crap. This was gonna be trouble. I just knew it.
“Yes, about that,” a scratchy voice said from the couch. Bruiser levered himself up on an arm, moving stiffly, his face twisted in pain. He coughed, the sound dry and harsh. “Since no one will allow an old man to get some sleep.” He looked at Evan, his brown eyes exhausted but clear. “Leo’s new primo called and spoke with me about your concerns and conclusions, and she suggested that you might believe Leo was involved. He had no idea,” Bruiser said. “None.”
Bruiser had gaunt cheeks and a yellowish pallor. He was shaking slightly, a fine tremor that spoke of dehydration and calorie loss.
“Wait,” I told him. I went to the kitchen and found a sixty-four-ounce bottle of blue Gatorade in the pantry area. I thought about bringing a funnel to get it into him faster, but figured I might accidentally choke him to death. I settled on a wide-gauge rubber straw currently in a water bottle Eli used to hydrate while he worked out, grabbed some energy bars and a bag of dried dates, and returned to the living room to see Eli tucking a blanket around Bruiser. Big Evan looked as if he might explode if not given all the info soon, but I opened the Gatorade and tucked one end of the long straw into it, the other into Bruiser’s mouth. “Drink.” He did, draining half the blue liquid in about sixty seconds.
Bruiser pushed the straw away, but accepted a handful of dates and tossed them into his mouth. I didn’t think he’d actually taken the time to chew them, and was sure he hadn’t when he went back to the Gatorade and struggled to swallow at first. He finished off the bottle and placed a hand over his mouth in what might have been a polite British burp, but I heard nothing. “Excuse me,” he said.
Impressed but not surprised, I went for another large bottle. By the time he’d taken in about a quart of the second gallon, he looked better and he had stopped shaking, but Bruiser’s voice was still rough when he said, “Leo took Shiloh in last summer.” My mouth dropped open, but Bruiser ignored it. “He didn’t know who she was, beyond her given name and her witch status. No history, no information at all. He didn’t know who any of the Damours’ scions were. He should have allowed her to be given the mercy stroke, given that she is a witch, and showed no indication of ever returning to sanity. But he asked Lincoln Shaddock to send Amy Lynn Brown to feed her.”
I dredged my memory and came up with the name of the two-year wonder, a scion who was turned by Shaddock and went through the entire curing process in two years, finding sanity and reentering society in a brand-new record time. She had been brown-haired, slender, unremarkable, but with a good head on her shoulders, calm under fire, smart. Aaaand yes. That was the familiar female vamp I’d seen at vamp HQ, sliding an arm around the panicked fanghead standing in for the leader of Clan Arceneau. “Okay.”
“She brought Shiloh out of the devoveo in less than two months, though your niece,” he said to Evan, “had been in thrall to the madness for years by that time.” Bruiser stopped and drank again. All I could think was that he’d have to pee like a racehorse, which was totally inappropriate under any circumstances, and I’d never say it aloud. I was, however, unable to keep a crooked grin off my mouth. Bruiser, as if he knew what I was thinking, shrugged with his eyebrows. He needed a shave, a shower, and new clothes, but he looked . . . good, sitting on my couch. Long and lean and dangerous.
Beast focused on him intently and started to purr. Mine, she thought.
“Unrelated, but pertinent,” he said, “Leo is having Amy’s blood tested to see if it’s something genetic, a fluke, or some reaction to Shaddock’s blood, that she went through the devoveo process so quickly and now is also able to help others through it faster.
“Before Leo could learn the girl’s history or true name, Jack Shoffru entered New Orleans, far in advance of Leo’s approved timeline, and held a party at Guilbeau’s. He took Shiloh, which means he knew who she was. And no one knew until you told Adelaide to look for her. And worse, something went wrong at the party and two scions who attended died.”
“Then Leo had his own shindig,” I said, and something went wrong. “Something got through security. Two somethings.”
“We think they tried to search Leo’s rooms,” Bruiser said, sounding more and more like himself.
“The blurry things,” I said, remembering the footage from the night of the party, and remembering Vodka Sunrise’s missing tooth.
Bruiser looked from Big Evan to me and back. “Leo fed from Jack and learned about the diamond. Quite honestly, we didn’t know that they were searching, or what they were searching for, until then.”
“All nice but I don’t give a rat’s ass about it,” Evan said. “What I want to know is, why did Leo not inform her family the moment Shiloh’s identity was known?”
Bruiser would have to be a block of stone to not hear the threat in Big Evan’s voice. He bowed his head slightly, formally, to the larger man. Even with him sitting, in his unkempt state, the gesture looked formal, ceremonial. “It was a mistake, seen in hindsight. And when the young scions who had attended the party began to vanish, leaving behind only a pile of ash, and their blood-servants began to fall ill, Leo attempted to right the wrong and find the girl. It was too late. Shoffru had her. He failed.”
“And what?” I demanded. “Leo figured it all out the night of the party and he still let me leave, knowing everything was coming down around his shoulders? Knowing my family was in danger?” I stopped as a flash of anger burst through me. I didn’t look at Big Evan because I could feel his reaction on the air, sparking and sharp with barely controlled magic. I pushed down on my own reaction because I might set him off if I let it go. “You didn’t think I should know this before I left vamp central?”
“Yes, I did. And when I insisted, Leo kicked me out.”
“Kicked you out?” Evan said, his magic stuttering and going still.
“Permanently,” Bruiser said. He looked lost for a moment, a scant instant of shocked surprise. Then he pasted a cocky grin on his face and said, “Which was timely considering that I followed Jane and assisted her in her difficulties.”
&nb
sp; “Which nearly got you killed,” I said.
Bruiser shrugged. “Leo and I have had difficulties over the last few months, but this was”—his face drew down, frowning—“different. Much more acute. I believe the proper phrase is, I need a new crib.”
“Dude,” the Kid said, still sitting in the corner, watching us all. “I can bunk with the bro. You can have my room.”
I sat up straight. This can’t be good. But before I could say no, Bruiser said, “Thank you. I won’t stay long. I promise.”
Mine, Beast said. Will take Bruiser.
“Uhhh,” I said, thinking, Rick . . .
Will take Rick back soon, she growled. Will have Bruiser now.
No, I insisted. I will be alpha in this one thing.
Bruiser turned his gaze to me. And held me in it, as if he cupped his hands around my face, as if I was precious and . . . special. As if he would never hurt me. Ever. Or something. And . . . Beast purred, which I swallowed down. Hard. Oh, crap.
Eli looked back and forth between Bruiser and me and his lips twitched.
“Shut up, I said to them both, and Eli chuckled softly, the sound pure suggestive wickedness. I said to Bruiser, “This place is already pretty crowded.”
“Yeah. Whatever,” Alex said, ducking his head. “I gave him my room. I took his stuff up there last night. So it’s, like, a done deal.”
“His stuff?” I asked, and my voice broke into a tiny yelp on the end.
“Yeah,” the Kid said. “I’m sending you info on the Damours’ potential lairs, to add to any Adelaide sends you. You shouldn’t need to fight once you find them, but you never know. And it’s less than two hours before sunset. You better get weaponed up.”
Not knowing where else to go, but absolutely certain that I didn’t want to stay in the room with all the guys, I went to my room, shut the door, and started changing clothes. As I left the room, I muttered just loud enough for them to hear, “Men.” They laughed. Great. I was an amusing tension reliever for them.
Deep in my mind, Beast said, Mine.