by Faith Hunter
• • •
My appointment with Misha and my trip down memory lane concluded, I was back in the SUV cab with Eli, the Kid on speaker phone while I instructed him to research Bryson Ryder. If the human wasn’t a primo of a known clan, then I wanted to know what he really was. It was dumb, but I felt responsible for Misha. “While you’re at it,” I suggested, “create us a listing of any properties owned by Big H’s clans.”
“Yeah, I’ll just snap my fingers and they’ll appear, collated in a file,” the Kid said, his tone full of snark. “I’m not Superman. You have no idea how impossible that last request is, do you?”
“Nope,” I said. “Don’t know, don’t care. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll buy you a cape and matching tights.” I hit END on the call.
Eli looked at me out of the corner of his eyes, a faint grin present in the crinkles of his eyes. “Cape and matching tights?”
“He’d be cute. We can call him Captain Nerdman.”
Eli actually chuckled, an evil little sound.
Back at Esmee’s, I changed into blue jeans and an old jacket over a T, weaponed up with nine mils, one in a spine sheath for left hand draw and its twin in a shoulder holster that put the weapon beside my left breast and under my left arm for right-hand draw, extra mags easy to hand, and blades in boot sheaths. I joined the boys in the breakfast room.
“Here’s what I have on the name Misha mentioned,” Alex said. “Bryson Ryder is human, married, a father of two, lives across the river in Vidalia, Louisiana, in a three-bedroom house. He works as a CPA and keeps a small office off Carter Street that advertises open hours in the daytime.”
“Misha said he was a primo blood-servant,” I said. They were usually well-off and lived on the vamp’s premises, where they were handy to do laundry or clean the pool or, in this case, do the books. And be available for sex and dinner, of course.
The Kid said, “He’s more likely a vamp’s occasional snack, and Misha was using him for background info. And before you ask, no, there’s no answer at his home or office.”
“We’ve got the time, and nothing else to do until eight. Let’s do a run-by,” Eli said, studying the addresses on satellite maps. “If the office and the house are empty, we can check them out and be back in plenty of time. If there are people there and it looks okay, then we’ve had a nice drive.”
By check them out, I knew Eli meant “break into and look around,” which sounded fine to me, except for any getting-caught-and-slapped-in-jail part. Our eight p.m. meeting was with Hieronymus, a meet and greet to sign contracts. Eight was just after breakfast time for a vamp, and we wanted to be armed and dangerous and ready for anything.
“And about that other thing,” the Kid continued. “Charly’s leukemia? I verified that she’s on chemo, on six different kinds of meds, including prophylactic antibiotics, some supplements to mitigate the effects of the round of chemo she finished last week, and one I can’t pronounce or find online.”
“Misha took her daughter away from home and on the road, on business, the day after she finished a round of chemo?” I asked, startled. “I am not happy with Mish. But I guess there’s some reason for what looks like total stupidity. I mean, okay, she has a book deal going, but surely any publisher would delay a deadline for a sick child.”
Eli said succinctly, “Deductible and twenty percent.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Insurance and medical bills were not things I had to worry about, not with my skinwalker metabolism and healing.
“She has her job as on-air personality at Torch News,” the Kid said, “and full benefits. But according to her financial records, Charly’s uncovered medical bills are already at twenty thousand dollars. I don’t know what she got for her book deal, but that’s a lot of dough.”
“Okay, Misha has to bring in large amounts of cash and fast,” I said. “But still. The day after a round of chemo?” I shook my head. “Something feels hinky.”
Back in the SUV, Eli pulled out and headed west, over the Mississippi. Lately, my whole life seemed to be spent crossing the Old Miss.
We took 84, also known as John R. Junkin Drive, across the river and into Vidalia. Eli found the business, and we both noted the Closed sign and the dusty Christmas tree in the front window. I didn’t need to look at Eli to know how strange that was. We drove around several blocks, looking for banks and ATMs, which had the best security cameras, and any other businesses that looked profitable enough to have cameras running. When we were satisfied that we had a line of entry that would be unobserved, we parked the truck near a trailer park and meandered back on foot, moving with enough purpose that we looked like we belonged, but not with so much intent that we looked like we were working ourselves up to rob someplace.
When a cop car motored toward us, Eli’s entire gait changed into badass street thug, and he took my hand. I cozied up to his shoulder and giggled like some mindless girl in love. Beneath his jean jacket I felt a blade sheathed to his arm and muscles hard enough to crack a coconut. The cop glanced at us but didn’t react otherwise.
When I figured he was gone, I glanced back and let go of Eli. “Not bad,” he said.
“Not bad, yourself. Where did you pick up that swagger?”
He didn’t reply and I didn’t really expect him to. We were at the fence a block behind Bryson Ryder’s office. We split up, and Eli took the direct route along the fence. I strolled down three more buildings and walked along a narrow path between two that had been visible on Google. What had I ever done without satellite mapping systems?
I turned at the corner and walked by the front entrance again, seeing no one nearby, and I texted to Eli quickly, Go. I heard a muted thump and a moment later I walked up the steps to the small house-turned-storefront, and Eli let me in. I was hit with the smell of mold, dust, and human. Fainter was the smell of vamp, mixed varieties, like the way an herb store might smell if all the canisters were emptied onto the floor and allowed to dry rot. A little chamomile, some red pepper, rose hips, lilies, and dandelion, and a hint of vanilla, but all old. Nothing fresh.
Eli was wearing black nitrile gloves and tossed a pair to me. I caught them out of the air, two-handed. Black gloves were way cooler than blue or green. I had even seen where they made purple, fuchsia, and neon yellow, but I was partial to the black.
“No active security,” Eli said to me. “Looks like it was turned off and never turned back on. Backup battery is dead.” Talking on a headset to his brother, he said, “Booting up.” He started up the computer, murmuring quietly as the Kid walked him through the dull intricacies of breaking into an old PC. The Kid had wanted to come along, claiming it would make our job ten times faster. Eli had vetoed that. The little felon was in Mississippi by the good graces of a lenient judge, and no way was Eli going to let anything criminal come within ten feet of him. No. That was for us. Lucky me.
Gloved, I looked the place over. There was dust everywhere, even on the PC keyboard and the phone. There were spiderwebs in two ceiling corners. A roach motel behind the desk was full. That was one thing about the Gulf states: roaches were everywhere. They were the size of a wrestler’s thumb, crunched like bubble wrap and squirted green goo when you stomped on them, and sometimes even busted up and leaking they’d still crawl away. I’d learned to hate roaches. They were fearless. Not that long ago I found one crawling under my toilet seat. I managed not to scream and inform the boys that I was truly a girl, but it was a near thing. And it wasn’t the first time my privacy had been so rudely interrupted.
The answering machine—an old digital model—had a blinking light. I pulled a tiny recorder the Kid had given me and hit RECORD on the mini recorder, then PLAY, on the machine, half listening as it played. Bryson hadn’t answered his messages in weeks. Maybe months. One of the last ones was Misha’s voice, still listed under “new messages,” as if it hadn’t been played. Which was odd. The calendar on the wall was still on October of last year. There was a dead plant in the corner. Whoever Misha had talk
ed to, it was beginning to look like it wasn’t Bryson Ryder, unless he had gone into hiding for some reason that let him abandon his business and yet talk to a reporter. Which was not impossible, but was highly unlikely.
On one side of the back door that Eli had kicked in there was a miniature kitchen with a small steel sink, a cheap microwave, and a tiny brown fridge, like one a college student would have kept in his dorm. The fridge stank of rotten broccoli and mystery meat, but at least Bryson’s body hadn’t been carved up and forced inside. A bathroom was on the other side of the door, and the water in the toilet suggested that it hadn’t been flushed in ages, an iron-brown ring showing where water had evaporated.
I pulled open a file cabinet. It wasn’t locked. The files inside were hard copies of his customers’ yearly taxes, three five-foot-long drawers’ worth. Nothing personal had been kept in the drawers that I could see. But in the bottom one I noticed a name on a file: CONSTANCE PERRAULT. Next to it was COLEMAN PÉRODEAU. Both were vamps. According to Reach’s preliminary research, both were lower-level scions of Hieronymus. I did a quick look for the clan Misha mentioned—Clan Petitpas. Just as I’d thought, there was no such listing.
One knee on the floor, I flipped through the files and recognized more vamp names, blood-servants, and commercial businesses owned by the same. “Eli. Got something.” He looked up from the PC. “Misha was right about one thing. Bryson Ryder is the tax consultant to the fanged and their dinners.” I pulled out a file from the H’s. “Including Hieronymus.”
“I have something too. There’s nothing new on his computer for the last six weeks. But before that, it looks like Bryson somehow got on Hieronymus’ bad side. There is a file of e-mails for each of his vampire clients, and under Hieronymus’ name is a series of thinly veiled threats written by the MOC’s lawyer. Legal threats,” Eli clarified. “Bryson was being threatened with a lawsuit.”
I tucked the mini recorder into a pocket and made sure everything appeared undisturbed while Eli went for the SUV. Just a little B and E and electronics theft before my afternoon snack.
• • •
Bryson’s home was a comfortable brick place, added on to since the Google street photos had been taken, with a big live oak shading the front yard and a mailbox full of mail at the curb, envelopes and flyers sticking out. “Not good,” I said.
Eli said nothing as he parked behind a new-model car in the drive, but he checked his weapon and chambered a round as he got out, taking point as we moved to the front door. He carried the gun one-handed, pointed down beside his leg, where it couldn’t be seen from the street. It seemed like a bit of overkill, but I unbuttoned my jacket so I could get at both of my weapons and walked facing the road, keeping an eye on the yard, street, and the neighbors’ houses at our rear.
It was typical suburbia for this time of day: quiet, no traffic, no activity. Ryder’s car had a lot of cat tracks up and down the hood and the front window. A children’s tricycle was by the front tire, on its side, and a doll lay on the walkway to the door, looking as if it had been outside for a while. The smell hit me about ten feet from the door. Something was very wrong at the Ryder home. I stopped and put all sensory clues together. “Eli. We got bodies inside.”
He stopped too, not asking how I knew, but his bearing went from vigilant to hyperalert. He held his gun now in a two-hand grip pointed at the ground in front of him. “Details.”
“Old blood. A lot of it. Sickly sweet. It’s been there a while.”
“Let’s go.” He moved back to the SUV and got inside.
I followed, buckling myself in as he drove away. All I could see was the doll and the tricycle. “A family is dead for weeks and somehow no one’s noticed yet?”
“You smelled the time frame?” he asked as he pulled back onto 84, heading for the river.
“Part of it. Another part was cat tracks on a new car, the mail in the box, and toys left out in the weather.” As we were crossing the river, I thought about calling Misha and telling her that her contact was dead, but I just burgled his office, so the less I told the press, the better, old friend or not.
Below us on the water, a barge loaded with train cars and two tugs were pushing slowly upstream, the wake turbulent behind and beside them. The barge was sitting low in the water, and it had to take a lot of power to fight a current so heavily laden. “Does it bother you that I can smell blood?” I asked Eli. Meaning: does it bother you that I’m a skinwalker? But not said.
Eli looked at me from the corner of his eye. “No. I’ll make sure a report is called in to the police about Ryder and then I’ll have Alex monitor the police bands and obtain copies of the reports. We’ll know what the cops do without getting involved.”
“The Kid can do that?”
“My brother can do almost anything,” he muttered. He didn’t sound very happy about it.
CHAPTER 4
Have Stakes, Will Travel. Amusing.
An hour later, cops were swarming all over the Ryder place, and the Kid kept us updated on what the cops found. Four bodies, two adults and two children, all in advanced stages of decomp. COD was officially undetermined, but from police chatter, it sounded like a vamp attack. If that was true, then Big H had decided to handle things himself instead of following through on the threatened lawsuit, or Ryder made some vamp mad, or . . . or . . . I didn’t know what. Something was really hinky here and I wasn’t a big believer in coincidence. No matter what was really going on, I should give a heads-up call to PsyLED. Which meant calling Rick.
Esmee was taking her nap, Eli was going through the stolen electronic files on the vamps, and the Kid was helping while illicitly listening to the Vidalia police channels. Jameson was clanking around in the kitchen, listening to opera, and the maid, his wife, who had nodded politely to me before scuttling away, mop in hand, was cleaning. I was in the middle of nothing and feeling antsy, so I took my cell and went for a walk on the grounds. The backyard was enclosed by an eight-foot-tall brick wall and boasted a multicar garage, a pool, and gardens that my friend Molly would have adored. I didn’t see any of it as I walked, holding the cell phone in my hand, staring at the contacts list on the bright screen.
PsyLED had issued new rulings that went into effect in the New Year. Now when humans were injured or killed by possibly paranormal means, law enforcement and private citizens were required to call PsyLED so one of their investigators could take psychometric readings. Rick was the special agent in seven states in the Southeast, including Louisiana and Mississippi. The cops would call. Eventually. But jurisdictional conflicts meant it would be later rather than sooner, and valuable evidence might be lost. I had almost asked Eli to make the call, but that had smacked of cowardice and so here I was, in the winter-chilled garden, surrounded on all sides by dormant vegetation, my knees knocking and a thumb poised over the phone. I put a foot on a garden bench and spun around so that I was sitting on the bench’s back, feet on the seat, the garden spread out around me. The live oaks and magnolias near me whispered to one another, birds twittered and squawked, and two gray squirrels raced around a tree trunk, chittering, tails snapping. I could smell rain on the breeze. I really didn’t want to do this. I hit SEND.
I had a mental image of Rick pulling out his phone, staring at the screen, knowing it was me, and remembering the last time we spoke, when I accused him of trying to kill me. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was so stupid. With my idiotic accusation, I had caused irreparable harm to a relationship that could have gone somewhere.
After four rings, I heard Rick say, “Jane.”
That was it. Just my name. Not hello, not missed you, not a rampage, which might have meant feelings for me. Just my name. I sighed slowly. “Yeah.” I wanted to say, How are you? Do you forgive me for being stupid? I miss you. Instead what came out was, “I think it’s possible that vamps drained and killed a family of four in Vidalia, Louisiana. And there are Naturaleza vamps in the area.”
“Business,” he said.
I couldn’t
tell if he was disappointed or not. “Yeah. I guess.”
After a moment he said, “Do the local LEOs know?”
“Local law got a tip. They don’t know the COD yet. It’s my understanding that the bodies were too far gone to make a determination without postmortems. But they’ve sent for the local medical examiner, so they’ll know soon.”
“Why are you informing me instead of the local law?”
Because I wanted to hear your voice. No way was I saying that. “They’ll get around to it. A national-media type claims to have spoken to him recently, but if the smell is anything to go by, he musta been doing that while dead. The timing is hinky. I thought you’d like a heads-up.” But I wanted to hear your voice. Okay, I was being stupid and girly. But I wanted to hear his voice.
“Where are you and how did you find it?”
I filled him in on everything except the B and E, and when I was done, he said, “I’ll make a call. I’m in Tennessee right now and don’t know if I can get away, but someone will be coming. They’ll take over.”
Which meant that someone would discover that Ryder’s office had been burgled. Oh, goody. I didn’t respond, and after an uncomfortable silence, Rick disconnected. I closed the cell and sat in the weak winter sun, beating myself up.
When I stood, I noticed a large stone beneath the nearest maple tree. Pocketing the phone, I walked over to it and realized that it wasn’t a stone from here or from anywhere around here. It was rounded and vaguely flat on top, maybe eighteen inches high, and, weirdly enough, it was pink. Pink, white-veined marble. I bent over it, and two feet away in the brush, I spotted a rusted steel pole about three feet tall with a verdigris metal lion on top. A mounting block and horse tie, remnants of a nonindustrial past, a slave past, if the age of the thing was any indication.
I sighed again and made my way back inside. I so did not fit in here. Not at all.