by Faith Hunter
My cell dinged. JoJo had sent a text to Margot and me. Found a Peeping Tom report from twenty years ago, and one count of lewd behavior with a minor. Nothing since.
Margot texted back, He went underground.
She meant that Paton was a sexual predator who had learned to hide his activities enough to be considered safe around neighbors. But why would a sexual predator claim he had witnessed an abduction if he was the culprit? Why not just remain silent? I thought about the sanctimonious predators at the church and considered them in light of the evidence here. I texted back, I’ll access all reports of missing girls when I get back to HQ. But I think he really saw the girl abducted. It fits the MO of a man hiding his own activities. In warrant, look for child pornography.
Margot texted back, My money says we got him.
I hoped her money was right, but just in case, I sent a text to Yummy that said, Can vampires smell other vampires and their blood-servants? If so, when you wake and get this, I’d like you to take a sniff at the abduction site of a human teenager. Then I sent a shorter text, Please.
* * *
• • •
Because a child was missing, Margot got her paper in record time. I spent the next hours working on my search on Isleen and Loriann, running back and forth between Paton’s house and the Blalock home, updating people at HQ, and keeping my nose in everything important.
In the middle of the running around, my laptop dinged. I took it to the truck and plugged it in to charge while I looked at the results of my search. I sat for a while, sweating, my fingers on the keyboard, limp, as I stared at the results. Then I called JoJo on her cell.
“Jones,” she said.
“I may have found Loriann, Rick’s ink blood-magic witch.”
“Go, probie!”
“Not really. Things are convoluted. There’s an NOPD complication from the two years after Rick was inked.” I told what I had discovered.
Jo listened and then said softly, “I’ll do some more research and then call Soul.”
“Copy that.” I ended the call. If I was right about what I had discovered, Rick had been hiding things from his unit.
* * *
• • •
Two hours after the call had first come in, we had significant evidence against Jim Paton for possessing child pornography and for watching Raynay Blalock through her window with a telescope that was usually set up on a tripod in his bedroom. The scope was found under the bed, but the feet of the stand had made indentations in the carpet that were impossible to explain away. Jim claimed he had nothing to do with Raynay’s kidnapping, but he was in deep trouble and his lawyer was trying to arrange bail and a safe place for the man to stay. So far no judge was willing to consider letting him out on personal recognizance, and Jim wasn’t going to be safe in his own house anymore, not since word had gotten out to his neighbors that he was into abuse of children.
But. Raynay was still missing. Margot and another FBI agent I didn’t know had spent hours with the mother of the missing girl, but she knew nothing. I still didn’t think Paton had anything to do with the kidnapping.
It was finally dark and Yummy was on her way over to add more evidence. Waiting on her, I sat in the overheated truck cab, windows open, sweating, making cell phone calls and typing up reports, my skin coated with that oily, greasy sweat that results from high humidity and midsummer heat. The temps were making me gripey and impatient and I was hungry and thirsty and I had forgotten to refill my water bottle, which meant I’d had to refill with city water from the Blalock kitchen tap. The taste was chlorinated and awful. And Yummy was late.
That thought was still echoing in my brain when the truck rocked and a fanged face slashed at my windshield. I had drawn my weapon and aimed before I realized it was Yummy. False vamp laughter, mocking and insulting, echoed down the street. Playing a vamp game. My heart was stuttering around one-eighty, and my breathing was still trying to catch up. Knowing she would hear me through the open window, I muttered, “I’m loaded with silver-lead ammo. Be glad I didn’t fire.”
“Maggoty Nell would make me true-dead?” she asked through the glass, still laughing. But it was now human laughter and her fangs snapped back into place in the roof of her mouth as her eyes bled back to human.
I reseated my weapon and opened the door, sliding out of the seat. “Thanks for coming.”
“The news media is all over this like white on rice. If my assistance will stick Jim Paton behind bars and recover the missing girl, then I’m happy to oblige.” The edge in her voice convinced me she was more than willing to help this once, with no quid pro quo to balance the account between us.
I inclined my head toward the crime scene tape and together we ambled over, unconsciously keeping the cruisers between the news van cameras and ourselves. Softly, so no one with a parabolic mic or something even fancier could overhear me, I said, “I don’t think Paton took Raynay. I think he’ll go to jail for child pornography, but I think blood-servants took the girl. I got a reading that suggested vampires took her in broad daylight, and since that’s not likely, I’m thinking blood-servants who have been drinking a lot of vampire blood—enough to make them read a little like vamps—took her.”
“You are not accusing Ming’s people,” Yummy said, half question, half assertion.
“No. But you tell me.”
We had reached the fifteen-foot-wide square of lawn marked off by yellow crime scene tape. The tech was long gone. Yummy looked at me as if asking if she could cross the tape. I shook my head. “Do the best you can from here.”
Yummy dropped into a squat, one knee on the ground. She was wearing tight Lycra running pants and still wasn’t sweating. I didn’t envy the whole blood-drinking thing, but I did envy the vampire not-sweating thing. She leaned forward and sniffed several times. Then sat back on her haunches. She said softly, “The human girl was frozen in panic. The ones who took her are the same blood clan as the Naturaleza who attacked the council chambers of Ming of Glass.” Yummy’s blond hair shifted and fell across one shoulder as she angled her head up to see me. “They’re Ming’s enemies. The enemies of all the Mithrans of Knoxville. When we find the location of their lair, we’ll kill them all. But we’ll be mindful of prisoners.”
I frowned. “Don’t you think it would be better to get PsyLED to take down a lair?”
“No.”
That was succinct. “Okay then. Thank you for coming.”
“One thing.” Yummy rose to stand beside me. “I also smell magic on them. Perhaps not enough to register on your machine, but enough to make them dangerous. Be careful. They might have powerful amulets.”
“Okay. Hey.” I stopped, thought it through, and asked, “You ever hear of a vampire named Isleen?”
“Yes. She is true-dead. If you have further questions, ask your LaFleur.” Yummy faded into the night.
I went back to my truck and called HQ, filling them in on the information Yummy had given me about the kidnapped girl, calling her a confidential informant. It wouldn’t fool anyone at HQ, but it did keep Yummy’s name off my reports.
When I explained my blood-servant-kidnapper theory, JoJo said, “So you think we have three cases. A kidnapping involving the vampires who also attacked Ming of Glass, a witch creating a circle to curse Rick, and Paton with his child porn addiction.”
“Yes. Or maybe overlapping cases,” I said. “And if the vampires need blood, they’ll be taking more people off the streets.”
“Why is nothing ever easy?” she muttered and ended the call.
* * *
• • •
I was back at HQ when the case turned itself on its head, and because I was the probie taking calls on the night shift, I got the news first. “PsyLED Unit Eighteen, Special Agent Nell Ingram,” I said, answering the official line.
“I’d like to speak with Rick LaFleur,” a female voic
e said.
“Special Agent LaFleur isn’t in right now,” I said, as I perused the list of missing teenaged girls within a ten-mile radius of Paton’s house. There had been seven in the last twenty years, three returned safely, four never found. That seemed like a lot. Distracted, I said, “Can I help you or do you want his voice mail?”
“Will you call his cell and tell him to call Loriann Ethier at New Orleans Police Department, CLE. It’s urgent.” She gave me a number, pronounced and spelled her last name, which didn’t match at all, and hung up.
Loriann. Rick’s Loriann. And she had just called PsyLED from NOPD. I sat at my desk, not sure what to do. I finally called JoJo on her cell so I could speak privately.
“This is weird, probie,” she answered. “I can see you from here.”
“Loriann Ethier just called HQ. She wants me to have Rick call her at NOPD CLE, whatever CLE is. Can you track it back?”
“I’m in the system. Hang on.” She repeated the number back to me. Then, “Dang, probie. You’re batting a thousand. You were right. The witch who spelled and inked Rick currently works for the New Orleans Police Department.”
Rick had to know Loriann worked at NOPD. Boss man had been keeping secrets. “Rick was going to stick around HQ until the witch circles stopped. But he’s not in-house. What do I do?”
“Call his cell. Pass along the message. I’ll notify Soul.”
I dialed Rick’s cell and opened with, “A woman wants you to call her. Her name is Loriann E-t-h-i-e-r,” I spelled out, “pronounced ‘Etta.’” His reaction was so intense it shivered through the silence on the cell. I stilled, feeling his shock through my bones and through my connection to Soulwood. Whatever it was, it was something with power, with magic, and it had hit Rick. Or come from him. “She’s the witch who inked you, isn’t she?”
Reluctant, hesitant, he said, “Yes. Loriann Ethier is the witch who . . . tattooed me . . . with a blood-magic . . . spell.” He growled out the last words as if they ached.
Magic. I’d been right. “Do you think she’s the one who’s cursing—”
“I’m not speculating. Occam and I dropped by my house to pack more clothes and I’m on my way back. I’ll make the call from HQ. ETA eight minutes.” He ended the call.
I gathered up my tablets and the note with the name and number and walked into the conference room. In the darkened space JoJo and Tandy were both poring over laptops and multiple tablets. “Rick’s on the way in to call her back. He says she’s the witch who gave him his tats.”
JoJo suggested that someone have sexual relations with her and scrubbed her hands over her turban. Tandy laughed. “We’ve already amassed a lot of research on her,” Tandy said.
Jo dropped her hands. “Yeah. With our combined talents, we pretty much know where Loriann is, where she gets her hair done, what her pets’ names are, what medicines she takes, and how she likes her steak cooked. All in fifteen minutes’ work. All we needed was a last name. Which Rick never gave us.”
I didn’t envy Loriann the loss of personal privacy. As we waited on Rick, I gave attention to my plants, sliding sturdy leaves through fingers and thumbs, thinking, trying to make the investigation fit together. Nothing fit. Parts of the puzzle were missing. Or I was blind to them. Probably that. But I did know that Rick should have told us about Loriann, that she worked for the New Orleans Police Department, because many of the witch circles had been found in Louisiana. No matter what she was today, this witch had done evil to Rick once. She should have been on a list of suspects from day one. And Rick hadn’t told us about her.
* * *
• • •
Rick blew into HQ like a storm, his eyes glowing the green of his cat, his black and silver hair flying around his head and shoulders as if caught up in a wind. He dropped his gobags and took his place at the conference table. Occam wasn’t with him, and I felt a shaft of disappointment. “I assume you’re all up to speed on Loriann,” he snapped. When Tandy and JoJo nodded, he said, “Fill me in.”
Crisply, JoJo said, “She’s twenty-seven years old, lives in New Orleans on the second floor of a two-bed, one-bath, Victorian-style two-story duplex just outside the Garden District.” She pointed to a photo of a house on the screen overhead. “She owns the house and two others, courtesy of her grandmother’s will. She’s single, has two cats, and works for NOPD Crime Lab and Evidence. She rents out the lower floor of her home to a doctor of paranormal species at Tulane Medical. She has a brother with a drug problem. She reported him missing twelve months ago. The number she gave us is the CLE direct number, but it’s possible that your call will be diverted elsewhere. This”—a second photo popped up on the big screen over the windows—“is from her most recent driver’s license, and the one beside it is from her NOPD ID.”
The woman had dark brown eyes and pale skin. She wore her brown hair parted down the middle and hanging close to her face in the driver’s license. In the NOPD photo, her hair was back in a tail, exposing her ears. Ear cartilage, shape, and placement on the head were better identification markers than facial markers, which could easily be changed by surgery. In both photos, she was unsmiling. I got the impression of heavy burdens and years of sadness from the photographs.
“She stopped dying her hair,” Rick said, his voice going soft. He cleared his throat as if something clogged it, and I remembered that odd sound when he told us about the ink spell earlier. “After I was rescued, Katie Fonteneau, once number two in the Pellissier vampire clan of New Orleans, and who is now Master of the City of Atlanta, saved Lori.”
“Why would a vampire help a witch?” Tandy asked.
His voice hoarse, Rick said, “Isleen was Katie’s scion—her blood-made vampire child. Isleen was also a psycho fanghead. Katie felt responsible for everything done to Loriann. And to me, I think.”
A vampire had to have known that her scion was insane.
Rick put his hand on his throat. Coffee gurgled into the pot behind him. Raspy, he said, “I helped Loriann get a job as a consultant at Crime Lab and Evidence. She did good work for a couple of years. Then she vanished. I haven’t had contact with her since.”
Jo said, “She was rehired by CLE this past January when the European Mithrans tried to take over. She’s full-time now, instead of the former consultancy. Her six-month evaluation was excellent.”
“Has she been researching something in private?” Rick asked softly.
“I can’t tell,” Jo said. “Her work computer files are encrypted and her personal system is set up to give an alarm if anything tries to read it. I can’t get in easily, if at all.”
“Really?” he said, as if he found that interesting. “Okay. Let’s do this. Clementine,” he said to the voice-to-text software, “record. Rick LaFleur, Jo Jones, Tandy Dyson, Nell Ingram, on conference call to Loriann Ethier”—he spelled it out—“currently of NOPD CLE.”
“CLMT2207 recording,” the system said.
He gave the date and time and punched in the phone number.
It rang once. “Crime lab. Loriann Ethier. How may I help you?”
Rick’s mouth opened. Nothing came out. I felt an odd, tugging sensation on Soulwood. “Rick LaFleur,” he said, sounding calmer than he looked. “How are you, Loriann?”
“You’ve had fifteen minutes, you and Diamond Drill. I’m sure you know everything about me.”
Jo’s head snapped to Rick at the use of her old hacker name. Loriann had been researching us, it seemed.
Loriann continued. “How are you? Since the calling started, I mean.”
Jo tapped on her laptop so fast it was a tiny little burr of sound. Tandy focused on the far wall, as if blocking out everything except the voices.
“How do you know about the calling?” Rick asked. I’d have thought him steady, uninvolved, except for the brightening green glow of his black eyes.
“Your tats are bein
g pulled on. I can feel the magic attacking them. So I did a little research.”
Tension shot through me. Loriann knew something about the magic in Rick’s tats, and not just from the original inking. Could Loriann be the witch cursing Rick? It made sense, except for the logistics. She wasn’t in Knoxville. But . . . she knew too much and there was no reason why she should know. Unless she had left a backdoor into Rick’s magic tats. I sent that possibility to Jo, who shot me a startled look.
Tandy scribbled something and passed the note to Rick. It read, Too far away to be sure, but I think she’s half lying.
Rick rubbed his eyes and temples as if his head hurt. “Go on,” he said, sounding a lot more cop-like than he currently looked.
“I heard about the Knox vamps being attacked and the witch who’s casting a curse there.”
“Who is the witch?” Rick asked. “What is she casting?”
Loriann said, “I got a look at the photos of the circles and they look a lot like ones I saw on the bank of the Mississippi last December, a month or so before the European vampires were destroyed.” Her voice took on an intensity that sharpened her sibilants, making her next words almost hiss. “Three circles. All created to be cast on the three days of the new moon. The spells are called Circle of the Moon-Cursed, or Circle of the Curse, or more commonly, Circle of the Moon.”
“Ohhh,” I whispered as something seemed to fall into place in my brain. As a curse, it would be cast as a new moon circle. Curses and new moons had been taught in Spook School, but the course info had been sparse. Curses were rare, against witch law. We had already considered that this spell was brand-new, experimental. If this was the testing phase, then it worked like a pulse of magic and then stopped. Was that why Rick was aging slowly—a pulse at a time? If so, then the final, full curse was still to come. It all made sense, but my knowledge of magic lore wasn’t extensive. I pulled my laptop to me and sent my info to the unit. JoJo’s system pinged softly and she shot me a look, nodding once to say she agreed.