“Tell Jethro we should get going. The sun will set soon.”
“Who?”
An amused gleam lit Aya’s dark eyes. She pointed Thibodeaux’s direction. He sat at a desk with his feet kicked up and a hat pulled down over his eyes.
“Jethro? Seriously.”
She nodded, grinning wider.
Jethro Thibodeaux. No wonder the man went by his last name. Who did that to their kid? His parents hadn’t been kind with that mouthful.
Contrasting her partner, my older cousin dressed classier than a member of the FBI in slacks, a pale peach blouse, and a coat. Sky and I matched Thibodeaux. Neither of us had brought more than standard vacation shit, and I wasn’t risking my one pair of packed slacks on a nosferatu hunt.
“Hey, man, Aya is ready to head out.”
Thibodeaux cracked open an eye and tilted his head back. “Well, if the lady insists.” He dropped his feet from the desk and stood. “Call me Thib, by the way. She’s the only one who doesn’t.”
“Thib it is.”
“Where to, boss lady?”
Aya cast a glance from Skylar to me. “What do our new recruits think?”
Skylar cleared her throat. “I read the case file. Rebecca Monette was last seen by her friends at The House of Blues. That’s not far from where we were attacked.”
“I reckon Decatur Street is their newest feeding ground, at least for the next night or two,” Thib said as we made our way to the rear parking lot. He unlocked a black SUV with a silver hologram of the NOLA SBA and its emblem on the door.
Great. Stuck in the backseat.
Before I had a chance to open the door for Sky, Thib tossed me a second set of keys and cocked his thumb to the Charger parked beside him.
Awesome.
“Meet you outside the club. Don’t scratch her up.”
5
Café Nocturne
Grunt work had to be the most boring part of the job, but I accepted our assignment without complaint since any work was better than no work. Vacations weren’t cheap. I wanted to sweep Sky off her feet, not live like a bum until we reached Texas.
Armed with a picture of Rebecca Monette on my phone, Sky and I made our way inside the House of Blues to canvass the staff and crowd while Aya and Thib took to the street. Loud music and colorful lights engulfed us from the moment we stepped inside.
“Wow, this place is intense,” Skylar said, her gaze roving over the crowded space.
“Yeah, I was thinking about getting us tickets to a show here. Guess we’re sort of getting a free one now, yeah?”
She rolled her eyes at me and angled toward the bar, navigating through the crowd. It took a few minutes, but eventually a bartender made his way over to us.
“What can I get you?” he asked.
I flipped my badge open. “Hopefully a little help. Were you working three nights ago?”
“Every night this week. Why?”
“Have you seen this young woman?” Sky asked, holding up her phone for the guy to see.
“Look, man, I’ve already talked to the cops about this. Yeah, she was here with some friends, but that’s all I know.”
“You didn’t notice anything unusual that night? Maybe an increase in customers of the paler variety?” Skylar asked, leaning forward on one arm. When she did, it nudged her cleavage up. The bartender’s gaze dropped.
Mine did too.
They were full and round, so damned perky I imagined squeezing both. I couldn’t really get my attention off them, especially the way the lights glittered off her skin and—
Sky had used her faerie glamour. It hit me around the moment I realized the bartender was speaking again, and that I’d totally zoned out for a second.
“—were a couple guys, seemed real interested in the girls. You know, buying them drinks all night long. Pretty sure they struck out though, ’cause the ladies left alone. I overheard one of them saying the frat boy thing didn’t do it for them.”
“Any chance you could describe the guys?”
The guy ran a hand through his hair and glanced down the bar at the thick press of people trying to flag someone down for a drink. “Not really. I see a lot of people, a lot of vamps in and out at night for a quick drink. They all sorta blend together. Only remember her cause she had a fantastic rack like yours. You got somewhere to be after you get off shift?”
Despite the insane urge to smash his face down against the counter, I did not want to lose my job and my license by breaking all of this dude’s teeth.
“That’s all we needed. Thanks, man.” I guided Sky away.
“So what did you take away from that?” she asked.
“That you’re really good at using your tits to get info and that this bartender’s a pig?”
She rolled her eyes. “I mean the info he gave us.”
“Oh. That the frat boy I dusted was probably with the folks who snatched her?”
Skylar nodded. “It also means we have vamps who haven’t turned darkling working with the nos. If it was the same frat boy, he didn’t turn nos until after her disappearance.”
I held the door for her on our way out. “That’s a given, I think, considering how long they’ve been operating in this city. I wonder why Thib and Uncle Hiroto didn’t mention it to us.”
Aya appeared on my right. “We wanted to see if you noticed it first.”
Sky almost jumped out of her shoes. I grinned, accustomed to ravens landing out of the blue like that and transforming low-key. We had a gift for it. And we liked scaring the shit out of people. “Case file says most of them caught a Lyft back to their hotel room, but Rebecca wanted to get a bite to eat.”
“Right.”
“So she probably stayed within walking distance.”
“The most recent phone carrier records show she was somewhere within a thousand feet of this area. GPS isn’t as accurate as we’d like it to be. After that, we have no idea.”
“So if this is where Rebecca and her friends split up, where next?”
“According to her friends, the most recent texts from Rebecca stated she’d met a nice guy and not to wait up late for her.”
“Can I try something?” Sky asked.
“Knock yourself out,” Thib replied.
Sky pursed her lips and cut one hand through the air in front of us, parting the Veil between the mortal realm and the spiritual plane. In the Twilight, fae and mages could read things the rest of us couldn’t see. I wasn’t able to cross over without assistance from one of her kind or a portal from a magician, and I also couldn’t read the different auras over there. But Sky could, and that made her valuable as a partner.
“I’ll be right back.” Without explaining herself, she pushed her way into the other world and left us behind.
“Maybe we should have had Hiroto request some additional magician assistance,” Thib muttered.
“Not many mages at the New Orleans SBA?”
“We got two battlemages, kid, and they’re swamped on bigger cases than this.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. They run the psychometry lab, but most of the time they’re out handling budding necromancers, too busy for this bullshit related to the Hidden Court. Anyway, this region’s always been manned by shifters and vampires. Just how it is.”
Aya wrinkled her nose. “It is unfortunate more of her kind do not join the SBA. Think of the good they could do as law enforcement.”
“You two will get along just fine with a view like that. Though, Sky’s goals are unique. I haven’t met any other fae on campus who want to do what she’s doing.”
“Perhaps things will change.”
Maybe. I liked to think that Sky’s tenacity and overachieving successes would inspire others to follow her lead. She’d definitely inspired me.
After the first ten minutes, I worried about my girlfriend’s absence and prepared to sniff her out. I couldn’t cross over into the Twilight, but I’d practiced seeking supernatural beings who hid across the Vei
l, and we’d learned ways of dragging them out.
“Whatcha think she’s doin’?” Thib asked. He remained the picture of calm, his back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. If he had a cigarette he’d look like a guy out on his smoke break. He blended in. Aya, on the other hand, in her Prada shoes and designer blouse, had a professional appearance that screamed cop or lawyer.
But we were all openly carrying so that probably gave us away, too.
“No clue. Maybe I should have gone with—”
Another rip opened in the air and Skylar stepped through, looking no worse for wear. The slice in the Veil snapped shut behind her.
“I tried to unravel the Destiny Lines tied into this street, and it’s a wreck.” The Destiny Lines were what fae like Skylar used to see the potential twists and turns in a mortal’s fate. Otherwise, a faerie godparent was just as likely to fuck up their charge’s life as they were to improve it. Learning to translate them took practice. Years of practice.
“But did you see anything?” Aya asked, intrigued. Her dark brows raised.
Sky’s jaw clenched, then she nodded. “I think I saw a phantom memory. Follow me.”
Thib pushed off the wall and gestured her ahead of us into the lead. The group of us followed her up Decatur Street then hung a left at the next corner. She paused two or three times to get her bearings, eventually taking us up another two blocks.
“This place,” Sky said. She turned to face a pair of French doors with red and yellow glass set in the rectangular panes. A hanging sign read Café Nocturne. “She went in there, I’m sure of it.”
“Well, fuck,” Thib muttered.
“What?”
Aya sighed and glanced at me. “This is a vampire-run establishment. We can ask questions, but they are not obligated to answer. In most cases, they demand we go through the baroness.”
“Who is out of town,” I finished.
“Right.”
I shrugged and made my way to the door. “Well, let’s see if they’ll play nice.”
Café Nocturne knew how to set the goth atmosphere. The interior lighting was kept dim, red shaded lamps on the tables and golden globes hanging from the ceiling. Due to the early hour, the place was nearly empty; only three tables were occupied.
“Sentinel Thibodeaux, how lovely to see you.” A slim, dark-haired woman oozed from the shadows and cast a smile up at the taller shifter.
“Penelope. You’re looking lovely tonight. Been a long time.”
“Yes. You never did call after our last engagement.”
I winced. No wonder Thib had been worried about coming inside, though I wondered about the story there. Penelope didn’t look like a woman scorned, but vampires had a way of keeping cool. I’d learned that playing poker with my fellow night students. Stoniest faces ever.
“I’m actually here on official business. Do you have a few minutes?”
Penelope arched a dark brow and looked at the rest of us. Her stare lingered on Sky before moving back to Thib. “I can afford a few moments. Please, follow me.”
The back areas of the café were little different than the front. Even the kitchen we passed kept the lights low, which seemed odd considering vamps didn’t require it. My best guess was they wanted to keep the atmosphere, and bright light flashing any time the kitchen door opened would be blinding.
Penelope led the way down an iron, spiral staircase to an office contrasting the goth ambience of the establishment above. The walls sported cream paint with ice-pink trim and lace curtains decorated phony windows with LCD panes replicating a sunny afternoon. Those really fucked with my internal clock, because it felt like night and we’d just wandered inside from traveling beneath an evening sky.
Our hostess sat on an antique chaise but gestured us to the other seats. Thib remained standing while Aya perched on the end of a velvet chair. Sky and I settled on a paisley sofa.
“What can I do for the SBA today?”
“A young woman by the name of Rebecca Monette went missing two nights ago,” Sky volunteered before the seasoned sentinels or I could respond, “and this is believed to be her last known location. We’d appreciate any aid you are willing to provide, especially if you can tell us who worked the café between the hours of two and four a.m. early Saturday morning.”
“I see. This isn’t a bar. Neither my baristas nor my waitstaff are in the habit of asking for ID, even when a mortal enters. I couldn’t tell you whether she visited or not.”
“This place does serve mortals, right?” I asked.
“Frequently.” Penelope raised her chin. “They come for the hot wings, muffins, vampire sightings, and offering the occasional bite out. There’s nothing illegal about consensual drinking.”
“But that does require an ID when it takes place in a business,” Aya pointed out. My cousin pursed her lips. “Recipients and givers of vampiric bites must meet Louisiana’s sexual age of consent laws. That is why you have a Red Room, yes?”
A strict BAB Board—Blood as a Beverage—governed which establishments in the city could operate a Red Room, the closest mortal equivalent being a liquor license. Willing humans offered their blood to the vampire patrons in a protected space, and they were rarely short on donors. Everyone wanted to try the True Blood experience at least once in their lifetime, it seemed.
“If she didn’t go to the room, then no bite occurred, and we won’t have a record of her arrival. Like I said, at that hour most people come in for the coffee and a muffin to soak up the cocktails they drank elsewhere.”
Sky shrugged and rose. “That’s a shame. Her friends seem to believe she came this way and the Destiny Lines implied she entered and hung around for a while. Had I learned more, I might have eased their concerns about Café Nocturne being a danger to mortals. Hopefully, they won’t start any unsavory rumors about their friend going missing here, or leave poor reviews and stuff on Yelp.”
Thib’s brows practically jumped off his face, and Aya aimed a quiet smile at her.
My girl was super-hot when she got down to business.
Penelope seemed less than impressed. For a moment, her composure cracked and anger flashed in her eyes, but only for a moment. Then she was smiling again. “I’m sure that will not be necessary. Miss Monette isn’t in our record book but I can peruse the security footage of the night in question.”
“We’d appreciate that,” Thib said.
Penelope vanished and reappeared in the chair behind her desk, moving in a blur that barely ruffled our hair. When she tapped a button on the desk, the wide screen opposite us powered on to reveal a grid featuring the views of eight different security cameras.
“Two, you said?”
“Yes,” Skylar replied. “She would have wandered in sometime between two and four.”
As much as she’d been a bitch before, Penelope took our request seriously and began the footage at one-thirty on the night of Rebecca’s disappearance before playing it at 20x speed. We all fastened our attention to the screen.
“There she is.” Aya pointed to the video recording the front door. Rebecca came inside alone and spent a minute with the hostess in conversation. Then she was shown to a table toward the back, the various cameras capturing her from different angles.
“Which of these is the Red Room?” Sky asked.
Penelope stiffened. “There are no cameras in the Red Room. It’s a private experience for both parties.”
“So how do you ensure nothing, uh, untoward happens in there?”
“We keep two security guards on staff at all times within the room, a vampire and a shifter. They maintain order according to the rules set by the BAB. We are always in compliance.”
Sky tensed. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to imply—”
Thib cut her off. “Someone sat down with her. Go back a few minutes.”
The footage showed two drinks delivered to Rebecca’s table, the second coming ten minutes after she initially sat down. Two minutes later, a man joined her at the ta
ble.
“Where’d he come from?” I had scanned the other videos but he didn’t appear in any of them except for the one showing the table.
“The Red Room, likely. The door is near that section.”
“Let me guess, no camera on the door either,” Aya said drily. “Do you recognize him?”
“Not offhand.”
Rebecca and her table partner remained for little over an hour, ordering drinks and food. Then they left together, arm in arm.
Thib rubbed his chin and leaned forward, staring at the man on the screen. “Freeze frame camera five and enlarge for me, Pen?”
A few keyboard taps provided what he wanted, but the image from the hi-def camera distorted around the man’s features in the telltale signs of a vamp flirting with crossing over to the dark as a nosferatu.
Any supernatural being could become a darkling, though the method tended to vary depending on their type. Mages had to fracture their souls to become liches, carve out their own hearts, and seal them in a cursed box; werewolves had to hunt, maul, and devour humans; vampires had to commit murder by blood drain. For the latter two, it wasn’t an instantaneous change. The corruption had a sliding scale that took them deeper down the rabbit hole until it became absolutely irreversible and there was no saving them.
But most were hooked by the first murder. According to interviews I’d watched in school, the blood tasted richer and more satisfying, the flavor deeper the longer they drank as they drained the veins and pulled the last drops from internal organs.
Gruesome shit.
Thib took over from there. “If he came from the Red Room, his name should be in the log, right?”
Penelope’s professional smile made me think she wasn’t going to make things easy for us after all. “Those records cannot be handed over without an official request from the baroness. I take the privacy of my clientele seriously.”
“C’mon, Pen. A girl is missing.”
“I understand, but she didn’t go missing in my establishment. As you can see, she left of her own free will, and anything that happened afterward has nothing to do with Café Nocturne.”
“Pen—”
Birds of a Feather: The Paranormal University Files: Skylar, Year 2, Summer Page 4