by Faith Hunter
“Not really.” Beast hacked in the deep parts of my mind. She had enjoyed it all very much, even still half asleep.
“You like him, don’t you?” When I didn’t answer, she sang out, paraphrasing Rod Stewart lyrics, “I know you think he’s sexy, and you want his body. Come on, Big Cat, say it’s so-o-o-o.”
“That is not right on so many levels.” I stopped at the bottom of the staircase, noting that the lamps of the night before were gone. I had forgotten to put them away, out of the kids’ reach, until we needed them tonight, but Molly-the-mom wasn’t forgetful. She was grinning down at me, one hand on the newel post, the other on the banister, her children on either side of her, Little Evan sitting, a thumb in his mouth, Angie wrapped around the spindles of the monkey-tail newel like a monkey herself.
The house was hot and the air was sticky, still, and dead. The widows were open, but there was no breeze. My T-shirt stuck to me and my jeans felt like a damp second skin. I started to sweat in earnest and rubbed my palms on my jeans. I needed Molly’s help. “Molly, I need a favor. A witch favor.” The smile slid from Mol’s face, but I bulled on. “I smelled witch magic at a vamp’s first rising. I need you to ask around with the local covens, see what you can find out. If there’s any rumors that someone is working with the vamps.”
A long silence settled on us then, Molly’s face, usually so full of expression, telling me nothing. Finally she sighed, and I felt a weight roll off me. “Okay. I’ll try. But the local covens aren’t real agreeable since Katrina and the fluff-up about witches not doing a good enough job to ward off the storm. The press hounded them. Is still hounding them. I’ll put out a few feelers and see what I get. But don’t expect much.”
“Thanks.” Beast stared at my friend and the children through slit eyes, feeling protective and tender, feelings I echoed. Kits. Cubs. Safe, she thought at me.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
“Big Cat’s always hungry,” Angelina said.
Molly swiveled her head to her daughter fast. “Why did you call her that?” she asked, her voice sharp.
“You call her Big Cat.” Angelina looked up at her mother, her face taking on an unexpected eagerness. “Is it bad words?”
I snickered and Molly shook her head, scooping up Evan and taking Angie’s hand. Together they started down the steps. “No, Angie Baby, it isn’t bad words. But it is a grown-up name for Aunt Jane. Like when Aunt Jane calls me Molly, but you call me Mama. Big Cat isn’t a name for little girls to use.”
Angie’s face scrunched up and tears glistened at the corners of her eyes. My heart melted. I had a flash of a cave roof, melting down, stalactites dripping down to stalagmites. Then it was gone and the trio reached the bottom of the steps. I took Angelina up in my arms. “I have a secret,” I whispered, “just for you. Not for your mama.”
“No fair,” Molly said.
Angie opened her eyes, the tears miraculously stopped. “Just for me?” she stage-whispered back.
“Yep.” I took Angie into the living room, away from the kitchen where Molly was going, Evan under her arm like a sack of potatoes. “A name, a secret name, for me. The name my mommy and daddy gave me when I was a baby.”
“Not Aunt Jane?”
“Not Aunt Jane.”
“Does Mommy know it?”
“Nope.” I sat her on the couch and knelt in front of her. “You want to know what it is?” When Angie nodded, I said, “It’s a very special name. You can tell your mama if you want to, but other than her, we have to keep it a secret for now. Okay?” Angie nodded again, her eyes wider. “And it’s in a different language, which makes it hard to say, so we’ll have to practice to get it just right.”
Angie looked around me to the doorway of the kitchen, making sure her mother wasn’t in range of the big secret. “Okay, Aunt Jane,” she whispered. “We can tell Mama the secret after snack time. But right now I’m the only one, right?”
“Right. My Cherokee name is Dalonige i Digadoli. It means Golden Eyes.”
“Biscause your eyes are yellow?” she asked, mispronouncing the word, as she often did.
“Exactly. Dalonige i Digadoli. Can you say it?”
Angie stumbled over the name several times before she got the syllables right. “Good,” I said. “But say it very softly. The Cherokee people speak very quietly.”
“Like everything is a secret?” she whispered.
“Yeah. Like everything is a secret and everything is special.”
“Dalonige i Digadoli. Golden Eyes,” she whispered.
“Perfect. Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”
“Me too. Mama says we can have Oreos and tea, biscause the milk is being bad biscause of the ’lectricy went off, biscause of the nasty storm.” She tilted her head, her long hair falling to one side. “Mama says all your meat is getting icky too. She says you need to jerk it. Why do you have to jerk the meat, Dalonige i Digadoli?”
I took Angelina’s hand and led her to the kitchen, where my best friend looked up from laying out cookies and pouring hot tea. “Jerk meat? That’s a very good idea, Molly. I like it.”
I oven-broiled and ate a steak so rare it ran blood when I cut it, while the kids and Molly feasted on tea and cookies and sliced fruit. Then Molly, Angelina, and I spent the rest of the morning slicing and seasoning the ten pounds of Beast’s steak I had tucked into the freezer when Ada knocked off the power. I had hoped the electricity would be back on before the freezer warmed up, but that hadn’t happened. When I left the house a little after noon, it was with a belly full of rare steak, pasta, and salad. The pungent aroma of cooking seasoned meat scented the house.
CHAPTER 4
We invade her territory
After first making sure no one was watching, I grabbed a handhold and jumped the fifteen-foot-tall brick fence to my landlady’s and rang the bell at the back door. Katie’s Ladies was the oldest continuously operating whorehouse in New Orleans, and her ladies’ primary clients were vamps. Even with vamps, there was pillow talk afterward. Or maybe during—what did I know? But I’d learned something of value to an investigation before, when I went to visit.
Troll appeared after only a moment, yawning, a meaty fist covering his mouth, his bald pate shining as if freshly waxed in the dim sconce lights in the hallway. “Morn-awn,” he said through the yawn, his big teeth seeming to reach for air. “You must be psychic.”
“Why’s that?”
“Some of the girls are up. Having a snack in the dining room. Help yourself.” He slung a thumb haphazardly toward the dining room. Seemingly offhand, as he headed left toward Katie’s business office, he added, “Bliss is with them.”
Guilt stabbed me, as I’m pretty sure Troll intended. I hadn’t seen Bliss since I ditched the little witch in a ladies’ room in a French Quarter club, bleeding profusely from a vamp bite, while I went tearing off after her attacker. I’d not even thought about leaving her bleeding—maybe to death—at the time, so intent was I on catching the young rogue. Since Molly came to visit, I hadn’t been over here much, compounding my inattention. “Yeah. Thanks,” I said. I stuck my hands into my jeans pockets and meandered right.
I heard their voices and caught their scents from three feet outside the door, and stopped, listening, quickly determining that four of the “ladies” were having a midmorning snack of coffee, tea, chilled boiled shrimp, and pastries. I picked out the voices and scents of Bliss, Najla, Christie, and Tia, who was rhapsodizing about her latest vamp conquest. My mouth turned up with real amusement at what she’d taught him to do. I hadn’t even known sex was possible in that position, especially while a vamp had his fangs buried in her femoral artery. She finished with “Mr. Tom says Carlos is ready to make an offer for me, and I’ll be his blood-servant for, like, a hundred years, which is way better than a human man who might dump me when I get old, and I won’t get old anyway with Carlos. Well, I will but not for, like, forever.”
“Come on in, Jane,” Bliss said, when Tia paused to dr
aw breath.
“Why come you thinking she out there, girl?” a strangely accented voice asked. “What? You smelling them again?”
It had been years since I’d been teased and bullied by the girls in the children’s home where I was raised, but it still got to me, even if I wasn’t the actual recipient of the persecution. “Bliss has a real good sense of smell,” I said from the hallway. Hands still in my pockets, I stepped into the room. Giving the bully a look with just a hint of Beast peeking out, I added, “No need to be mean.”
“You eavesdropping, Janie?” Christie asked, her irritation a sharp tang on the air. “No need for you to stand in the cold like a lost child looking in. There’s room at the table for one more, even if you are an inhibited and stuffy little churchgoer.”
“Christie!” Bliss said.
“She’s right,” I said, as I pulled a chair out with my foot and sat. “I am Christian and I guess I’m pretty inhibited—by your standards.” I looked at Tia and smiled gently. “For instance, I’m not flexible enough to hang from the ceiling while a vamp is feeding on me, especially not there.” Tia giggled, the sound childlike and innocent, which, thanks to the parents who sold their daughter out of the trunk of their car for drug money, she would never be. To Bliss, I said, “But I’m also a Cherokee, and I’m learning about the spiritual practices of the People, hoping to study their magic.”
Bliss looked quickly away, her face shutting down. Bliss was still in the witch closet (or maybe she didn’t know she was a witch?) and any mention of magic use made her uncomfortable.
I poured myself a mug of hot green tea from a carafe on the table, and a warm lemony scent wafted out. I was pretty sure it was a sencha green, with lemon grass, ginger, and chamomile for flavor. I added two spoonfuls of sugar and stirred, tilting my head to look at Christie. Today her hair was braided into two plaits like a schoolgirl’s and her face was bare of her usual harsh makeup. She wore no rings or chains through her multiple piercings, and for once she was mostly covered, if you counted a sheer robe over baby doll silk nightclothes as covered. I’d seen her at the dinner table dressed for an evening out with more exposed, pale skin than this. But even covered and without the steel through her flesh, her expression was worldly and jaded and watchful. Christie had always been just a bit cruel to me, as if I might want to steal what was hers.
We invade her territory, Beast thought at me, sleepily. We are Big Cat. She is we sa.
We sa. Little cat, or bobcat. Oh, crap. I am so stupid. I didn’t let the expression reach my face, but I suddenly understood what Beast was thinking, and it made total sense in a predator/prey way. Christie had been the biggest, baddest thing around, with her chains and whips and studded collars, until I showed up. And though she had no idea why, now she was not quite so big and bad.
“But you?” I lied. “You scare me spitless.”
Christie laughed, a startled bark of sound. The look she sent me was considering, measuring, maybe a hint hopeful. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’d love to watch you practice with that whip you carry sometimes.” It was Beast’s desire, not mine, but why not?
“Christie is amazing,” Tia said, nodding, her full lips in a little bow. “She can whip a vamp until he almost bleeds. Only almost. She never breaks the skin. She’s talented.”
I didn’t know how to handle that, but the image made Beast purr. “You each have a gift, you know,” I said, trying to find a way to bring up Bliss’s witch gift and her unknown parentage, “something special that sets you apart.”
“You mean like Christie and her whip?” Tia asked, excited. When I nodded, her eyes widened in her coffee-and-milk-hued face. “What’s mine?”
Okay, maybe I could have found a better way to broach the subject, but I was into it now, and I had to answer her. I floundered a moment and finally settled on the truth, even if it might not lead where I wanted it to lead. Slowly, feeling my way, I said, “You are gentle and kind and caring, and so forgiving. And ready to offer your clients not just your body, but your love and your affection. And they notice. They can tell you care.”
Tia’s hazel green eyes had widened as I spoke, her mouth forming an O of surprised pleasure. “Do you read palms too?” She stuck out her hand, palm up, face eager.
“No.” I shook my head. “No palms.”
“Do Christie,” she said.
I slouched back in my chair and fiddled with the tea mug, taking a sip of the sweet lemony tea, not quite sure how I had gotten myself into this. “Christie . . . is bold and adventurous. And controlled. She has to be to keep from hurting the wounded people who come to her for . . . um . . .” For wild, domination-based, bloody sex? No. “ . . . for help to meet their . . . special needs. And she’s brave and smart. And I think she’s observant and reads people real well.” When I stole a glance at Christie, she seemed taken aback, but not displeased. Thoughtful, she bit into a pastry, red jelly squeezing out the end, and she nodded as she chewed.
“Do Najla,” Tia said.
I looked at Najla, her skin so black it looked bluish in the dim light. “Najla is harder. She’s a survivor. She keeps secrets close to her heart. But if I was looking for a friend, I’d pick her in a heartbeat, because I don’t think she’d ever betray me if she finally gave her friendship.”
Najla’s eyes narrowed as if she were picking through my words for something to pounce on. Finding nothing, she canted her head and stared at me, hard. Tia clapped her hands, excited. “That’s Najla. When the rogue vampire attacked Katie that time, she grabbed all the girls upstairs and barricaded the door to her room and broke up a chair and gave out stakes. She was gonna kill it if it got in. Do Bliss! Do Bliss!”
This was my chance in, but I knew I could screw it up big-time if I said the wrong words. I chose a Krispy Kreme donut and bit in. It was cream filled and chocolate iced, my very favorite, and was perfect with the lemon-drop tea. As I chewed and thought, I took in the room. This was the first time I’d been in it since the rogue attacked. The black-wood, antique dining room furniture he’d destroyed had been replaced with more modern pieces of burled pecan wood, with Spanish wrought-iron curlicues on the pedestal legs and chair backs. The walls had been repaired and repainted a warm milk chocolate, and the damaged paintings of Katie that had lined the walls and the heavy draperies had been cleaned and rehung. I swallowed the donut and licked my fingers. Drank my tea. And became aware that the four girls were watching me, silent. And they were never silent.
“Bliss,” I said. They leaned in closer. “Bliss has gifts far beyond most people. She can smell things other people can’t, hear things they can’t. And I bet she can see things other people can’t, or see things in a different way from most people.”
“Like the old ladies. Remember?” Tia looked at the girls, one hand making a fast circle as if speeding them up. “Three times now. We all saw five old women, but Bliss said they were really younger, and had blue and black sequins all over.” Tia shrugged as if to say, “See, like that.”
“Yeah,” I said, carefully. “Blue and black sequins” was a way that power signatures might be described if one didn’t know what they were. “Bliss would see things differently because she can see through magical glamours. She has what the Irish might call ‘the sight.’ ”
Bliss stood abruptly, so fast her chair rocked and spun halfway around. Silent, her blue-black hair swinging, she left the room. Tia’s mouth opened and tears gathered in her eyes. “She’s mad. But the sight sounds like a good thing.” She looked at Najla and Christie, pleading. “It’s a good thing, right?”
Christie looked at me, her eyes cold. “Not if you want to keep it secret, it isn’t.”
Tia looked from Christie to me, tears dropping over her lids and spilling down her cheeks. “Bliss?” she called, and trailed her friend out of the room. Najla gave me a look that could have cured meat and followed them. I could hear their footsteps as they raced the stairs to their rooms on the second story.
“Real s
mooth, Yellowrock,” Christie said. “How you gonna tell her she’s witch-blooded when she don’t want to know?”
“You knew?” I asked.
“Pretty sure. She’s got the sight, like you said. But she doesn’t want to talk about her parents or her life before here. Katie said to give her room to deal with it in her own way.”
Which would have been nice to know. “You’ve all seen five glamoured women a few times?” When she nodded, it was stiffly, as if she wanted to lie and say no, but couldn’t see how to pull it off. “Where? And it was always the same women?” I asked because I had seen something like that once before but couldn’t quite bring it to mind.
“In the Quarter a couple times. In the Warehouse District once. Bliss has a regular, a vamp client who sends a car for her and brings her to an upscale apartment in the district, so she’s there pretty often. Tia has a regular on Royal Street she sees twice a week. Don’t know about it being the same women, but it was the same glamour each time. Middle aged, dowdy, a little plump. Why?”
“Not sure. But would you pass the word? Next time someone sees them, call me? I’d like to get a look.”
Christie rolled her eyes. “Sure. Whatever.” She slid a punk-pink cell phone across to me. “It isn’t working yet, but you can input your number. Then get outta here. I need my beauty sleep.”
I parked Bitsa in public parking near the front door of the NOPD on South Broad Street. The power was back on here, traffic lights working, air conditioners humming, marked units whizzing out to answer calls. I wasn’t armed, but I did have my cell phone, change for vending machines if I got hungry, a spiral notebook, and a camera. And here, the cell towers were up and running. Sweet.
I was hoping to find info and evidence about witches and vamps and the problems between them, as well as info on vamp history that might lead me to the young-rogue maker. It wasn’t kosher to bring a camera into NOPD, but unless they searched me, I wasn’t going to mention it. I wanted evidence, and if I was left alone with it, I was going to take copious photos and e-mail them to myself. I could take pics with the cell, but I didn’t know its memory capacity, and I might need a lot. I tucked the camera and cell phone into my boot.
