by Faith Hunter
“You are going to pay me for my time, aren’t you?”
I pulled a folded money order from my jeans pocket and held it out to him. He grunted, unfolded the paper to check the amount, and grunted again. “Nice. This is more than I was hired for. What’s the rest? Tip? Or do I have to . . . work it off?”
His question had a decidedly erotic tone to it and I didn’t have time for flirting, not with Angelina and Little Evan missing. “Tip. Definitely tip.”
“Spoilsport.”
“But you can buy the beer on your tip money on Saturday night. After the children are back home safe and sound.”
“Deal.” His voice was toneless again, all business, the life-or-death business of being a cop. I sometimes envied them the ability to turn that stony, cold mien off and on.
I felt a vibration and Rick pulled a cell phone from his pocket, opened the cover. His brows went up as he checked a text message. “I’m being shunted to the special cases division. I have a conference today at five in”—he checked the text again—“room 666. What kinda meeting place is this?” He closed the cell and put in back in his pocket. “ ’Bout time the brass gave me something to do besides paperwork. I hate paperwork. What?”
I pulled my brows back down and stuck my eyes back on the file. “Nothing. Can I get copies of these files? It’s a hassle coming all the way down here every time I need info.”
“You’ll miss me, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“I haven’t slept in two days. I’m heading back to my bed.”
Rick leaned in and pushed back the hair that brushed my cheek. Tucked it behind my ear. His fingertips were warm on my skin. “Alone?”
I spluttered with laughter. This guy could twist anything into innuendo. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I certainly hope so.”
So tired I could barely think, I made it home and to my rumpled bed, where I stole four uninterrupted hours of sleep, waking only when someone knocked on the front door, three distinct taps, leaving the wards sizzling in reaction. It had to have hurt, telling me that it wasn’t a delivery or a salesman. It was more imperative than that. I had a visitor. Or maybe a Visitor. The queen of England would knock like that, taps to announce herself, not to ask admission.
I wrapped up in the chenille robe that came with the house, tied it snuggly, and went to the door. Peeking through a clear pane in the door’s new stained glass, I wasn’t surprised to see Mol’s oldest sister, water witch, professor, and three-star chef, Evangelina Everhart. Evangelina was a bigger, broader, more authoritative version of Molly, a three-star-general version of Molly, wearing a business suit, panty hose, and a posture so upright it looked as if she were born with a witch’s stick up her backside.
She was carrying a suitcase. My heart did a nosedive. A cabdriver behind her unloaded two more cases onto the curb. Evangelina looked up and met my eye through the pane of glass. Too late to pretend I wasn’t at home.
I opened the door and stood aside. Evangelina looked me over from bare toes to mussed hair. Her lips pursed, censure on her face at the evidence that I had been napping while her sister was in the hospital and her niece and nephew were missing. I grinned sourly and walked away without a word, leaving the door open. Evangelina and I weren’t the best of pals. To her, I was the Hell’s Angel, motorcycle-riding, bad-influence friend of her younger sister.
I put on a kettle of water for tea, listening to Evangelina pay off the cabbie and carry her luggage over the threshold. The front door closed with a restrained snap. Molly’s ward was still up, but it clearly recognized family; she entered with no problem and stepped into the kitchen. Standing in the entrance, she sniffed, looking around again at what was left of the signatures of Molly’s broken, ripped wards. I could still smell the burned, scorched reek of energies torn and blasted through.
“No one should have been able to break through this.” She sounded surprised. And maybe a little scared. “No one. Even an entire coven would have had trouble blasting through it.”
“That was my thinking. Cream and sugar? Mug or cup?” I waved at the table, an invitation to sit.
Evangelina turned her intent stare to me. “Both, please, mug, and if you have a shot of whiskey to go in it, that would be nice.”
My eyes didn’t bug out, but it was a near thing. I shrugged an apology. “I have beer.”
Evangelina returned the shrug, saying “never mind” with hers, and sat at the table, kicked off her sensible shoes, pulled off her suit jacket, and leaned back. I could smell her feet and the odor of dried sweat and worry. She had been on the go and under stress for too many hours. She ran her fingers through her hair, scratching her scalp and yawning. It was the nearest thing to relaxed—or maybe simply exhausted—I’d ever seen her. “I think beer might clash with the tea.” When I laughed tiredly, she said, “I’ll get some whiskey later. For now, I apologize for waking you. How long since you slept?”
It wasn’t the sarcasm I’d expected. It almost sounded concerned, which was nearly my undoing. Again. But I would not cry in front of Evangelina Everhart. I put cookies on the table, on a plate, cookies Mol had baked for her kids, white chocolate macadamia nut. They were still soft, and that fact brought tears to my eyes. It hadn’t been all that long since the children were taken, but it seemed like forever. Tentatively, I said, “Two days. Give or take.” Evangelina took the plate and rearranged the cookies, not as if she disapproved of my arrangement, but as if she needed something to do with her hands. Her face got more pinched, holding in her emotions, her eyes on the cookies. “Can you tell me what is happening?”
For the second time today I recited the state of affairs of Molly, her kids, and the vamp/witch problem. When I finished, Evangelina said, “I heard that there was a vampire war threatening. Is that real or gossip?”
“Real. I think. The vamp clans have realigned loyalties. Even though Rafael of Mearkanis is the one who might challenge Leo for master of the city, I’m guessing that Clan Rousseau is the one pulling strings, fomenting a vamp war. I’m betting that the political dissatisfaction is just a cover so they can get this rogue-spell to work without getting caught and executed under the Vampira Carta.” I put leaves into the strainer and the teapot into the sink, the familiar motions bringing me some much needed calm.
“Not an unlikely assumption.”
“What I don’t understand,” I said, “is why witches are helping them.”
“That’s part of what I’m here to find out. I’ve put in a call to the coven suggested by your Leo to meet tonight. Do you want to join us?”
I looked at Evangelina in surprise. I had never expected her to include me in her witch business. “Um . . . he’s not my Leo. And I have a meeting with the local cops at five. I think they’ve decided to launch a special investigation.”
“Too little, too late.” Her voice sounded weary. She ate another cookie, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t tasting it.
We sat silent until the timer went off, lost in our own thoughts. I poured tea, and we drank.
Then I made a phone call. I had something brewing in my mind—something that seemed a lot like a plan.
CHAPTER 19
No good deed goes unpunished
Room 666 was just as dull and boring as ever, but this time it smelled heavenly. From the bottom of the stairs I smelled fried grease and onions and seafood. Jodi had brought takeout food with her, thank God. Despite my worry over the kits, my stomach growled as I pushed open the door.
The cops were sitting around the little table, Jodi and Rick and another guy I didn’t recognize, all with colas in sweating cans in front of them. When I slid into the seat next to Rick, he gave me a look. “You coulda said you were coming too.”
“I coulda. More fun this way.”
Jodi said, “You two flirt on your own time.” Rick snorted. I popped my Coke open so I didn’t have to respond. “I’ve been offered this case because my boss is ticked that I have an in with vamps.” She glanced at me. “Since I atte
nded a vampire council meeting.”
“No good deed goes unpunished,” I said. Jodi and I had attended a council meeting together, a first for an NOPD cop at any level of authority. Her boss had been peeved not to be invited, and in a childish reaction, had clearly been giving her scut cases.
“I can’t promise it will help any of our careers, especially if any more witch children are taken, but I’ve been offered the witch child kidnapping cases, the newest and the cold cases. Those previously investigated by my aunt Elizabeth. We’ll be under the SCD, the special cases division,” she said to me. I nodded. “The current investigation—”
“There is no current investigation,” the third guy growled.
“Right. Well, there is now. And I’ve requested that you join me, but it isn’t mandatory. You want glory and promotion, you’ll say no. You want to do some good, you’ll stick around.”
“I’m in,” the third guy said. He leaned over the table and put out this hand to me. “Sloan Rosen.” I took it and shook. He was human, African-American, heavily tattooed, even on his fingers, with jailhouse tats. Which was very interesting. They reminded me of LeShawn’s.
“Jane Yellowrock.” I looked at Rick and back, drawing conclusions. “You were undercover too?”
“With the Crips. Until last year when I was outed by arresting four of the top local boys. Now I have a bounty on my head, some secretive vamp clan is out to get me, and the big shits can’t figure out where to put me. And I figure you’re here to make sure we’ll all go down fighting.”
I put it together with a twisted grin to show I was being ironic, not insulting. “So, as far as the brass is concerned, having you on this team puts all of us in danger. The vamps can track your scent, and the Crips are standing in line for you and would happily take us out to get you.” He nodded slowly, lips pursed, and I said, “But if it makes you feel better, Leo Pellissier will probably plow through all of them to get to me for killing his son. Just being near me is a death sentence. Bet Leo wins.”
“You two children can have a pissing contest about who has the biggest bounty on your heads later. For now, we have work to do. Rick, pass out the food; Jane’s stomach is growling so loud I can’t hear myself.”
Rick stood and placed grease-stained bags in front of each of us. I smelled oysters inside mine and started salivating. The kits were missing, I might have a hard knot in my belly, but the Beast still had to be fed.
“I want you all to study the info on the stolen witch children,” Jodi said. “Look for ties, connections, anything that might have been missed previously.” She flipped files at us the way a cardsharp flips cards and we all set them to the side of our paper plates of food and opened both. I don’t know how Jodi was able to leave her bag closed, but she did, and kept talking.
“Because there was never any proof the witch kids were killed, taken over state lines, and because no ransoms were ever demanded, neither FBI nor the state police has ever been called in. Until now, local policy has been to shunt the disappearances to inactive juvie case files thinking that the kids just ran off and will be back, or that they were taken by human family members to get them away from witch influence.” She looked at me. “Thanks to an official letter from the office of the Blood Master of the City, that policy has now changed.”
Office . . . Bruiser. Bruiser had done that.
Hard delight gleamed in Jodi’s eyes. ”I’ve been told you had something to do with it,” she said to me. These cases might not advance her career, but she wanted them. It wasn’t well-known, but Jodi’s mother was a witch, and I was guessing that so was her late aunt. The relationships gave her a personal interest in discovering what had happened to the missing witch children and acquiring justice for them if possible. I tilted my head to show it was nothing. Which it had been on my part. Bruiser had done it.
“According to Jane,” Jodi continued, “witch children are being killed in black magic ceremonies by vampire criminals who are raising young rogues. Clan Pellissier would like the offenders ‘brought to the day.’ ”
I looked up at that. My current contract with the vamp council used those words, whose archaic meaning meant killed true-dead.
“George sent us a copy of your contract,” she said to me. “The figures are blacked out, of course. But it gives us official permission to carry silver rounds in our weapons and stake any vampires we catch in the act of black magic.”
“Sweet,” Sloan said through his sandwich. It came out “Shhhwee.”
“Rosen is our electronics guy. He took down the Crips mostly with electronic monitoring. He stole their books and put a stop to a lot of weapons and cocaine trafficking that had connections to a South American vamp clan. We’re still hunting down three humans with the evidence he collected. If we need anything listened in on, he’s our man.”
“If it helps at all,” I said, “I think a Rousseau is responsible for young rogues being raised all over the city and for the witch children kidnappings.” I filled them in on what I knew and what I guessed. I pointed at the file cabinets. “The red folders helped.”
Jodi gave me a knowing half smile. “Rick said you wanted copies of the woo-woo files sent to your house. They’ll be messengered over by a marked unit ASAP.”
Sloan drained his Coke can, set it on the table with an empty twang. To Jodi, he said, “We done? ’Cause I’m outta here. Dinner with the wife and kids.”
“After eating all that?” Jodi said, swiveling so he could get his longer legs out.
Sloan stood beside her, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “Fast metabolism.” He balled up all the empty papers and utensils. I shoved the last bite of bread and oyster in just in time, and salvaged a paper boat of fries and onion rings. Jodi cleaned the table with a disinfectant wipe she took from her pocket.
“I’ll keep you up to date, Yellowrock,” she said, “until we get the Trueblood kids back.”
“And Bliss,” I said. “She was taken by the same guy.”
“Right. Bliss. You did know her real name is Ailis Rogan, didn’t you?” When I shook my head no, she asked, “Do you know if she has any family? ’Cause Katie’s bouncer has no record of any.”
“No. Bliss wasn’t very forthcoming about her past.”
“Runaway?” Sloan asked. “I’ll check old records and see if anything matches up.”
“I’ll e-mail you all our addys,” Jodi said to me. Waving her arm to indicate room 666, she said, “Our official work area is here and next door. The brass’s idea of a joke, I’m sure. I’ll get some PCs, a landline phone or two, an empty file cabinet, a whiteboard, and a map.
“I’ll be here and at my desk for paperwork till midnight thirty. Later.”
She and Sloan Rosen walked out together. I didn’t look at Rick as I got up and slid across from him to the warm seat just vacated.
Out of curiosity, I said, “What do you know about a guy named Derek Lee, former marine? Lives—”
“I know Derek Lee. Word on the streets is that he’s put together his own little army and is going after gangs. We have a few unexplained bodies that might be notched into his bedpost, like the bloodbath in Crips territory Jodi came from today. How do you know Derek Lee?” That last was a cop question, asked in a toneless, staccato voice, with an underlying threat.
I shrugged. Cop threats don’t impress me much. “I heard he’s going after vamps and gangs with vamp connections. I’m thinking Derek works for Leo from time to time.” When I said the words, several little things clicked in my mind. “Question: If the master of the city officially recognized that some of his species were practicing ritual black magic, and a purge became legal by the Vampira Carta, what would happen to the clans?”
“I don’t have a degree in Mithran Law, They could be disbanded or reorganized by the master of the city. Why?”
An unconscious Holy crap sounded in my mind. At my adrenaline spike, Beast stirred and stared across the table. “Derek said something about the Crips once. If he’s been fig
hting them, it might be with Leo’s unofficial backing.”
I had called Derek before I left the house. I was meeting the ex-marine and his crew soon, to raid a few warehouses in the district, looking for the lair of a vamp who kept her children chained for the safety of the public. Not something I wanted the cops to know. Not something I wanted Leo to know. Unless Leo had been pushing me in that direction all along. Had I been herded like prey? Beast snorted in affront.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking, lady, but you’re startin’ to scare me again.”
I looked at Rick. Who was looking at me just the way a woman wanted to be looked at. Not something I could put into words, but a look I recognized when I saw it. He reached out a hand and I placed mine into his, letting a smile soften my lips.
Knowing I was probably screwing up something that might be really good if I gave it half a chance, I said, “Did Leo tell you to seduce me?”
Rick dropped my hand, leaving it in the middle of the table. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin as if he were wiping beer—or the remembered taste of my mouth—away. “No one tells me who to sleep with.” And he left me alone in room 666.
I pulled my hand back into my lap. “That went well.” Beast hacked a laugh. I stood. I had work to do, most of it on the computer and in the files I’d photographed and sent to myself, the files from this very room. Odd how I ended up back here all the time, in the woo-woo room. On the way out of the NOPD, I discovered that I had missed a call from Derek Lee. And what he told me made me smile.
Half an hour before dusk, I roared into the Breaux Mart grocery store where Derek had told me to meet him and set my booted feet on the pavement. The black steel-walled van that pulled in beside me and idled might have worried a lesser woman. Cops call them snatch vans, among other things, none of them nice, because the vehicles are perfect for grabbing a woman or child and making off with her. I reached over my shoulder and placed a hand on my shotgun, ready to pull. I wasn’t frightened, just cautious. Really cautious. A faint click sounded and the tinted window lowered with electronic smoothness. I cut the engine and set the kickstand. Derek pushed back dark glasses. “Jane with the funny last name.”
