Black Arts jy-7

by Faith Hunter

  Before Evan had his phone put away, the Kid said, “Got it. I’m in.” He settled to his comfy chair and the small table where he worked. “She rented a car in Asheville the day she disappeared, on her Visa. Like most rental cars, it has GPS. It’ll take a bit, but I can access it.”

  “You can tell that already?” Evan asked, his voice pained and incredulous at once.

  “Yeah. You came to the right place, dude. Even if you did huff and puff and try to blow the house down.”

  “Three little pigs,” Little Evan chortled. “Daddy’s a wolf-ees!”

  “Yes, he is,” I said to Little Evan. To Big Evan, I said, “Go help Eli. It’s cold in here.” His eyes widened, and he acted as though he was gonna balk at taking orders from me, but really, what choice did he have? Whether subconsciously or by deliberation, he had come to me. My turf, which meant my rules. And I needed to set the parameters early because my team needed freedom to search the way we wanted, not under the thumb of a distraught husband.

  Big Evan blew out a breath and his shoulders drooped. He called to Eli, “I got a drill in the van. I think I stripped out the screws when I blew the door open like some hormonally charged teenager.”

  “Yeah, I see that,” Eli said, his voice casual, as if he dealt with air witches every day. He knelt at the doorway and fingered the splintered wood. “Better than a battering ram.”

  “Daddy’s a wolf-ees!” Little Evan chortled again. “He huffed and he puffed!” Then he turned in my arms, yanked my braid, and demanded, “I’m hungry. Fruit Loops!”

  Big Evan looked up at that. “In the van. I’ll bring them.”

  Eli chuffed slightly, a catlike sound he had picked up from me in the last few months. I detected derision in the tone and knew it had to do with the amount of sugar in the cereal. As well as a former Army Ranger, Eli was a dyed-in-the-wool health nut.

  “Fruit Loops it is,” I said cheerfully. Eli shrugged slightly without turning his head, his body language so restrained no one else might have detected it. I was still learning what the minuscule changes meant. This one meant People are idiots. They eat too much sugar and fats and carbs. This is why everybody’s gaining weight.

  I carried the kids to the kitchen and grabbed the high chair in the back of the butler’s pantry (a tiny, windowed room off the kitchen that the guys and I had started using for a tea and coffee bar) and deposited Little Evan at the table. The Kid, watching from the living area where he worked, chuckled when he saw the high chair. It had been in the way, but I hadn’t let anyone put it in the small attic, and hadn’t explained why. Now the Kid asked, “Skinwalkers are psychic?”

  I grabbed the tall books that Angie sat on so she could be a big girl at meals. I ignored how easy it was getting the children settled in my house. Molly hadn’t talked to me in months, and yet I had kept all their things handy. “No, not psychic. Just . . .” Pitiful? I settled on “Just hopeful. We used it when Molly visited last summer.”

  My Beast was hyperaware, alert, and focused on all the people, especially the children, in her den as I opened a can of ravioli for Angelina. Kits, she purred, her happiness like a warm blanket.

  Yeah, well, we get to keep all the guys too, I thought at her. We can’t have the kits without the grown-ups.

  Pack, Beast spat. I could tell by her tone that she wasn’t pleased. As I opened the ravioli and heated it in the microwave, she sent a series of memory pictures to my forebrain, and I understood her disquiet. In the wild, mountain lions were solitary creatures, except when a female had kits. For a while after they were weaned, the female kits stayed in the den with the mother cat, sometimes for several years, hunting together, sleeping together, and even, rarely, mothering another litter together, until wanderlust hit the females and they disappeared. Which I had totally not known. But never, ever were males allowed to stay once they were grown. They were kicked out to fend for themselves as soon as they learned to hunt and kill.

  Will be trouble, Beast thought at me. Too many males. She sent me a memory of big-cat brothers fighting to the death over a female. They were her kits, these young males, who bit and shredded flesh with teeth and claws. From a high promontory, Beast had watched them fight. The memory was detailed—bloody, vicious, the memory-scent of blood and rage pheromones rising on the wind, the sound of yowling, spitting, screaming. My breath caught in my throat as one male sank his teeth into his brother’s belly and ripped. Gore and blood spattered the ground. Beast had watched as the injured male dragged himself off to die.

  I shivered, horrified, ravioli scent filling the kitchen, replacing the memory-scents. But from Beast I got nothing, no emotional reaction to the memory at all. I had no idea of her feelings at the time of the fight, or now, when she shared the memory with me. Trouble, she thought.

  Big Evan has a mate, I thought at her. Eli has a mate in Natchez. The Kid is too young for a mate.

  Beast growled at me and sent me a memory picture of Rick LaFleur, stretched on my sheets. Jane had mate. Jane is stupid. With that pithy thought she prowled into the back of my mind and lay down, her head on her paws.

  “Yeah,” I whispered to her and to myself. “I am.” The microwave dinged, pulling me back to my kitchen. Big Evan entered and set a half-empty grocery bag of food, one of garbage, and a cooler on the kitchen table. “We ate on the road,” he said.

  “Yeah. I see that,” I managed, and poured milk and Fruit Loops into a bowl for Little Evan.

  • • •

  An hour later, the door was closed on new hinges that Eli had bought, just in case, and the back windows were boarded over with plywood he had bought for the same reason. The former Ranger was Mr. Prepared. Or Mr. Paranoid, though I’d never say so aloud.

  Evan, when he wasn’t helping Eli, had moved in, which felt so weird. I hadn’t even had to beg or insist. And since Evan had agreed so readily when I suggested that they stay here, I had spent that hour getting my new guests settled, the children in the bedroom directly over my own, in the twin beds they had stayed in on their one visit, and Big Evan in the room directly behind them. His bed was shoved against the wall, to make room for the workout equipment that had made its way into the house in the last few months, but he didn’t seem to mind. I wasn’t exactly Betsy Homemaker, but I put sheets on the beds and got towels from the stash in the upstairs linen closet. There were two bathrooms upstairs and Eli had cleaned his out, without being asked, now sharing one with his brother.

  It had been a seamless transition from a family of three to a family of six, and when I let myself think of it, that was weirder than weird. The house felt odd and full and not quite right, as if it was shifting to accommodate the bodies, probably more people than it had housed since it had been used as a brothel back in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds.

  But while all the situational stuff was good, by the end of that first hour we had lost Molly’s trail. The car she rented had been turned in to the rental company in Knoxville, only a few hours’ drive from Asheville, and Molly’s trail had stopped cold. The Kid had not found a single credit card purchase since, and my idea of easily tracking Molly by train, plane, or bus had proven incorrect. My former best friend had truly disappeared.

  I stood over his shoulder, as Alex worked on four electronic tablets simultaneously, smelling the stink of his worry and stress, seeing it in the tightness of his shoulders, hearing it in the pounding of his fingers on the tablets. I took a calming breath and asked, “Thoughts? Ideas?”

  The Kid looked around the room. Finding us alone, he said, “I have an untraceable account in India.”

  I drew a slow breath. Alex was on parole for hacking into the Pentagon to get a look at his brother’s military records. Eli had put his younger brother on a short leash in computer terms, denying the Kid the opportunity for any illegalities. Well, except for a short stint in Natchez, and that had been life and death. And very, very big bucks, a hypocrisy that hadn’t been lost on any of us.

  But Molly was
missing. What if someone picked her up out of the parking lot? What if she had met a rogue-vamp who smelled her witch blood and came after her? Okay, that wasn’t likely, but . . . Molly was missing. Was finding her worth incurring Eli’s wrath? Getting the Kid stuck in a parole violation and tossed in jail? I thought about Molly, hurt somewhere, in an accident; off the road, in a gully. Or abused by some kid who had stopped for the lone female on the side of the road and decided to hurt her. Yes. It was worth it. “What are we talking about?” I hedged.

  “Security cameras in front of the car rental center for starters, to see what happened to Molly immediately after she dropped off the car.”

  “Dangers?”

  “Minimal to none. Except pis— Sorry. Ticking off big brother and hiding from Big Brother.”

  “Do it,” I said. “I’ll talk to your brother.”

  “Better you than me,” he said, and opened a black screen with white code on it. He bent his head over this tablet, his fingers moving with nearly balletic precision.

  I walked to the back of the house, to the small washroom/mudroom I had never used until I had housemates, where Eli was putting his tools onto the shelves he had built. The house was darker with the windows covered, more intimate, safer, and more claustrophobic. But my big-cat and I could live with the denlike feeling for a while. Until the smell of male got too strong.

  Eli glanced up, took in my face and posture, and sighed, reading my body language, or maybe just knowing me too well to miss what would happen next. He stood and angled his body to me, dipping his nearly shaved head, his brown eyes narrowed. We stood within inches of each other, nearly the same height, so the posture looked both uncomfortable and aggressive. “How dangerous?” he growled.

  “Minimal to none, he says. For now, just checking the rental car’s security cameras to see where she went when she turned in her car.”

  He thought about that for a while, while I sweated and waited. “We monitor every step along the way.”

  “Thank you,” I said. And dang if my eyes didn’t fill with tears. I turned away fast, but Eli caught my shoulder and pulled me back, an action I’d never have allowed anyone else to make.

  “We’ll find her,” he said, one hand on my shoulder, gripping hard.

  “I just . . .” Words failed me. I didn’t know what I felt. Or thought.

  “She’s family,” he said. “I know what it means when family is in trouble. I cried a few tears when Alex was arrested and they wouldn’t let me in to see him for forty-eight hours.”

  I blinked away my own tears and gave him a disbelieving glare.

  “Okay. I busted down a wall in my rental unit. I did shed a few tears digging the splinters out of my knuckles.”

  I laughed, a small hiccup of sound, which was what he intended, I’m sure.

  “Look. It’s possible she really intended to come to you for help. It’s also possible that she intended that as a distraction for Evan and she went elsewhere, and then it took longer than she expected to get finished with whatever she needed to do. A lot of things are possible, not just her dead in a ravine.” He did that little lip-twitch smile at my reaction to his mind reading. “We don’t know enough yet to worry. We’ll do the best we can to find her.” Her patted my shoulder and left me in the cold mudroom, swallowing down more tears, my breath harsh.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “She could have called if she had a problem. She could have asked for my help. Instead she’s disappeared. And I don’t know how to help her.”

  Eli paused in the short hallway and said over his shoulder, “Help her husband. Keep her kids safe. Let us work. That would be my best guess as to what Molly would want.”

  And of course, my partner was right. I took a ragged breath and squared my shoulders. “Okay. Yeah. Okay. We can do this.”

  CHAPTER 2

  ’Cause Wolf-ees Stinks!

  It was nearly dark when the groceries arrived by delivery, and Eli and Evan shared kitchen duties, putting away groceries and making supper. It was peanut butter and jelly for the Trueblood children, steak and potatoes and beer for the adults, cola and pizza for the Kid. We were silent and worried, Alex sitting at one end of the table, his electronic devices in a semicircle around him, running programs I couldn’t even guess at. Several times he paused, put down his fork, and punched some keys, mumbling things that sounded like Klingon cusswords and probably were. He had learned he could cuss in my presence if I didn’t know what he was saying.

  Midmeal my phone rang. I yanked it out of my jeans pocket, hoping it was Molly. The table went silent, hopeful. I grimaced and mouthed, Katie, my landlady. I answered, “Yellowrock,” and put the phone on speaker.

  Troll’s gravel-crunching voice said, “Bliss and Rachael are missing. Get your ass over here.”

  I frowned. I didn’t have time for missing working girls and Katie’s drama

  “Go ahead,” Eli said, mind-reading again. “We got Molly covered for now.”

  I said to Troll, “Language. Give me details.” I pulled out an old-fashioned spiral pad and pen.

  “They went to a party last night and they didn’t come home. Missed their ride. Haven’t called. Haven’t answered their cells. Now, what part of ‘get your ass over here’ is confusing?”

  We had a communication problem. “We have children in the house,” I clarified. “Watch your language.”

  “The Kid is, like, nineteen. When I was nineteen I was living in a whore—”

  “Molly’s children,” I said loudly. The Kid snorted softly, hiding a smile.

  “Oh. Why’n’t you say so? Get your butt over here.” The connection ended.

  “I’ll be right there,” I said to the air, and closed the cell. I stuffed the last bite of steak into my mouth and said, “I don’t want to go, but it shouldn’t take long and I’m no help here right now. This is the Kid’s search for the moment. I’ll be back.”

  “Is this related to Molly?” Evan asked, his eyes on his plate.

  I stopped, surprised. Bliss is a witch. So . . .

  “Statistically improbable,” Eli said.

  “Yeah. What he said.” I stood and went to my room, brushed my teeth, put on my boots, and weaponed up. I had started carrying fewer guns and more blades, worried that someone would get a weapon off me and use it to kill a human. Or worse, that I’d miss a vamp I was aiming at and kill a human. Silver shot would kill humans as easily as vamps. But this time I holstered up with two .308s and grabbed a light jacket to hide the weapons. And considered the rest of my armament. Most of it was locked safely away, but not all. We had children in the house. I laid all my guns on the bed and closed my bedroom door behind me.

  To Evan I said, “How ’bout you give the kids a bath?” To Eli I said, “And make sure everything is locked in the safe room.”

  The guys looked at the kids and then at each other. Eli said, “Message received.” He would put all the guns in the hidden room where we kept our armaments, and do it while the children were upstairs and not able to see the secret room.

  Without another word, I spun on a heel and took the side door into the dark, heading for Katie’s. The chill hit me, a wet, cold slap of air. I had once thought that Louisiana didn’t have a winter. I had been wrong. It was just winter Deep South–style, wet, icy air, a little road ice, the cold spells broken up with long periods of warm springlike air. We had been in the wet icy part for the last three days, and it would be later in the week before the seventies hit us again, a tropical storm front raging in off the coast. We’d have rain, rain, and then maybe a little rain. Some wind. Maybe some lightning. And some more rain. Inches of it. But at least it would be warm.

  I jumped to the top of the splintered boulder pile in my backyard, grabbed a jutting brick as a handhold, and leaped, pulling myself over the wall, swinging across and dropping down. It wasn’t a move a human could’ve made. Sometimes being human was overrated.

  I knocked on the back door of Katie’s Ladies and felt myself being viewed throu
gh the dynamic camera anchored overhead—a security upgrade I had installed when I first came to the Big Easy. There was another camera, smaller and better hidden, in the corner. Most people would never look for a hidden camera once they saw a big, obvious one. And most robbers, rapists, kidnappers, and general bad guys wouldn’t think about a hidden camera after they had disabled the obvious one. The door opened—a steel door with no windows, a far better security arrangement than the glass door originally installed. Troll looked down at me from his six-feet-plus height and grinned. “Little Janie. Come on in. Katie’s waiting for you in her study. You know the way.”

  “Little Janie,” I grumbled. But I was getting used to the moniker. I was also called Legs, by some of the security experts in the city. Maybe it was dumb, but nicknames made me feel at home, welcomed, in some obscure way. And helped to alleviate some of the discomfort I always felt in Katie’s presence. I had never been comfortable with her, but, to make it worse, she had fed on me not that long ago, and it’s hard to excuse that kind of thing, even for me—and I understood a predator’s drive to dominate and feed.

  I blew out a breath, shook off the memory, and turned left, meandering down the hallway to Katie’s office. Katie was the heir to Leo Pellissier, the Master of New Orleans and the Southeastern U.S., except for Florida. She was dominant, strong, and a little scary, with less control than the MOC, less charisma, but, possibly, more raw power. Katie was the first sane vamp I’d ever met, and her office was the first place I had come when I got to New Orleans.

  Her office was much as it had been then, though the walls were now painted a cooler, darker seafoam green, and the hardwood floor was covered with a new silk Oriental rug, a burnt persimmon background woven with green waves along the border with a darker green and burnt orange sea serpent crashing through the waves in the center. The rug was modern and luxuriant and probably cost more than I had in the business’ checking account, which was a lot. The leather sofa still faced the desk, two leather chairs to either side. The bar and minifridge were on the left wall, and Katie’s ancient blackwood, hand-carved desk with the leather center was to the right, lit by a brass lamp in the shape of a swan, its neck arched back to ruffle its half-lifted wings.