by Faith Hunter
Instantly, I did. It had seemed important even then. And might be vastly important now. Bruiser had called, we had chatted, and I had hung up on him, rudely.
“That your other boyfriend?” Rick had asked.
Shock had zinged through me and I rolled back on the bed on top of him. I remembered the swish as I slung my hair out of the way. “Other boyfriend?”
“If you want to call me that.”
“I’ll think about it. But if I had a boyfriend, there’d be only the one.”
“Hmmm,” Rick had murmured. The vibration had rumbled through him like a big purr. “Wonder if he knows that.”
“I remember,” I said now, hearing the insecurity in my voice. Which I hated. “I haven’t slept with Bruiser.”
Rick looked down, his lips going soft. “Good. Selfish of me, under the circumstances, but good.” He looked back up, meeting my eyes, his with the golden-greenish glow of his cat. “We can’t be together right now. Not like you and Bruiser can. But eventually I’ll find a way out of this were problem. And then . . .” He let the words trail off.
I swallowed, my throat dry. Beast peered out of my eyes, purring deep in my mind. “Then what?” I managed.
“Then if you’re sleeping with him, I’ll kill him and take you.”
Electric shock blasted through me and I caught my breath. Rick just smiled, showing his teeth, and made a huff of amusement, all cat. He stood with the grace of his leopard and strolled to the door. He opened it and left the room, the low light playing across his skin. The door closed silently, and I felt more than heard him stalk away. “Holy crap,” I whispered.
A knock came on my door and I called, “Just a minute.” I rose, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and my sweater, and opened the door. My knees were still knocking.
The Kid stood there, his multitudinous electronic gizmos in hand. “I think I found something,” he said, “about Silandre and Hieronymus’ heir, Lotus, and—” He stopped and waved his hand as if wiping away everything he’d just said. “Eli’s in the breakfast room. Come on.”
I went. My personal life could wait. Like, for years.
• • •
“Esther and Silandre were pals back in the eighteen hundreds,” the Kid said. “Bodat found out about this photographer dude, and he got a pic of the women together in front of a whorehouse that catered to Union soldiers and sympathizers both during and after the War between the States. And to me it looks like the front of Silandre’s Saloon.”
“Dude. We did it together,” Bodat said from the kitchen door, where he stood, a chicken leg in one hand. The unmistakable scent of Popeye’s fried chicken filled the air.
“Yeah. We did,” the Kid said. “And the best part? Lotus is in one of the photos.”
Something warm and anticipatory danced along under my skin. Eli and I bent over the back of the Kid’s chair. The sepia-tint photocopy was faded, with a slightly fuzzed focus, but it was clearly of three women, two Caucasian, and the third Asian. The house in the background might indeed have been Silandre’s Saloon. “Lotus, Esther, and Silandre. They look mighty chummy,” I said. “Wonder if one of Esther’s pals turned on her and beheaded her.”
“Backstabbing vamps?” the Kid asked. “Say it isn’t so. I also found these.”
He handed me a stack of old photocopies. The top one was a deed to a four-hundred-acre piece of property just outside Natchez proper. It was owned by Lotus in the year 1801. The page beneath was a copy of a page from a legal ledger, a list of signatures for marriage licenses. Circled in red were the names H. E. Hieronymus and Lotus Song Hieronymus in the year 1802. The names were close; they belonged to the same people of today.
The Kid pointed. “Next in the stack is a death certificate for H. E. Hieronymus and wife, lost at sea in 1820, followed by the posthumous sale of the original property to a couple named D. L. Hieronymus and his sister, Lotus Hieronymus. And then here”—he pointed to another page—“they died again and the property was inherited by them later, with different names. This was one way vamps got around the inheritance laws and kept their property through the ages. You know, from before they were out of the closet and could just keep their real holdings in perpetuity if they wanted. It was old-fashioned real property and wealth management.”
“Up until the nineteen forties,” Bodat said, “when Hieronymus didn’t let Lotus have the property back. He kept it all in his name.”
“He cheated her,” Eli said. My head was spinning with all the names and times, but I agreed.
“Right,” the Kid said. “Instead of the property going back to them both, Big H bought it and kept it. The next page is a court ledger, listing legal claims. One is a claim of misappropriation of inheritance filed by Luminous Song, claiming to be the daughter of Big H and Lotus. She tried to get it back. She wasn’t successful.”
“It’s convoluted,” I said, “but it’s motive.”
The Kid leaned over me and flipped pages. “I marked the pages for the good stuff.” There were properties all over the state listed in versions of the names Silandre, Lotus, and Esther.
“They were business partners?” I asked. The Kid nodded.
Bodat wiggled his eyebrows in what I took to be an affirmative. “They formed a corporation called Lotus Blossoms, which ran brothels Under the Hill.”
“And then Big H cheated them out of about half their ill-gotten gains,” the Kid said.
“So why didn’t they just offer a Blood Challenge and get it back the vamp way?” Eli asked.
“Those are mano a mano, which any of them would have lost, not three on one, which they might have won,” I said, thinking. “They took the long view and waited until a stronger vamp came along and showed them a better way. Maybe when they heard about Lucas Vazquez de Allyon, Esther left Natchez and swore to him. When Death’s Rival made his move on other cities, Esther probably worked a deal with him and her old business partners to take over Natchez territory.”
“And then you cut off de Allyon’s head,” the Kid said. “Kinda spoiled their big plans.”
“Yeah.” I breathed out, putting the stack of papers on the table. “But knowing all this really doesn’t help us find the missing humans, witches, or the BBV.”
“It narrows the focus,” Bodat said, “which means we can create an algorithm to find—”
I held up a hand, stopping him. “You guys did good work. Really good. Narrow down the list of properties we need to search to ones with basements only. We’re spinning our wheels right now.” I held up the poor-quality photo of three bawdy women, corseted, wearing large hats and stacked heels, with their skirts thrown up to reveal a lot of stockinged legs. Photos of vamps were nearly impossible to make until the era of digital photography. The original might be worth a small fortune.
“Okay,” I said. “Eli, let’s weapon up and check out Silandre’s Saloon again by daylight. Maybe we missed something.”
CHAPTER 20
I’ll Get Well Later
We were back at Silandre’s, the place looking more garish by daylight than it had by night, and that was saying an awful lot. Buddy and Bubba’s ATV was still there, parked near the kitschy plastic flamingoes. I stepped from the SUV, feeling again that strange tingle of magic I had noticed Under the Hill, but it passed over and was gone. It left me feeling unsettled, but I had no idea why. Shrugging to relieve unexpected tension, I turned my attention to the saloon.
The white-painted board siding had so many coats of paint on it that it looked nearly flat, rippled instead of stacked. The windows were mostly old blown-glass panes, the few replaced panes having a different refractivity and clarity than the older ones. It hadn’t shown in the dark, but the gaudy pink paint on the woodwork was two-toned. Bleagh. But, then, I’m not a girly kinda gal and don’t care for pink, especially the bright, brassy shades Silandre had chosen.
The front door was unlocked, and when we entered, a brass bell over the door rang with a tinkling sound. It hadn’t been there the last time we we
re here. Someone had been moving things around; the front room was no longer overcrowded with kitsch and there were no fanged dolls at all. However, the place was so filled with commercial scents that I couldn’t smell anything but the floral-fruity-lavender-cherry-spice combo. I holstered the nine mils I hadn’t even known I’d drawn and pulled the M4, cradling it in my arms.
A young woman stuck her head out of the middle room and called a cheery, “Hello. I’ll be with—” Her accented words came to a complete stop as she focused on the weapons. She had sounded vaguely Russian as she spoke, and now her eyes went wide with fear.
I held up a hand, fingers spread. “It’s okay. We’re here with Big H’s permission.”
“Hieronymus,” Eli corrected.
“Yeah. Him. We’re not here to hurt you or anything.”
Moving slowly, the girl came out from the wall, revealing a slight frame, long, straight hair, and dark eyes. She looked like a child, willowy but tall for her age, the way girls look when they have grown a foot in a year, all knobby knees and elbows below a pink shirt and plaid skirt. Much like I had looked during my first year in the children’s home.
I had no idea what she was doing here or if Big H’s people had cleaned up our mess in the back. We had left an awful lot of blood in the back room. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Nostrana,” she said. Yeah. Middle or Eastern European.
“Have you seen Silandre?” I asked.
“No. She has not been here.”
“How about the back room?” Which was a coward’s way of asking if Big H’s cleanup crew had gotten all the blood out.
Nostrana shrugged. “Someone purchased the entire set, I think. The room was empty when I arrived two days ago. I have been rearranging everything, making it into a doll room.” She stopped, biting her lip, as if she had said too much.
“Nostrana,” I tried to pronounce it like she had, all liquid sounds and sophistication, but it came out sounding flat and Southern. “You work for Silandre?”
“Three days a week, and during the three days of the full moon and the one night of the new moon. It is odd schedule, but I am exchange student in university, so I can make it do.”
“There’s no university anywhere near,” Eli said, sounding cold and hard and managing to call her a liar.
Nostrana’s head came up and she firmed her lips. “I take classes on Internet. And I take bus to campus three days a week.”
“Long trip,” Eli said, still disbelieving, this time almost snide.
“Is not your concern. What do you want?”
I smiled. Nostrana was no pushover. “To look around,” I said, sliding the shotgun into the spine sheath and showing both hands open and empty. Reluctantly, Eli holstered his weapons, but he kept a hand on one. When Nostrana didn’t object, I walked through the disordered room toward her. And felt the tingles on my skin. I stopped. This didn’t make sense. “You’re a witch.”
Her eyes narrowed and she reached into a pocket. “Also not your concern.”
“Witches are disappearing in Natchez. Have you been approached by anyone? Been followed?” I asked.
“No.” Her left hand clutched something in the pocket.
“No need to use magical defense on us,” I said. “We’re going.”
“Please. Quickly. And not to come back unless Silandre is here.”
I jerked my head at Eli and backed away, stepping carefully to the front of the saloon/store and out into the meager sunshine without turning my back on her. I didn’t speak again until we were back at the SUV. “Witches are missing. Vamps are turning into cockroaches, and Nostrana is a witch working for a vamp.”
“If she was telling us the truth,” Eli said.
“She smelled of the truth.” Eli gave me an odd look, one I’ve come to associate with me admitting to being anything nonhuman. Like most of the other times, I ignored it. “I need to talk to Francis.”
Without commenting, Eli started up the SUV and we rode along the Under the Hill streets and passed by the old warehouse/bar where we had fought and survived. Once again, a surge of magic hit me, a sharp, bitter tang in the air. “Stop the car.” Before Eli had come to a complete stop, I was out of the SUV and moving between buildings, following the scent. Within three steps, Eli was behind me. In my pocket, I felt something hot and I dug a hand in, pulling out the coin the tribal elder had given me in the church-that-wasn’t. The silver coin was hot to the touch, the temperature variant a sure sign of witch magics. I reached into another pocket and touched the pocket watch. It too was heated. And stank of old blood.
“Here. It’s here.” I turned in a slow circle, holding the coin out before me, feeling the coin heat and cool, like a childhood game—“You’re getting hot! Cooler. Cooler. COLD! Hot again!” Leading me toward the middle street . . . and as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone.
The coin was now neither warm nor cold and the watch was my body temperature. Maybe the change in temp had been my imagination. Maybe I’d been palling around with supernats for so long that I was starting to scent magics everywhere. I dropped my arm. Stuck the coin in my pocket. The old blood smell of the watch clung to my fingers. “Crap. Okay. Let’s go home, Eli.”
He raised his brows. “You’ll tell me what this little jaunt was about later.” It wasn’t a request. More a command.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Let’s go.” While he drove, I texted. A lot.
• • •
There wasn’t much left of the winter afternoon when we got back to Esmee’s. “I have some dirty work in the garage,” I said.
“We killing the vamp?”
“Francis? I hope not. But we may have to cut off his clothes.”
Eli’s forehead wrinkled. “Say what?”
“Francis is one of the new spidey vamps. I’ve been smelling old blood on Francis, stinky stuff.” Stinky stuff like the pocket-watch amulets, but I didn’t share that with Eli, not yet. “Francis is healing even without blood meals. I think our boy may have something on him that’s helping him heal and transform, maybe even controlling him somehow. It might be what allowed de Allyon to do what he did and control the vamps under him so well, and take over other cities, and be a Naturaleza in a world where all the other vamps were Fame Vexatum.”
Eli shook his head, but I thought it was in surprise, not negation. I pulled out the pocket-watch amulet.
“Didn’t you ever wonder why the priestesses and the European council allowed de Allyon to keep his own territory, operating as a Naturaleza in open violation of the Vampira Carta? And no one tried to stop him?”
“So far as we know,” he hedged.
“So far as we know,” I agreed, as Eli pulled the SUV to the garage. “He had to have something on the other vamps, some kind of weapon or way to protect himself until he discovered the vamp plague.”
“A witch circle,” Eli said, surprised.
“Exactly. Powering some kind of amulet or objet d’foci,” I said, playing on objet d’art, “that allowed him to do all kinds of stuff. Then he discovered the vamp plague and he decided it was the perfect weapon to expand his power base.” I flipped open the pocket watch, catching a whiff of that almost-familiar stink. Remembering where I’d first gotten the amulets—off Naturaleza vamps and humans sworn to de Allyon. “This isn’t powerful enough to be the amulet or focal object. But I think it’s tied in somehow.”
We left the vehicle, walking into the daylight. It wasn’t bright and the sun was hidden behind layers of clouds, but it was daylight. It would do. Inside the garage, the shadows enfolding us, we stood, letting our eyes adjust.
Eli said softly. “Francis is one of the revenants. He’s faster and stronger than anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah. And what I’m thinking is that some of the revenants have been killed true-dead more than once and brought back. And that every time they get brought back, there are more changes.”
Eli let that sink in a bit, staring off at the horizon. “What’s
your strategy?”
“I’m gonna tell him to strip. Then when he doesn’t, I’m gonna pull his cage into the yard, out back where the kids can’t see it happening, and let him burn for a while. Then if he doesn’t give me what I’m looking for, I’ll kill him and cut his clothes until I find it.”
“You sound mighty cheerful about it.”
“I am.”
Eli shrugged with his eyebrows, which was really cool, and followed me into the dark.
• • •
The interrogation didn’t take long. Even with his accelerated healing powers, Francis Adrundel was no match for the sun. After two minutes outside, smoking and blistering and screaming, he emptied his pockets. I picked up the pocket watch and tucked it into my other pocket. I didn’t know what the watches did, but I had an idea that getting them together could eventually be a problem.
Once I was done, I called Clark, Big H’s primo, and asked him to send some blood meals by to feed Francis. The thing he was becoming had to die true-death eventually, but so far, he’d been useful. I wanted him kept undead.
• • •
I had timed it well. An hour before sunset, I called my escorts into the dining room. Bruiser was back, with no explanation of where he had gone, Soul was dressed in silver-colored gauzy clothing that reminded me of moonlight, and Rick was glowering, wearing earpieces with his magic-spelled music coming from them. Brute and Pea looked beautiful and cute and deadly. Part of me wanted them on my team, and the other part of me knew that would be a mistake. I’d eventually have to kill the wolf and I really didn’t want to kill anything that an angel had cursed.
“Soul, can you do another magical scan for Misha? Or maybe a scan for a full witch circle?”
“I have tried questing,” she said softly, “and found nothing because of the interference. All I could detect was the massive magical energies in Natchez and Under the Hill.”
“Okay. Bobby and I are going for a ride,” I told them.
