Black Arts jy-7 Read online

  I nodded. Blood-slaves were the hangers-on in a vamp’s household, there for food and sex and odd jobs, and to be passed around to any visiting vamps. Or sold to another vamp to pay a debt. They were addicted to vamp blood and would do anything to get more. Literally anything with anyone. Blood-servants were much higher class. They were attached to a clan, had contracts that laid out their jobs, and were sworn to a blood-master. They were cared for, healed when injured or ill, and usually provided blood meals only to the one they were sworn to. I had started a file on them, keeping track of who was sworn to whom.

  “So. We have a hired car in front, supposedly on the way to a party at Arceneau Clan Home, with one female vamp, an unknown man with a nose ring, and the girls, and a car in back with a former blood-slave, a now true-dead vamp who attacked our home with Adrianna, and an unknown bearded male, possibly a vamp, wearing an earring. Right?” I didn’t expect an answer and I didn’t get one.

  The Kid shrugged, but added, “The girls never got to Arceneau Clan Home. They turned around partway and headed totally in the wrong direction. And the tail car must have lost them as they left the city. When the black cab went over the Mississippi heading west, the tail car was nowhere in sight.”

  “Huh. Keep me informed,” I said. I punched in Wrassler’s number and left him a message on voice mail. “The vamps who attacked my house were involved with the disappearance of two of Katie’s girls, but may not have been working with the vamp who took them. They may have been tailing them, which makes the disappearance of Bliss and Rachael part of this.” I hesitated. “Whatever this is.” I hung up. Softly, I asked Alex, “Anything on Molly?”

  The Kid shrugged, a typical teenaged gesture that was equal parts annoyance, frustration, and exhaustion. He didn’t know and it was eating him up inside. “No,” he muttered. “Nothing new except that I isolated a camera that views the valet parking. I’m trying to get the time and date differentiated.”

  I patted his shoulder, sighed, and rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the tension in the muscles. “On another subject, text Wrassler to call in someone with prison or government experience to go over the protocols in the back parking. The Tattooed Duo were handling that, and now we got nobody in-house, but I’m sure one of the clans has a specialist they can send over. Also, get him to go over all the security upgrades that were seen by the two.” Which was sufficiently confusing, but I figured he could make sense of it all. I closed my door and fell across the mattress, rolling over to strip off my weapons and shove them under the bed. I was crashing. I desperately needed a nap.

  • • •

  I woke to the smell of coffee and bacon. Mostly the bacon. I had slept an hour, and felt worse for it. I rolled from the bed and again stowed my smaller weapons in the gun safe in my closet and the larger ones on the high closet shelf where the children wouldn’t see them. I stripped out of my sweaty clothes, which still stank of blood and gore, and showered, the water almost scalding while I soaped and washed my hair, before I switched it to cold—or cold as New Orleans water ever got. I braided my wet hair and dressed—and because I lived with so many males, I started with a bra. Hated those things. Even a holster felt better most days. Over it went a T-shirt and thin cotton pants. It was March in New Orleans—cold one day, humid, wet, and warm the next. Already I could smell spring flowers over the stench of humans in the city. The house felt stuffy, and it wouldn’t be long before we had to turn on the AC in the daytime. Back home in the Appalachians, we might still have snow on the ground. Deep inside, Beast rumbled something that sounded like Home. Go home.

  Flip-flops and a nine-mil in a spine holster completed my ensemble.

  I left my room and joined the breakfast mayhem in the kitchen, thumbing my cell open to check for voice mails. “Any messages or text from Wrassler?” I asked.

  “Aunt Jane! Aunt Jane! Aunt Jane!” Two midsized projectiles launched through the air at me, in what was becoming a ritual, the strawberry blond one at midthigh and the redheaded one from much higher—directly off the tabletop where he had been standing. Beast shoved into me and I caught EJ in midair just as Angie Baby rammed against my legs. I staggered but caught my balance and hoisted EJ over a shoulder, juggled my cell, bent and picked up Angie, and deposited them in their seats. They were still squealing and the guys eating breakfast stared at me with open mouths.

  Oh. Yeah. A normal woman would have dropped them or ended up in a pile on the floor. “Not human,” I said. “Deal with it.” Just saying the words was liberating. It was like shutting off a loud, out-of-balance motor, one that had caused an unstable vibration all through me, one I hadn’t noticed until it was gone.

  Pretending I didn’t notice the sudden silence in the room, I picked a slice of bacon off the platter in the middle of the table and shoved it into my mouth. Chewing, I prepared myself a plate. It was scrambled egg day and I had regular eggs, Cajun eggs, and Western eggs. Cajun was cooked with red peppers and Western was cooked with onions and bell peppers and jalapeños. I served up most of what was left of each, scooped on a dozen strips of bacon, and sat, adding four pieces of toast to my plate. “Good,” I mumbled as I ate. Around me the men started back eating.

  “Glad you approve,” Eli said dryly.

  I said through a mouthful of eggs, “Report from Wrassler?”

  “The humans who attacked the house have no memories of the attack,” Eli said. “The last thing they remember is a party with some sailors at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base out in Belle Chasse.” When I looked up, chewing and lost, he added, “Belle Chasse is an unincorporated location in Plaquemines Parish.”

  I stopped chewing and swallowed the bite whole. Which hurt. When I got it down, I said, “Vamps and military guys?”

  “Yeah,” Eli said, concern lacing his tone. “NAS JRB is six nautical miles from downtown New Orleans. It’s home to the 159th Fighter Wing, USCG Air Station New Orleans, a Marine Corps Reserve unit, navy and army units.”

  I felt as if I were being given a military readiness lecture. And maybe I was.

  “Layman’s terms: The base supports both the 159th FW’s NORAD for air defense and Homeland Security, and the Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans search and rescue/maritime law enforcement missions. It contains a military airport known as Alvin Callender Field. I’ve already notified your ex. Or your maybe sometime. Or your—”

  “Rick will do,” I said, sounding more prim than I intended.

  “The info was confirmed by a vamp-feeding and Vulcan mind meld,” the Kid added. “There were vamps at the military party. One had red hair. Wrassler said to call him after four p.m.”

  I snorted into my breakfast as I ate. Vulcan mind meld. It fit. “Hmmph,” I said. “Now wayward vamps want a piece of Uncle Sam? Leo will be ticked. Cajun eggs are the best. More?”

  “Good G—gravy, woman. You just ate a dozen eggs,” Eli said. I shrugged. He got up and opened the fridge for more eggs and milk. I was nearly done when he flipped a pan of steaming eggs onto my plate and I dug in again. When I was satisfied, I pushed back the plate, swallowed the last bite down with a slurp of cold tea, and met Evan’s eyes.

  He was tired and fighting anger, tiny hot flames in his blue eyes. I said, “The Kid will update you on Molly, but we don’t have a lot to go on. Yet. When is the last time you did a finding spell on her?”

  “This morning,” he said. “And I got nothing. But more like it’s blocked, not like she’s . . . gone.” He meant dead. “Which is a relief of some sorts.”

  “Can you tell who’s blocking her?” I asked. “Like, is she blocking all targeting and finding spells herself, or is someone else blocking her from others?”

  The corners of Big Evan’s eyes pulled down with his frown. I could tell he hadn’t thought about her blocking him out. But now that I’d planted the worm in his skull, it was burrowing deep.

  Go, me. With a little luck, I might make cruelest skinwalker of the year. “Can you tell if she’s still nearby?”

&
nbsp; “She’s within fifty miles,” he said.

  “Mommy’s okay,” Angelina said. “But she’s scared.”

  My mouth came open, but I stopped on whatever I was going to say, when Evan said, very gently, “You can tell she’s okay?”

  Angie nodded. “All the time. Can I have more syrup?”

  “You’ve had enough sugar, sweetheart,” Evan said, his eyes unfocused. “Can you tell where Mommy is?”

  Angie scrunched up her face and thought, chewing her breakfast. “No. She’s okay. But she’s scared. You hafta find her soon. Can I please be excused? Me and EJ’s gonna play in the backyard.”

  “Sure,” Evan said. “Don’t try to leave the yard.”

  “Biscause the alarms will go off,” Angie said, nodding. “From your wards.”

  “Right.” But it was obvious that he wasn’t really hearing her. EJ crawled out of his high chair and he and Angie scampered out the side door, their footsteps hollow on the wood porch into the backyard. Evan looked down, fighting disappointment and fear and despondency so strong it crossed the table in dark waves.

  My cell buzzed and I didn’t recognize the number. “Yellowrock Securities,” I said.

  “Ms. Yellowrock, this is the concierge at the Hilton on St. Charles Avenue. Ms. Bedelia Everhart has trusted me with a missive for you. Would you prefer to have me mail it to you or would you like to pick it up?”

  It took a moment to put the name with Molly, and when I did I stepped away so no one could read the expression on my face. “I can be there in a few minutes.”

  “It will be waiting for you at my desk, ma’am.”

  I clicked the cell shut. Eli and the Kid and I shared glances. As if covering for me, Eli said, “Windows for the back of the house come today. We’ll have them installed by one.”

  “Well,” I said with fake-sounding cheer, “I’ll make a trip back to the hotel to see if anything new has happened, and then I’ll be researching at NOPD.” Mostly talking to Jodi at police department central. Asking if she knew anything about Molly or vamps out of Texas, or people in vamp society who wore gold earrings.

  “Woo-woo room?” Eli asked.

  “Yeah. No cell signal. If you need me, call Jodi.”

  “Will do.”

  I pulled on a pair of green Lucchese boots and left my house, hopped on the back of Bitsa, and took off to research—the tedious part of being in the security business.

  • • •

  When I got to Molly’s hotel, I stopped at the concierge desk. “My name’s Jane Yellowrock,” I said to the slender, white-haired guy behind the desk. “I understand that Molly—Bedelia Everhart left me a message.”

  “Ms. Yellowrock, yes,” he said, his smile professionally courteous. He extended a legal envelope. “She left it this morning.”

  My heart jumped into my throat. I smiled back, took the envelope, and found a seat in the lobby. Mostly because my knees were shaking.

  I slid a nail under the flap and opened it, to see a piece of hotel paper and a room card key. The handwriting was Molly’s. She had written two very short lines.

  I’m safe.

  Tell Evan I’ll be in touch soon.

  Mol

  “Holy crap,” I whispered. And then I closed my eyes. Molly is safe. Tears pooled under my lids and I squeezed them tight to keep the emotion and the waterworks under control. When I thought I could read without bursting into tears, I reread the letter.

  And then I sniffed it. And I smelled blood. Molly’s blood.

  It was faint and fresh. And it made my heart stand still. Blood is composed of proteins, and as it ages it breaks down. Like with any other biological product, unless it’s preserved, it starts to stink. Old blood has a sickly sweet smell. This was fresh blood. Maybe as little as four hours old. And mixed with the faint trace of blood were pheromones, the kind humans exude when they are blood-drunk, when they’ve been bitten and drained and the vamp was compelling them to become happy and docile and addicted.

  I also smelled a vamp I almost recognized. I closed my eyes and sniffed. Slow and steady, then in little bursts of breath that I pulled over my tongue with a small scree of sound. Almost familiar. But not quite. As if maybe this vamp and some other vamp I’d been in contact with over the years had been kissing cousins. Or had been made by the same sire. Not enough to go on. The tears that had gathered when I first smelled Molly trickled down my cheeks. I slashed them away with the back of my hand, yanking brutally on my flesh. I would not cry. I had too much to do. I took three deep breaths and pulled out my fancy-schmancy cell phone.

  I didn’t want to call Big Evan. Not with this. But I had to. I dialed his number. “What?” he answered.

  “Molly’s alive,” I said. “Or she was a few hours ago. Someone claiming to be her dropped off a letter at the hotel. If it really was her, then she’s in the city.” I steadied myself, a hand on the chair where I sat. “But you need to know that she’s been fed on by a vamp. So nothing in the letter is necessarily real or true.”

  I read him the letter and listened to a prolonged silence as he digested the meager words.

  “So where is she?” he asked. His voice sounded hoarse, as if he forced the words out through strangling emotion.

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “Who has her? What did she come here for?” he asked.

  “Again, I don’t know yet. I’ll call back when I know more.” Big Evan swore and ended the connection. I headed for the elevators, stuffing the letter back in its envelope.

  On the way up, I pulled the envelope to sniff it again, confirming that she had been coerced to write the note. Molly had handled the paper. Her scent was fresh, though weak on the page. There were hints of fear on the note as well as . . . desire. And an undertang of vamp. I sniffed it again and remembered where I’d smelled it before. This vamp had been in her room the first time I went in. A vamp had Molly, was feeding on her. Anger was a low hum deep in my bones, but I breathed deeply, controlling it.

  The card key worked and I stepped inside, noting on the way in that repairs had been made to the door. Inside, her scent was fresh. Molly had been back, and had left only a few hours ago. She was unharmed, if the scent signature was anything to go by. The underlying reek of blood was no more than would be left after a vamp-feeding. I detected only a faint trace of anguish, or fear, and far more blood-drunk pheromones. I stood in the entryway, breathing, scenting, studying the room with all my senses before I went farther, then quartering the room, starting with the bath. She had showered, and recently, if the damp, cream-colored towel and washcloth were indications. I sniffed the towel, and determined that she was okay. Healthy. Not stressed by a beating or some other horrible . . . indignity was the only word I could think of, and my mind sheared away from rape, settling on Molly not being freshly wounded. Her toiletries bag was missing. Her toiletries, including the birth control pills that I still hadn’t mentioned to anyone.

  Some of her clothes were missing from the closet, and her suitcase was gone. The covers were thrown as if her bed had been slept in at least once and she hadn’t let housekeeping in to make up the sheets. There were indentations on one of the cream-colored pillows and the other was off to the side, and both pillowcases smelled strongly of Molly. The white sheets and coverlet were rumpled at the foot of the bed. Something in the room bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what. My nose said everything was . . . not fine, but not deadly horrible.

  I remembered my thoughts when I had discovered the birth control pills. Was Molly having an affair? I went to the bed and bent over the sheets. No scent but Molly’s. No humans, no witches, no vamps, no one but Molly had been in the bed. Beside the bed, the flowers that had been slightly wilted before were dry and crackling, brown as if they had dried in a desert. In the corner, two vamps had stood, waiting on Molly as she showered and gathered her things. A male and a female.

  I closed my eyes, trying to find something, anything that would tell me who they were and where she was. Th
ere was nothing here. I had no leads. No ideas. Nothing except the stink of the vamps I’d scented the first time I came to the room. I stopped and sniffed again. No. Not Adrianna. Not one of the Arceneau Clan that she had been left in charge of. It had been stupid to think that in the first place. My cases were not interconnected.

  I knew only this: Molly was in trouble. Someone didn’t want her found. She was blood-drunk and didn’t know she was in trouble. She had left me a note—or someone else had.

  I had no conclusions other than to keep looking for Molly. Except that I’d used up all my own sources.

  And that meant that I was going to have to ask Leo for help and soon. “Crap, crap, crap,” I muttered. I hated to involve Molly with the MOC. Hated it. But unless I found something new in the woo-woo room, I might have no choice.

  • • •

  The woo-woo room was in the basement of NOPD Central. The first time I’d come here, it was dank and mostly unused. Then I’d discovered that witches had gone missing in New Orleans for decades, maybe centuries, and neither human nor vamp law had done a dang thing to stop it. The files of missing witch children had gone back for as long as the local cops still had records, all of them cold cases—unworked cold cases. Until Jodi’s aunt—a witchin-hiding and also a cop—came along and began to work the cases in her off time, human law enforcement hadn’t cared that witches had vanished, in much the way that white cops had once ignored the violent deaths, lynching, and missing citizens of African lineage, perpetrated by the KKK.