Black Arts jy-7 Read online

  I’d made a stink about it all. Things had started to change. Jodi got a promotion of sorts, which was really intended to be a career killer, by NOPD powers that be. She became the head of the woo-woo squad. Not the squad’s real name, but one of the many names that I called them. Under her leadership, the woo-woo room had expanded into space for three offices and a conference room, carved out of the bowels of the cop dungeon. Unlike the upper reaches of the building, it was quiet and conducive to the kind of cold cases Jodi excelled in. Unfortunately it had no cell signal at all.

  I skipped down the stairs, my visitor’s badge bumping my collarbone, a box under my arm and a bag in the other hand, sloshing with my steps. I wandered the short hallway until I found Jodi, standing in the conference room, her jacket off, staring at a whiteboard. There were five whiteboards in the room, each and every one covered with photos of witch children. Some of the photos went back a long time, discolored with age, curling in, folded or creased. Knowing that there was nothing I could do for any of the victims, and feeling a sense of helplessness that curdled my stomach, I always tried to not look at the photos. Yeah. I was a coward.

  The photo Jodi stared at, seeming mesmerized, was centered on the center board, with two other photos, file names, and numbers.

  “Jane,” she said, without turning her head to me. “Haven’t seen you here in a while.”

  “Yeah. My bad.” And here I was, not visiting, but bringing problems and asking for help. I needed to take this slow. “I brought peace offerings.”

  Jodi looked at me, her eyes tracking to the stuff I carried. A slow smile spread on her face. “Café DuMonde. You are evil. What if I’m on a diet?”

  I didn’t have the time, but I offered, “We can go for a run together this evening.”

  She huffed a breath. “I’m on a case. But thanks.” Her eyes found mine. “Why do you have to be such a pain in the ass? Being friends with you is hard work.”

  “I know. So. Beignets and coffee? They’re still sorta hot.”

  Jodi pushed papers aside from the long length of tables and I set the box and bag in the clear space. “Gimme,” Jodi said of the coffee. I poured a cup from the travel box the café had put together and she took it, inhaling the aroma before she inhaled the coffee itself. “God, this is so much better than the swill we scorch here. I needed this.” A moment later she took a beignet and bit in. Through the powdered sugar and fried pastry she said, “So. What do you want?”

  I followed her lead, took a beignet, and bit in. The taste was incredible. Sweet, hot, and perfect. Through the pastry I said, “I need info. And I have something to trade.” Jodi made a little “go ahead” gesture with her pastry and I said, “I need to know about any dark-haired male vamps or blood-servants who currently have short beards.” I demonstrated with a finger to show her the shape. “And who may wear earrings. Hoops.”

  “Yeah?” Jodi watched me speculatively, and from the look in her eyes, she had something for me. “What do you have to trade?”

  “Info on a vamp gather.”

  “Old or recent?”

  I popped the last of my beignet into my mouth and pushed it in with one finger. Chewed. Swallowed. Grinned. Letting her wait. “Planned.”

  Jodi’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “No shit? Uh, sorry. No kidding?”

  “None at all. And if you help, I’ll ask Leo if you can attend. He’ll probably say no, but it’s worth a shot.”

  “I’d give my ex-husband’s left testicle to attend a gather. Actually, I’d give both. Wrapped up in a box with a bow.”

  I chuckled. I’d only recently discovered that Jodi had been married once. It hadn’t lasted long and it had ended badly when the ex had tried to sleep with Jodi’s cop partner. Who was male. And not gay. “Like I said. I can’t promise anything. But I can tell you as much as Leo lets me about the gather, like date and time, info I’ll get tonight. I do know that it’ll be soon. Deal?”

  “One of my sources spotted a new vamp in town. He goes by the name Jack Shoffru, and we have records on him back to the mid seventeen hundreds. Scuttlebutt from way back when, like ancient history gossip, says that he ran with Jean Lafitte.”

  “The pirate?” I asked, startled, talking around the pastry and thinking about the gold earring. I had been thinking gay vamp, but the earring could certainly have been piratical. I kept my smile in and swallowed my bite of beignet.

  “Yeah. Him. Lafitte made Louisiana his stomping grounds, until he disappeared in 1823.”

  I stopped cold, another beignet halfway to my mouth. Disappeared was a vamp term, used when a vamp had lived too long unchanged and unaged in the human world. It also was a term they used when they were first turned and went into forced containment in their master’s scion lair for the necessary ten years or so of curing, the time and the condition of insanity referred to as the devoveo. “Sooo, are you saying that Shoffru actually is Lafitte?”

  “No. They hung together. A lot. Records suggest that he was a ship’s captain in Lafitte’s fleet and a partner in Lafitte’s warehouse in the city in 1805. Anyway, Shoffru has been gone for nearly two centuries, and is now a big-time MOC in Mexico, which was also a stomping ground for Lafitte. Now he’s back. I’ll e-mail you his file as soon as I nail down some particulars.”

  “That would be great,” I said. “A pirate on Leo’s territory. Yeah. I need to talk to the MOC.” I stopped. “When did he get here? To New Orleans? And . . . do vamps have passports? How did he get here from Mexico?”

  “My sources are still tracking that down and trust me, it should not be taking so long. No one is saying, but I have a feeling that either he compelled humans to let him in without papers or he snuck in over the border.”

  I sat back on the tabletop, letting the formerly unmatched puzzle pieces find a few new empty slots. “So, does Galveston have a port where he could have come over?”

  Jodi looked at me strangely. “Yeah. Why? What do you know?”

  “Not a thing; just a wild guess. See if any record goes to Shoffru renting a limo in Galveston. If he did, then that would be the port he entered through, maybe, and the method he used to get here. And if my guess pans out, that would mean you would be willing to share all you have on him, right?”

  “Deal. But right now I need info on the gather. Is security going to be a problem?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Shouldn’t. Maybe traffic problems the night of. I’ll keep you informed if we need traffic cops.”

  “And if you get me into the gather I’ll be your biggest fan.”

  “I’ll try to make it happen.” I nodded at the photos on the whiteboards. “Anything new on the cold-case missing witches?”

  “Not much.” Her mouth turned down. Jodi’s mother was a witch, as her aunt had been. For her, missing witch cold cases were a personal issue. “So many lost,” she said. “So few bodies ever found. They have to be somewhere.”

  “Or turned and chained in a vamp’s basement.”

  Jodi spun slowly on a heel and looked at me, her eyebrows forming a slight V. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “My last bit of news is about witches,” I said, taking a breath to start on the real reason I was here. “Molly Everhart Trueblood came to New Orleans a little over forty-eight hours ago. And went missing. A vamp took her.”

  I placed Molly’s note on the table beside Jodi. She studied it and said softly, “Her note seems a little terse for a wife talking to her husband, but it also suggests she went of her own volition. Like a guest and blood donor. I doubt the FBI would be concerned enough to launch an investigation. I know NOPD wouldn’t be.” Jodi looked away from the dread in my eyes. “There’s just not enough here, Jane.” Her tone still gentle, she said, “It’s not too early for a missing-person report to be filed, but you need to know that the switch in states makes it more difficult.”

  “You want me to go to Missing Persons?” I said, my tone incredulous. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.” She lifted her ey
es and met mine. “Her next of kin need to file it. And I’ll keep an eye out for her or any news about her. But there hasn’t been a crime committed. That’s all I can do at this point, until there’s more evidence.”

  I shook my head, disbelieving, and heard myself say, “So when I find her dead, drained body, then you’ll take an interest?” Jodi pursed her lips as if to keep in words she couldn’t say to me. On one level I understood. She had a job description and bosses she had to account to for the use of her time. But still. “This sucks,” I said.

  “Yes. It does. I’ll help if I can,” she said, soft and sympathetic.

  Which was no help at all. Unwillingly, I said, “Her husband is in town helping me look for her. He’d be the one to file.”

  Jodi nodded slowly and went to a box on one of the long tables in the room. From it she pulled a loose bunch of cards and shuffled through them, handing me one from the middle. “Here. Lou Redkin is currently over Missing. Tell him I gave you his info. He’ll help you work through the logistics. File the report as soon as you can. Meanwhile I’ll keep a lookout. I promise. And if you get something more than a note, I’ll push for an investigation.”

  “Yeah. Thanks. I guess.” I felt blindsided by Jodi’s lack of help. I kept telling myself that I understood it. But it hurt in ways I wasn’t sure I comprehended yet. “Last thing,” I said, and Jodi gave me a little smile. I interpreted it as being because I came to see her with a laundry list of problems. I gave a “so sue me” shrug. “Two of Katie’s girls jumped ship after some vamp parties. It looks like they went of their own volition, but it’s odd that they haven’t contacted their friends, so I’m a little worried. I’ll send you the particulars.”

  Jodi’s expression changed subtly. “Let me guess. One of them was the witch, Alis Rogan.”

  Missing Persons would have no interest in missing working girls, especially a missing working girl who was also a witch. Which was why I’d brought it to her. “Yeah. The coincidence of Bliss and Molly missing at the same time isn’t lost on me,” I said. “Keep an eye out and call me if you hear anything?”

  “Yeah. Ditto on Katie filing missing-persons reports, even though NOPD won’t do much with them.” I nodded. NOPD would bury everything I brought them.

  “Before you go. The knives and bullets taken from the Council House?” she said, referring to vamp HQ by its proper name. She handed me a sheet of paper that looked like info copied from an Internet site.

  I read aloud, “Datura: a native plant, common in flower gardens. It’s also known as Jimsonweed. This deadly poison is related to nightshade and tomatoes. The toxins in Jimsonweed are tropane belladonna alkaloids, which possess strong”—I stumbled over the next word—“anticholinergic properties.” I finished the article. “This is all about ingestion. Why put it on a blade?”

  “Because it can affect people even through skin. Accidental poisoning by gardeners has been reported. And because it’s easy to find and easy to use. Somebody was intending to send you on a psychedelic trip and/or kill you.”

  And had gone about it in a weird way, especially considering my skinwalker metabolism. I’d likely have . . . What? Would it have metabolized out fast? Or would it have interfered with my skinwalker shape-changing? Too many people knew about me and what I was. Maybe this was a test as much as a murder attempt? I didn’t know how to feel about it. I folded the paper in half, over and over, until it was small enough to tuck into a pocket. I stood and gathered up the trash, tossing it into the nearby can, and putting the top on the coffee for later.

  Jodi said, softer, “Jimsonweed is especially bad for witches. It makes them lose concentration, so they have trouble completing spells.”

  “So why would they use it on me?” I asked. I shook my head. “Unless they thought I was a witch. Not.” I’d have to think about this awhile. “Beers when you’re done with the case?” I asked.

  Jodi studied me as if evaluating my nonreaction. “Beers and burgers,” she amended.

  I nodded and left the woo-woo room, making my way back up from the bowels of the building and back home in the SUV.

  CHAPTER 10

  Le Petit Chaton Avec Les Griffes

  My orders came in the form of a call from Bruiser, which woke me from my nap. I flipped open my cell, shoved my hair back from my face, pulled it around, over my shoulder, and rolled into a sitting position on my bed. “Bruiser.”

  Instead of his usually flirty hello, or his pleasant British-style greeting, he simply said, “Bring your weapons tonight. The master wants to spar.”

  “Uhhh.”

  “Nine p.m.”

  “Spar?” I said, incredulous. But I was talking to the silent room. Bruiser had disconnected. I had never sparred with Leo before. Our only physical altercation was when Leo attacked me in the street one night when he was in the grieving process that vamps called the dolore. Basically, vamps just lived too long. Loss of a close loved one who had been with them for hundreds of years could make them lose it mentally, unless they had a Mercy Blade, the magical beings that helped vamps maintain mental and emotional control. At the time I killed his son, Leo didn’t have one, and he had nearly killed me. I closed the cell. “I don’t want to spar with Leo. Stake him, maybe. But not spar,” I said to my room.

  I remembered the last time Leo had put his hands on me, and I shivered. He had forced a feeding. It wasn’t the only time I’d been attacked and fed upon by a vamp—most vamp-hunters have been bitten once or twice—I had even been healed from some bad vamp-fighting injuries by way of a vamp bite. But Leo’s bite was the only time the feeding had been done to bind me to a master vamp’s will. I thought about Leo’s apology. And about fighting him. My lips parted slowly and I chuffed. Forgiveness might be a lot easier if I had the MOC under the heel of my boot.

  I checked the cell and saw that I had hours before I would have to fight the Master of the City of New Orleans. Time for a long stretch, time to get dressed, and plenty of time to plan. I crawled from bed and started stretching, the smells of something rich, meaty, and spicy coming under my bedroom door.

  • • •

  After a meal of BBQ ribs and salad, I pulled up the dossier on Jack Shoffru that Jodi had sent me. The file was dense with material: pdfs of scanned, handwritten notes from decades in the past, more recent reports from Interpol and the FBI, and still more recent reports from the Drug Enforcement Agency. The info was well structured, however, evidence of Jodi’s handwork and organizational skills. But the older, handwritten notes were the most interesting. It was historical documentation that Jack Shoffru had been contemporaries with Jean Lafitte, which meant he had been contemporaries with Leo. I sat slowly on my bed, making sure, cross-referencing dates, even downloading the file to my old laptop to see better on the bigger screen than the tablets.

  I created a new file titled What-If, and typed in my notes, questions, and worries in bullet points. Mostly I had a lot of conjecture, and not a lot of facts. Okay—none. I had a lot of guesses. But they seemed to hint at a picture, or maybe several pictures, even if there was no mass to the smoke and mirrors at this point. I needed more facts.

  Vamps’ lives went on for so long that the past was knotted and woven into the present in layers, sometimes in layers of blood. Like the blood diamond and the vamps and witches who had used it over the centuries. My breath caught. What if Molly’s kidnapper knew about the blood diamond? My what-ifs could be a lot of things and I shouldn’t be getting paranoid.

  Too late. I had thought about the diamond and now it had me in its claws.

  I checked the time and patted myself down to remove weapons. Even though I was licensed to carry in most of the Southern states, it sometimes wasn’t worth the hassle that could come from carrying them. Where I was going, weapons were a surefire way of getting attention from the po-po.

  Weaponless, I grabbed my keys and left the house on Bitsa. There were eight or nine banks in the French Quarter/Central Business District area, and I’d picked the closes
t one for my banking needs and the safe-deposit boxes I rented. I didn’t think about them much, but . . . I had a fair number of evil toys in my possession. Well, in the bank vault, but it was pretty much the same thing. I parked and walked into the bank just before closing.

  Minutes later, I was standing in a private room, no security cameras, no bank attention, and three bank boxes sitting in front of me. It had been a little bit of a hassle getting them to let me open all three boxes, but when I told the teller that she’d have to open them back and forth so I could rearrange my valuables, she gave in.

  I lined all the bank boxes in a row and opened the first one. It contained my personal stuff—passport, the paperwork that stood in lieu of a birth certificate, made out in the name of Jane Doe, the papers with my legal name change to Jane Yellowrock. My security business licenses and PI license. I closed that box and pulled the others to me.

  In the one on the left I found two lead-lined acrylic boxes, called RadBoxes by the manufacturer, the kind used in hospitals for blood contaminated by radioactive meds. Inside was a clump of reddish iron about the size of the end of my thumb. The iron blob looked unchanged, and I closed the RadBox without touching it. In the other lead-lined box were pocket watches. Everything looked okay, but the black arts artifacts always made me feel slimy and the stink of old dead meat and spoiled blood clung to my fingers for hours after I touched them. This time, I didn’t touch. Who says a cat can’t learn new tricks? I closed up the box and pushed it to the side.

  In the second safe-deposit box, there were two RadBoxes, but here things were a bit different. Resting on top of one yellow acrylic box top was the thing that should have been inside. It was a coyote earring, carved of bone, howling at the sky. It had come to me in a funky dream one night. Like, literally it had come to me. As in appeared on the pillow by my head. And it moved around sometimes, like now, crawling out of its box. I tucked it back inside. “Stay there,” I said to it, knowing it wouldn’t listen. I opened the final RadBox, aware that I had been putting it off till last.