Black Arts jy-7 Read online

  I closed the cell. Eli said, “Sugar Lips?”

  “Yeah. Ick.”

  The Kid said, “Before he gets here, two things. One, Reach sent me his search on Rachael and Bliss. There have been no financial transactions or cell phone usage since they disappeared. He’s set up an automatic ding if they use their credit cards, ATM, cells, anything, everything, anywhere, and will notify us if they pop up used. I can take over on the other parts of the search from here. Okay?” I nodded. “Two, I found security footage of Molly turning in her car in Knoxville. Evan and I already studied it and got nothing. You wanna see?”

  Eli and I all but scampered over, to see footage of Molly entering a rental car cubicle. “McGhee Tyson Airport. High volume. High security, even on the rental agencies,” the Kid said. Molly was clear on the camera, not hidden by a glamour or some kind of spell that would mess with the digital stuff, which could mean that she expected us to find this footage. She was wearing a coat, brownish, and sturdy shoes; she handed a woman behind the counter something—keys, most likely—and turned and walked away. The screen flickered to another angle and we saw her walking down the concourse, no luggage, no bag. Which meant she had other transportation already secured.

  “That’s it for the car rental security cameras,” Alex said. “I can’t get into the airport security footage without incurring the wrath of my parole board and my brother.”

  “I told him to stop. We’ll find Molly another way,” Evan said from the kitchen, sounding gruff. “Meanwhile, you have footage of the missing hookers.”

  “Call girls,” the Kid said. “Very expensive, high-class call girls who my brother threatened with bodily harm if they gave me a freebie. Totally unfair, dude.”

  “When you’re twenty-one,” Eli said, sounding as if he’d said it a thousand times already, “and you’re off parole, and your record has been wiped clean, you can break any law you want and buy any hooker you want and get any disease they have, and go to jail for your good time. Till then, I’ll break your legs if you try.”

  “Not fair, bro. Anyway, here’s the footage you got from the restaurant,” he said. “I’ll try to sharpen it, but digital can only go so far. That stuff on movies and TV, where they telescope in and make out writing on people’s shirts and focus on tattoos and see eye color, is totally fiction. We won’t get much better than the fuzzy stuff you already saw.”

  We were still watching the footage, the Kid trying to sharpen the digital images, and taking off still shots, when the knock came. I walked through the house, opened the front door, and said, “Come on in, Sugar Lips.”

  Troll grunted and moved past me, his bald head catching the foyer lights, his eyes taking in the repairs. “Whatever it is, Katie ain’t paying for it.”

  “I know. My nickel.” I closed the door and he followed me into the living room. I introduced Big Evan and Troll, and the two huge men sized each other up. I just hoped the floor joists held.

  “Molly’s husband?” Troll asked.

  “The same,” Evan said.

  “You’re the one who made the spell for Rick—my nephew a couple generations back. I owe you one.”

  “Nothing owed. Blood-servant for Katie?”

  “Primo.” The guys bumped fists and Troll pointed to the back windows, now covered with plywood. “Your work?”

  “I thought my wife had left me and come here.”

  “Jane don’t swing that way.”

  “That’s not— Never mind. Jane is helping me find my wife.”

  “Good. I like Molly. Met her when she was visiting. She didn’t look down her nose at my girls. I like that. High-class lady, your wife. If I hear anything about her, I’ll let you know.”

  They bumped fists again and I made a little roll-’em motion at the Kid. The footage started. “We want to know the names of the vamps and humans leaving the restaurant, and the name of the driver of the car they got into.” I handed him a spare spiral pad and a pen.

  Troll started taking notes as human-shaped forms left the restaurant. Twice he asked to see a section again, and several times he pointed to heads and said, “Don’t know ’em.” But his list of names was twelve long by the time we reached the section of the girls leaving the restaurant and getting into a black cab limo. He watched that part four times before he finally said, “I don’t recognize the driver, which I should if he drives for a vamp. And that isn’t a regular licensed driver either. The car is personally owned.” He pointed to something attached to the dash and said, “Radar detector. They’re legal in the state, but no company allows them in their cars, and if a driver had one he plugged in, why have it in the city? Makes no sense. More importantly, these are heads.” He tapped the screen and I studied what I had thought were shadows. They were sitting in the seat facing back, and while they were indistinct, we could see Rachael and Bliss clearly. Bliss’ eyes were wide and her mouth was in a little O of surprise and delight. Rachael was laughing. “There were people already in the car. People they recognized and felt safe with.” He sounded long-suffering.

  His girls had gone off the reservation, to use a U.S. government line about my people. I let one side of my mouth rise with relief. “They weren’t taken against their will,” I said. “Good. We’ll keep looking, but I’m guessing they got an offer they couldn’t refuse.”

  “Yeah.” He breathed out the word. “Someone at the party offered them something they wanted. It didn’t have to be money either. Bliss and Rachael have been making noise about signing on for full-time service.” At my blank look, Troll said, “Becoming full-time blood-servants to one master rather than working for Katie. They got money. Katie makes sure they have excellent financial portfolios. So whatever they were offered, it had to be worth stiffing Katie. She’ll be”—he looked around the room to make sure there were no children present—“pissed. Sorry, Janie, but she will be.”

  I shrugged. Living with the Younger brothers was making me inured to mild profanities and minor vulgarities. “We’ll keep looking, but it goes to the back burner unless we learn something else.”

  “Yeah.” Troll stood and looked around, as if thinking. “One other thing. Probably not related. Two of the humans in the footage are blood-slaves looking for a permanent master. “They’re both sick today, along with four others in the city.”

  “Sick?” I asked. Blood-slaves, like blood-servants, didn’t get sick. Vamp blood kept them healthy, though it also kept them blood-drunk and passed around to be dinner and sex toys among vamps. “Sick how?”

  “Fever. Malaise. Leo sent them to his vamps for healing. But . . .”

  “But it’s weird,” I said.

  “Yeah. Weird.” Before I could ask, he added, “I’ll find out if they all went to the party.” Troll lumbered to the front door. “Later, y’all. And get this fixed.” He pointed to the covered window. “You already put Katie on the bad side of the New Orleans Vieux Carré Commission with your last construction and repairs.” He let himself out.

  I looked at Eli and explained, “Historical commission. I fixed the door last time and it didn’t match up perfectly and eventually Katie had to pay a fine, even though we matched the door to the oldest photos of the house.”

  “Last time?” he asked.

  “Long story.” I studied the list of names on the spiral paper Troll had stuffed into my hand. “He recognized four vamps and eight humans. We’ll talk to them if the girls don’t turn up soon. Any news on Molly?”

  “Just one thing,” the Kid said. “The mileage on Molly’s rental car. According to an online mileage calculator site, the distance from Asheville to Knoxville is eighty-two miles. She paid mileage on one hundred forty miles. Molly took a side trip before she turned in her car and disappeared.”

  “My wife doesn’t want to be found,” Evan said, sounding surprised and deeply injured.

  “Maybe the other things Molly mentioned in her note to you, the ones that needed putting to rights, are part of the extra mileage on the rental?”


  “She took care of something nearby, close to home,” Evan said. “Then she disappeared.”

  “Mileage,” Alex said. “Lemme work on that.”

  The Kid spent an hour trying to figure out where Molly might have driven to account for the extra miles, but it wasn’t happening. There were too many possibilities. Big Evan had stopped pacing and spent the time sitting on the couch, studying his hands. I didn’t know him as well as I knew Molly, but I knew he was thinking about how Molly had deceived him. I needed to keep him feeling positive, so I said, “I need to know everything about Molly. What she’s been doing, how she’s been feeling, who she’s been seeing, what spells she’s been working—”

  Big Evan’s head whipped to me. “I told you her magic’s been off. Plants dying around the house, her not being able to heal them. Her magic’s the biggest part of the problem,” he growled. “She hasn’t been working any spells. None. Not since Evangelina died.”

  CHAPTER 4

  A Touch of Tasteless Snark

  The couple had been having problems, something Evan had confessed to us after an hour of silent hand-staring. He didn’t know what had been going on with Molly.

  “She stopped talking to me,” he said, after lots of prodding. “She stopped sleeping with me. She stopped working in the garden. She stopped baking. She stopped . . . singing.” He looked at me, his face stricken. “That was the worst part. Molly always sang. Always. I never remember a time when she didn’t sing. Old songs from movies, or Broadway, or church. Children’s songs. Always singing. The house was silent for months.

  “The last time I saw her, she kissed me and said good-bye, just like always. There was nothing different that day, except for this look in her eyes. This . . .” His hands flapped as he searched for a phrase. “This determined happiness. I thought it meant she had worked through whatever was wrong. I had no idea she was leaving.” He broke down then, and turned his face away so we couldn’t see his misery.

  I had patted his broad back, as if that might help. It hadn’t. And I had no idea what to say to make it all better.

  Now, lying in the dark of my room, I had a feeling that there was a lot of stuff going on with Molly we didn’t know, and the secret stuff was the important stuff. Where had Molly gone on her fifty-to sixty-mile excursion? What had she needed to make right? Why had she said she was coming to see me and then not shown up? And most important, why had she stopped doing magic?

  Magic to witches was as natural as rain was to clouds, as natural as the cycle of the moon, as the motion of the tides, the flowing of rivers, the eruption of lava, the growth of plants, the movement of tidal winds. It was nature in all its glory and all its power, and once a witch began using her gift, denying it was said to be impossible, which meant that either Molly was practicing in private or something had happened to her magic. Something bad, or she would have told her husband. Beast padded to the front of my mind and lay down, staring into the dark. Her tail tip, thick and rounded, was twitching just a bit, showing her inner agitation at all the humans and witches in her house. But she had been mostly silent about it all day.

  I rolled over and stared out the window. The night and a cloak of fog had closed in the house, making it feel small, isolated, cocooned, and too full. I lay in the dark, wearing a long-sleeved tee and flannel pants for the snuggle effect, hearing people move through the house, little groans of floorboards, small squeaks of stairs, voices murmuring, the sound of breathing. Too many people. It reminded me of the children’s home where I was raised, and none of those memories were particularly wonderful. Unlike at the children’s home, these people were friends and family, but . . . I just wasn’t used to having them all here, all the beds full, the house busting at the seams.

  Like pack, Beast murmured deep inside. She wasn’t happy for reasons I didn’t fully understand. And if I would admit it, I wasn’t happy. I flopped back over, my hands behind my head, the covers up to my neck, and stared at the ceiling, the fan above me hidden in the shadows. But if I was honest, I was unhappy for reasons other than the people in my house. I was unhappy because of Molly.

  My best friend in the entire world was in trouble. She had told her husband she was coming to see me, though she had refused to see me or speak to me in months. Why? Why would she not just pick up the phone? Why lie? Why all the deception?

  Unless . . . Maybe Molly left that note, because she knew if she told Evan that she was coming to see me, he would follow . . . and she wanted him here? Why? My stomach muscles clenched as things started coalescing in the back of my brain, straining to take a form that I couldn’t yet make out. I slowly sat up in bed.

  Either she was throwing him off the trail or she really was coming to New Orleans. Yet she had disappeared. And that side trip? All of Molly’s friends and sisters lived in or around Asheville, North Carolina. Where had Molly gone for fifty or sixty miles? Why had she then turned in her car and disappeared? And how was she living without money? That was the real question. Sooo . . . Molly had a plan. And I needed to find out what it was. And where she was getting her money. And if she ever got to New Orleans. Or if something had changed her plans against her will.

  Taking the cell off my bedside table, I texted the Kid: Find where Molly’s mother lives. Name something like Bedelia Everhart. Check mileage. Start file. Whatever had happened afterward to change her plans, Molly’s original scheme had included me. That could be the only reason for using my name. So where was she?

  • • •

  I struggled awake in the night, feeling/hearing/knowing my door was opening. A faint scritch of wood on wood. The air moved differently over my face. The sound of the central heater was less muted, with a more hollow hum. And I smelled Angie Baby. “Aunt Jane? I’m scared.”

  “Come on in,” I whispered, lifting the covers.

  She slid into the bed, whispering, “Scootch over,” and she spooned into my tummy, pulling my arm across her. The smell of strawberry shampoo and witch child filled my nostrils. The bed, which had felt just fine only moments ago, felt wonderful now.

  Kit, Beast thought, purring happily.

  I was glad it was dark because I knew there was a silly, goofy grin on my face. “What about Little Evan? Don’t you think he’s scared?”

  Angie Baby sighed and settled deeper against me. “EJ’s brave. G’ night.”

  “Good night, Angie.”

  Moments later, I heard small feet pattering down the stairs, and EJ raced into the room through the open door, saying, “Me too! Me too!”

  The silly smile still on my face, I reached over and lifted him onto the bed. He crawled across me, pushed me off my own pillow, and flopped into the warm spot. I pulled the other pillow over and fluffed it until it fit my neck and face, EJ’s cold back nestled into the small of mine. I pulled Angie close and closed my eyes, more than satisfied. And Beast was still purring. Finally she was content.

  • • •

  Beast kicked out, swiping my mind awake. Instantly my hands found the children, safe and asleep against me. What—? My cell vibrated on the bedside table. By Beast’s alert interest, I knew it was Leo. I took the cell into my hand, holding it as I pushed Beast away from control of my mind. She wanted Leo, always had, and the binding only made it worse. I needed to make sure that Leo never learned about the other soul that lived inside me, nor the fact that she was bound to him.

  I eased out of the warm bed and padded into the living room, sitting on the couch and pulling the coverlet over me. I checked the time before I answered. Three eleven a.m. Like the middle of the day to a vamp. “Yellowrock.”

  “My Enforcer.” The words were a soft rumble of sound, a possessive vibration that pulsed on the binding and made Beast ready to roll over and offer him her belly. Leo was using that come-hither tone the really old ones use when they are seducing for dinner and sex, and Beast liked it. My usual defense to all that was a touch of tasteless snark.

  “Mornin’, Leo. ’Sup?”

  His hesitation was
slight, but noticeable, and I grinned in the dark until he said, “You will attend me before dawn. We have much to discuss.”

  It wasn’t a request, and because the MOC paid my quite hefty retainer, I had to obey. But I didn’t have to kowtow to him about it. “Okeydokey, Your Royal Fanghead. You want I should bring my shooter? My tech guy? Or just me?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment and I could almost see him trying to find a response to my smack. “You alone will be sufficient,” he said at last. “Shall we say half an hour?”

  “Sure.” I thumbed the cell off without waiting for his permission, which was totally satisfying. It wasn’t much rebellion by anyone’s standards, but it was all I could manage, and until I could find a way to break my binding, I wasn’t going anywhere, so I might as well get paid for it. Moving silently in the dark, I dressed in jeans, boots, a fleece tee, and a leather jacket against the wind chill. I tucked the covers around Angie, picked up EJ, and made my way up the stairs to Evan’s room, to tap on the door. When he opened it, he was wearing a robe, for which I was grateful, as I had once seen Big Evan in his version of sleepwear—boxers and not much else—and once was enough. He took in my clothes, seemed to reach a conclusion, and tilted his head in question.

  “His High and Mighty requested my presence before dawn. Will you let the wards down and put them back up?”

  Evan whistled a soft single note, and I felt an indistinct prickle of magics against my skin as the wards fell. “Kids were both in your bed?” he rumbled in his version of a whisper.

  “Yeah. They might be confused when they wake up.” I handed Evan his son, and watched with something like longing as he nestled the boy’s head on one shoulder and the sleep-limp body across his barrel chest. EJ’s arm came up and he hugged his father in his sleep, his lips making several smacking sounds as he adjusted his position. “I’ll bring up Angie. When you hear Bitsa start up in the street, you can reset the wards.”