I hadn’t shown Jodi the Damours’ lair. After my raid and the silent alarm went off, a neighbor called the cops, after seeing vehicles take off with speed, and a motorcycle ridden off by a woman. The uniforms first on the scene had called the NOPD cops in charge of the paranormal cases, meaning my former boyfriend Rick LaFleur and Jodi. Rick had been okay with it all, but it had taken Jodi a while to get past the fact that she hadn’t been part of the team entering the lair.
The Damours blood family had fallen into disgrace. They’d been stealing witch children and killing them in black magic ceremonies. Blood magic. Which Jodi knew, as she had been cop-on-scene when I killed the Damours. “Leo had to have known something was up with them, but he hadn’t gone in and cleaned house. Until I showed up. And I don’t know why they got a free ride, not yet.” I was giving all my secrets away tonight, it seemed. I sighed and laced my fingers together, trying to look nonthreatening, which was hard with all the weapons I was carrying. Weapons Jodi had let me keep, which was a huge sign of trust in a cop.
Carefully, I said, “Our killer vamp? Has to be tied in with Adrianna. And that could mean tied in with the Damours. But I can’t smell him—the killer vamp. Actually, I don’t get a real sense of gender, which is odd. The only thing I can tell you with any degree of certainty is it wasn’t Adrianna herself. And I can’t tell Leo, because he let the Damours’ work unrestrained in his city.”
“Keeping secrets from the MOC in his own council house,” Jodi said, her tone wry and unamused. “Better you than me.”
• • •
I staggered out of the vamp council’s HQ just before dawn, still in my sock feet. I hadn’t seen Leo. I hadn’t discovered what the humans might know, the ones who had attacked my house. I didn’t even know where they were being held. Once Jodi showed up, I had been denied all access. It was her case and she was making sure I knew it. And to cap off my wonderful—not—night, all the way home I kept feeling as if someone was watching me, though I took three unexpected turns and never saw anyone. I was exhausted and worn and growing paranoid and wanted only to sleep.
But that wasn’t to be. The Kid had found something and was sitting at the kitchen table when I entered, the smell of espresso and strong, hot black tea rich on the air. I didn’t even ask. I just poured a megamug, added three spoonfuls of sugar, and topped it off with most of a container of Cool Whip. I sat at the table with a quiet groan and said, “Tell me.”
“You do know that mug is for soup, right?” Alex asked.
“Yeah?” I looked at the mug and said, “Hughn.” And drank. The black China tea hit my taste buds and my bloodstream at the same time. Caffeine and sugar are two drugs that have some effect on skinwalkers, and some days I crave the lift they give me just like a human does.
“And you do know you left your boots somewhere?”
“I noticed. I also noticed I ruined a perfectly good pair of socks.” I lifted my foot and let him see the hole in the bottom. “I’m listening,” I said, aware that they were the same words Jodi had said to me not long ago.
The Kid turned his screen to me. On it was typed I drilled into a bank’s security cameras. I got some shots of Bliss and Rachael.
I knew instantly that we weren’t speaking aloud because we had an air witch on the premises—and because hacking into a bank’s system was illegal, and a surefire way for the Kid to break his parole. And if Eli was listening, we were so screwed. I sniffed, placing Eli by scent. He was upstairs. I nodded for the Kid to continue.
The screen disappeared. Behind it was a different screen, one with a fuzzy image on it. It was Bliss, her black hair and very fair skin in shocking contrast. Beside her sat a more fuzzy image of Rachael, her head tilted back, her eyes closed in what looked to be desire, but was more likely a bad case of blood-drunkenness. Over her, obscuring the lower part of Rachael’s face and upper body, was another head. From its position I gathered that the vamp was drinking deeply from Rachael’s jugular. The vamp had red hair, though not curly—just long and flowing. “Adrianna?” I murmured the question. But she still had curly hair when she attacked the house. So I was betting no. Some other redheaded vamp.
The Kid shook his head. He didn’t know either.
“Any better shots?”
He gave me a waffling motion with his hand and punched a button. From another angle I could make out a portion of a face, but it was blurry. The nose was distinctive, maybe a bit too long, a tad too pointed for perfect beauty, which was odd for vamps. They usually only turned the physically perfect—no matter how mentally ill the human in question might be. I pointed to the nose and then drew my fingers along my own and pulled them together and out as if elongating my nose. The Kid shrugged and held up a finger to the side of his nostril, as if showing me that it could be something else and the poor quality of the shots might be involved in creating an effect that nature hadn’t provided. So the photo was no help. Ducky.
The man beside her seemed delicate, his hair spiky, his face in shadow. Only the large nose ring and spiky hair set him apart.
Alex hit another button and a different car appeared on the screen. He typed out This car was behind them. Following, as per three different traffic cameras and the bank camera.
“Shadowing or tailing?” I whispered. There was a big difference. Shadowing might mean the lead car knew they were there and they were all working together. Tailing meant two forces in opposition.
Tailing, the Kid typed. “Way back. Can’t tell that the lead car knew.” He punched a button and a different shot of the second car came up. It showed a quarter shot of a man’s head and part of his jaw—black hair, black beard, the kind that lines the edge of the jaw and usually moves up beside his mouth to form a goatee. His jaw was strong and sculpted, his chin might have been square, and something glinted gold on his neck. Dangling earring? If so it was a big one. Vamp? Not likely. Most male vamps didn’t wear big honking hoops.
How many vamps have beards? I typed into his tablet. How many blood-servants? Thinking about the limo from out of state, I added at the bottom How many Texans?
Lots, he typed back. Thirteen local fangheads scanned in already, no Texans. I’ll try to do facial matching. At my questioning look he said aloud, “Like facial recog programs, but this one matches parts of a photo with other known photos.” He hit a key and a shot came up. It was from the other side of the street and it took me a moment to realign my brain with the car’s spatial reality. I was looking at the tail car from the other side. Sitting at the passenger window in the backseat was a vamp. The one I’d killed earlier this evening. The now true-dead vamp who had attacked my freebie house had been tailing the vamp who drove off with Katie’s missing girls, which made no sense at all. Another key punch brought up the driver of the second car. Below his face, the Kid typed Macon Brown. Human. Blood-slave, not -servant, this info per your vamp census last year.
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.