“Update, Jocelyn,” Wrassler said, edging her inside. P. Shooter and I followed and closed up behind us, looking up the narrow, curving stairway to make sure no one stood at the top. P. Shooter moved into the room, already quartering it.
“They’re all in the bar,” Jocelyn said, “and I had drinks and food brought out.” She shuddered a breath that shook her to her toes—which were bare and painted and adorned with rings and anklets. Pretty feet. Thick, beautiful arms, skin the color of walnut, but soft and oiled to a sheen, large breasts, and no bra. Long flowing clothes—a washed silk salwar chemise in purples. “No one has been in or out of the house—so far as I can tell—since we closed up for the dawn. And I kept everyone out of Sonya’s room.”
I moved to the front windows and saw that they were locked and secure. P. Shooter looked at me and gestured to the back of the ground floor. I nodded and he left to check it out. I paused and sniffed, smelling fear and alcohol and blood and perfume. Humans and two, maybe three vamps. We moved into the main room, which was rectangular, the walls painted a pale mint color with darker green trim, the floor shrimp-toned tile, and the coffered ceilings twelve feet tall. Leather sofas were in one area with a merrily burning gas fire in the corner. The bar ran along the windowless right-side wall for twelve feet or so, and was stocked with enough liquor to satisfy a platoon of soldiers on leave for a month. Across from it was a library with books and shelves and an architectural-style desk. A long table with upholstered chairs marked the dining area. The back of the building smelled of cooking and a bathroom and old plumbing. P. Shooter disappeared into the rooms there.
Incense was burning, patchouli, I thought, in two burners, trying to mask the odor of marijuana. I didn’t smile, but it was a close thing.
I counted the people sitting curled up together like puppies needing comfort on the sofas and chairs, coming up with eleven. Because of the incense, I couldn’t tell by the smell, but two were vamp-pale. Vamps each needed a minimum of three humans to feed from, which totaled up at three humans apiece. The lair was running on a skeleton feeding crew. Which was funny. Sorta.
“Where . . .” Are her ashes? Where did she die? No. Wrong. “Ummm . . .” I floundered.
“All the bedrooms are upstairs,” Jocelyn said, wiping her nose with a wrist. “Blood-servants are on the second floor. Sonya’s, Liam’s, and Vivien’s are on the top floor.” She sniffed. “Sonya’s is the middle room.”
Wrassler jerked his head to me, indicating I was to check out the upstairs. I nodded back and headed up the narrow, curving stairs by the front door. Pulling back the slide, I off-safetied, my trigger finger off the trigger, along the side of the weapon. I paused at the top of the stairs, feeling P. Shooter coming up behind me, and letting my eyes adjust, hearing my breathing, and Shooter’s, slow and steady. Smelling everything. More blood and sex and humans and vamps and alcohol and more marijuana. Lots of marijuana, the smell overpowering all the others. In the fumes of dope, I could detect everything, but not parse the scents into the finer smells, like individuals and their previous locations. The kids had been partying.
“Downstairs?” I asked Shooter, sotto voce.
“Everything secure, all locked up for the day,” he murmured. He gave me the hand signal for I’ll go right and moved out. Using basic paramilitary procedures and hand signals, Shooter and I divided the place up, me taking the left half of the second floor. The rooms were tiny, like dorms that had been halved. They were cramped and messy, and the bathrooms were worse. There were only two baths on the second floor, one on the ground floor, for the nine messy humans. And no place for a killer to hide.
P. Shooter and I headed up the stairs to the top floor. Here there were three matching suites, each done up like a swanky hotel, lots of creamy Egyptian cotton, ebony king-sized four-poster beds, drapery that puddled on the black hardwood floors, the rare rug in large blocks of bright color, similar bright pillows everywhere. Squishy tan oversized armchairs and ottomans. The three baths were long and linear, done in white marble and black tile, everything sparse and very similar. Closets were free of hiding humans. Windows were actually doors, but all were locked and secured. Shooter and I met in the middle room.
In front of a long, beveled mirror on a stand was a heap of clothing. Tangled in the orange, pink, and shrimp floral dress were tiny gold sandals, two bracelets, a watch, a necklace, two earrings, and a heap of ash. It was brownish and white with granules of red. The brown for flesh, the white for bone, the red for blood, I guessed. I breathed in and out. Nothing had burned here. Nothing had bled here except for humans, and that some time ago. I smelled no magic, at least not over the mixed vamp/blood/weed/sex smells, already mixing with the patchouli rising from the bottom floor.
I knelt and sniffed again, short bursts of breath, my mouth open, the air scudding across my tongue and throat with a faint scree of sound. No. Nothing had burned. No smell of cremated human or roasted vamp. But the ash itself smelled like vamp—a thick and wiry smell that reminded me of cactus and hot sand. Something had turned a female vamp into an ash heap.
I pulled my cell and took pics of everything. When I was done, I pulled a wood stake and stirred the ashes. No bones. No fragments. Weird. I asked Shooter, “What’s protocol on this? Do I call the cops?”
He frowned, and I realized that he was one of twins from the council HQ, blond and lean and sorta scary looking now that I saw him armed. I hadn’t recognized him because his ponytail was tucked down inside the collar of his sweater, to keep an opponent from using it like a handle to control him, just as I had done with my own hair.
“The primo’s call. Except the primo’s new and won’t know, will she?”
“Wrassler’s call, then,” I stated, and Shooter grinned. “What?”
“Maybe I’ll have a nickname someday.” He holstered his gun.
“P. Shooter. P for Pellissier.”
“Yeah?” He nodded, thinking, securing all his weapons without looking at them, by muscle memory alone. “Can we drop the P? I haven’t used a pea shooter since . . . ever. And it sounds kinda wimpy.” He grinned again, displaying perfect white teeth, blue eyes bright and clear. He was pretty, buff, and deadly. My kinda man. If he hadn’t also been a human-shaped bag of vamp food. Ick.
I grinned back at him. “Sure. Let’s go talk to Wrassler.”
Wrassler and Eli were in a corner of the main room, talking softly. Someone had turned on the fifty-inch TV to a home shopping network. The models were posing in tummy-shaping underclothing and long thigh-slimming leggings. Which looked really hot and uncomfortable. I joined the men while Shooter patrolled the ground floor again, his weapon back in his hands.
“Ash,” I said softly.
Wrassler thumbed through his cell and held up a pic of some clothes and ashes with the odd brown, white, and red coloring. Same theory, different scene.
“Yeah. Like that,” I said. “I see no way that the vamp—ire,” I added, “was turned into ashes. No burn smell, no magic smell, no easy way in or out, no weapons found. Do we call the police?”
“No. Leo has people working on it. I’ll collect the ashes. Thanks.” He heaved a breath and ran his eyes over the people in the seating area. They had begun to stand, stretch, and move toward us. It was time for Wrassler to give them the bad news that their expressions suggested they were already expecting. And time for Eli and me to head home. Or scurry away before the predictable emotional breakdowns, take your pick.
• • •
We got home just after dawn and I fell into bed, exhausted, bleary-eyed, my head stuffed full of vamp business. It was only on the edge of sleep that I realized that Leo hadn’t really talked to me about the witches or their disappearances or Molly or Bliss or Rachael or any of the things I had needed to discuss. He had given me a hint and changed the subject before I realized it. “Dang,” I mumbled into my pillow. “He did it again.” But he had given me one thing I hadn’t had before—the names of Shoffru’s ships, which offered me a line of research.