Black Arts

  “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 lin
e of research.

  • • •

  I rolled over at noon after too little sleep but with my brain whirling too fast to find dreams again. I rose, stretched, showered, and dressed in casual clothes and warm socks, braiding my hair into multiple braids and twisting them up into an intricate bun that made it look as if I had much thicker hair. Silver stakes kept it all in place. It felt weird to be able to do this on my own. Christie, one of Katie’s girls, had taught me how to do the fancy bun. She had taught me how to put on makeup too, but I was always much more sparing than the dominatrix.

  I laid my night’s work clothes out on the bed, going for the side-zippered pants I had picked up at HQ the night before, with a slim, tailored white shirt, black vest, and black jacket. I needed to replace my black boots, and my dancing shoes were showing their age, but I ran a damp rag over my old black dancing shoes, the ones with the sturdy heel and the strap over the instep, and set them at the foot of the bed. There was nothing fancy about my ensemble, more useful and serviceable than swank, though the fabrics were top-of-the-line.

  After doing some online banking, I traced the names of the ships Leo had given me, the Ring Leader and the Lady’s Virtue. Shoffru and a cohort had captained both pirate vessels, and also had owned property on the island of Saint Domingue. I sat back, staring at the screen of my laptop, feeling a frisson of knowing, of being absolutely certain that I had found something important, but having no clue what it was. I cross-referenced notes from other cases, and when I found it, I was elated and horrified in equal measure.

  The island had been home of the Damours, vamps I had killed during the black magic ceremony that had as the centerpiece the sacrificial deaths of witch children. The Damours who were part and parcel of Adrianna and why she wanted to kill me.

  Bruiser had given me a history on the Damours’ blood-family, which I had transcribed into truncated notes. I opened that file and read Island of Saint Domingue: vamps’ haven. Clans in strict social/political society based on race/wealth. White vamps on top, vampyres du couleur libre—free vampires of color (also landowners and slave owners)—in middle, slaves at bottom: workers, sex toys, blood meals. Slaves treated barbarously.

  The history lesson all came back. The slaves had wanted freedom. Duh. The vampyres du couleur clans had little political power because of their race, and they wanted equality with the white vampires. The whites wanted status quo. Some, both white and mixed race, had the witch gene and practiced blood magic, dark rites. Some with the witch gene never quite regained sanity, even after they passed the devoveo state and were unchained. I had read accounts of the atrocities the island’s fangheads practiced. Their cruelty was legendary.

  There had been a vamp of color, François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture. He had turned some of the discontented and helped plot one of the major uprisings. It had taken years, and it was brutal, on both sides. Three of the surviving vampire clans, including some who practiced blood magic, came to Louisiana in 1791, upsetting the local political scene.

  They had traveled on Shoffru’s boats, the Ring Leader and the Lady’s Virtue. Had the Damours turned Jack? Was he a vamp when he worked with Lafitte? So what did an old vamp want with working girls? Was it possible that he had been friends with the Damours and wanted revenge for their deaths? If so, how had he figured out that I had helped kill them? Nothing made sense. Nothing connected. Nothing.

  I checked my e-mail, and I saw notes from Eli and the Kid. Eli had talked to some of the waitstaff at Guilbeau’s and discovered who had given the party, the one from which Bliss and Rachael had left and then vanished. The host’s name was unknown, definitely not a local vamp, and not a familiar local blood-servant either. I set him and the Kid to working on IDing him. Or her. It was hard to know gender with a name like Bancym M’lareil, and there was nothing in a quick Internet search.

  The Kid had info on the local vamps and humans that Troll had ID’d, on the security footage leaving the party. Troll had also sent the Kid a text that the other humans who had gotten sick had all attended the vamp party in Guilbeau’s. Something had happened at the party that had made humans sick, but it wasn’t like the vamp plague that had attacked both vamps and the humans they fed from. And I still didn’t know how that related to the girls disappearing. Unless they were sick somewhere and not able to call for help? We had also discovered that the ashed-to-death vamps had attended the party. Something had happened at the party, and I needed to know what.

  None of the people on the security footage had anything against Katie, Leo, or me, so far as Alex had been able to detect, so I created a note asking about info on the night in question—a formal one for the vamps and a much more casual note for the humans. But I signed both kinds of notes “The Enforcer, Jane Yellowrock.” I cross-referenced my files for the vamps and humans who had e-mail addys and sent these notes out right away, then created printed notes for the Luddites and addressed them for snail mail. I really wanted to make an in-person visit while wearing enough weapons to start a small war, but there were too many names on the list to risk that. And even if I managed to find the right lair and locate the girls, a frontal assault would likely get them killed. When I left my room, I discovered a gift-wrapped box outside my door—gold foil paper with a bloodred ribbon. I picked it up and carried it to the front room, holding it up in question. Without looking up from his tablets, the Kid said, “Delivery. Special messenger. Card on the side.”

  And so there was—in a matching gold envelope. I pulled the card free and read the fancy old-fashioned script, For my Enforcer. To replace that which you lost in my service. Leo.

  I thought about refusing—I always thought about refusing Leo’s prezzies. But he considered it an obligation to replace things lost in his service, and who was I to keep him from giving me what he thought was just compensation? Besides, he always gave totally superlative top-of-the-line gifts. I curled on the couch between the children—who were watching a movie, natch—and unwrapped the box. On the other side of the paper was a Lucchese boot box. From the size and weight it was boots, not mules or ankle boots or shoes. Delayed gratification was best, but I didn’t have the constitution for that crap.

  I opened the box and peeled back the paper to reveal boots. Black leather with green leaves and gold mountain lions embossed on the shafts. These were hand-constructed, hand-tooled, hand-stitched, hand-everything Lucchese Classics, and they went for around three thousand bucks a pair. Cooing like some kind of girly girl, I lifted them out, the goat leather supple and softer than any piece of leather had any right to be. I removed the stuffing paper from the shafts and slid the boots on. “Holy Pan-hide, Batman,” I whispered. They fit perfectly. I was sure I’d never take them off again.

  Still wearing the boots, I curled on the couch, half dozing, Angie Baby on my lap, and EJ now on the floor making “Bhupppp” noises with his lips as he pushed a toy truck around the floor. The Disney movie was playing softly. The Truebloods had a huge collection of kiddie movies.

  I must have slept because when I nodded awake again, the Kid was no longer alone working at his table in the corner, running electronic searches. He now had a student. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes to make sure I was seeing what my eyes said I was seeing. Tia was a working girl from Katie’s and she was currently bent over Alex’s shoulder, listening to him talk computer. She was also making the Kid crazy, but that was another story.

  Alex looked up and said, “Tia volunteered to babysit.”

  “For the honor of computer lessons,” Tia finished, smiling coyly. Yeah, she knew what she was doing to the Kid. But he was nineteen and able to send her away if he wanted to. And they both knew his brother’s rules. No visits with any of Katie’s Ladies until Alex was twenty-one.

  “Big Evan is driving around the city, listening for Molly,” the Kid said.

  Weird things happened when I took naps, even unexpected naps.

  The side door opened, rousing me, fully, and Big Evan came in. He looked worn and wan and de
jected. Pretty much how I felt. “Anything?” I asked, realizing that I had been dozing with my mouth open. I checked my lips for drool and thankfully found none. I just hoped the Kid hadn’t taken a photo.

  “No. I drove all over the city, but I couldn’t pick up anything. You?”

  “Leo said a lot of nothing last night, but claims he doesn’t know where Mol is. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have her.”

  Evan shook his head and slumped up the stairs, even his footsteps sounding dejected.

  Angie turned in my lap and craned her face up at me. “Daddy’s worried about Mama.”

  My heart flipped over. How did I answer this? “I know, honey.”

  “Mama’s coming back. Right?”

  I forced the horror and fear and worry down deep inside. I had made promises to my godchild before and been able to keep them, but this time . . . This time felt different. “I’m—” I stopped, the words strangling. “I’m searching for her,” I managed. “I’m trying to find her.”

  “Good.” Angelina pulled Ka Navista from the crack in the couch and tucked the doll into the crook of her arm. The doll looked frazzled and tattered and much loved, the long black hair tangled. To the doll she said, “My aunt Jane can do anything.” My heart turned over and went flat, as if the life had been sucked out of me. I looked away and batted my eyes to keep the tears away.

  “I’ll do my very, very, very best,” I whispered.

  Beast butted my soul with her head. Will find Molly kit-mother. Will kill ones who took her. She flexed her claws into me; the pain shocked the fear and worry away.

  Okay. Yeah. We’ll find Molly, I thought back, feeling inexplicably better.

  “We’re gonna have company.” Angie crawled from my lap and sat in the corner of the couch, watching the doll with determined, hopeful eyes.

  And then I heard the bike. It had the high-pitched whine of a Kawasaki. And it was heading our way. Despite my lingering worry and pain, heat bloomed from my middle, flamed up my torso, and folded itself over my shoulders while settling low in my abdomen. It was like being embraced by a big-cat, as Beast’s interest fluctuated and changed.