Grégoire took a breath he didn’t need and blew it out in a sound that was all French, a pah of disgust. “Leo still grieves. Perhaps it is wise to let sleeping dogs lie, as you Americans say.” He shifted his head on the pillow and smiled. “I moved my right big toe. I can feel the sheets.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “Because I have to ask about your Mithran family.” Grégoire frowned, the expression looking hard and remote and wrong on his young face. I kept my eyes on the knife in his hand. I could shift and heal from most wounds, but a poisoned blade might have unexpected consequences. “Is there something here in the Council Chambers that Reach might have discovered? Something that Satan’s Three might want?”

Grégoire’s eyes shifted slightly before meeting mine. If I hadn’t been living with Mr. Minimalist in all things emotional, I might have missed it. I’d have to remember to thank Eli. “What does Leo have that they might want?” I whispered.

“Should I speak of my master’s secrets? Of the weapons that keep us safe?” he asked. “I have not forgotten that you once saved my life and my clan. For this, I will not kill you. I will think on what you seek to learn and the dark things hidden here.”

I frowned, but I’d heard that tone in vamps’ voices before. I was about to be kicked out. Before he could, I said, “Thank you for the box of papers.”

Grégoire didn’t reply. “If you will not feed me, you are dismissed. And tell the next blood-servant to enter.” Grégoire turned his head, but he didn’t let go of the knife he still held. I stood and left the boudoir, leaving the door open for Katie, who looked me over with cool disdain as she entered. Or rather, she looked me over the way she might something icky she found on the bottom of her shoe.

My attempts to see Leo were thwarted by Derek himself, standing in front of Leo’s door. “Per the MOC. You can come back at dusk,” the former marine said. “Not before.” And from the look on his face, Derek was ready and willing to enforce the edict: it wasn’t worth fighting for. So I headed out.

It was two hours after dawn when I finally made it back to my house, and in through the door on the back porch. The front was still sealed off with crime scene tape, and if I’d been someone not connected to the household of the Blood Master of the City, I’d be in a hotel. I needed to sleep, but my body was too wired, and my mind was too busy making lists of things I needed to do. Eli headed upstairs to repack his gobag and then to crash for an hour or two. Even Uncle Sam’s finest needed to sleep sometime.

I was brewing a pot of tea when my cell rang with a familiar local number and I answered it with the name of my business, just in case it wasn’t who I thought it might be. “Yellowrock Securities.”

“Jodi here.”

I smiled into the cell. “Long time, no see.”

“Yeah, well, if you’d keep people from leaving bombs on your doorstep, you might get some social time.”

“Ouch. Did you catch that?”

“I got dragged into the paperwork, liaison, and media side of things. Thanks in great part to the general knowledge at NOPD that I know you.”

Jodi was the head of the woo-woo department, working to solve new and cold paranormal cases. She had been given the promotion as a way to punish her for knowing the wrong people, supernatural people, but it hadn’t worked out quite the way her superiors expected. Instead of sitting forever in her basement cubicle, Jodi had been thrust into cases with the vamps and the three-initial law enforcement departments. The ATF, the DEA, the FBI, and the longer acronym, PsyLED, to name a few. Jodi was making waves in state and national law enforcement and rubbing elbows with the rich and fangy. She now had media power, enough that her superiors’ intent to ruin her career had backfired. She was fast-tracking up toward a glass ceiling that the family of known witches had never made before, or at least not in Louisiana law enforcement.

“So what did they discover about my bomber?” I asked, hoping she’d share things most victims didn’t have access to.

“He’s had a long-running career. Like well over thirty years. His fingerprints were found through Interpol, on another bomb in Russia.”

“Yeah, about that timeline. I may have an enemy or three in town. Some who were alive four hundred years ago,” I said. “They go by the names of Peregrinus, Batildis, and the Devil. The vamps call them Satan’s Three.”

Jodi cursed softly under her breath.

“My feelings exactly. They have to be really bad to get such cute nicknames among vamps. Do some checking on them, would you? The vamps are children of a vamp named François Le Bâtard. You may have something in your files that I don’t. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. Ummm. Totally in a platonic way,” I said.

“That rings a bell somewhere. Later.” Jodi disconnected.

I ended the call on my end and took the metal box of ancient papers gifted to me by Grégoire to the kitchen table, and started a good strong black tea. When I had it steeping, I opened the box.

The scent of age wafted up from the papers, to mix with the bouquet of George’s flowers. Pollen and catnip blended with the scents of old inks, old heavy-cloth paper, old flax paper, old vellum, and older papyrus, each in fancy manila folders, probably made of acid-free paper to protect the contents. I lifted out the topmost file and opened it, without touching the pages within. The writing on the loose pages inside was an ancient script with lots of flourishes and sweeps, like most vamp calligraphy, but more spidery and uncertain. I thought it might be Latin. Or an archaic version of one the Romance Languages. Spanish? Italian?

I heard a soft knock at the side door and knew it was Bruiser. Just knew. I set down the file. Swiveled in my seat and stared at the side door, into the shadows there. I walked to the door, my slippered feet silent on the wood floors.

I placed a hand on the door, not sure I wanted to open it. Not sure why I wouldn’t open it—except fear. Am not afraid, Beast thought, rising up in my mind. Want. Want mate. I opened the door, letting in the heated morning light, and looked up into Bruiser’s brown eyes, studying him. He studied me back, his expression both calm and captivating, a warm snare of possibility. Beast, and something else, something of myself, moved deep within me, questing. Want this one, Beast thought at me. Strong, good mate. She sent claws into my mind, just pinpricks, for now, and I held her back.