I nodded, but current tribal politics didn’t help me.

“Each community is governed by its own tribal council and advised by their respective Council of Elders,” uni lisi said. “That old man, he talk about thing he see in the bayou and the swamps. Him a member of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band, but there the Isle de Jean Charles Band, and the Bayou Lafourche Band too.”

“All three bands are ancestrally related. Mama was being courted by a leader of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band, but he was killed trying to save a family during Hurricane Rita. That’s the old man she’s talking about.”

“Him too old for me anyway. I need me a young man.” Uni lisi cackled with glee.

“Was there any specific place where he saw the creatures?” I asked.

“Nah.” Uni lisi waved her hand in the air as if it was all unimportant. “He seen them when he smoking wacky weed. He a crazy old man.”

Aggie added, “He did say once that the Uktena tried to talk to him. That his ancestor killed one with a steel knife and drank its blood, and that it made him strong. But he didn’t say where any of this happened.”

“How about a Cherokee flood story?” I asked.

“There a silly story about a dog who tell a man to build a raft, and then that dog, he tell the man to throw him into the water to kill him. Stupid dog, he was. Then the flood came and the man on the raft lived but all the other peoples were just a pile of bones.”

“Their spirits danced,” Aggie said, looking troubled. “It sounded like the pile of their bones dancing. Mama’s beau said he heard it once.” She nodded and sipped her tea, her eyes far away, in the past of the old stories. When she spoke again, she sounded uneasy. “Like a pile of bones . . . dancing. I always hated that image.”

Uni lisi waved her hand again. “Some stories silly. This one silly. You don’ be unhappy about this silly story or about that old man. That a long time ago.” But her voice no longer sounded like the story was silly, or that she had stopped grieving for her old man.

Out front I heard a truck turn into the cul-de-sac. Truck lights swept the property as it went around my SUV and circled the small turn-around of the cul-de-sac. I slipped out and determined it was indeed a power company truck, and its diesel engine was idling as a man with a powerful flashlight stood beneath the pole, looking up at the damage, muttering imprecations about kids these days. I returned to the One Feathers’ back porch, offered my thanks, and said my good-byes. I slipped out and to my SUV. Checked my GPS.

I called Derek and asked, “If I give you a GPS, can you send a guy to sit in a tree and keep an eye on two old ladies? Like you’re doing with Leo’s clan home property? I can pay.”

“Sure, Legs. I’ll send Blue Voodoo. He hunts. Sitting in a tree will be like a day off with pay for him.”

I gave Derek the GPS and the address, described the layout, and left it to Derek and Blue Voodoo. I didn’t know the guy well, but he was one of Derek’s longtime men. The One Feathers would be safe from anyone targeting my friends to get at me.

Without turning on my lights, I started the engine and backed out of the street. Where would a tribal elder have heard a sound in the bayou, a sound like bones dancing?

I was no closer to discovering anything, spinning my wheels. But something about dancing bones sounded important. And sad.

With the night off, I could have changed and let Beast hunt, but it felt too dangerous to shape-shift and play. Too much was going wrong and I had too little information. And yet, the arcenciel had gray energies like the ones where I changed form. So . . . maybe it wasn’t play. Maybe it would be research. I didn’t know but I decided to stay human, for now.

I was still on the west side of the river when I saw an SUV like the ones I’d seen before, maybe tailing me, though this one was grayish in the night, not black. I asked my cell to dial the Kid, and when he answered, I said, “You remember the license plates Eli and I got you for the black SUVs that were tailing us?” I knew the Kid would remember, so I didn’t wait for an answer. The question was rhetorical. “What did they come back as?”

“Local leases. Both came back to a Paul Reaver, not Revere, but Reaver.”

“Fake name?” I asked, as I slowed, letting the vehicle close the gap on me.

“Probably, but the credit card is good, so whoever created the ID did a good job. The cars have GPS, which I got, and I’ve been following them. Both are currently near the corner of Beryl Street and Jewel Street, hear Harlequin Park. Eli rode by, talked to a neighbor who says they are nice people. Nice house. Rental. You need me to send you a photo?”

The tail vehicle pulled up fast and its lights hit my mirrors, blinding me. My heart rate sped and I reached to the passenger seat and pulled a nine-mil from the thigh holster. “Is there another car rented under the same name?”

“No. I checked. Why?”

The SUV took that moment to pull around me and roar off. It was full of people and was blasting some heavy bass beat into the night and trailing odors of weed and booze. Teenaged rockers, full of hormones. I let the tension drain away, even as I memorized the license plate. “No,” I said, hearing the relief in my voice. “But just for grins, run this plate.” I gave him the number. “And is Soul there?”

“She went out about half an hour ago.”

“I’ll get back to you.” I ended the call and wondered how much of what I was seeing and worrying about was nothing and how much was various supernatural beings hiding things from me. Maybe it was time to beard the lion in her den.

Pulling over, I parked in the shadow of an abandoned warehouse, the front of the vehicle snugged up against the building. There were lots of warehouses up and down the Mississippi, some old and fancy with intricate brickwork and some thrown together out of metal and steel. This was a newer, and therefore uglier one, with tall grasses growing up in cracked concrete and birds flying through broken glass in the ventilation windows high off the ground. There were no security cameras that I could I see, and I was far enough off the road so that traffic cams would have a hard time picking anything up, if there even was a traffic cam on the isolated road.

I rolled down the window and sniffed the night air, smelling rats and feral cats and exhaust. A far-off skunk. Dead fish. Water. No people had been here recently. I made sure that the thigh holster Bruiser had provided was secure on the passenger seat beside me. Loosened both nine-mils and chambered a round in each. Standard ammo, not silver. It would likely be rednecks or gangbangers, not supernats, who would bother me out here.