Brandon said, “In the middle of the lightning storm from one of Dante’s circles of hell, a car pulled up and six unknowns, male, jumped out and attacked the movers. Fists. Then blades. Before we could intervene, it escalated into gunfire. We got the movers under cover, but a neighbor had already called NOPD. Since it involved gunfire and was in an upscale part of the city, law enforcement showed up quickly. At which point it appeared that the gunmen would turn on the officers.”

“We stopped them,” Brian said. “I assume Alex will have acquired the security footage.”

Which I couldn’t wait to see. “Okay. Keep us informed,” I said.

I wandered through the ground floor of the house, and on the way out, I passed the mural on the wall, the one I had seen before, that attracted my attention on so many levels. I stopped to study it. Closely. More intently than ever. I realized that one of the vamps in the mural had dog fangs. Which Bruiser had to know. “Onorios,” I said, using my Enforcer tone. “This blood-family with dog fangs. Details.”

Bruiser stepped up on my left, one twin on my right, the other behind me. Onorio scents and heat enveloped me. “Bouvier,” the twin from behind said. His tone suggested that I should know and remember this already. Things were ticking in the back of my brain but not fast enough.

“Remind me,” I said.

Brandon, to my side, pointed. “Rousseau and his favorites, Elena and Isabel.” Rousseau was the formal way to refer to a clan head, though Rousseau Clan had been disbanded during the vamp war not long after I got here. His fingers moved. “Desmarais with his Joseph, Louis, and Alene.” The first names indicated a blood-servant or much lesser scion; the vamps were obvious by the fangy display.

Brian leaned over me, his body touching my spine. “Laurent with her favorites, Elizabeth and Freeman.” Freeman was black and gorgeous and I had little doubt why he was both free and a favorite. “Renee with his master, St. Martin.” He went quiet. St. Martin was associated with the Damours blood-family, the family of witch-vampires I had helped to kill. They had been powerful and evil and dangerous. And their red motes of power were still trapped inside me.

“Bouvier with Ka Nvista.”

The vamp master and Bouvier clan head at the time had dog fangs, which I hadn’t noted before. His blood-servant was Cherokee, her name meaning dogwood. She had yellow eyes like mine and she was likely a skinwalker, though no one who was alive both then and now had ever remarked on any similarity in our scents. She was beautiful, with long, braided black hair and lost eyes. Her master would have savaged her beautiful throat with the double fangs. “Bouvier and the Damours. Did they hang together back in the day?”

“Yes,” Brian said. “They did. As did other masters and scions from time to time. The Damours were a sensual and sybaritic family. They attracted many of the restless young, the dissolute elder, and the bored.” He didn’t sound particularly approving, which relieved me in ways I didn’t take time to look at too closely.

I pulled my cell and texted the Kid to go through the old records databases to look for all witch/vamps who used to hang with the Damours and see how common the dog-fanged vamps were among the group. But Alex had beat me to it, texting back, I started that research the moment the first dog-fanged revenant appeared.

Why? I typed back.

Because everything else bad in this fuc—messed-up city traces back to the Damours, so why not this too?”

He typed that so I could see his near-cussing. But he was right, and maybe he was more clearheaded than I was right now. Vamps were long-lived and had different views of future plans, potential goals, and multiple methodologies. They could harbor vengeance in their hearts for centuries before they enacted it against an enemy. It was called the long view.

Do any of Leo’s current scions have dog fangs? I typed back.

Checking. A moment later he typed back, No.

I pocketed the cell beneath my now mostly dry poncho and said to the three Onorios, “Thanks. I have things to think about.” They all stepped back, in synchrony, which felt weird, and created a passage out the front door. Just before I reached the door, I turned, retrieved the cell, and stepped back to take a couple of dozen photos, using several different filters, just in case I needed to reference it later. I sent them to Alex’s and my own e-mail addy and text number. Then I pocketed the cell again and left the house. Bruiser waited for me at the limo, holding the door open against the fine, misty rain, but when I slid in, he didn’t follow.

“Shemmy will take you home,” he said. “I need to be here at dusk with the twins and that’s only two hours away. You haven’t eaten sufficiently. I smell your hunger. Stop for something to eat. Cochon’s maybe.”

“Shemmy?”

“His father was Jimmy and his mother was Sheba. Not the queen.” His lips curled up slightly at beating me to the question.

“Shemmy it is. Does Shemmy have any special gifts, training, or abilities?”

“Of course. Your second insisted.”

My second was Eli. “Good to know. Later, then.”

“Later, love.” He closed the door, leaving me in a state of bemusement. He was British, so calling me love was like Eli calling me Babe. Inconsequential. But it felt like more, as if he was getting closer and closer to the three little words. No one had ever said them to me. No one. Unless I counted the claiming by my werecat ex. But not love. Not ever. I wondered how I’d feel when it happened. If it happened.

“Howdy, Shemmy.”

“Miz Yellowrock,” Shemmy said, politely.

“No need to be fancy.” I swiveled my body around and put my booted feet on the seat. I leaned back my head and blew out a breath that spoke of exhaustion. “Jane is fine.”

“Jane it is. I hear you give nicknames. What’s mine?” I looked up at Shemmy, who fit the general physical parameters of Derek Lee’s security team—the shaved head, big, muscled, physique of the former military. “You can’t beat Shemmy. It’s perfect.”

Shemmy pulled away from the curb just as my cell beeped with a call from Alex, and he didn’t wait for me to say hello. “A revenant broke the iron bars over the front doors of a church—a freaking church—on Jackson Ave, walked inside, and killed two people. In daylight. Plus there’s a riot still taking place nearby. It started during the last lightning. Sending you and your driver the address and directions. The storm is bad there, so be careful.”

“Of course it is,” I said, hearing the wry note in my voice. “On my way. Don’t call your brother. He’s busy at HQ. I’ll handle it.” And Eli was exhausted, not that I’d say that one.

Alex treated me to a silence fraught with import, the kind that meant he was thinking fast and on several levels. “Sure,” he said, in a tone that meant he disagreed with my assessment. I was drawing a lot of interpretive conclusions. Odd for me. “The revenant is still there,” he said, “and the cops have the building surrounded.” He clicked off.

“I’m just trying to be nice,” I said to the blank screen.

I turned the cell off, knelt on the floorboard of the limo, and slid my fingers around the edges of the flooring. The bottom of every limo had a store of weapons, caches that Eli had discovered as part of the latest security upgrades. We had known about the weapons in the sidewalls and nooks and crannies, but that was for handguns. This one had blades and shotguns and silver ammo. I chose a double-barreled shotgun and loaded it with silver-pellet birdshot. I’d rather have my own Benelli and silver fléchette rounds, but there was a problem with collateral damage—humans I might injure or kill by accident. For that reason I took two .380s and set them into old-fashioned leather holsters. I pulled the unfamiliar rig on over my clothing and hooked an adjustable gorget around my throat. There were two motorcycle jackets in the bottom, and I took the smaller one, even though it smelled like Leo. The scent would indicate to another vamp that I belonged to the MOC, which I hated, but the second jacket was too large.

I heard a discreet click and Shemmy spoke over the limo’s intercom. “Ms. Yellowrock, Mr. Pellissier wishes you to know that the media is present at the church.”