Lightning struck, hitting close by. The light was shocking, brightening the entire St. Louis Cemetery Number One. The water around us carried the electric charge, zinging up our bodies. Finally, if a little late to help in the fight, I bubbled out of time. The female vamp’s head was still attached to my arm, and so I used the blade of the knife and worked it between her jaws. She had been a freshly turned vamp before she died the second time, and her four small fangs hadn’t penetrated the leathers, the silver, or the plastered interior armor. The jaws finally released and the head fell away from my shoulder and the bubble of time. Then it just hung there.

Beast sent me a memory of a dog she had seen once. The reddish dog had a half-rotted rabbit in its locked jaws, foam and spittle all over the rabbit. The dog was moving in faltering circles. Rabid and dying. Beast had hated the smell and had moved far away and out of the dog’s territory. I sniffed. That smell wasn’t present here, so that was one good thing.

I worked my elbow joint as I made sure all the vamps were separated from their heads. Eli was still staring around, his eyes not seeing, his face slack, but he was uninjured. Satisfied, I knelt down to study a vamp and head, lit by the lightning, caught in stasis. The cut that separated the head from its shoulders was clean, but above it, closer to the jawline, was a fine line, reddish and jagged. I realized that I was seeing a line of very, very fine stitches, the tiny circled and knotted ones made by a plastic surgeon. The head had been removed to bring about a second death, then reattached postmortem. For burial? That made sense. A vamp mortician had made her pretty for a coffin viewing. I hadn’t been to a vamp funeral. Maybe I should have. Because now I knew that some vamps buried with the head reattached could get up and move again.

I moved through the nonfalling rain, from head to head, checking, and all had the dog fangs and the stitching. I figured all the previous revenants had it too, but the thread was so fine I hadn’t noticed. So either there was something different about the dog-fanged vamps themselves that allowed them to rise for a second undeath, or there was something unique about the reattachment that allowed the head and neck to regrow together in the coffin. I needed to talk to someone who knew about vamp funerals.

I stood and checked out Eli, who was in the act of blinking against the rain. I thought that might be a good thing. The experience had thrown him into a stasis of his own, one probably from the Middle East, not a place associated with rain. The weather might bring him out of it.

Edmund was looking where I had been standing, and he was royally ticked off. Bruiser had a different look about him. It was protective. Which was just so sweet. I looked up into the storm and the lightning.

Three arcenciels were right there, in full dragon form with dragon heads, not the human-shaped heads they were capable of presenting. Wings out, hovering above me, a couple hundred feet high, hanging in the air. Soul and Opal were beautiful and feral in their rainbow dragon forms—pure magic that humans had not been able to see. Soul was staring where I had stood, and I was pretty sure she was saying something to me. I returned to my original spot and waited until the Gray Between let me go.

It juddered and shuddered and snapped back into time. Darkness and the storm dropped over me, blinding, the torrent sounding like a jet engine. Soul dropped down to within inches of my face, glowing with rainbow lights. “Someone rides the dragon,” she hissed, her lips moving over her bladelike pearled teeth. “Close. That one seeks to cage us. Our sister must be set free.”

Beast was close to the surface and narrowed my eyes on Soul, adoringly. Littermate, she thought at me. Littermate and not littermate.

Which made no sense. Beast was working through something.

I might have blinked, because Soul was gone. After the nonminutes in the bright light of the lightning I had lost my night vision. “Jane?” Edmund queried, spinning in the rain to find me.

Eli rammed into Edmund and the two fell, rolling in the puddled rain, wrestling. Edmund taking a flurry of blows. Grunts and cursing. Far too much violence for whatever had happened between them to spark this. I wondered if the magic in the storm was causing their aggression, and the riots in the city too. I drew on Beast-strength and waded in. Grabbed an arm of each and spun them around, throwing them both flat into the puddles.

“Stop it right now!” I yelled. Both men froze, bodies on the ground, eyes moving to me, to each other, and away. “Get up and act like you have some sense. The storm is making people—men in particular—violent and aggressive. Maybe it’s calling the revs and having the same effect on them. Whatever it is, we have to stop it, not fight each other. You idiots!”

I looked up and caught a glimpse of arcenciels dancing in the storm. I slashed rain out of my face. I was wet to the skin, the silk underwear clinging to me.

“We should leave and call the police,” Bruiser said. “This is an active crime scene. And it’s possible that PsyLED will have some idea about why the revenants are rising.”

“Sure. Whatever.” I was still ticked off at Ricky-Bo. Including him or his agency in anything I did was galling. Not so long ago, PsyLED hadn’t existed and vamp physiology was unstudied and unknown to the medical and forensic communities. Now, thanks to a certain fight in Natchez, where my team took down over two dozen vamps, the feds had vamp bodies to study. They probably had lots of knowledge by now. Thanks to me. Thanks to Rick.

I found and put away my weapons, still wet and gooey, because I had no choice, and led the way out of the cemetery. The entrance of the cemetery was blocked by cop cars. Standing in the rain, beneath an umbrella that was being buffeted by the decreasing wind, was Rick LaFleur. I walked past as if I hadn’t seen him. Bruiser stopped to talk. Men. The rest of us got in the limo and Shemmy lowered the privacy wall to toss us towels.

“Ms. Yellowrock,” Shemmy said, excitement high in his voice, “Derek and a small team have gone to the Roosevelt to search for an unknown vamp.”

“Mith—” I stopped. Why should I care how the fangheads wanted to be called. “Go on. They’re heading to search the Roosevelt,” which was a five-star hotel in the French Quarter.

“Their party includes vamps to create access via mesmerizing. That’s it. Except that Mr. Pellissier sent a new cell for you. Same number, everything up until three hours prior to you losing yours has been restored.” He tossed a new matte-black cell at me, and I caught it out of the air. Like the old one, it had an armored case and was a cell that Leo could track. I flipped it open and scrolled around. Apparently someone had downloaded and backed up all the content from my previous cell every few hours and then downloaded it onto this one already. How kind. Not. Sneaky li’l bastard going through my private info. Rage thrummed through me.

Beast pressed a paw on my mind and extended her claws, pressing down. Clearing my mind. I had always known that Leo had total access to my official cell, the very reason I carried a throwaway, a burner phone, for private convos. So why my anger? The storm was affecting me too. “Just ducky,” I muttered.

“What, mistress?” Edmund asked.

“Stop calling me that.”

“Yes, mistress.” I could have sworn he was smirking, but there was nothing of that on his face.

I sighed and followed Edmund’s lead, drying myself off with the big fluffy towels. Fangheads have the best stuff. Top quality all the way. The stink of wet leather and gun oil and New Orleans wet was potent in the car. I also smelled fresh tea and followed my nose to a paper cup of coffeehouse chai latte in a cup holder. I thought I loved Shemmy. I took it and drank. Heaven in a cup.

Eli, however, just sat, his face scrunched into lines, his hands gripping his weapons, too tight, skin white. I pressed the towel over my head, squeezing the water from my queued hair. From behind the towel I asked Ed, “So you’re my primo?”

“Yes, m— Yes.”

“So if you know something, and I need to know it, you’ll tell me.” Edmund didn’t reply and I dropped the towel to settle a mean little smile on him. “Yes or no, primo?”

“If I can answer, I shall,” he said carefully. Which meant that he might know stuff he had sworn to keep secret.

Vamps always had secrets. But this should be common vamp knowledge. “Are vamps always beheaded after they die a second time?”