“I can’t do that, I’m afraid,” she said, her words stiff. Embarrassed. She told me where Shaddock was, what he was doing, and added, “Shall I meet you there?”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at the screen, eyes unfocused, thinking. And then it all started to come together. “Crap,” I whispered. When I put the cell back to my head, I said, “Twenty minutes,” and hung up.

I looked down at my dress and then at my men. “Call for two vehicles to be waiting around front in five minutes. Derek you’re with me. Wrassler, pick a guy and follow.” I stuck my head back inside Grégoire’s room. “The parley talks are off for tonight.” Grégoire’s eyebrows went up slightly. Before anyone could ask, I said, “I’m not quite sure why, but I have an idea. It’s possible that Shaddock was attacked. I’ll call back when I know more. I suggest you stay within the confines of the hotel until you hear from me.”

Without waiting for a reply, I backed out and closed the door. “I’ve gotta change. You guys need to be in jeans and well armed.”

“Vests?” Derek asked, meaning flak jackets. Combat clothes.

“No. But weapon up. We’re going to Shaddock’s barbeque joint for dinner and dancing.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

You’ll Be True-Dead.

A bump-and-grind Country Western number could be heard out in the street, even over the steady patter of rain, an oldie goldie about a funeral in a bar, the singer propped up by the jukebox, dead. Which fit a few of the people inside, some of whom weren’t breathing and had no heartbeat to speak of. When we walked in the door, the place was mostly deserted of normal human customers, but there was still a crowd composed of vamps and the hangers-on of the vamp community, blood-slaves and junkies. Oddly, there were no blood-servants. If I didn’t already have alarms going off in my head, that alone would have spelled trouble. The place smelled of cooked meat and the dry, herblike scent of dead meat. Vamps. I tucked my three silver crosses into my shirt as Beast rose in me and peeked out, curious.

Only one couple was dancing; it was a version of the two-step, but with way more pelvis action than the song or dance style warranted. Lincoln Shaddock and Evangelina Everhart had their legs entwined and their faces close together, whispering, laughing. I smelled vamp and witch blood and sex on them, heated from the dance. And the pink spell covered them both.

I already knew that Lincoln Shaddock had bitten her, leaving two constricted pinprick spots on her neck, but I didn’t know why. They had lived in the same area for years. Nothing in my research suggested they had been together before. So why now? Why was Evangelina spelling the region’s most powerful vamp? What exactly did the pink rosy spell do? As I watched from the shadows, I saw a red mote of spell-light flash out of Evil Evie and zip around the room like a bat out of a hellhole. It whipped around and disappeared into Shaddock’s chest. “Crap,” I whispered. I’d seen that before. To my muscle, I said, “Do you see a pink glow on them?”

“No, but they need to get a room or turn around so I can get a better view,” Derek said.

Before the witch noticed us, I pulled my men into a shadowed corner table. I’d had my share of booths with their restricted sight design and problematic body realignment options. We sat, my jeans stuffed into Lucchese boots with ash wood stakes exposed at the tops, each of us loaded with enough concealed guns, knives, and silver to bring true-death to every fanghead and human in the joint. I spotted Chen, standing at the end of the bar, his face like a slab of granite and eyes black as midnight. He inclined his head slowly, and moved toward the back, disappearing into the shadows. I figured that was tacit permission to do whatever I needed to his boss.

When a perky waitress came we gave cola orders so we could keep sitting at the table. “Drink nothing, eat nothing,” I said, thinking of knockout drinks to disable us, or poison to finish us off.

“Copy that,” Derek said.

I studied the scene. The vamps were all sitting, lounging actually, on long booth seats, one or two to a booth, their human blood-meals gathered at their sides. Blood-drunk slaves were smiling vacuously while being dinner or were working as security, cooks, waitstaff, bartenders, and busboys. Once they looked us over, they returned their attention to the dancers, a security lapse no blood-servant would ever make. One-handed, I checked the placement of my hair stick weapons: six wood stakes and a slender-bladed, sheathed knife. With my other hand, I pulled my cell and dialed New Orleans, ignoring the way my heart tripped when it rang.

The connection opened, and I heard R&B/island music in the background, the signature sound of the new house band at the Royal Mojos Blues Club, a bar and dance joint owned by the vamp master of New Orleans. “Good evening, Jane. How are you?”

I pulled in a slow, calming breath. “Hiya, Bruiser. I’m good. You?”

“Do you need me?”

I thought about that for a moment and decided to go with pretending there weren’t a dozen innuendoes in that one question. “I need you to run an errand for me.” I ignored his “Pity” and went on. “I need you to go to my bedroom and into the closet. I need you to pick or smash open the weapons cabinet in it, and look for a black velvet bag. If it’s there, I need you to open it and pour the contents out on a table. Don’t touch it. And call me. Will you do that?”

“Why?”

“I need to know if Evangelina stole something from me.”

“I can think of far better things to do in your bedroom than play smash and grab, but yes. I’m only a few blocks from there. I’ll call you shortly.” The call ended.

Lincoln had his hand under Evangelina’s shirt. Public displays of affection were not Shaddock’s style; I didn’t like what that said about his state of mind. As for Evil Evie, she was once the most stuck-up, inhibited, repressed woman on the planet. Now? Not so much. I set the phone on the table, wondering how much power Evangelina was siphoning off her sisters and if that was more dangerous than interrupting the spell. I studied Shaddock and his dance partner, thinking about what I’d just set in motion due to the red mote I’d seen.

When Bruiser got to my freebie house in New Orleans he would know I hadn’t planned to return. My belongings were in cardboard boxes on the floor of the closet, packed for shipping. They had Molly’s address on them. They had postage attached. I didn’t know what Bruiser might say or do, but I figured it wouldn’t be pretty.

While we waited, I saw movement among the vamps as two powerful walking dead stepped into the restaurant. They weren’t powerful as in physically imposing, but they were formidable. Commanding. Dominant. Compelling. Dangerous. And, crap. They had decided to pay us a visit. They surged toward us across the floor with the boneless, nearly gravity-defying grace of the hunting vamp. “Heads up,” I said. “Dacy Mooney and Constantine Pickersgill at the door. They want something.” But then Lincoln’s heir and spare would do nothing unless they wanted something. “They’ll smell the gun oil and ammo.”

As they neared, I felt the crosses under my shirt start to glow. The vamps draped themselves into chairs at our table, Dacy wearing a beaded buckskin fringed jacket and dark brown jeans with boots. She had feathers woven into her blond hair. On her, the look worked. Seeing the glow on my chest, Dacy laughed low, as if crosses didn’t scare her. Her fangs snapped down with a small click, one and a half inch bone-white killing teeth. Beast huffed in delight, which always surprised me. She liked sane vamps too much sometimes.

Pickersgill said, “Are you boys here to try your hand against Linc?” There was insult in the word boys, as thick as if he’d used the N-word. But it was threat in the tone that my guys reacted to, pulling weapons, the light gleaming on silvered blades, the smell of challenge rising.

“Hold,” I said. I stared at Mooney’s eyes, blue as her daughter’s, not vamped out, but in control. “I’m here to send the witch packing and Lincoln to Grégoire on his knees, quaking in shame and fear.”

Dacy smiled. “You’un Leo’s enforcer?” Her accent was pure Tennessee, probably poured on thick to keep from sounding like the threat she undoubtedly was, but the heavy accent sounded weird coming out of a vamp’s mouth. I didn’t reply. I had seen the term in a codicil of the Vampira Carta, and read over the language an enforcer used to establish control over vamps, but I hadn’t really studied it. I didn’t fully know what enforcer meant in vamp terms, and I didn’t want to get stuck with any nasty duties I hadn’t already signed up for, not unless agreeing kept my people safe. So I shrugged, which was universal for, Call it what you want.

“No need for violence, y’all,” she said. “If I’da wanted you’uns dead, you’da been hamburger sixty seconds ago. As it happens, however, my little girl says I can trust you, Jane Yellowrock, even if you do hunt my kind. And if you’re speaking the truth, then I’ll be happy to stand aside and let you”—she tapped her cheek as if thinking of the right phrase—“interfere with my master’s plans for the evening. He’s actin’ foolish, which ain’t like him a’tall, and is unworthy of us’ns.” She stood. Over her shoulder she said, “Try not to hurt him too much,” and winked. I laughed, letting Beast show in my eyes.

Pickersgill followed her to their table. It was easy to see who was heir and who was spare: Dacy was firmly in charge, with political savvy, brains, and power. Pickersgill was smart, but in the power department, he was her shadow. As they settled, the outer door opened, and Adelaide entered. She was dressed in slim casual clothes and a pair of Italian leather boots that likely cost more than my entire wardrobe. She cast a fast, evaluating look around the restaurant, met my eyes and let her lips curl up on one side. Then she walked to her mom’s table and slid in.

Derek was watching me. In the past, I would have pulled Beast back down and tried to pretend that nothing had happened when Dacy and I had our little dialogue, but lately I didn’t bother. I was getting tired of the angry, wary condemnation in his eyes each time I proved I wasn’t purely human. Or maybe the irritation was Beast, flexing her claws. Cats didn’t care who liked them, as long as everyone else knew their place—at the cat’s feet, under the cat’s claws. Derek sat forward, his body tensing. Before I could act on that subtle dare, my phone rang, Bruiser’s number on the display. I punched a button. “And?”