I nearly dropped my donut in surprise.

Leo’s eyes landed on me, his expression telling me to be silent. I wondered if it was polite to be filling my belly while watching the rescue. Probably not. Probably rude as heck. Feeling peevish, I finished off that donut and took another. Leo’s expression morphed into feeble amusement before he turned back to the screen.

“But,” Bruiser went on, still speaking formally and carefully, as if by rote, or as if he knew how fragile everyone here was, watching and not being able to help or retaliate, “witches have been here. Two witches. The scent of their magical energies are everywhere, in the runes, the sigils, in the water, and on Ming’s flesh. They may not have instigated the crime, but they have perpetuated it and maintained it. Ming has been repeatedly bled, by knife to her throat, to feed one who felt no bloodlust and was not overpowered by compulsion. In fact, Ming of Mearkanis is not able to mesmerize at all at this time. It must be the effect of the brooch, and I cannot remove it alone. It must be done by the Master of the City, under controlled circumstances.”

I thought about the brooch pinned through her flesh. Magic working on a vamp. Not good. In fact, very bad.

Bruiser continued with his report. “The two humans in the pit with her have modern dentistry, ruling out them being her primo and secondo blood-servants, Benjamin and Riccard. Whoever these humans are, it’s unlikely that they signed papers to serve the Mithrans. We have taken photographs of the skeletons, which we have sent ahead. Local law enforcement will need to be called, quite soon, sir.”

Leo’s lip curled at the idea of human law enforcement, but his gaze narrowed and he said, “As soon as Ming of Mearkanis is in flight, you may contact the parish authorities and tell them that the pirate pit revealed something other than treasure. There will be no mention of Ming. The identity of the humans may lead us to the perpetrators.”

Which totally let Eli and me off from having to do a crime scene workup on the pit. A sense of relief filled me, making me know just how much I had not been looking forward to Yellowrock Securities being involved in that.

“Yes, sir,” Bruiser said, his tone impassive.

“Well done, Onorios of New Orleans,” Leo said. “We await you and your precious cargo. Godspeed.”

Which made my eyebrows go up. Godspeed? For a vamp? Weird and weirder.

CHAPTER 8

Eww, Ick, and Grody

It was early by vamp standards, but I hadn’t slept and if I didn’t get some shut-eye, I was in trouble, so Eli and I went to the break room. I spent little time in the room, mostly because on one memorable occasion, I met two heavily tattooed men who later tried to kill some people. And succeeded. More vamp machinations. In the back of the room was a small door, set flush with the wall, a door I hadn’t known about back when. Behind the door was a small bunk room, available to anyone, human or vamp, seeking a place to sleep. There were twelve double bunks in a row, so close together that any hope of privacy was long lost. But it was better than asking to bunk in with a vamp.

Three of the bottom bunks were inhabited. A greater number of the upper bunks were being used. The room stank of sweat, old beer, bad breath, and the sort of bodily gasses that tended to accumulate around people who ate a lot of highly spiced food. I didn’t care. The sheets were clean and the room was dark, so I crashed on the bottom bunk closest to the door. Eli swung up into the one above me.

With Leo’s clan home still not finished, and stuck in the peculiar hell of seeking a certificate of occupancy permit while not really being ready to be occupied, HQ was stuffed full and the room was seeing a lot of action. Too many humans in one small place meant very restricted sleeping arrangements. Leo had thought he could speed up things in his clan home by offering a building inspector a little cash flow and had the misfortune of meeting up a parish employee who had an unbreakable moral code. Or who hated vamps. The guy had turned Leo over to the police, who’d had no choice but to file charges. Leo had been ticked off. I’d had the wisdom not to laugh. Go, me. On that self-congratulatory note, I fell into dreams.

* * *

There was a new dream, but familiar to me. A green eye in my left palm, opened to see me, to read me. The feel of energies scanning through me, learning who I was, what I could do. And then the dream was gone, as if it never was. I dropped deeper into sleep.

* * *

It was after midnight when Eli woke me, his watch making a tiny beeping noise, too soft to wake the others. I had kicked off my shoes in my sleep and I pulled them on, stretching before following my partner into the break room and the hallway beyond.

“I got a text from Alex,” he said. “Ming of Mearkanis is in the special lair.”

“Okay,” I said, counting and resetting the stakes that had come lose in my bun. “Special lair, as in the one between floors where Leo keeps my favorite redheaded psycho, Adrianna, the so-far-immortal vamp Leo won’t let me kill?”

“One and the same.”

“You know it ticks me off to wake up from a nap after too little sleep, to see you looking so wide-eyed and bushy-tailed,” I grouched.

“Babe. My tail is not bushy. Syl says it’s slick as a baby’s butt.”

I almost said I wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole, but thought better of it. Instead I made a gagging noise and let him lead me down the hallway to the elevator, and then down more hallways, some steps, and finally to the special scion lair.

The guard, a tall, slender woman with prominent shoulders and a narrow waist, let us into the lair. The room was small, white, and featureless with one door and no windows. The floor was smooth and sloped to a drain in the center, presumably for hosing off the inmates, though the opportunity to use it for torture had occurred to me. Vamps are treacherous, double-crossing, unstable creatures. Torture would seem to be right up their alley.