The afternoon sun glinted off the countless beads people wore around their necks. The streets weren’t completely clogged yet. More people would venture out once it got dark. It amused Bones that a vampire could be about at this time of day, yet some humans let their excesses from the night before trap them in bed until dusk.
Bones’s only concession to being out in daylight was to wear shades and sunscreen. He wouldn’t burst into flames if the sun touched his bare skin, as the movies so comically claimed. Still, an hour in the sun for a vampire was akin to all day at the beach for an albino. He’d heal almost instantly, but there was no sense using his strength over something as trivial as a sunburn.
He’d already walked the length of the Quarter and back, noting the differences since the last time he’d been here—three years ago? No, it was four, because he’d celebrated the new millennium here. Blimey, the years were blinking by. It had been well over a decade since he’d set foot in London. Once I kill the LaLauries and finish tracking down Hennessey and the other miserable blokes he’s involved with, I’m going home, Bones decided. It’s been too long. I’m even sounding more like a Yank than an Englishman these days.
Only a couple blocks down was the LaLauries’ old house. Even in daylight, there were shadows shifting around it. Residual ghosts. Any sentient spooks who’d died there stayed away from the place, not that Bones blamed them. At night, the house positively crawled with old, despairing energy from its gruesome past. It was no accident that the house had changed hands so many times over the past hundred and seventy years. It was now empty and for sale again as well. Humans might not be able to see the residual manifestations, but they could sense them, on some deep level.
And Delphine LaLaurie, at least, seemed drawn to the house as well. Why else would she pluck one of her victims right in front of it during a tour? Was the irony just amusing to her? Or did she still, after all this time, miss her old home? Was that why the LaLauries kept returning to the Quarter, despite the danger of Marie’s wrath?
Bones came closer to the house. The strong smell of chemicals wafted to him from a store to his right. Salon, he diagnosed, then glanced at his reflection. His hair had been brown for quite some time. Since someone was obviously hunting him, it wouldn’t hurt to alter his appearance.
He entered the parlor, not surprised to find a few people waiting. Every business in the Quarter enjoyed a boost from Mardi Gras, except perhaps church services. He put his name on the list, took a seat, and waited. Forty minutes later, he was brought back by the hairdresser.
“Hi there, what’ll it be?” she asked in a friendly way.
“Color, trim, and wash, if you please,” Bones replied.
“You English have the loveliest accents.” She laughed. “Makes everything you say sound so proper.”
After she washed his hair, she led him to her cubicle. Bones read her name on her beautician’s certificate and gave a snort of amusement.
“Rebecca DeWinter. Was that an intentional reference?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Yeah. My parents loved that book. You’re the first person who’s tied my name to it. Not many people are big readers of the older classics.”
Bones stifled his next snort, because telling her that he still considered Rebecca to be new fiction would require too much explanation.
“I go by Becca, though,” she added, giving his head a last toweling. “So, what are we doing with color today?”
What shade hadn’t he done recently? “Make it blond.”
She blinked at him in the mirror. “Really?”
“Platinum, the whole lot of it.”
Her hand was still in his hair, absently fingering his curls. Bones met her eyes in the mirror. She turned away quickly and threw “Let me just mix the color” over her shoulder.
A smile tugged his mouth. He had no false modesty about his looks. They’d been his trade in the seventeen hundreds when he was human and survived by selling his body to women. Since then, they’d ensured that he didn’t spend many nights alone, but by his choice, not for need of coin anymore. And at times, he’d used his looks when he was hunting lethal, feminine prey. They’d been a useful tool, but Bones placed far more importance on maintaining his wits and strength.
Becca came back and applied the color to his hair. Bones chatted with her, learning that she’d worked here for a couple of years, lived just outside the Quarter, and—interestingly enough—had been closing up the night Eric Greenville was murdered.
“…such a shame,” Becca continued. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen those tour groups by our window while the guides talk about that old house. They can’t stand on their corner, since that’s private property, so they hang out in front here. How awful for someone to be robbed and murdered by a person he met on one of those.”
“Is that what the papers say happened?” Bones asked, though he already knew the answer.
She shrugged. “Yeah. Weird stuff always happens during Mardi Gras.”
That might be true, but Bones was more interested in how Becca might have caught a glimpse of Delphine LaLaurie that night, whether she realized it or not. He’d intended to track down the tour guide from that evening, for the same reason, but that person would be much more recognizable to Delphine. Becca was anonymous. She could be right useful, and judging from her scent—and the lingering looks she snuck his way—she wouldn’t be averse to spending more time with him.
“I’m in town on business,” Bones said casually. “Leaving soon after Mardi Gras ends, but I wondered if you’d fancy having dinner with me?”
He’d been watching her in the mirror as he asked. Her eyes widened, then she broke out into a smile.
“Um, sure. That would be nice.”
She was quite pretty. Shoulder-length brown hair with blond highlights, a nice full mouth—and arse—and she looked well into her twenties, so not a novice when it came to dating.
Infinitely biteable, Bones decided with a speculative gaze. “Are you free tonight?”
She glanced away. Funny how many otherwise confident women shied under a direct look.
“Yeah. I get off in an hour, but you know, I’d want to go home and change…”
“Smashing, I’ll pick you up at your house ’round eight,” Bones stated, giving her his charming smile. It worked well enough. She didn’t argue, as it were.
When he left the salon, his hair was champagne blond, he had Becca’s address in hand, and a far different plan for to-night than he’d started out with. You might turn out to be my homing beacon for Delphine, Bones thought, giving Becca a peck on the cheek while promising to pick her up later. Or at the very least, we’ll both have dinner tonight.