Cat Fight

Author’s note: This short story takes place (in the JY timeline) after Dark Heir.

“The Master of the City of New Orleans sends you greetings and a missive.” The words had that old-fashioned ring, a sure sign of a powerful vamp’s official notice—and the fact that the courier was a vamp himself, and not a human blood-servant—which indicated that this situation could only be trouble. I’d heard similar words once when the chief fanghead had told me to get out of his city or he’d eat me. And not in a good way.

I cocked a hip onto the doorjamb, crossed my arms, and stared at the envelope in the vamp’s hand. “He sends his favorite slave as messenger boy? Can’t be good news,” I said. “Give me one good reason why I should accept the note.”

Edmund Hartley smiled, an act that turned his nondescript face into something almost human, and certainly charming. “Because I have healed you and those you love several times, without asking for recompense, or requesting you in my bed or your blood in my fangs in return. Because I am fascinating and intriguing and you are curious about my history and my life.” His smile twisted slightly on one side, indicating a mischievous side I hadn’t seen before. “Because you like me and we have become friends of a sort?”

All of those things were true, but I wasn’t going to give in so easily, not to a fancy note from Leo. I scowled at him. “Friends with a vamp?”

Like Edmund, Beast thought at me. Would make good vampire mate.

Down, Beast. We have a mate.

Beast chuffed with amusement.

“It is true that if we were locked in a dungeon together,” he said, an innocent, practically winsome look on his face, “I would certainly drink you down. But other than situations resulting in starvation, you are safe from me, I assure you.” He was teasing me. It was a novel conversation to have with a vamp.

I looked at the note. The previous note, delivered by Bruiser a long time ago, had been a scroll, tied with a ribbon. This one was inside a handmade envelope constructed from heavy cloth paper, and had my name written on it in Leo’s own handwriting, with a real fountain pen, all the scrolls and twirls and dips and stuff, like they used to write way back when. And like the last one, it was closed with a bloodred drop of wax and Leo’s seal.

I had been avoiding Leo and his messages and texts, which may be the reason he had sent a messenger. It was harder to ignore a human-shaped face than a beep or two or three dozen on my cell. I stared hard at the envelope, hoping it would disappear. It didn’t.

I was pretty sure that the note was a request—make that a demand—that I take up my responsibilities as Leo’s Enforcer, which I hadn’t done since I tracked and captured the Son of Darkness. I’d been hurt in that job and so had my team. We deserved some time off. But Leo probably thought a week was long enough, hence the increased number of unanswered texts and voice mails and phone calls. And now the note. Which was surely some form of orders, and I had never been partial to getting ordered around.

Leo Pellissier was a . . . I couldn’t think of a word bad enough to call him, even silently, except for corrupt CEO or debauched king. He was a high-handed, demanding, megalomaniacal, exacting, meticulous, fussy, taxing, body-part-of-your-choice fanghead. According to the contract we had signed, he was also my boss, or had been until the SoD incident less than a month ago.

“My master wishes you back in his employ.”

“Uh-huh.” I jutted out my jaw, thinking. I hadn’t even closed the door on the messenger or opened the dang note, and I was already mad. I snapped out my hand and Edmund snapped the envelope into my palm, practically choreographed. I broke the seal and pulled out the note, which was written on equally fancy, heavy paper. The note said:

My Dearest Jane,

As per our agreement, there are duties awaiting your return. If you wish a longer holiday, that can be arranged, however, the Clan Blood-Master of Bayou Oiseau, Clermont Doucette, has requested your presence. If you are not available to assist him I will send another.

I am placing the Mercy Blade and Edmund Hartley at your disposal.

Leonard Pellissier,

Blood-Master of the City of New Orleans

I grunted. Not too long ago, I had stopped over in Bayou Oiseau, a pretty little Cajun town on the banks of the bayou of the same name, and solved a problem that had been brewing between the witches and the vamps for a long time. After my visit, Leo and the chief suckhead of the town, Clermont Doucette, which was pronounced in the patois of the region as Cler-mon Doo-see, had been supposed to parley together and settle the long-standing difficulties between them, but I hadn’t seen Clermont in New Orleans, and Leo hadn’t gone south to Bayou Oiseau, so maybe any peace I had created between the two had evaporated after I left. That had been known to happen.

Both vamps had overly high opinions of themselves, and I could easily see where problems might arise. Leo was an even bigger predator than I am—and I’m half–mountain lion—and he could be a mite off-putting when he got into a snit. Clermont could too.

I held the note over my shoulder and it skated from my fingers, tugged away by one of my partners, Alex Younger, the younger Younger. The smart one of the team. The stinkiest too, when he hadn’t showered in a while, and he had been playing World of Warcraft for the last couple of days. Edmund’s nose wrinkled and he took a half step back before he caught himself. It was that nearly human reaction to the stench that made me chuckle and relax. I said, “I know, right?”

“How does he stand himself?” Edmund whispered.

“Beats me.” I jerked my head to the interior of the house and pushed the door wide. “Come on in. You know what the note said?”

“I do. I am supposed to escort you to Bayou Oiseau as your personal protection and as Leo’s personal delegate.”

“Personal protection? I’m my own personal protection.” I stared at Edmund as he entered, his hands clasped behind his back. He was shorter than my six feet, nondescript, with brown eyes and brown hair, and looked scholarly and bookish, like a schoolteacher, a librarian, or a slightly cynical professor. “Or my partners are,” I added. “I don’t need more personal protection.”

“I hope you might think of me as your primo.”

I closed the front door behind us and led the way through the dimly lit house and into the kitchen, thinking about what he was saying and what he might really be meaning. With vamps there is no simple truth, just layered, multipurposed, dual- or triple-intentioned half lies. “Only vampires have primos. And primos are human.”

“Exactly. Having a primo would be a way to provide cachet, to raise your value, to suggest that you are something more than simply an Enforcer, a bully boy. And Leo having two Enforcers adds to that effect. All these changes will make the Mithran world, even the European Mithran world, sit up and take notice. It will give you power in our world. You would be one of the very few human Enforcers ever to have a Mithran primo. And I do believe that I would serve you best in that capacity.” Edmund looked too pleased with this idea, as if maybe he had come up with it himself. Actually, knowing Edmund, he probably had.

“Hmmm.” I topped off my mug and added the secret ingredient. “I’m having tea. Want a cup?”

Edmund looked at my mug and stuck his nose in the air. “Not if it has . . . Is that Cool Whip on top?”

I hid a grin. “That sounded like a tea snob’s outrage.”

“Good God, woman. It’s a sacrilege.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. And then I said, “One of my favorite housemothers when I was growing up was a woman named Brenda. She always put Cool Whip on her tea.”

While Edmund prepared a proper cuppa, expounding on the virtues of real cream and real sugar, I added more tea to my cup and another dollop of Cool Whip. Yanking vamps’ chains always made my day brighter.

•   •   •

I got the essentials from Edmund, which were pretty simple but not terribly informative, not the kind of thing to require a Mithran mailman. “The witches and non-Mithrans in Bayou Oiseau are once again at war and the Blood-Master of New Orleans directs you to broker a peace agreement.”

“Again.”

“Yes.” I could have sworn that Edmund was hiding laughter.

“In an area where vamps ran unchecked and unrestrained by the Vampira Carta”—which was the written law for all Mithran vampires—“for centuries. To a place where the witches who survived learned a lot of tricks to keep the bloodsuckers at bay. A place where blood ran in the streets and witches and vamps were burned at dawn. Back there.”

“Yes. That is his request.”

“Uh-huh. I got the broad picture,” I said to my erstwhile primo. “Now I want the deets, the stuff you know, but that Leo told you not to tell me unless I asked. Consider this asking.”

“Gladly, my mistress. According to Clermont Doucette, a valuable item was stolen by a witch from the Clan Home. It has made its way to the witch coven. It has not been returned.”

So far as I knew, there was only one witch living at the Clan Home, and she was the witch daughter of Lucky Landry, a witch leader in the town. Shauna Landry Doucette had married the vamp heir, Gabriel, and this marriage was the sole reason for the peace agreement I had brokered in Bayou O. A kind of successful Romeo and Juliet story. At the time.

I grunted, which must have sounded like encouragement, because he went on.

“Clermont’s daughter-in-law stole the item.” Seems Juliet hadn’t remained loyal for long.

“The Master of the City also desires me to bring back any magical item that you might discover.”

That was an ongoing order, an order I never followed through on. “Ducky,” I said.

“And I am to go with you.”

“No.” I refused Edmund’s assistance and that of the Mercy Blade, and sent my messenger skipping into the night scenting of amusement and irritation in equal measure. Well, strolling languidly, though the mental image of the ultracool, elegant vamp skipping down the street left me with a smile. He had been gone exactly forty-seven seconds when my cell rang, displaying a studio pic of Captain America on the screen, which was my current image for Eli Younger. I accepted the call and stared at the Kid, who pretended to ignore me. “Eli. Yes, yes, yes.” I paused and thought and added, “Yes, and what do you think?”

My partner, the former Army Ranger, chuckled. “Think you got me pegged, babe?”

“Yup. Yes, your brother is nosy, and yes, he is correct. Edmund Hartley did come visit with a letter from Leo. Yes, it offers us a gig as part of my Enforcer position southwest of New Orleans, in Bayou Oiseau. But I don’t think Clermont would have told Leo everything. He’s canny and sneaky and probably wants help on his terms. He probably kept back mucho info from Leo, hoping to salvage the situation in his favor. So we might be walking into a mess.

“And yes, there has been a suggestion, made by Edmund, that Edmund should be my primo. It sounds like something he’d come up with, all Machiavellian, and probably with an evil intention and outcome all planned out. You know. The usual vamp crap. And what do you think about it all?”

Eli chuckled, and I heard his sweetie pie in the background.

“Put her on speaker.” Eli thumbed a button and I said, “Hey, Syl. It shouldn’t be dangerous. But it is dealing with Cajun vamps and witches, so all redneck possibilities will apply.”

Sylvia chuckled and said, “You have my blessing and an order for you to keep Eli’s blood in his veins.”

“I’ll take all precautions.”

“And, Eli, you keep her blood in her veins too.”

“That’s the plan, boss.” He clicked the speaker off, and, a moment later, ended the call.

“Boss?” I asked.

“Syl and I don’t do PDAs.”

PDAs. Public displays of affection. Even verbal ones, it seemed. “So, you’re in?”

“Syl’s got a murder scene to take care of. Some big muckety-muck in Natchez took a three-tap, and had a kilo of cocaine in the trunk of his Mercedes. I’m heading home, because while I love the woman, watching her and her crime scene techs crawl around in some guy’s guts and brains isn’t what I call a romantic evening. We’ll talk when I get there, about Edmund wanting to be your primo. That should be my job.”

“No, you’re my partner. If I accepted, Edmund would be our vampire servant.”

“Come to think of it, that sounds all kinds-a classy. He could clean our toilets. See you soon, babe.”

The call ended and I stood there, still staring at Alex, who hadn’t yet looked up, ignoring me the way only a gamer in the middle of a World of Warcraft game could. I said, “Take a shower within one hour or I’ll pull the plug.”

He snorted, the sound remarkably like my own. “No, you won’t.”

I lifted my brows at the challenge and started toward the cord.

“I have battery backup,” Alex said, his voice sly, his eyes still down.

“Shower. Or I’ll stop all credit on all computer and all related purchases. And I’ll tell Eli how bad you stink.”

Alex lifted his arm and took a sniff. “Holy sh . . .” He did look up then. “I’ll be in the shower before he gets to town. And I’ll strip the bedsheets and put new ones on both the beds upstairs. And I’ll put out fresh towels. And I’ll wash a load of clothes.”

Yeah. He stank that bad. “You could also call the cleaning service and they could clean the whole house while we’re gone. Not the shower part. You’re on your own for that.”

“Spoilsport.”

“True dat,” I said, in the patois of Louisiana. I left the room to pack. I no longer had fighting leathers of any kind, thanks to the battle with the Son of Darkness, and I still didn’t have Bitsa, so I wouldn’t need bike riding clothes, which meant that it didn’t take long to pack. Packing done—jeans and T-shirts, boots and undies, toiletries and one pair of summer jammies—I took the time to call my own . . . whatever he was, and schedule a few hours at his place for when I got back. We were seriously overdue for some “us time,” but Bruiser was still out of town doing something Onorio-ish. We made plans for when I got back, which was likely two days away at best. Lately our trips were overlapping. Sometimes working for suckheads . . . well . . . sucked.

•   •   •

I-10 was a straight shot west, and rest stops, gas stations, and restaurants were few and far between, yet, even with a straight shot and no roadside distractions, the trip to Bayou Oiseau took longer than we expected because of the rain. A front had moseyed in and settled over the lower half of the state like it intended to sign a lease and stay. Beast slept as we drove, and I spent the drive time reading the case notes aloud to the boys so they would be up to speed on the small town and the events that took me over when Bitsa needed a mechanic on my only other trip there.

The inhabitants were mostly Cajun—vamp, witch, and human. The vamps had a bad history of abusing the populace for generations, and they knew (or had known) nothing about the Vampira Carta, which are the legal papers that govern all Mithrans. Worse, the vamps had not been aligned with Leo, and therefore had no oversight.

The witches were unaligned with the NOLA witches. Ditto on the lack of oversight.

In between were the humans who had either taken off for safer environs, joined forces with one faction or the other, or hunkered down to fight a war of attrition.

The Youngers both chuckled when I told them I had played matchmaker and peacemaker between the vamps and witches. I had no idea why they thought it was amusing. The wedding had been beautiful.

Edmund, who had appeared with a pop of air just as we were about to back out of our parking spot in front of my house, was unexpectedly romantic. “I am quite certain that it was the social event of the year,” he said. I wondered if there had been a hint of irony in the statement. Eli grunted. Alex ignored us all, still playing his game.

None of us were particularly happy to have Edmund along, but the vamp had insisted and so had Leo. The MOC—Master of the City—had claimed that Edmund’s attendance would be beneficial and give weight and clout to our presence. Whatever. The call was short and unsweet and to the point. “You will take Edmund.” Click.

Not that he had the time, but Leo had said nothing about Edmund being a primo, which made me think even more that the primo idea was Edmund’s alone. A primo would be around often, if Leo gave him to me, and if I accepted him as such, which wasn’t likely. If I took Ed on and he turned out to be a pain in the butt, then I’d have to fire him, which would also be a pain in the butt. So far, the vamp had held his peace and kept quiet, not intruding on the comradery the Youngers and I had established, but no way would a vamp be able to maintain subservience to humans and a skinwalker. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I finished my reading of the case notes with, “Mostly, BO is a backwater community of churches, a blood bar, a few shops, a grocery, a couple of restaurants, a B and B, a dozen wild game processors”—which was the polite term for butchers for hunters’ kills—“alligator and boar hunting, fishing businesses for tourists, an airboat tour guide company, and a few thousand citizens spread over a wide area of bayou, swamp, and sinking land. It needs paint, repaved roads, an influx of tax money, and a general makeover.”

“Looks like the town is finally getting that makeover,” Eli said, as the SUV lurched over ruts in the road. He slowed, his headlights taking in the rain-wet dark.

The two-lane state road we turned onto from I-10 had been freshly graded in the last couple of days, judging by the coarse road surface, in preparation for new paving. The heavily armored SUV bounced over the ruts and splashed through standing pools as we rolled past road-paving machines parked on the sides. In the rain, in the momentary clarity provided by the windshield wipers, I thought that they looked like stalled dinosaurs, which made Beast perk up and look out through my eyes.

Want to hunt dino-saucers. Or cow!

Not on this trip. Just vampires and witches.

My Beast curled up inside, closed her eyes, and pouted. She hadn’t been out a whole lot recently, and she was grumpy about not getting to hunt. Could hunt cow from window of ess-u-vee, she finished.

The SUV was part of my gear as Leo’s Enforcer, and it had all the bells and whistles and onboard computer—as well as the bullet-resistant, multilayer, polycarbonate glass and Kevlar inserts around the cab—that Eli’s personal SUV didn’t have. I had been shot at recently and appreciated the protection that the heavy vehicle provided, but the extra weight made a jolting ride on the rough road.

We made it to the small town long after midnight, the few streetlights offering small globes of visual warmth in the downpour. There were dump trucks and construction vehicles and more of the road-grading machines parked everywhere, but in the darkness and the rain, no workers.

The town name meant bird bayou, and the first time I saw the quaint little place, I thought it looked like a love child spawned by the producer of a spaghetti Western and a mad Frenchwoman. The main crossroads were the intersection of Broad Street and Oiseau Avenue, which wasn’t as pretty as it might have sounded. Broad Street was narrow, and the buildings lining its single-lane cousin were downright ugly. There was only one traffic signal in the entire town, and despite the crossroads being the main intersection, tonight there was no social life either. Everything was at a standstill, and not just because it was so late.

A circle of drenched women blocked the main crossing. Twelve women. The scent of magic was strong in the air, tickling along my skin and making me want to sneeze, despite the insulating rubber tires and the pouring rain, not that insulation worked against magic as well as it worked against electricity. Or at all, actually.

Eli pulled to a stop some twenty feet away from the witch circle, the soaking-wet women illuminated by his headlights. Witch circles can be composed of different numbers of practitioners, and I had seen circles with two, five, twelve, three, four, and nine witches, depending on the geometry and mathematics being used to rout the magical energies. Twelve witches made up the most potent kind of circle, and working with that kind of energy and potential could do scary things, including take over the witches and use their combined life force to power the working, leaving dead witches behind and their magic operational but out of control. These witches were bedraggled and dripping and so involved that they didn’t seem to notice or care about the weather. Or us. And oddly, they were standing outside the circle they were working. Which meant that something inside had their full attention.

I tried to make out what it was, even pulling on Beast’s vision, but all I saw were dull kaleidoscopic colors, all in the green and blue part of the color spectrum, with a hint of yellow. It looked locked down, well contained, whatever it was.

“Twelve, eh?” Eli sounded casual, but he had fought beside me when a full circle had changed the local vamps in Natchez into bizarro insectoid creepazoids. Wiping out the vamps had been the worst fight of my life, and I’d had some bad fights to compare it to. “Last time we ran into one of those,” he murmured, “I met Syl. That was a good time in my life.”

Alex made a gagging sound. “Ignore the lovestruck idiot in the driver’s seat,” he said. “Can you see what they’re doing?”

“The circle looks like a form of Molly’s hedge of thorns spell,” I said, “but they’re outside the hedge. I think I see some kind of circle outside the hedge, but it’s weak as well water. There’s something in the middle of the street and in the center of the circle.” I squinted to see it better. Tried to look at it from the edges of my vision, focusing on a tree in the distance to make the blue-green fog of dullness. “Is it a . . . a hat?”

Beast rose from her nap and studied the scene through my eyes. Witches are studying prey. Which was as good an explanation as any I had.

“I can’t imagine why you sound so shocked,” Edmund murmured. “Not so many years ago, most women loved hats.”

“Jane’s not most women, dude,” Alex said for me. “And it isn’t a hat—it’s one of those laurel wreath things that the Greeks and the Romans used to wear.”

At the comment, Edmund sat up straight and leaned across the opening between the front seats to get a better look. As he studied the wreath, he slowly vamped-out, his pupils going wide, the sclera going scarlet, and his fangs slowly dropping with a soft schnick of sound on the hinges in the roof of his mouth. “Well, well, well,” he said. “I do wonder what that can be.”

I couldn’t have said why, but I had a feeling that Edmund knew exactly what it was, and for whatever reason, he wasn’t saying. I thought about calling him on it, but decided to hold my tongue, saying instead, “Down boy. That’s a dangerous circle, so no matter what it is, we aren’t getting near it.”

I gave directions to the bed-and-breakfast where I stayed last time I was in town and Eli put the SUV in reverse and backed a few feet but didn’t pull away. The headlights gave us a clear view of the town and the women, despite the rain, and I could see him taking in everything, the way Uncle Sam had trained him in the Rangers. If he had to, Eli could now draw an exact replica map of the town for house-to-house warfare. Hopefully we wouldn’t need that map or that much bloodshed, but it was a handy skill set.

On the south corner of the intersection, there was a huge, brick Catholic church, the bell tower hiding a tarnished, patinated bell in its shadows. The large churchyard was enclosed by a brick wall, with ornate bronze crosses set into niches in the brick every two feet. On top of the wall were iron spikes, also shaped like sharp, pointed crosses. The sight made Edmund growl and sit back. I just smiled. The church in Bayou Oiseau had been fighting vamps for decades. It never hurt to remind a vampire that he had enemies and that there were ways to fight his power.

To the east of the church, across the road, was a bank, beige brick and concrete, with the date 1824 on the lintel and green verdigris bars shaped like crosses on the windows and door. To my right was a strip mall that had seen better days, brick and glass, with every single window and door in the strip adorned with a cross, either painted or decaled on. The mall featured a nail salon, hair salon, tanning salon, consignment shop, secondhand bookstore, bakery, a Chinese fast-food joint, a Mexican fast-food joint, and a Cajun butcher advertising andouille sausage, boudin, pork, chicken, locally caught fish, and a lunch special for $4.99.

“Is that Lucky Landry’s place?” Alex asked.

“That’s it,” I said. “Best food in fifty miles.”

Beast thought, Good meat smell. Lucky is good hunter to hunt so much meat. Want to hunt with Lucky Landry.

Directly ahead of the SUV, catercornered from the church, was a saloon, like something out of the French Quarter—two stories, white-painted wood with fancy black wrought iron on the gallery, long narrow window doors with working shutters, and aged double front doors, the wood carved to look like massive, weather-stained orchids. The building’s name and purpose was spelled out in bloodred letters on a white sign hanging from the second-floor gallery, LECOMPTE SPIRITS AND PLEASURE. It was the town’s blood bar, and the only building without built-in crosses at every access point. I rolled down the window and took a sniff. Unlike the last time I was here, I couldn’t smell beer and liquor and sex and blood, only rain and magic. The bar was closed and someone had nailed a cross over the front doors. Somehow that felt like a bad omen.

Eli backed another few feet and his headlights fell on something that had been hidden in the shadows. A small group of people stood in the downpour, about ten feet away from the witches’ circle’s north point. People, standing, immobile, in the rain. Not breathing. Not doing anything. Suckheads. Watching the witches. Wet and undead and scary silent.

In the backseat, my babysitter vamp cocked his head and studied them. Softly he said, “Interesting.” But his tone said it was more than just interesting—it was unexpected, disturbing, and dangerous. Wordless, Eli backed down the street and turned into a narrow alley to bypass the intersection and the . . . whatever was going on there.

Miz Onie’s Bed and Breakfast was closed for the night, but the woman was a light sleeper and met us at the door before we could even knock, dressed in a fluffy purple housecoat with her graying hair up in twisty cloth curlers. She was not yet sixty, but was using a cane this time, and her gait looked pained.

“I see you come down de street,” she said, her Cajun accent mellifluous. “Come in out de rain. You rooms ready. Wet clothes go hang on de rack,” she pointed. Without waiting, she led the way up the steps and we followed her uneven, slow steps.

“Are you injured, Miz Onie?” I asked.

Woman is sick. Smells old. Cull her from herd?

No!

Beast chuffed, but I didn’t really know if she was being funny or hiding a serious question.

“Broke my ankle back a month ago. Doctor say it a spiral fracture and take longer to heal. Got to wear dis boot, which make clump-clump noise, but I making good progress.” She looked at the Youngers. “You not the same boys what come with Jane last time,” she said as we dumped equipment and gear in the hallway upstairs. “Them boys be U.S. military. Who you is?”

I remembered that Miz Onie had liked men in uniform and had given special attention to the men, including huge breakfasts and food left out to munch on all day. “Former U.S. Army Ranger, Miz Onie,” I said, “and his younger brother, Alex. And Edmund Hartley.”

She looked them all over, nodding to herself at the sight of the Youngers. But her eyes squinted when she got to Ed. I couldn’t tell from her body language or her scent how she felt about the vamp, but she didn’t kick him out. She turned for the stairs and her room on the first floor, walking hunched over, gripping her robe tightly closed with her free hand. “Breakfast at seven. Towels in each bath. This wet weather has me out of sorts and strangely sleepy, so good night, all.”

Once again she gave me the best room, on the front of the house, the green room, with emerald green bedspread, moss green walls, striped green drapery, and greenish fake flowers in a tall vase near a wide bay with soaring windows and a door out to a gallery. The boys were sent into the room Derek had used on the last visit, which had two twin beds and a view into the garden out back. Edmund was left standing in the hallway alone, until she pointed to a third room, a nook at the top of the stairs. He frowned as he took in the windows and the draperies—which could be opened to let in the light while he slept, if an enemy was so inclined to watch him burn to death in bed.

He raised his brows. “Doesn’t like Mithrans, I take it?”

“Not fond of anyone one but military boys.”

“I fought in the Civil War. Does that count?”

“Confederate?”

“No.”

“I’d keep it to yourself, then,” I said, tossing my sleepwear on the bed and my toiletries on the bathroom counter, and laying out my weapons with much greater care.

Patiently Edmund said, “Where am I to sleep, my master?”

Sleep with Beast!

I ignored her and stood straight, staring at him. “None of that ‘my master’ crap. Not now, not ever. In fact, you can take that primo idea and stuff it where the sun don’t shine. As to your sleeping needs, I doubt the B and B has a vamp-sealed room, so I guess that, if the bedroom she assigned to you doesn’t make you all jolly, you get to spend the day in my closet.”

Edmund didn’t sigh, as vamps don’t have to breathe, but his body took on a long-suffering posture.

“Don’t worry. I’ll put a pallet in there with a nice comfy pillow from my bed. Meanwhile, why don’t you go see what the vamps are up to and get the lowdown on their point of view. I’m going to catch a couple of hours of shut-eye and head back out at five a.m.”

“Even when I was human that was an ungodly hour. And in case you haven’t noticed, it’s raining outside.”

“You’ll dry.” I pushed him out of the room and shut the door in his face. “Nighty night, Edmund.”

I texted Clermont Doucette that I was in town, put a nine mil on the bedside table along with a stake and a vamp-killer, kicked off my traveling boots, crawled between the covers, which smelled faintly of lavender and vanilla, and closed my eyes. I was instantly asleep. I woke when the single door to the gallery opened and wet air blew in. The nine mil was targeted on the dim outline before I got my eyes fully opened. “It’s loaded with silver,” I said, my voice gravelly with sleep.

“I would die, then, true-dead, if you shot me,” Edmund said, sounding unconcerned.

“Why are you entering my room from a second-story window?” I asked, as the night breeze fluttered the pale curtains into the room. The curtains were new since my last visit, and they had ruffles. I hate ruffles. “All the novels say suckheads can turn into bats and fly around. I thought it was fiction.”

Edmund made a pfft sound with his lips. “There is a tree outside your window with low branches. You need to put that toy away and come see this spectacle.” The guy really did have big brass ones. At the thought, I couldn’t help but grin, and Edmund’s eyebrows went up a notch. I waved the inquiring look away and rolled to the edge of the bed, my aim not wavering, and hit the floor in my sock feet. The bay window was narrow, and I motioned Edmund back with the weapon. He stepped out into the dark of night, onto the gallery, and I followed. The main intersection of Broad Street and Oiseau Avenue was visible between the waxy leaves of a magnolia in the yard of the B and B.

The witches were still standing in a circle in the middle of the crossroads. Standing behind them were two vamps for every one witch. They were positioned to attack and though the witches were outside the hedge circle—which was weird enough on its own—the vamps hadn’t yet attacked. Weird.

“How long?” I asked.

“Since the rain stopped.”

“How long until dawn?” I clarified.

“Perhaps fifteen minutes.”

“I was supposed to be up before this.”

“According to Clermont Doucette, the witches put a sleep spell on the entire town. Once humans go to sleep, they don’t wake until after dawn.”

I grunted. I wasn’t human, so why was I affected? Miz Onie had still been up when we got here. Or had been woken. I had to wonder if Miz Onie was immune to sleep spells or wasn’t human, to be able to be up and about. “What happens at dawn?”

“The Mithrans attack, moving at speed. The intent is to capture every witch and take back the wreath, which may be magical, though no one seems to know what its purpose is.

“When Shauna brought the wreath to her father, Landry decided that it was a religious artifact instead of a witch artifact and took it to the Catholic priest, who then called the bishop of Orleans Parish, St. Tammany Parish, St. Bernard Parish, Plaquemines Parish, and Jefferson Parish, who happens to be the same person, the preeminent religious figure in the southeast part of the state. The bishop sent a spokesperson, who kept it all of one day before deciding to send it Rome for exorcism.”

He paused for my reaction, but I didn’t have one to give, except to lower my weapon.

He inclined his head in recognition of his change in status from prisoner of a sort to gossip artist. “It has a great deal of power. I could smell it on the air. When the Mithrans heard that it was to be sent to Rome, they came en masse to the church. But it had been closed up behind the crosses on the walls and doused in holy water.”

I looked back at the gathering on the street and sighed. “Leo sent me into a mess, didn’t he?”

“To be fair to the Blood-Master of New Orleans, he did not know that things had become so dire.”

“Uh-huh. Go on with your story of intrigue, love lost, and magic crap.”

“Someone, not a Mithran, as he was undeterred by holy icons, stole over the wall to the church grounds, and pilfered the wreath from the priests.”

I started laughing softly, though I wasn’t sure it was from amusement or something more dismal. Watching the tableau in the street, the sodden witches and the hyperalert vamps, was like watching paint dry.

“That person took the wreath to the coven of witches, the female witches of the town, and the coven immediately recognized the power of the artifact.”

“So we have the vamps, the Holy Roman Church, and the witches all after the same thing.”

Edmund was definitely laughing now; his eyes were even twinkling. “The coven has been studying it for three nights, attempting different tests and spells to identify the magical signature—these are the words of Elodie and Gilbert, Mithrans who would speak to me, not my own. The wreath has been resistant to everything, even to being used as a power source for a spell of healing, the most simple and beneficial of all spells. While clearly powerful, the wreath is not assisting and is resistant to anyone spending its stored power.”

“And they called it a wreath?”

Edmund paused, his lips pursing slightly as he thought back. “I called it so. They did not object or suggest another name or title.”

“Go on.”

“The Mithrans want the wreath back, but the witches are in place before dusk and remain in place until after dawn. They are safe from attack by use of a spell that I have never seen or heard of before—what they call an electric dog collar. If anyone touches the faint circle that encloses them, they are instantly zapped with a strong force, sufficient to set a Mithran attacker ablaze, or stop a human heart. Or to send a wood beam catapulting across the square,” he added drily. “A human tried that one and received a broken arm for his troubles.”

I laughed then and took a seat on the small chair inside the room, the gun hanging down between my knees.

“Neither the Mithrans nor their humans can get to the witches,” Edmund said. There is evidence that the love match between the witch Shauna and her husband, Gabriel Doucette, is under strain.”

“No kidding. Okay. You say that the coven has been studying the thing for three nights. What happens at dawn?”

“The Mithrans pop away, as you might say, to their lairs, safely away from the sun, and the witches drop their dog collar spell, pick up the wreath, and walk away.”

“Go wake up the boys, will you? And be prepared for Eli to try to kill you. He’ll be unhappy to have slept past four a.m.”

“I’ll toss a bucket of water on him from a safe distance. That often works for mad dogs.”

Before he could move for the door, I heard a pop of sound and focused on the open gallery door. A form stood there, silhouetted in the faint gray light, his hands raised in a gesture of peace. It was Gabriel Doucette, heir of Clan Doucette, husband of Shauna Landry, the witch who had stolen the wreath. And a vamp.

I was glad I was still holding my weapon, because it was instantly settled on Gabriel’s pretty face. Gabe wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier when I met him the last time, and time and marriage hadn’t made him any smarter. He vamped-out—eyes, fangs, talons, the whole nine yards. Before I could squeeze the trigger and fill him full of silver-lead rounds, Edmund had my visitor’s head in his claws and his body bent back over one knee, exposing Gabriel’s belly and throat. It was clearly a position of forced submission.

“What do you want with my master?” Edmund asked, his power spiking so high it sizzled along my skin like the flare of sparklers, if the burning could be frozen into icicles taught to dance.

Gabriel made a sound like, “Gurk igh ugh eee.”

Edmund eased his hold and said, “Speak the full truth or die,” which was not what I’d come to do, but sounded pretty effective.

“I got to speak to the Enforcer before dawn.”

“You’re speaking to her,” I said.

Gabe’s eyeballs rolled around in his head until he could see me. “I have a . . . a petition for Enforcer of de Master of de City of New Orleans.” Which was formal talk, taken directly from the Vampira Carta. The local suckheads had been studying, it seemed.

“Let him go, Edmund. But if he gets riled, you can take back up where you were.” I frowned at the meek-looking vampire. “You were going to hurt him, right?”

“Yes, my master, his death, for entering your presence uninvited.”

Yeah. That seemed a little strong to me, but I wasn’t going to argue, not with Eli and the Kid still spelled asleep while flying vamps invaded. There might be others wanting to enter. I did glare at the use of “my master,” a title I was not going to accept.

Edmund gave me his meek look in return. He wasn’t bad at it, puppy-dog eyes and all, but I knew a fake when I saw it. Practicing that look in the presence of vamps might have given him extra acting skills, but having been a clan blood-master for so long had unbalanced it in favor of an underlayment of arrogance.

“Whatever,” I muttered. I looked at our prisoner. I didn’t have a real firm grasp on the proper response, except that it was equally formal. I sighed and pulled back the slide on my weapon, ejecting the round. I set it and the nine mil on the small bedside table and moved to the edge of the bed, where I sat again, empty hands dangling. I needed more downtime than I’d gotten. Vamp time was hard on a girl’s beauty sleep. “The Enforcer of the Master of the City of New Orleans and the Greater Southeast United States, with the exception of Florida, will hear you.” When he didn’t say anything I added, “Talk, Gabe. Make it clear, concise, and fast.”

“I the man who responsible for the troubles in this town, I am.”

That was pretty concise. I hadn’t paid much attention to Gabe’s voice when I was here last, trying to keep my skin on my bones and my blood in my veins. But his Cajun syllables were clear and pleasant, a higher tone that contrasted markedly to his father’s deeper voice. “Okay. Let’s hear your side.”

“A vampire man, a Mithran as the Vampira Carta say, he have certain needs.”

My head went back. “If this is about sex, I’m not interested in suckhead infidelity.”

“No, no, no. Not sex. Blood.”

Edmund didn’t bother to hide an amused grin. My prudishness was a source of cynical entertainment among the vamps. I frowned at him and caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the mirror over the vanity. My hair was everywhere, as if I’d fought a vamp in my dreams. I sighed and said, “Edmund, we’re safe here. Go check on the boys. No buckets of water.”

Edmund dropped Gabriel, saying, “As my master commands.” With a pop of displaced air, he was gone.

“Get up and sit”—I pointed to the floral upholstered chair I had just deserted—“and tell me what you did that got all this started.”

Gabriel rose from the floor with the fluid grace of the undead and took the small chair. He was dressed in rain-wet jeans and a camo shirt, work boots, and leather armbands worked in Celtic symbols with the logo of a rock-and-roll band. Around his neck he wore a leather thong with a tiny gold Celtic circle hanging from it. His brown hair fell to his waist, some braided, some hanging free, all of it wet and dripping, which might have made another man look like a soaked dog, but on Gabe, with his aquiline nose and almond-shaped eyes, it just made him prettier. When he bowed his head over his interlaced fingers, his hair touched the floor. It was a graceful gesture, and it was no wonder that the witch, Shauna, had fallen for the pretty boy. “Been a fool, I have,” he said.

That was a good start. I pulled a vamp-killer, which I placed at my side. His eyes went wide and he swallowed, a totally vamp reaction to the presence of a fourteen-inch-long steel blade plated with silver. I reached around and began unplaiting my braid, going for casual and killer all at once. I nodded for him to continue.

His eyes on the weapon, he said, “All dis mess”—he jerked his head to the outside in a gesture that was particularly Cajun and Gaelic and Frenchy—“might . . . pro’lly, have start when Shauna found dat I done drank—one time only—from someone else.” My eyebrows went up in surprise. “Shauna, she got baby blues after our lil’ boy, Clerjer, born.” It came out Clarshar, the name all pretty and flowing syllables of the expectation of peace.

The child had been the first vampire-witch baby born in the traditional human way, as opposed to a vamp turning, in ages. His name had been a hopeful blending of the names of the leaders of the witches and vamps in the small town, Clermont Jérôme Landry Doucette, the baby being the first and only thing bringing the two opposing groups together in, well, forever.

I nodded again, showing I understood.

“Shauna, her go anemic. Not have blood for me. I have to feed or I go”—his hand made a circle around his ear—“crazy in de head.”

I thought about that. Two young people madly in love. Baby. Weakness. One not able to feed from the other. Postpartum depression. It made sense, on the face of it, for him to drink from someone else. It seemed right and proper, the gentlemanly thing to do, to get sustenance from elsewhere. Except that for vamps, feeding and sex were usually synonymous. “Who’d you drink from?” I frowned at him. “I’m guessing that it wasn’t from your sire or a brother?” Gabe shook his head, his eyes back down in shame. I blew out a breath, and if my sarcasm was a bit strong, I felt it was well placed. “I take it she was pretty?”

“Yeah,” he said after a pause that went on too long. “She is dat.”

“And you had sex with her?”

“No! I no cheat on my Shauna! Her blood-kin to Doucette clan. I no dishonor her like dat.”

“Sooo . . . ,” I said, thinking, my fingers combing through the mess of my hair. “No fun and games.” And then it hit me. “She walked in on you?” Gabe nodded, the motion as jerky as a human. “And it looked like you were having a little too much fun?”

“Yeah. It did dat.”

“Idiot.”

“Yeah, I am dat too.”

“Who was she?” I asked as I started rebraiding my hip-length hair at the base of my head, pulling and slinging each third through the rest.

“You know her,” he said after a few quiet seconds. “Her be Margaud.”

I stopped braiding and narrowed my eyes at him. He glanced up at my silence and the expression on his face said he knew how stupid he had been. Simply put, the three Mouton siblings hated vamps. The three adult children of the family were the former army twins, Auguste and Benoît—alligator hunters and vamp haters from way back—and their sister, who was as beautiful as they were ugly. A trained sniper, Margaud had seen some real-time action in some foreign battlefield. And she hated vamps maybe even more than her brothers did. “Just to clarify. You drank from Margaud?”

“I did.”

“She let you drink from her?”

“I at de bar. All alone on Saturday night. Hongry, I was. She come in, sit beside me, order her a whiskey. We talk a bit. She buy me a whiskey. We talk some more. She say, ‘How you doin’, Gabe? You looking pale.’ She smile. She ask, real sof’-like, ‘You need some-a dis?’ I stupid.”

I don’t cuss as a rule, except sometimes to yank people’s chains, but this was a special case. “You’re a dickhead.”

“I dat too. Before she sit by me? I found later dat she done call Shauna and tell her to come to de blood bar. Dat why Shauna walk into back room when I feeding from Margaud.”

I yanked on my hair, braiding fast, thinking. “You know she was trying to cause trouble, right?”

“I know.” Gabriel sounded ashamed and devastated all at the same time. He looked at me, and his eyes, still human-looking, filled with pale pink tears. “I love my Shauna. I die now of heartbreak, I am. I die for sure, before I drink again.”

Pinkish tears meant, well, not starvation, but certainly long-term hunger. His body looked thinner, as if lanky had been stretched to its limits. His physical control, under the hunger constraints, was pretty amazing. It left me with nothing to say. Margaud was a bitch and Gabe was an idiot. A starving idiot, but still an idiot. I finished braiding my hair and twisted an elastic band around the tip. “Anything else I need to know?”

Gabe’s head dropped even lower, so I couldn’t see his face. His voice a mutter, he said, “When Shauna come through the door and see us, she throw a vase at us, she did. Margaud, her run to Shauna and take her hand, like friend. Say she willing to . . . to share me with Shauna.”

“Oh.” Yeah, That’s a great way to make everything worse.

“Fight, there was. Catfight. I stupid, and blood-drunk just a bit, so long since I drink my fill, and I laugh. Shauna left. Went back to Clan Home, took Clerjer, took the wreath, and disappear.”

“The wreath outside in the witch circle?”

“De same.”

“Margaud set up the whole thing to mess with the vamps and start trouble.”

“Yeah. I tink dat so too.”

Margaud was a beautiful, deadly woman, with ash brown hair, blonded by the sun, deep brown eyes, and skin tanned golden. She was petite and delicate and last I saw her, she had looked too small to transport or position the sniper rifle she had used to give us cover when my team approached the Doucette Clan Home. She was muscular and fit, and carried herself with a capable, confident air, the exact opposite of a woman who’d just had a baby, all full of baby fat and hormones. No matter how unearthly beautiful Shauna Landry Doucette was, the sight of her husband in the other woman’s arms would have hurt. Bad.

The sharpshooter had played a hand and played it well, and now I had not only to try to fix things with the wreath and repair the damage to the marriage, but figure out Margaud’s next move and stop it before it happened.

I frowned. People skills were not among my best talents; I was more a shoot-first-and-bang-heads-together-later kinda gal. “You talked to the witches? To Shauna’s daddy?”

“I try. Him come at me with carving knife, he did. And then him throw spell at me from them fire tattoos on he arm. I get away alive, but barely.”

Lucky Landry was one of the rare male witches, and he had full-sleeve tats down his left arm. They were of weird creatures, combos of snake and human, with fangs and scales, mouths open in what looked like agony, as red and yellow flames climbed up from his wrist to burn them. It was like some bizarre vision of hell.

It wasn’t commonly known, but spells could be tattooed into the flesh of witches for use, and into the flesh of humans for binding them, all of which was strictly illegal according to witch law, but the supernatural inhabitants of Bayou Oiseau had been cut off from others of their own kind for a century, give or take. Things were different here. Everything was different here.

I heard stirring in the boys’ room, male voices, no screaming or shots fired, so Edmund must have been nice in his waking. From the lower part of the house, the smell of bacon rose on the air. Miz Onie was up early, starting one of her amazing breakfasts. I stood and, carrying my vamp-killer, went to the door of the gallery, turning my back on Gabe, which was a pure insult to the vamp, the way an alpha proves strength in the face of a weaker opponent, definitely an insult, almost a dare. One Gabe didn’t take.

Dawn was coming, gray streaks across the dark sky, red clouds in the east. The vamps stood two and two behind each witch, vamped-out, claws and fangs and bloody vampy eyes, pupils like pits into hell that I could see even from here, with Beast so close to the surface, aiding my vision. One vamp spot was empty. “Better hurry,” I said.

I felt the air move and swirl as Gabe leaped from the gallery, slower than most vamps. Blood starved. Stupid man. He appeared as if by magic beside his father, both vamps standing behind the witch at the north point of the circle, usually the leader of the coven. It was hard to make out much about the woman because she stood in a shadow cast by another magnolia tree, drenched and dripping as they all were. She was tall and strongly built, an Amazon fully six feet tall—my height, and she had me by fifty pounds at least, and from here, all of it looked like pure muscle. The vamps moved in, closer, so close that one jerked back as if shocked by electricity.

I don’t catch scents as well in human form as I do in my Beast form, or in tracking dog form, but even from here I could smell the ozone tingle of witch magic, the herbal and blood scent of vamps, the overriding scent of rain. The smells were powerful and full of the vamp version of adrenaline. The vamps were getting ready to do something.

The shadows changed, shifting, as the sun tried to lift itself over the horizon. Just before the day lightened, the vamps rushed the witches. As one, they slammed into the dog collar circle. The ward sparked, flashed, power so bright I spun away, covering my face with my arm. I heard the awful screams of vamps dying—or thinking they were. A chorus of ululations so high that my eardrums vibrated in pain. I heard/smelled meat sizzle.

The first rays of the sun swept in and, with a small explosion of sound, the vamps disappeared, leaving behind the stink of burned vamp, and the echo of vamps in pain as they rushed into the blood bar and what were probably lairs beneath the ground.

I blinked down and saw humans rush to stand in front of the blood bar doorway. Big men in muscle shirts and carrying truncheons creating a barricade of muscled flesh and iron pipes. The protection of loyal blood-servants.

Behind me, I felt a draft of fast-moving air, and the closet door in my room opened and closed. A vamp, God help me, was climbing into his safe haven for the day. In my bedroom. My life was still getting weirder by the day.

Down below, the witches stood straight and stretched. With a gesture, the Amazon woman dropped the inner hedge of thorns and walked to the center of the inner circle. She picked up the wreath, holding it like a holy relic. In the dawn light it was clearly not a Christmas wreath, but just what we had thought—a laurel wreath or olive wreath, like the ancients used to indicate royalty. The haze of pale magics it contained were grayer, duller, less clear in the brighter light. And even from here, I could smell the magic wafting from it like ozone from a power plant or after a lightning strike. An internal shiver raced along my spine at the thought of lightning. I’d been struck by lightning and nearly died. Never again. Never.

The Amazon walked away carrying the wreath. Just ducky. A magical gadget in the hands of a witch who clearly was powerful all on her own, and who also had the power to draw on the magic of others. A town full of witches, protecting the magical thingamabob. One that my boss would want in his greedy, taloned hands.

This whole thing sucked.

•   •   •

We had a breakfast big enough to last all day, with a slab of thick-cut bacon that had to have come from Lucky Landry’s butcher shop, Boudreaux’s Meats. Best meat I had ever eaten—well, cooked, and me in human form. Beast had other thoughts about her preference of freshly brought down meat, raw and still kicking. Not my preference. There were also sausage links with the intense spicy flavor of Lucky’s special spice and herb rub recipe, free-range scrambled eggs from a neighbor’s hens, fresh-baked bread, three kinds of muffins, and a bowl of fruit big enough to take a bath in had the fruit not been in the way. The Kid ate huge servings of everything, even the fruit. He was suddenly putting on weight, the muscle kind, and I was sure he had grown another inch. He would be topping his older brother if this kept up, and I saw Eli glancing at his baby brother from time to time as Alex ate. Eli was no slouch in the eat-his-fill department, and neither was I. We managed to put a hurting on the food before Eli decided it was time to talk.

“Who the hell put a sleep spell on us?” he growled.

“Language,” Alex said.

Eli’s eyes narrowed, but he patted his lips with his napkin and placed it beside his plate before taking a tiny sip of coffee. The motions were tight and tense, and I knew he was holding himself in check with effort. Eli had control issues. Spells pushed his buttons. Oversleeping pushed his buttons. Edmund waking him up pushed his buttons. Especially if Edmund was tossing cold water on him or, worse as far as Eli was concerned, whispering sweet nothings in his ear. I managed not to smile at the thought, but it was a near thing.

“Who the heck put a sleep spell on us?” Eli’s voice was ubercontrolled.

“The whole town was spelled,” I said, “not just us. And I’m betting that Leo didn’t know this part.”

“Why?”

“Because he would have shared this with us. Being put to sleep could mean the difference between success and failure, so Clermont didn’t tell him. They’re back to playing vamp games.” I told the boys about my visitor and the intel I had been given. At some point in the narrative, Eli calmed down. The fact that the spell had been a general one, and not particular to us, seemed to ease his anger. For me, that made it worse, as it spoke of a huge usage of magical power, but I kept that to myself. When I finished with my tale of love lost and male stupidity and female scorned and revenge, Eli sighed and poured himself another cup of coffee. The small porcelain cups were dainty and pretty, with little pink and yellow flowers on them, and they held about a third of what our mugs did at home, but Eli hadn’t let that stop him getting caffeined up. He was steadily making his way through a second pot of Miz Onie’s dark French roast brew. “Well, at least we got a good night’s sleep.” He gave me his patented grin—a slight twitch of his lips, which, on anyone else, could have passed for indigestion. “Except you.”

“Yeah. Thanks for the sympathy. I also have a vamp sleeping in my closet. No sympathy for that either?”

“Not a hint.”

“Fine. We have a good nine hours of daylight left before the vamps rise. Alex, I want you to find out the historical and/or current relationship between the Doucettes, the Moutons, the Landrys, and the Bordelons, four powerful families that I remember from my last trip here.” Alex pulled out his electronic tablet and took down the names, but he looked at me curiously.

“I talked with Lucky Landry about the town, back on my first visit, and he told me when the first Cajuns got to Louisiana.” Trying out a Cajun accent, I said, “Dey Moutons say dey get here in 1760, but my family, de Landrys, land in New Orleans in April 1764, but dey don’ get here in dis town till 1769.”

Alex pulled a face. “That was terrible.”

Eli added, “It sounded like you were talking while chewing gum and eating hot mashed potatoes.”

I decided further attempts weren’t worth the trouble. I really needed to find time for French lessons. “His grandmother was one of two Bordelon witch sisters, Cally Bordelon. The Bordelons were the strongest witches in these parts when the vamp-witch-human wars started in Bayou Oiseau. Lucky Landry is related to all the witches in the area, and we might need to know the historical context of this situation. Or we might not. I’d rather have intel and not need it than need it and not have it. Anyway, the family tree between the Bordelons and the Landrys might be important, especially if we find a Doucette or a Mouton in there somewhere.”

“Got it. On it,” Alex said, already bent over his tablet.

To Eli I said, “I think I need to talk to Shauna’s daddy and get the witch side of the story, then maybe see the Amazon witch in the street.”

“Weapons?” Eli asked.

“Me, nothing. You got three-eighties and a vamp-killer?”

“No collateral damage. Got it. Fifteen,” he said, meaning he’d be ready in fifteen minutes. He looked at his brother. “While we’re gone, see what you can find about a magic wreath. Get us dossiers on the living and undead principals to fill out Jane’s old ones. See if there’s anything in Reach’s database to update what we know. And get a shower. You stink.”

“Again?”

“Garlic,” I said. “You sweat garlic and testosterone.”

“I’m da man?” he asked hopefully.

“No,” Eli and I said together.

“You just need to shower more often,” I added, trying for kindness.

“A lot more often,” Eli said, going for honesty.

•   •   •

We started out at Boudreaux’s Meats, which opened at eight a.m. according to the sign on the door, but actually opened closer to nine. Maybe so the proprietor could get a few winks in between dawn and opening. I hadn’t seen Lucky in the circle, but I had no doubt that he was involved somehow, his daughter being the center of the whole situation.

Boudreaux’s had been owned and run by Old Man Boudreaux, until Lucky married the man’s daughter and Boudreaux took his son-in-law under his wing, teaching him everything he knew about carving up pig, cow, wild boar, squirrel, gator, and seafood. And cooking all of the aforementioned protein on a grill. And making various meat-based delights out of it. I’d been in the state of Louisiana for a long time now, and I’d never found another eatery as good as Boudreaux’s Meats. The outside was decorated with signs advertising the meat and the day’s meals, with the specials written in chalk on a blackboard. There were also crosses painted on each window in brilliant blue, which was new. Inside, the place was changed a bit too, with blue plastic tablecloths on the few tables, new backless benches, the floor painted blue and polished to a high shine, and the smell of bacon flavoring the air. The cooler was still in the same place, full of ice and beer. And just like last time, I was met with the bad end of a gun.

“Jane Yellowrock,” Lucky said from behind the counter. “Raise your hands. Keep ’em high. You too, boy.” Eli narrowed his eyes at Lucky, the word boy being pejorative in these parts, but he raised his arms. Lucky had a deep, heavy Cajun accent, hard to understand sometimes, but there was no mistaking the intent of a double-barreled shotgun. The witch was in his early fifties, Caucasian, with black hair and dark eyes—what the locals call Frenchy. A few strands of silver marked his hair, new since I was here last. “Why you here?”

“I was asked to come by the Master of the City of New Orleans.”

“To stop de witches of dis town, here? To steal le breloque what Shauna found?”

I wasn’t sure what a breloque was, so I ignored that part. “To find out what was going on and restore peace if possible.”

Lucky snorted, a deep and resonant sound that belonged on the backstreets of Paris or in the deeps of the swamps.

“And no,” I said, “I have no intention of trying to steal the wreath or whatever it is. I’d like to stop the bloodshed before it starts, though.”

“Le breloque. Tell you what. You cut de head off Gabriel Doucette and I let you go way ’live.”

“I’ll tell you what. You put that shotgun down, I’ll let you live. Deal?”

Lucky snorted again and I smelled the tingle of his magic on the air. No way was I letting him hit me with a spell.

Everything happened fast.

I drew on Beast. Leaped hard across the storefront. Pushed off with a foot and lunged left, then right, behind the counter. Fast, fast, fast.

My partner dove behind the cooler, pulling both guns.

He was still midmove when I knocked the shotgun to the side with one forearm and twisted it out of Lucky’s hands. The spell he threw shot over my shoulder and slammed into the wall behind me. Something crashed. I didn’t have time to look. I turned the shotgun on Lucky. And snarled. Fun, my Beast thought. More!

“Move and bleed,” I growled.

Lucky wore a sheen of sweat that hadn’t been there before, slicking his olive skin.

“What was that spell?” I demanded.

“A get away from me spell,” he said, his mouth turning down. Sadness in his tone, he said, “Broke my wall, it did.”

I glanced once, fast. The back wall of the meat shop looked like a cannonball had gone through it. There was a hole open to the shop next door and the sounds of screams came from it weakly, as if the ladies inside were running away. Smart women.

“You not so easy to stop dis time. Why dat is?” he asked.

“I was expecting the shotgun. You were expecting a human. I’m no longer aping human.” Which still sounded weird when I said it, but secrets could no longer help me.

“What you is?”

I grinned and let more of Beast shine through me, seeing the golden reflection in Lucky’s black eyes. “Not saying. Tell me what happened. Everything. Or my partner will put a hole through your forearm that will take some healing spells and physical therapy to get over.”

From the side I heard a vamp-killer being drawn.

Lucky didn’t spare my partner a glance. “Le bâtard, Gabriel Doucette, done cheat on my girl.”

So far the stories were close, which was better than I feared. “And?”

“And she took my gran’bébé, my petit-fils, and le breloque, what called by de suckheads la corona, and she brung it to me, she did.”

“And?”

Lucky’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m looking for a timeline here, Lucky—everything you know or suspect. If you want to live by your nickname, talk. And if you want to live at all, you better call off the magic, because I have no problem knocking you out and carrying you to the Doucettes’.”

“You not do dat.”

“Try me.”

Lucky snorted again, but this time with less force, as if he was rethinking my intentions. Odd what things you can pick up from a snort as melodious as Lucky’s.

“I take la corona to de priest. Him call de bishop, who send us a scholar. De scholar decide la corona belong to dem. Pack to send it to Rome, they did. Shauna, her climb de fence and steal dat package back. Le breloque, it go to de strongest witch and coven leader.”

I frowned, letting the events settle in my mind. Asking the same questions of different people was a standard investigative technique. One always learned something new, a different slant, a different sliver of intel. It was boring, but it was useful. This time I had learned that Shauna was not just reactionary, hormonal, ticked off, and a wronged spouse, she was also a thief. Of course, the priest and the bishop’s henchman might be thieves too, if I included their taking the wreath and planning to send it away, as thievery. Which I did. Unless . . .

I thought about the laurel wreath and the Roman Catholic Church and, for a fraction of a second, wondered if it could be something other than a witch artifact. Maybe the reason that everyone was so interested was because the laurel wreath was something else entirely. Something glamoured to look like a witch icon. Maybe another circlet, maybe one made of thorns. Now, that would be a powerful talisman. Vamps were always looking for things related to Golgotha, to the place of the skull, from which they took their beginnings. So was the Church for similar and yet wildly opposing reasons. Both wanting the same things . . .

The wreath part of the crown of thorns was supposedly in Rome, while the thorn parts had supposedly been removed from the twisted vine and sent as gifts, bargaining chips, and items of priceless monetary and unimaginable spiritual value to various kings, cities, churches, and armies over the course of history. I had never heard of the crown of thorns being taken from Rome, never heard of it being stolen by vamps or used by witches. And besides, a vine of thorns wouldn’t have been a laurel. If it had gone missing, I surely would have heard about it—the whole world would have heard about it. So the wreath wasn’t that crown. I shook off the thought and said, “I thought you were coven leader.”

“No man can be leader of de coven. Man magic too strong, unpredictable, to lead full coven. Too what dey call volatile to do all de maths for a group.”

Witch magics were dependent on mathematics, geometry, and physics. Lucky was indeed too volatile to run a coven, which took control, finesse, and good people skills as well as strength, but I knew another male witch who could have handled the positon well. “Okay. You did know that Margaud didn’t have sex with Gabriel, right?”

Lucky frowned, a ferocious expression that went all the way to his toes as he tensed. “My girl walk in on dem, she did!”

“She walked in on Gabe feeding on Margaud, after Margaud got him drunk, called Shauna, and then offered him dinner.”

“You lie.”

“I don’t. Margaud and her brothers hate vamps. She set the whole thing up, using Shauna’s postpartum depression and anemia, and Gabe’s starvation, as a way to start trouble.”

Lucky’s frown lessened. “What?”

“You didn’t know Shauna was anemic? Depressed? Women do awful things at times like that, or so I hear.”

Lucky scowled, an expression that suggested he was thinking back. “Her taking iron pills,” he said reluctantly.

“Uh-huh. And Gabe was starving to death because he wasn’t feeding. I’m not saying that drinking whiskey on an empty stomach was smart, and I’m not saying that Margaud wouldn’t have slept with Gabe, or that she didn’t spike his liquor with something even stronger. I’m not saying that Gabe isn’t an idiot, because he is. What I am saying is that you didn’t get the full story. Your daughter is”—I pulled a Cajun saying out of the air—“the pole around which this johnboat twirls.”

“You say my Shauna causing trouble?”

“Yep. First off, it sounds like she also has postpartum depression. And that’s on top of you raising her to think she could get anything she wanted out of life just on her looks.” Lucky started to object. “Don’t. I met her. I knew girls like her, growing up. I recognized the signs the first time I met her, and that was before the depression set in. You let Shauna wrap you around her little finger her whole life. You need to see all your people for who they really are. Shauna, Gabe, and Margaud too. And then you need to stop being flighty, emotional, and volatile, and be a leader. Don’t tell me you can’t just because you’re a male witch. That excuse might have worked when you were fourteen and full of testosterone, but it stops working today. Right this minute.”

I set the shotgun on the counter and let Lucky go. He didn’t lunge for the gun, which kept him alive; Eli had a vamp-killer in one hand and his .380 in the other, aimed through the glass butcher counter. At this range, he could have hit Lucky—and a gorgeous ham—with his eyes closed.

He said, “You done come to dis town and you try teach me lesson?”

“Somebody needs to. Lucky, this town is this close”—I held my thumb and index finger a quarter inch apart—“to going up in flames or turning into a bloodbath. Or both.”

“Okay. I hear dat.” He squinted at me. “You too young to be my gran’-mère, but you sound just like her.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” The rest of the convocation went much more smoothly.

•   •   •

The shop door closed behind us. Eli said mildly, “Grandmaw?”

“Boy?”

“Yeah, ’bout that.” He scowled. “Coonass,” he said, evaluating and passing judgment.

“Agreed.”

“But . . . Grandmaw?”

“Cherokee chick,” I corrected.

“Badass, motorcycle-mama, deadly Cherokee chick,” he amended.

I nodded contemplatively, taking in everything about the small town as we walked, including the still-unused heavy equipment parked in the streets around the main intersection. “Badass, gun-toting, loyal, former military, take-no-prisoners-and-leave-no-one-behind”—I paused, thinking about Eli’s milk-and-coffee skin tone and his possible ethnic background—“caramel candy man.”

“Sylvia says my skin is sweet as sugar,” he agreed, looking relaxed as a tourist, but his eyes taking in everything, glancing at me, making sure I saw what he did. The unused equipment didn’t have state or county license tags. Some private company had gotten a contract to repave the city streets, and then, for reasons unknown but probably having to do with bloodsuckers, the workers had disappeared. “She likes to lick me aaaall over.” His twitch of a smile was half-teasing, half–evil swagger.

“Ick. TMI. Boy talk. Not what I needed to hear. If I weren’t so badass I’d stick my fingers in my ears.”

He laughed. Finished with the questions, insults, clarifications, and bragging rights, Eli slipped his sunglasses on against the glare. The day was heating up in what South Louisianans called fall weather: mid-nineties, dead air, with a blistering sun. Even with my healing abilities I had taken to wearing sunscreen. Sunburn was unpleasant, and it might be a while before I could shift into Beast and heal the minor hurts. “The only good thing we got out of our chat with Lucky was lunch plans.” He shook his head as we sauntered toward the Catholic church on the far corner. Eli went on, “I ate until I was stuffed at breakfast, and I’m already hungry just from smelling Boudreaux’s.”

“I think it’s a spell. A make people hungry spell.”

Eli’s stomach growled softly in reply.

“See?”

The Catholic church hadn’t changed since my last visit. The bell tower was the tallest building in the town, built of thick brick walls that shadowed its tarnished, patinated bell, the openings high landing and nesting places for pigeons. The church itself was cross-shaped, brick and mortar. Brick fencing encased the expanse of close-cut lawn. The ornate bronze crosses in the niches of the fence had tarnished and leaked various shades of verdigris down the brick, like the stains of ancient tears. The top of the wall, with its pointed cross iron spikes, made the whole place look like a fortress of religion instead of a church.

The town had been at war for far too long, vamps and witches fighting, humans fighting both, the church stuck in the middle, taking sides as it could, and somehow surviving the bloodletting. At one point after the Civil War, the witches and humans had joined with the priests and taken the war to the vamps. There were beheadings and burnings and death in the streets everywhere. The Middle East today had nothing on Bayou Oiseau at the height of the vamp wars.

Eli stopped at the entrance to the gate and pulled his phone. He now had a bullet-resistant, Kevlar-protected official cell like mine, a leash to Leo, but handy in so many ways that he hadn’t been able to leave it behind. He scrolled through his address book and tapped an icon on the screen. He put the cell against his ear and walked away, so I couldn’t hear the person on the other end, even with Beast being nosy. A moment later Eli said, “Joe, my brother. Yeah. Okay. You? The arm? That’s good, that’s real good. Yeah, business. I’m in a little town called Bayou Oiseau, Louisiana. We’ve got a magical artifact here that the witches and suckheads are fighting over. The church had it for a while and then it was stolen back. According to some, the church sent a scholar to look it over. Would you take a look and see if there’s anything I need to know? Text would be great. Yeah, this number. Thanks, dude. Yeah, yeah, I might make that one. You too.” He closed his cell and gestured inside.

“You gonna tell me what that was all about?”

“I’d prefer not to. But if I have to, then yes.”

We walked through the gate of the church, and instantly the flesh on the back of my neck started to crawl. Predator/prey response. “We being watched?” I murmured to Eli, my lips not moving, so my words couldn’t be read by a lip-reader.

“Targeted,” he said casually, his lips equally still. “Eyes in the bell tower. One rifle barrel.”

“How did you see it?” I asked, curious.

“Birds shuffled.”

“Ah. That or magic glasses.”

Eli huffed out a soft laugh but didn’t contradict me. And that got me thinking about what the government might be able to do if they had witches helping them. The national registration of the supernats could someday happen, and if it did, the possible results and repercussions for those with magical potential were dire. Like forcing witches to work for the government, creating new and harmful weapons, and, worse, at the risk of families and friends being hurt if witches didn’t comply. I could see the Department of Defense chaining vamps to the wall and draining them for sips of blood before soldiers go into battle. I could see—

“You getting all the way from ‘maybe’ to ‘stupid’ with the conspiracy theories, yet?” Eli asked, an edge to his voice.

“Pretty close, after that phone call,” I said.

“Don’t. The glasses were five bucks at CVS on Decatur Street. Uncle Sam trained me well. That’s it.”

I smiled, using the excuse to tilt up my head. The rifle barrel was still following us, pointed down now. “I wasn’t trying to push your buttons.”

“Did it anyway.”

I shoved open the heavy wood door, and cool air flowed out. Cool air was one reason for the thick walls when building back in the days before central air-conditioning. “I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. I changed the subject. “Did Lucky mention the priest’s name?”

“‘Father’ usually works.”

“Hmmm. Is the bishop’s scholar still here?”

“Didn’t get that intel either. Flying by the seat of our pants, just like usual, ain’t we, babe?”

“Except for your mysterious phone call.” Eli didn’t reply, and I sighed again. “I shoulda asked Lucky.”

“Shoulda,” Eli agreed.

“I forgot.” Sometimes I wondered whether my adrenaline-addicted partner let me forget to find out stuff just so he could play commando games again. But . . . nah. Surely not.

The door closed behind us. We were standing in a darkened foyer sort of place, windowless, the interior walls constructed of wide planks of cypress wood, the finish darkened by time and damp. Ahead, I could see the sanctuary, which, if I remembered right, Roman Catholics called something else. Inside, it was obvious that the church was shaped like a cross, the thick brick walls pierced open with stained glass windows letting in the sunlight in colors of ocean blue and bloodred. The exposed beams of the roof system were far overhead, beams bigger around than my waist. Verdigris-stained brass chandeliers dangled on rusted iron chains. In niches were statues dressed in clothing from Roman times, all with halos, and some with wings. Saints and angels. At the front of the church was a cross, some twenty feet tall, with a plaster Jesus hanging there, all bloody and beaten, wearing a blue scarf over his privates and a crown of thorns. This crown looked nothing like the one in the street in the dark of a rainy night.

“Where do you think the priest is?” I asked.

“This time of day? The sacristy or his home. Or maybe he’s the sharpshooter in the belfry.” Eli pulled his cell and checked a text message, frowning.

“Sacristy?”

Eli shot me a glance and removed his glasses, the gloom too much even for the loss of cool factor. With them he indicated the room we were in. “Narthex.” He glasses-pointed ahead. “Nave. The center area is the crossing with the transcepts as the cross’ arms. The head of the cross shape is the apse, with the chancel and the altar. Behind that wall is the sacristy. This church is built on the classic, historical, cruciform architecture.”

I was pretty sure I was goggling. “Are you Catholic?”

He tapped his chest with the glasses. “Ranger. We know everything.”

“What can I do for you, my children?”

The man who was speaking was standing in the crossing, half-hidden in a shadow cast by a plaster statue, bloody and clawed, with a lion rampant, about to bite him. The statue. Not the priest. Beast peered out from my eyes, amused at the statues. Small teeth and claws. Beast’s are bigger, she thought. The priest was a middle-aged, pink-skinned, redheaded man, slight of build and serious-looking, his hands in the pockets of his long black robes.

Eli murmured, “The black robes make him an old-school Jesuit.” He narrowed his eyes as if that was important somehow and spoke louder. “Father.”

We started down the center aisle, our boots loud on the wood floor, echoing up into the rafters. The air inside was still, the way an empty house feels when its people have been on an extended vacation. It smelled of cleansers and lemon oil and ashes, and the stink of Silvadene. The silver-based cream was used for second- and third-degree burns on humans. On vamps, it would be a poison.

The priest repeated, “What can I do for you, my children?”

Before Eli could reply, I said, “The Mithran Master of the City of New Orleans, Leo Pellissier, sent us to see what was going on in Bayou Oiseau between the suc—the vampires and the witches.”

He didn’t change posture, but I smelled the priest’s interest and the shot of pure adrenaline that pumped into his bloodstream. I had an instant certainty that the priest wasn’t just a priest. At my side, I felt Eli shift a step to my left, his body slightly left-side-forward, right hand at his side. That was a fighting position, and I caught a whiff of gun oil. Eli had drawn a weapon. Not good. Now that we were closer to the priest, he stank of old fire and cooked meat and frustration tightly controlled. I studied the priest, his black robes and sash unrelieved by color except for the splotch of red above his waist on his left side and the white around his collar.

The priest said, “A vampire sent you to this town?”

“Yeah. At the request of the local Clan blood-master.”

His voice soft a breeze, Eli said, “We understand that you had control of the wreath, what the Mithrans call la corona in Latin, or le breloque, in French.”

I didn’t react, but . . . how did my partner know that was Latin? No way could he blame that on being a Ranger.

The priest said, “The wreath is spelled, hiding what it is. Spells are of the devil.”

“Not all of them,” I said.

“Yes. All.”

“Powers and principalities are not all from Satan.”

“You wish to bandy Scripture and Church history with me?” Something in the emphasis suggested that I was out of my league in that department, that he could squash me under his metaphorical, verbal, scholarly boot. I decided on another tack.

I said, “Is the vine of the true crown still in the Vatican? Or did it go missing?” The priest removed his hands from his pockets, and Eli tensed, not that anyone else would have noted the minute changes in his body. It was more a scent change than motion, and it eased when the priest appeared to clasp his white-gloved hands behind his back. The stink of burned meat and Silvadene was instantly stronger on the air.

I knew my partner needed something, so I went on the offensive, drawing the priest’s attention to me with a single step forward and what little I had gained from the Kid’s info. “Or should I say, one of the many vines of the crown of thorns. Several are in France, one in Germany, one in Belgium. Spain and Italy have pieces of it, even the Ukraine. And the thorns are everywhere. For the Church to send an important guy like you, it must be possible that the real one has gone missing, and they thought it might be here, sealed into the corona.

“Or . . . worse,” I said, thinking, “maybe an even more ancient corona showed up here. Something the Greeks would have attributed to a god or goddess or the witches could use to get back at the Church for a millennium of oppression, and . . .” I cocked my head and grinned at the man. His face was placid, but he stank of anger. “. . . the Church couldn’t have that, could it?”

As I spoke, the Jesuit’s nostrils flared with fury and then his skin paled with something like dread. I wasn’t good at guessing games, but I was very good at flying by the seat of my pants, and I had a feeling that I’d just flown over the priest’s home base. I thought about the smells and the white gloves. Or not just gloves. No.

“Idiot,” I said scathingly. “You tried to burn it, didn’t you? But it wouldn’t burn. It burned you instead. That’s what”—I almost said that was what I smelled, but I changed it to—“you’re hiding with the gloves. They’re bandages hiding the burned skin.”

Eli said, softly, “I talked to Joseph Makris at the Vatican.”

At the name, the priest’s eyes went wide with despair and his shoulders dropped. At the same moment he capitulated, there was a soft ding and the priest answered the cell phone in his pocket. He carried on a soft-voiced conversation before putting the phone away. Afterward, he looked even more dejected. To Eli, he said, “That was Makris. But then, you knew that, yes?”

Eli gave one of his abbreviated nods.

“We tried everything we could in the small time we were allowed. Perhaps it wasn’t for us to decipher. Perhaps we were full of hubris and foolishness.”

The priest wavered on his feet, looking drunk or hurt or . . . spelled. Yeah. Spelled and hurt both. He went on, his speech slower, his words growing less clear, slightly slurred.

“It is not of the Church, nor of the place of the skull. The writing on its rim is archaic and unlike anything I have ever seen—if it really is writing and not some form of decorative work. Not cuneiform. More ancient. Like clay tokens or runes in their simplicity, mixed with squiggly, jagged lines, lightning bolts. If it is a witch artifact, it came from an ancient past so distant that history itself has swallowed it whole.”

“Do you know what it does?” Eli asked. “What magic power it holds?”

“No. I was unable to determine anything before it . . .” He lifted both hands, and it was clear that they had been wrapped with something like medical sticky wrap and that the gloves were too large for his hands, holding the bandages in place. “I don’t know what it is, but it . . . it makes people think things they shouldn’t.” He closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly. I smelled his tears, hot and toxic. “If I had to name it,” he said, “I would call it the crown of temptation. Or the crown of despair. Desperatio coronam. It brings such grief, such anguish of the soul.” He looked to Eli. “If you find it, bring the evil thing to me, my son. I will send it to Rome, where it can be destroyed.”

“Question,” I said. “Did you start feeling unhappy and miserable before or after you tried to hurt the thing? Before or after you got burned?”

The priest’s eyes moved from Eli to his burned hands, and his lips parted.

Surprise, surprise. I shrugged. “Maybe despair and lack of clear thinking is part of a punishment for trying to hurt it. Burned hands. Grief. Maybe, like the hands, it’ll heal. And maybe it would heal faster if you let a witch heal you. Or a vamp.”

The man’s eyes blazed with righteous fury and the stink of the burn grew on the air as he clenched his hands into bloated fists. Before he could speak, I said, “Never mind. Eli, let’s get out of here before the man sets himself on fire with indignation.” Eli backed away and I followed suit, though how the priest could shoot us with burned hands seemed impossible. To be on the safe side, I angled my body to the entrance as we moved back down the nave into the narthex. And out into the noon sun.

Instantly I started sweating. Eli holstered his weapon, looking cool and unaffected by the encounter or the heat. “You want to tell me what was going on in there?” I asked.

“Yeah. My pal Joe sent back a text about a certain emblem being worn by a small, renegade group of the clergy in the Western Hemisphere.” He slipped on his sunglasses. “The emblem is a small red thing attached to their vestments. The group is composed of professor-type priests looking for magical things and magical people. A few things and a few people have gone missing.”

“Missing as in kidnapped?”

Eli shrugged, not willing to speculate.

“Think they’re working against the Mithrans?”

“Joe thinks they have an agenda that they haven’t revealed yet. And he thinks someone in Rome is responsible.”

The sun felt good on my back as we left the church grounds, but the knowledge of a sniper in the belfry didn’t. “Think he’ll shoot us?” I asked as casually as I could with sweat trickling down my spine and a target on my back.

“No. But I need to report everything to Joe.”

“Fine,” I said as we passed through the brick gates unscathed. “Question. You knew all this before we got here, didn’t you?”

“I knew some. There’s been some chatter about magical devices. Alex has been monitoring it and did some deeper searching in Reach’s database. As soon as we heard about a magical device near us, I got in touch with people I know.”

Reach had been the best researcher of all, ever, anywhere, when it came to the arcane, the weird, the woo-woo stuff. Then he’d been attacked by a human and two vamps and disappeared. Or so we thought. There wasn’t any direct evidence either way. I still didn’t know if Reach was alive.

I’d come into possession of his database in what, under any other circumstance, I’d call coincidence. But I no longer believed in that, not when it came to the vamps and the layers of history and death and conspiracy they so loved. Someone had wanted me to get the data. I just didn’t know who yet.

Deep inside, my Beast chuffed with amusement. I didn’t know why, but I’d learned that Beast would tell me stuff when she was good and ready and not one moment sooner. I said, “And you got in touch with your friend Joe. A former Ranger?”

Eli gave his patented nonsmile, a twitch of his lips that he probably thought was cool. It could also have been constipation. Someday I’d hit him with that one and see how he reacted.

“Someone in the Vatican, maybe? People who want the magical stuff I’ve collected?”

“They think they can heal the world’s wounds with them,” he said. “And they think they’re the only ones who should have them.”

“Which means they’re the last people on earth who should have them.”

“Correctomundo.”

“Joe. Former military?”

“Current.”

“I thought you were on the outs with the Army because of me.”

Eli gave me a real smile, showing a hint of pearly whites. “Worth it, babe. Totally worth it.” More seriously he said, “I have friends who know why I was blackballed and who still keep me in the loop.”

I looked away. The guilt about Eli’s being ostracized by the military always got me deep down, but I also knew he was speaking total truth when he said it was worth it. I could smell that on him. “Okay. Joe. What’s he do?”

“Joe is the U.S. liaison in charge of overseeing the Pope’s safety.”

“Wait. The Pope as in the Pope? In Rome? That Pope?”

“Oh yeah. You have no idea how much the U.S. has invested in terms of time, intel, and equipment, keeping the Vatican’s citizens safe and alive, all of them, for the last twenty or so years, since the jihad extremist movement got so big again.”

“Okay. And Joe says?”

“That there was a blip in the Holy Vicar’s security intel yesterday morning, and it necessitated sending a small group of God’s warriors to the U.S. They landed at John F. Kennedy International this morning. They have a direct flight charter scheduled for New Orleans at four p.m. And then, unless they go the helo route, they’ll have a drive in.”

“Oh crap. We’re gonna have to fight the Vatican, aren’t we?”

“The Holy Roman See, to be specific, not the Vatican. And the See is considered a sovereign state. Which means all their men will be considered papal representatives and will be accorded all protections under law afforded to all international ambassadors on U.S. soil.”

“Soooo they can do anything to anyone and get off scot-free. But . . .” I thought it through. “The vamps are currently under a temporary but similar legal protection.”

“Until the U.S. government in all its wisdom and glory—”

I snorted derisively.

“—decides if they are citizens or not.”

“So we have to involve Leo. Like, now.”

Eli laughed evilly. “He’s sooo gonna be pissed.”

I’d have socked him, a good, solid thump, but it would have only made him laugh harder.

•   •   •

We didn’t have long before the people from Rome arrived and made a bad situation worse. I was pretty sure that Lucky, despite being a witch whose ancestors were technically hunted by the Catholic Church since the witch hunts in the Middle Ages, and terrorized by the Church in the time of the Inquisition, was a Catholic. Pretty sure. Not totally. But his daughter, Shauna, and her vamp husband had been married in the yard of the Catholic church. . . . Would the priest be in trouble for his part of the ceremony? Crap. This was getting sticky. I decided to go back to Boudreaux’s Meats, ostensibly for lunch. And after a good meal, Eli and I needed to get info. Any way we could. Even if it mean hurting Lucky. That bothered me. A lot.

•   •   •

Alex met us at Boudreaux’s and we dined on the Cardiac Confidence, my name for the lunch that consisted of fried gator, fried smallmouth bass, fried soft-shell crabs, and fried boudin balls bigger than Lucky’s fist. He made one to show us the truth of that statement. We also had beer-battered fried onion rings, fried squash, fried pickles, fried crab-stuffed hot peppers, and fried mushrooms in a basket so greasy it took a handful of paper towels to stop the drippage. Lucky said, exactly as he did the last time I ate here, “My own batter, secret recipe it is, and dat oil is fresh and hot for cooking.” Certainly lard, but while we ate, imminent heart disease seemed worth it. After dinner, while we were disposing of the beer bottles that were illegal to sell in the dry parish but were totally legal to give away for “tips,” I said casually, “Lucky. I remember you telling me that you had family who were killed in the vamp-witch wars here in BO.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, and I thought I saw the flame tattoos on his arm flex in irritation before subsiding. “Priest in dem wars, Father Joseph, he was, before the war.” Lucky was talking about the Civil War, I knew because I had heard the story. “He teach townsfolk how to kill wid stakes and swords. Him made dem crosses to be everywhere, on every house and building, and most dey attacks in town stop. Peoples, dey safe in town until Father Joseph was turn by de suckheads one night. But he strong in de faith. He rise and still in he right mind. Fight de blood/drink/kill temptation. He come to de church and tell dem townspeople to cut off he head. Dey did. But it nearly kill most dem all to kill priest.” His mouth turned down, and he crossed the room, taking a beer from the cooler before sitting at the table with us. When he started again, it was nearly word for word as he had said it last time, history by rote.

“Vamp turn on vamp. Kill each other, they did.” He popped off the top of a LA 31 Boucanée with a shell-shaped bottle opener. The beer was made by Bayou Teche Brewing in Arnaudville, Louisiana, and it smelled of hops and smoked cherrywood. He drank a third of it, tossed back some of his own fried mushrooms, chewed, swallowed, and continued, his eyes faraway as if he saw the story he told.

“But they not always find suckhead to cut off head. One, they stake her. She rise from de grave, she did, and she kill and kill and kill. Church got itself a new priest, Father Matthieu, and he lead a hunt to kill her. Dey take her head and burn her body in center of de streets jus’ befo’ dawn, nex’ morning.” He jutted his jaw outside, to the crossing of Broad Street and Oiseau Avenue.

“Bordelon sisters, witches all, dey come gather up de ashes for to make hex. And Julius, blood-master, hem was, when he hear of all dis, he make war on dey witches. Kill dem mostly. Dem witches, dey make de hex, and de suckheads cain’t eat, cain’t drink. Sick-like. Dey kidnap local doctor, Dr. Leveroux, kill hem when he cain’t cure dem. Leave his body in middle of town, like warning.

“Dem witches, some of my peoples, dey join wid priest and fight dem suckheads. War was everywhere, here, in de bayou”—he pronounced it bi-oh, which sounded odd to me—“in de swamp. My gran-mère be one dem Bordelon sisters, Cally Bordelon. She still alive when war was over. Most dem suckheads, most dem witches, dey dead.”

“Would a priest today help you, join with you, to fight the vamps?” I asked.

Lucky snorted and finished off his beer, one that should be consumed slowly to appreciate all the goodness in the bottle. “Priest today not too interested in helping us no more. Turn he back, he did, when my Shauna marry . . .” He stopped.

“After Shauna married Gabe in the eyes of the Church.”

“Yeah.” Lucky picked up the bottle and dropped it with a clink on the table. “Dat priest sent away. New priest . . . hem witch hater, from new sect of priests. Call demselves Keepers of Truth. Got priests from all different orders and societies. Michaelites, what dey call dem Salesians. Augustinians. Dominicans. And some dem Jesuits. Black Robe what they brung in, hem witch hater even more than local boys.

“What I’m gone do?” he asked me. “My Shauna. You see her. Black hair what she got from me, blue eyes from her mama. Beautiful like angel from day she born, my baby, she is.”

“But not acting like herself due to the hormones and the depression. The priest? We didn’t see the local guy. Black Robe, that’s a Jesuit scholar?” I glanced at Eli and received a scant nod. “They want the corona to be sent to Rome to be studied. Meaning destroyed.”

Lucky lifted his eyes from his beer bottle and said, distinctly, “No. Not to Rome. I throw it in de swamp for de gator to eat first.” I started to reply, but he spoke over me. “Dat Church in Rome hunt witches all through history. Torture them all. Burn them. Kill them. I a man of forgiveness, but they don’t want no forgive. They still take war to my peoples.”

“I need to talk to Shauna. And to Margaud,” I said.

Lucky’s tats blazed with his reaction. Anger flaming up his arms. Eli pressed a gun to his side and said, simply, “Don’t.”

Lucky cursed in French and his English patois, but his heat faded quickly. He looked down at the muzzle over his kidney. “You really shoot me wid that gun?”

Eli didn’t respond and Lucky raised his gaze to Eli’s eyes. “All dis. Dis because I call you boy?”

“I’m a man of forgiveness,” Eli paraphrased Lucky’s words, “but they don’t want forgiveness. They still take war to my people.”

Lucky snorted, full-nosed and half in his throat. “You right. Troublemaker in my nature. I am ass, I is.” He stuck out his hand. “I ask you forgiveness. You accept? Then you put dat pop gun away?”

“Deal,” Eli said. They shook, and Eli put the gun away. I noticed the safety was still on, and he had never injected a round into the chamber.

“You got Margaud’s contact info?” I asked.

“I do. And You can see my Shauna now. No mo’ customer come in today, not wid all trouble. I close up shop and we go my house.” Lucky kicked his bench back and stood, disappearing into the back of the shop. “Leave all dat,” he said, pointing over the counter to the messy table and greasy paper and plastic products. “I clean it up when I get back.”

•   •   •

Lucky Landry’s house was not what I was expecting. I hadn’t been invited home on my last visit, but I had subconsciously created a vision of a redneck double-wide and cars on cement blocks in the yard. Maybe a toilet planted with petunias, positioned on the front porch. The white tidewater home with centipede lawn and tastefully planted flower beds was a shocker. I did manage to wipe my surprise off my face before I got out of the SUV.

Lucky parked his ancient blue pickup truck behind a half-shed carport, invisible from the road, and we all got out, Alex moving slowly as he gathered all his electronic equipment. Lucky led the way to the front door, speaking over his shoulder to us. “My wife, she make me park where my coonass huntin’ truck can’t be seen by de neighbors. Not for her, I be living in trash, I know.”

The front door opened and the woman standing there was, well, also not what I had expected. Blue eyes, nearly black hair with just the slightest hint of red when the sun hit it, petite and curvy and pretty. And not dressed like a country singer at Mardi Gras, all bling and fringe, but in suit pants, a fitted shirt, and a business jacket. Except for her height, which was far too short for a successful model, she could have walked out of a fashion catalog.

“Lucky, bring your friends right on in. I got cold sweet tea with mint or lemon and some tasty lemon cookies. They’re store-bought, but you’d never know it. You’re that Jane Yellowrock woman, aren’t you?”

“Who?” The word hammered at the air from inside. “If that bitch is here I’ll kill her! This is all her fault!”

Shauna Landry Doucette raced around her mama and out the door, fast as a vamp. Her mama caught her in both arms and held her in place, magics sparking all around them both. Lucky snapped his fingers, and a portable protective ward went up around him. It was too small to hold us too, and I grabbed Eli, pulling him down behind the ward. “Get down!” I shouted to Alex. He hit the dirt behind the bole of an oak. Uncontrolled magics sparked in the air, burning on our skin. Eli jerked and whispered a curse.

“You hurt me,” Mrs. Landry said, holding her daughter tightly, “and I’ll be seriously unhappy with you, young lady. And if you turn your magics on me, I’ll send you to your grandmother in a heartbeat.”

The word grandmother must have been an awful threat because Shauna burst into tears. The painful magics faded.

Her mother shook her hard. “This is no one’s fault but yours and that blood-drinking husband of yours. You don’t think. You don’t plan. Marriage isn’t roses and chocolate and candles and great sex. Most of the time it’s hard work and pain and forgiveness, on both sides. You marry a blood-sucker and you got to plan for a whole lot more forgiveness than most.”

Shauna sobbed on her mother’s shoulder. The girl was gorgeous, even with the twenty extra pounds of baby fat and her pale, anemic skin. Alex, rising from his undignified crouch behind the tree, took a sharp breath at the sight of her before retrieving his gear from the ground. Even Eli, with his dedication to Syl, couldn’t help a spark of interest.

A trace of fatigue in his voice, Lucky said, “My wife, Bobbie. You know my girl, Shauna. Sorry ’bout dem fireworks. Shauna not herself.”

“Shauna needs vamp blood,” I said, “and not from her husband.” And that got their attention. I stopped at the bottom of the steps, crossed my arms, and stared up at the women on the narrow front porch. “Her husband is starving. Do you know what happens to vamps when they starve? The pain is physical, a raging in their blood. The blood hunger is so intense that they often go insane. He needs human blood. You’re anemic, Shauna. You need some blood to heal, and Gabe doesn’t have enough to spare. Your blood isn’t enough to keep you healthy, let alone a young vamp. They need more blood than older vamps. Didn’t Gabe tell you that before you married?”

Shauna ducked her chin and averted her eyes from all of us.

“Shauna,” Lucky barked. “Dis lady done come long way to help you. You answer her question.” His expression darkened. “Or you gran’-mère be here for real. You mother and me, we give you to her. Together.”

Shauna’s mouth opened and I had the feeling that she had been playing one parent against the other. “I asked you a question, Shauna,” Lucky all but growled. “Did Gabe warn you?”

Bobbie’s hands tightened on Shauna’s arms and Shauna nodded jerkily. “Yes. He told me. But I thought . . .” Her pale face flushed with embarrassment. “I thought the sex feeling was just for me. I didn’t know it was for every feeding. I thought I was the only one who would be in that . . . position. . . . When I found out it was for everyone, I . . . I lost it. And I saw that bastard laying on top of Margaud. I should have . . .” She broke down again, without telling us what she should have done.

“Shauna, your husband can be taught to drink without sexual feeling. He probably never thought to ask if it was possible, and if Clermont Doucette is like most men of his generation, he probably never thought to tell his son.” Shauna’s face lifted, her mouth open again, like a pale pink rosebud. I’d never seen a mouth so small and perfect. My own was wide and straight and showed a lot of teeth. I frowned and went on. “Gabe isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he was starving himself to death to make you happy. Then Margaud spiked his drink, called you, and set up a feeding. I’m not saying that Gabe doesn’t deserve some kind of punishment for his lack of control, but you can solve this. You need to get yourself help. And starting a vamp-and-witch war isn’t going to help anyone, including your baby.”

Shauna broke into a crying fit. From inside the house a baby started wailing too.

Eli chuckled softly. “Way to go, Yellowrock. You just made a sick woman and her baby cry. You gotta win points for that somewhere.”

“Shut up,” I said. To Lucky I added, “Can we go inside now and chat. It’s hot and miserable and the air’s wet and I need tea.”

“Come on in. Her mama and me, we spoil her so when she a child, her so pretty and all.”

I realized that was both confession and apology. “Uh-huh,” I said, starting up the walk in Lucky’s wake, Eli and Alex behind me.

Once we were in place in the spacious living room with iced tea in hand, Shauna in a rocking chair with her back turned, nursing her baby, I asked, “What can you tell me about the wreath?”

“My family be leaders of coven here in Bayou Oiseau, my mother and my sister, Solene. Solene can tell you what dem learn.” Lucky punched a number on his cell and when the call was answered, he said, “Jane Yellowrock back in town, her sent by Leo Pellissier to fix things here. You talk to her? Tell her what you learn? Yeah. Dat fine. Come now is good.”

Lucky ended the call and said, “Solene on de way. She talk to you.”

“Just in case, I’m hiding behind you when she gets here.”

Lucky laughed. But I was serious. Ticked-off witches were scary.

•   •   •

We drank tea, made uncomfortable small talk. Shauna made me hold her baby, and then laughed when I made a panicked squeak and the little boy screamed. I blushed and the Youngers laughed with her. It was mortifying, a word my housemother Brenda used to use instead of embarrassing. Previously, the usage was confusing, but for the first time ever, I totally understood the connotation. It came from a word that meant killing or putting to death, and I surely wanted to die with the baby in my arms. The last time I held a baby it was my godchild Little Evan, and that had been a long time past.

Beast, however, was totally at ease and she shoved me out of the way, purring over the child. Kit. Human kit. Want kit.

Yeah. No. Later.

Beast growled and milked my mind with her claws, long sharp claws that gave me a headache, while forcing me to lean down and sniff the little boy, who smelled of lotion, baby powder, urine, poo, milk, and witch, from his mother. I was still holding the baby when the witch magics shuddered through me. The sink of roiling energies filled the home even as the door opened and she walked soundlessly inside. It was the Amazon. And she was fully powered up, angry and expecting trouble. And me with my hands full of baby.

Behind her, just outside of her range, two ogres followed, Auguste and Benoît, Margaud’s brothers, ugly as homemade sin and twice as big. Margaud’s brothers each weighed in at an easy three hundred pounds, hirsute, sour with last night’s beer, and both smelling of fish and gator. Their last showers were weeks ago. Maybe months. Maybe never and the men thought wading through a bayou was the same thing as a bath. The men wore matching T-shirts, this time in subtle shades of orange, or maybe that was just the expanded sweat rings under old-fashioned bib overalls; on their feet were unlaced work boots that might have been brown once upon a time. I set the baby on the couch and stood, motioning Eli to stay put. I stepped in front of him, allowing him opportunity to ready weapons. The brothers were human and taciturn, even by my standards, with expressionless faces. The only active thing about them was the stink, and it might have walked around the house all by itself. The silent Cajuns glowered as they crowded inside.

The witch was huge, six feet tall, and outweighed me by more than I had thought, all muscle and attitude. Dark hair and eyes, packed into T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes. Breasts like beach balls. I had a quick image of a blue-painted, tattooed, Celtic queen going into war buck naked, a knife and spear her only weapons, with the bones of her enemies tangled in her hair. She was surrounded by a haze of power that made my own bones ache. She extended a hand to activate a preprepared magical working.

Lucky grabbed his small family and snapped up a ward. Leaving the boys and me at the hands of the witch, me with access only to mundane weapons, which I’d never use in the confined space. So I went with my best talent, my smart mouth. “I know ogres eat human flesh. I have to warn you, I’m older and stringier and harder to kill than I look.” I pointed at Eli. “Military.” I pointed at the Kid. “Underage. Be nice!”

I pointed the same finger to the witch, and then dropped it when her eyes landed on the finger. It looked accusing instead of attention-getting. I folded all my fingers into loose fists. “I’m Jane Yellowrock, and I have no desire to fight. The vamps call it parley, and it’s as good a word as any. I’m here to parley. Rules of parley include guarantee of safety to all involved and truce for the duration. So power down on the magical crap and let’s chat.”

The Amazon’s eyebrows went up. “Magical crap?”

“Magical stuff. Magical boo stuff. Magical woo-woo stuff. Spells. Workings. Magical thunder and lightning. Call it what you want. You win. Now power down and let’s talk.”

“Leo Pellissier would allow you to dodge a fight?”

“Leo is male and he thinks in terms of war, strategy, and one-upmanship. He also has testicles, which I’ve come to understand means he thinks with them as often as with his upper brain.”

The Amazon’s eyes crinkled, but if it was a smile it never reached her mouth. “You’ve come to parley about balls?”

Auguste, or maybe it was Benoît, laughed, displaying an impressive number of missing teeth. The other brother scratched his butt. Through his clothes, thank God.

I figured laughter, even laughter at my expense, was better than a magical war. “It seems to have worked as a conversational gambit.”

The witch chuckled, dropped her ward and all the aggressive power she had gathered. She plopped onto the recliner nearest the door and motioned to the ogres. “Wait outside, boys. There’s lemonade in the truck.”

“Hard?” one grunted.

“No. Freshly squeezed,” she said. “You can drink the hard stuff on your own time.” The ogres shuffled out and the stink in the house lessened appreciably. “So. Jane Yellowrock. Parley away.”

“First, who the heck are you?”

“I’m sorry.” She inclined her head regally, the gesture somehow increasing the image I had of her with tattooed blue skin and the finger bones of her enemies tied into her hair, maybe also in a necklace around her neck, some warrior goddess leading a tribe into battle. “I’m Solene Landry Gaudet, Oiseau Coven leader, sister to our host, aunt to the hotheaded fool hiding her baby.”

“You don’t talk like him,” I said, nodding to Lucky.

“Turn on dat coonass mojo, I can, if I need to,” she said, then dropped the accent. “But I went away to college and learned to speak in a socially correct way, so far as the rest of the country is concerned. Are we gonna parley or not? Sundown isn’t that far away, and I’m busy.”

I told her everything I knew, had figured out, guessed at, and deduced. It didn’t take long. “What we need here,” I said in conclusion, “is a way to stop the war, repair a marriage, and open lines of communication between the vamps and the witches. And then get you both tied in with the regional councils so dumb stuff like this doesn’t happen again.”

“I’m not giving the corona back to the suckheads,” Solene said. “It isn’t theirs.”

“It came from them,” I said, going for reasonable. “Shauna stole it.”

“This time. The corona is witch magic, old, and half-forgotten. Therefore, originally, it was witches who made it.”

“That’s one possibility. Another is that witch magic itself came from someone or somewhere else and that someone else made it and technically owns it. Or that the magic feels like witch magic but isn’t. Maybe humans made it and witches added the magic later, under contract to a third party. Which would make it belong to that third party. Or maybe it’s like a magic teapot, a spirit captured inside and needing to be set free.”

“Like a genie? Rub my lamp and you get three wishes?” She made a sound of disgust. “Tell you what. That third party shows up, proves it belongs to them, and I’ll give it to them.”

“What kind of proof of ownership is necessary?” I asked “How about if they can unlock the thing’s magic and use it? Would that do?”

Solene narrowed her eyes at me. It was clear that she hadn’t planned on my accepting her suggestion or having a rejoinder to it. I put on my best innocent expression. I’d never been very good at fake innocence, and I didn’t think Solene believed this face, but I kept it in place, hoping for the best. “All I’d need is to see it, take a pic of it with my cell, and we can start searching out its . . . provenance—isn’t that the word?—to get it back to its legal owner, its creator, or at least the person who should be responsible for it.”

“If it belongs to Satan, one of his emissaries, a demon, a Watcher, or any of the dark pantheon, the witches will keep it.”

“As long as the phrase dark pantheon is not construed to include Mithrans or vampires, I’ll agree to that. If the vamps actually own it, it goes to Leo Pellissier.”

“If you can provide appropriate provenance that it belongs to the suckheads, I’ll turn it over to them. I’ll stipulate that I’ll ‘turn it over to the rightful owners.’”

That was too easy. I had a feeling that Solene knew the wreath had never really belonged to the vamps, and that maybe she had knowledge and proof that they had stolen it themselves. But, remembering the corona in the street, hazed by energies and the rain, I had another thought about the crown, one dealing with some of the squiggly lines on the base, the ones shaped like lightning bolts.

Before I could act on it, Solene said, “One other caveat. The suckheads never were able to crack the magics. If we crack the wreath’s magics tonight, all bets are off. If we can use it, it’s ours.” She looked too self-satisfied, as if she knew she’d crack the magics and she had just been playing with me up until now. But realistically, if they cracked the spell on the thing and could use the energies contained in it, there was no way I’d get it back. They’d turn us into fried toads if we tried to take it away.

I scowled but said, “Agreed. When can I see it and take pictures of it?”

“Now. Auguste and Benoît have been guarding it in the truck.” Solene grinned at what she saw on my face. “I’m not dumb enough to leave it anywhere unprotected. The suckheads might be bound by daylight and night, but their blood-slaves and -servants aren’t.”

I stood and motioned the Youngers up too. I saw Eli pocketing something as he stood, and I figured he’d had a weapon ready the whole time. Knowing the elder Younger, he’d have more than one at hand. As if we’d all been pals forever, we made our way out of the tidewater house to the truck, Lucky and his family following at a safe distance. It was one of those real Humvees, the ones that had been used in wars, if I was any judge of such things, because it was still painted in desert camo, was scarred, scratched, dented, beat-up, had a less-than-minimalist interior—two seats and a flat metal bed behind them—and looked like a survivor. It had to sound like a herd of charging rhinos when it ran. And I hadn’t heard anything until the door opened. Solene has a spell that can dampen audio. Now that would be cool to have. Maybe I could bargain for that later on.

The ogres got out of the Humvee and stood to the side as Solene opened the back door, lifted out a battered blue cooler, and set it on the ground. She raised the plastic top and took out the wreath. Up close, I saw pretty much what I’d seen the night before, but in more detail. It was a metal wreath, neither silver nor gold, but a hue that might have been a mixture of both, or maybe white and yellow gold mixed together. It was a dully gleaming metal circlet, carved or incised along the base with markings that could indeed have been decorative or early language, triangles and circles and squares in no particular order. The upper part was carved or shaped in ascending points in what could have been laurel leaves. Some kind of leaf, anyway. There were no stones or other ornamentation. But the haze of magics was much clearer at this distance, even with the sunlight.

I didn’t ask to touch it. I simply pulled out my cell and started taking photos of it, walking around Solene to get the corona from every angle, taking the attention of the group with me, so Eli and Alex could do whatever they wanted without anyone noticing. I asked to photograph the wreath in sunlight and in shadows under the trees. I didn’t ask to touch it, which seemed to make Solene more agreeable. I also got a shot of it on the ground with a quarter and a dollar bill beside it for measurement purposes.

When I was done I said, “Thank you. If I can figure out how to call for a parley, I might like to request another meeting before the coven meets tonight.”

Solene shrugged easily. “Fine. In the main intersection of town, a quarter hour before dusk. After that, the circles will be formed and we won’t come out until dawn or until we figure out the magics in the wreath.”

I nodded and turned to Lucky. “Thank you for your hospitality. Shake a knot in Shauna’s chain so she can fix this thing with Gabe. Your daughter is a spoiled-rotten brat with delusions of what a mature relationship really is. She needs to understand how the different kinds of vamp relationships really work, how vamps feed, and how much blood they need. Gabe needs to be taught how to feed without a sexual component. I’d suggest you and Bobbie, Clermont Doucette, Shauna, and Gabe sit down together and explain the facts of life to them both. And I suggest it be done tonight, as soon after sunset as possible. I’ll send a request to Clermont if you want and facilitate this particular discussion. Text me when you decide. But let me make this clear.” I drew on Beast, lifted my head, and assumed all the power of the Enforcer position. Lucky stepped back at the glow in my eyes, and Solene did a double take. The leader of the BO witches stepped between me and her niece, as if her human flesh was a shield. That simple action made my heart melt with both tenderness and anguish, because no one in my entire childhood memories had stepped between me and possible danger. But a melting heart didn’t stop me.

With the full force of my skinwalker energies pulled up around me, I said, “If I have to get in the middle of a lovers’ spat, I’m not gonna be kind or gentle. I’ll make sure things are fixed one way or another, but the happiness and safety of two stupid kids is not my primary goal. You people will handle this. Understood?” Lucky and Bobbie nodded. I turned my gaze to Solene. “Because as it turns out, relationship issues are the least important part of why I’m in BO. I’m here for the wreath, to find its rightful owner. And I won’t leave without seeing that done. That’s not a threat. It’s a statement of intent.”

Without letting the witch leader reply, I pivoted on one toe and walked to the SUV, giving her my back as if showing her there was no way to harm me. That was a lie, but it wasn’t one I’d admit to, not after such a great parting shot. I climbed into the passenger side and closed my door, hearing two others shut in the same moment, as if we had choreographed it. Eli started the engine and the powerful motor hummed as we rolled sedately out of the drive and down the street. I twisted in my seat and smiled brightly between my partners. “That went well. What did you find out?”

Alex shook his head. “You are one scary woman, Jane Yellowrock.”

“Yup. A big-cat. Which is way scary.”

Eli’s face was totally expressionless, even more so than normal. This was his battle face. “Two things. One. Never step between me and a target. Two. I brought the psy-meter. The wreath redlines.”

Psy-meters had been developed by Uncle Sam and were used to measure paranormal energy. Eli should never have been able to get his hands on one, and I had never asked how he came to possess it, for fear it had “fallen off a truck” somewhere. Eli had sources I didn’t want to know about. Every species and mystic device had a reading, one when at rest and another when actively using magic. Magic itself had a reading. Even I had readings. The wreath redlining when at rest meant one of two things. La corona contained massive power, or it was always in use.

“Okay,” I said, processing that and adding it to the overall picture of the thing. “No stepping between you and a target, not even to allow you a chance to draw a weapon.” I didn’t add, Fortunately she wasn’t a target, and there wasn’t room in the house to step the other way. That would have been an excuse. Eli didn’t accept excuses. There was always another way.

Eli gave me a stare before swiveling his eyes back to the road. He wasn’t happy. Maybe he had heard my silent excuses?

Alex said, “I started a search online, which is still ongoing, for magical implements shaped like a circle or a wreath. I also ran it through Reach’s database. Currently we have forty-seven magical and historical things that are shaped like circles, are made of metal, and are, at present, missing.”

“Keep me in the loop.” I took out my cell, the one with all the pics, and sent them to Alex and Eli for record-keeping. Then I sent three of the best to one of my contacts in PsyLED, the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security. I figured I’d hear back fast if it was anything. I yawned hugely and said, “Sundown comes quick. I need some shut-eye. Unlike you two, I didn’t sleep last night. Take me back to the B and B.”

Eli sent me a sly expression that fell somewhere between a smile and a smirk. “Sharing a room with Edmund, are you?”

“Yeah. He’s in my closet. Get over it.” Eli slid his eyes back to the road, miffed that I didn’t rise to the bait. But truth be told, I wasn’t happy about the vamp sleeping in my closet, which sounded like the punch line to a very bad joke. Not happy at all.

•   •   •

I slept for four hours, about normal during an investigation, and Edmund behaved himself, maybe because I kept the blinds slit open and Eli woke me an hour before sunset. Not giving an opponent an opportunity to attack (or try to be snarky or try to seduce me) is the best offense. Being offensive to Edmund Hartley seemed the wisest course of action.

I showered and dressed in jeans, boots, and a T-shirt, and pulled a lightweight jacket on, black summer wool for a touch of formality that said I was taking everything seriously. I wished I had fighting leathers, but until I could afford more, I was out of luck. No way was I asking Leo to pay for them, no matter that some people seemed to think fighting leathers were part of my job expenses and therefore his financial responsibility. Just in case I had trouble, I pulled on a pair of cheap black sneakers—good for traction, easy to replace. Tucked a silver cross into a lead-lined pocket and silver and ash wood stakes into my bun, and strapped on a few weapons before hoofing it downstairs.

We ate a nice supper, nice meaning it was a five-star-type meal: a crisp salad with fresh bread to start; leek, spinach, and cream soup; braised rabbit with wild mushrooms; bacon, fig, and brie tartines; and a lovely white wine. Enough food to stuff a woman watching her weight. Miz Onie served huge quantities for breakfast, but not for supper. There were too many green things and not near enough meat to satisfy a skinwalker with battle—mental and possibly physical as well—ahead. When we left the B and B, all weaponed up and ready to rumble, we made a fast trek to Boudreaux’s Meats and ate a real meal. Barbecue pig, slaw, and French bread. That crazy coonass witch could freaking cook!

The sun was setting as we left the eatery and meat shop, and Lucky clicked off the lights and locked the door behind us. His wife and daughter were waiting in a car at the curb, engine running, for a meet and greet with the Doucettes, and, amazingly enough, they handled it all themselves, without my help. They had even agreed on a location convenient to all, in the blood bar across the street. Maybe the BO citizens were growing up. We’d meet the two families in the bar after the witches got their circle going.

Eli was dressed in Ranger desert camo and weapons. Lots of weapons. Even Alex was tacked up, with tablets in his pockets and my Benelli M4 on its harness up his spine. It looked strange to me for the Kid to be wearing weapons, but it worked. Fully armed, looking like a high-tech, paramilitary gang, we crossed the streets, weaving between an unused grader and a front-end loader. The heavy-duty equipment was beginning to rust—not unusual in the high humidity of Louisiana.

In the square, witches had gathered, standing in a circle. Back from the witch circle, in clumps of three or four, human blood-servants stood, watching, looking menacing, but not doing anything. More witches appeared. No vamps yet, as the sun began going down behind a fresh bank of clouds moving in off the Gulf of Mexico.

I checked my cell. No one had gotten back to us about the wreath. The Kid had worked all day and still had nothing from historical archives, museum archives, or law enforcement archives about a missing corona/wreath/breloque. None of the photos he had found were a match for the one in BO. Nada. Nothing.

It was hard to tell for sure, but the sun was nearly gone when the last witch showed up, rushing in on a bicycle, which she dropped in the street, and raced into place, heaving breaths. She managed a gasping “Engine trouble. Bike. Water.” Another witch handed her a bottle of water and she drained it, still gasping.

Solene, who was standing in the center of the circle looking cool and maybe a little bored by the presence of the blood-servants, bent and placed the wreath on the pavement. The waiting humans tensed, every single one. Preparing for something. Three in one group pulled extendable truncheons and snapped them open. I drew the M4 Benelli shotgun from Alex’s back and slapped the barrel into my palm with a resounding smack. “Think twice!” I shouted.

Eli laughed, the scariest sound I’d ever heard him make, and said, “Leo Pellissier’s Enforcer will have no trouble making mincemeat of you untrained coonass idiots.” They shifted, finding my partner in the falling dark. His voice softened now that he had their attention, and I could practically see their bravado melt away. “And I’ll be pissed, because that means I’ll have to clean up the blood and guts.” His voice went conversational, but with an edge, a little crazy-sounding. I liked it. “It’s hard to get blood off asphalt, know what I mean? Of course, brains are the hardest. They’re sticky; they adhere to the tar like sourdough and Elmer’s glue.”

In the scant seconds that the servants hesitated, Solene said, “Hedge of thorns.”

The words surprised me, because that was my BFF’s family’s spell, but it seemed to have gotten around, even to this backwater.

An inside circle flared up, reddish and sullen in the remaining daylight, the ward enclosing the wreath. A half second later she said, “Electric dog collar.” The outer circle, looking like little more than a pale shimmer, raised up. The witches were protected. I had the feeling that Solene hadn’t needed my help anyway. I had a feeling she had all sorts of offensive and defensive spells ready to toss at the humans, some of them deadly.

“Where the heck did you get that laugh?” I muttered to Eli.

“Borrowed it from a Taliban commander who thought he had us pinned down one night in Afghanistan. He didn’t. But until we filled him full of holes, he had the Bela Lugosi laughter down pat.”

“Gave me the shivers. Keep it in your repertoire. I like it.”

Eli gave me a lip-twitch grin.

The front doors blew off the blood bar.

I dropped to a crouch, Beast slamming into me. Eli dashed for cover. Dragging Alex by the collar. The humans in the street screamed, ran, or were knocked off their feet, depending on where they were positioned relative to the blast. The witches turned as one and looked at the bar, then, while the humans were still reeling, turned back and continued whatever the heck they were doing. The sign that had hung over the bar, LECOMPTE SPIRITS AND PLEASURE, landed in the street and bounced. I couldn’t hear it over the concussive damage to my ears, but it splintered and broke. I snarled and sucked in the wet night air, over my tongue and the roof of my mouth. The smell of explosive magic was an overriding stench filling the street, nearly hiding the smells of blood, sex, and liquor, and the stink of vamps.

Overhead, thunder boomed and the skies opened, not droplets, not drops, but bucketfuls. A deluge like something from Noah’s time, solid sheets of rain like standing under a waterfall during a spring flood, the rain pounding on me. Instantly I was drenched. “Well, crap.”

Night fell with the rain, the world darkening. Beast’s vision flared over mine, a greenish silver overlay of energy and life, everything clearer than my human vision. The Gray Between rose around me, from within me. Pain flashed through my flesh and sizzled through my neurons, intense and blinding, lighting up my nerve endings, searing my flesh. Then was gone. I stood from my crouch and growled, stalking to the door of the bar.

At the first hint of trouble, Eli had shoved his brother into a hidey-hole under the second-floor gallery and Alex crouched there, arms wrapped around himself, hiding his laptop from the mist that sprang up from the ground as the huge raindrops hit and splashed, creating a saturating mist along with the soaking rain. The Kid’s long curls were wet and dripping, plastered to his skull. But he was safe.

I got a glimpse of my hands. Pelt-covered, knobby knuckles. Beast had shifted me into my half-puma, half-human form. But there was no pain, and the change ground to a halt before my bones cracked and split, incapacitating me for way too long in the midst of a battle. Beast was getting good at this.

My hearing was already healing, and I made out screaming, the wail of a vamp dying, the nearly ultrasonic pulses that made my healing eardrums shudder.

From the bar doorway, flames flashed. Witch magic. Had to be Lucky.

I pulled on Beast’s strength and speed and jumped. Shoving off from the street and landing twenty feet away, just inside the door. Impossible for a human. Piece of cake for a Puma concolor. When I touched down, I instantly pushed off again and landed, rolling under cover of a pool table. It was on fire but only on the felt top and one leg.

I took in the fight. Vamps in the corners of the room. Witches and humans in the center, the remains of a protective ward scorched into the floor. The vinyl floor tile was on fire, melting. Draperies on a low stage were blazing, the flames not just licking up the rotted fabric, but roaring up. Smoke filled the room.

There was a burst of thunder inside. Magic parched my nostrils. A human-sounding scream was quickly cut off. Something heavy landed on the pool table over me and I heard an ominous crack. The top of a pool table is made of quarried slate, and it’s strong. I bowed my body in and rolled. Across the burning floor. To the feet of Clermont Doucette, fully vamped-out. His fangs braced at the carotid artery of a furious Bobbie Landry. A threat not yet carried out.

A shotgun boomed.

Everything went still. Silence vibrating with the gunshot. For an entire second that felt like an eternity.

A baby’s cry broke the mute waiting.

I swiveled my head, locating the sound. Gabe stood at the edge of the stage, vamped-out, lips curled back from narrow, pointed fangs, eyes blacker than the pit of hell, set in pale pink sclera. Still starving. Idiot. And then I realized he was holding a baby in his arms. A witch I didn’t know was at his feet, bleeding. Unconscious. And somehow he hadn’t fallen on her to feed. Gabe had unplumbed strengths.

Shauna was standing in a hedge of thorns. Staring at her husband and baby. She wasn’t afraid. Something I didn’t have time to examine.

Lucky Landry was inside a triangle, a ward I had never seen before. He threw something at a vamp on the stage near Gabe. The unknown vamp screamed, an ululating howl of pain, and started bleeding from his nose and mouth. He fell, writhing on the stage.

Eli raced across the room, heading for the stage. Lucky threw a second spell. It hit Eli, bowling him across the room, against the far wall, so fast it was a blur. I saw him hit. My heart stopped everything, went into some kind of no-thought-no-feel mode as Eli’s head conked the wall and he slid down it. I growled and aimed my M4 at Lucky. “I don’t want to kill you. Don’t make me do this.”

Lucky swiveled his head to me and his eyes widened.

Clermont, within inches of me, his speech impeded by his fangs, said, “What you are?”

Lucky’s eyes slid past me and he said, “What dat?”

I followed his eyes to the pool table.

Atop it was this . . . thing.

I swiveled and fired. Six shots, silver fléchette, hand-packed rounds, silver for the creatures of the dark. As I fired, Lucky threw a combustion spell at the thing. Flames rolled around it and off, onto the flaming felt of the pool table. Mud, dried by the flames, cracked and dusted down. If my rounds had done it harm, I couldn’t tell.

Part frog, part boar, part alligator. Frog body and back legs, boar tusks and bristly hair and little twirled tail, a frog mouth and snout, full of alligator teeth. And arms muscled like a gorilla but covered in horned scales. The thing was dripping mud and foul gore. Whiffs of tar, the tart stink of rotten lemons, and the perfume of the grave came from it, fish and dead birds and rotten gator meat, days dead. A demon from the deeps of the darkest hell. I had seen one before and it only took seeing one once to know them all. And from Lucky’s face, it wasn’t one he had called.

With strange double pops of air, Clermont disappeared and reappeared, this time holding a sword with a slightly curved blade, not quite a broad sword, too wide and curving to be a dueling sword. The blade was black except along the honed steel edge and point. The cross-guard was a swirl that swept back, protecting the hilt and his hand, to knot around the pommel. A Civil War–era sword, old and dependable.

He rushed across the floor and cut a long slice, deep into the swamp thing. The demon screamed and black blood welled up. I had a half second to notice the dark magics within the blood, then the wound clotted over like tar cooling.

I retreated toward Lucky, which was also closer to Eli, lying unmoving against the wall. His eyes were half-open, the whites showing. His chest moved as he drew in air, and something inside me unclenched, sending relief shivering through me. He was still alive.

The demon spread a grin, half its face opening to reveal teeth no frog ever had, spiked and barbed and curved back. It should have roared, but instead it flexed its shoulders and laughed, a deep, dark reverberation. The notes made Eli’s laugh sound innocent, a schoolboy at a silly prank. This was the laughter of a devil with a torturer’s joy of blood and misery.

Clermont’s eyes continued to vamp-out, growing blacker than I had ever seen them. Gently he put Bobbie Landry behind him and said to her, “Take Shauna and Gabe and Clerjer. Door to left of stage and down, into lair. Make my fool son drink from my primo and my secundo. Tell dem all, Sacrement! Dey know what to do.”

Bobbie shot a look at Clermont, then at Lucky, her eyes wide with fear, the calculating kind of fear that can keep its head in the midst of bombs and explosions and even demons from hell. As if it wasn’t there, she reached through Shauna’s hedge ward and shoved the girl. Hard. Shock on her face, Shauna stumbled out of her ward, toward the door. “Mama? How . . .”

With one unladylike fist, Bobbie roundhoused Gabriel, catching Clerjer as he dropped the child. The baby over one shoulder, she grabbed a handful of Gabe’s long hair and tried to haul him across the stage, not bothering with gentleness. My kinda woman—take no prisoners, no back talk, and no stupidity. Shauna, seeing what her mother was doing, took her baby, laid him across her own shoulder, and added her strength to Gabe’s deadweight.

They disappeared behind the stage just as the flaming draperies lit the ceiling overhead with a wind-whipping roar. The heat flowed like a burning wave across the ceiling, seeking the air at the doorway, the flames billowing and rolling like a boiling, upside-down river, like water gone mad. The entire ceiling was afire, the heat so fierce that I crouched to get my body an inch or two lower. I smelled wood smoke and burning hair. Mine. The smoke raged down, black and suffocating.

Into the inferno Edmund raced, two long swords flashing in the red-scorched heat. He and Clermont attacked the swamp demon. If I’d had the time, if my partner weren’t down, I would have stood there slack-jawed, watching them. Edmund Hartley with swords was a thing of utter beauty. Thrust, whirl, lunge, lunge, lunge, thrust, whirl, the cage of flashing steel so fast that, even with Beast-vision, I couldn’t follow it. It was a glittering, flickering dance of death that slashed gobbets of mud off the demon and sent them flying. They hit the walls and quivered, orienting themselves back to the battle, as if the mud gobbets could see the demon, even without eyes, as if seeking a way back. Lucky tossed preprepared workings at the dismembered parts and they drooped into flaccid nothingness, sliding to the floor, where they lay inert.

Satisfied that all were safe-ish, for the moment, I raced to my partner. Kneeling, I rolled Eli up across my shoulder and back, and raced to the doorway. I dumped him there in an ungainly pile and shoved him into the street, into the rain. Freshly wet, I raced back inside, the rain so cool it felt delicious on my charred scalp.

Lucky was coughing, but he and Clermont were moving with purpose around the swamp thing, staying out of Edmund’s way, flanking the creature. The three warriors scarcely looked at one another, but seemed to read intent, matching maneuvers as though they had worked paramilitary tactics together for decades. Clermont surged forward and hit the floor, rolling under the pool table. As he ran, Lucky spun to one side and pulled something from his pants pocket; he threw it, spinning, red-hot, and smoking. It hit the thing under the arm, silent. Just like a ninja throwing star, but one that had been in a furnace all day, glowing with fiery magic.

The star disappeared inside the swamp thing with a sizzle of sound. The creature hissed and laughed again. It licked its lipless mouth with a wide, brown frog tongue. Lucky tried the preprepared working that had been successful on the dismembered body parts, but on the bigger mass of demon, the spells simply rolled off it and went out in poufs of broken energy.

Edmund spun his body in again and this time cut off one of the thing’s hands. Black blood bubbled out of the stump. The hand landed across the room. Lucky’s spell disabled it and the fingers melted, the hand liquefying into water and runny mud.

In the open doorway, I saw a form jump into the room, and time slowed. Not the Gray Between, the new power I had learned to use, not the one that was likely to kill me one day. No, this was the slow-down of time that warriors experience in the heat of battle, where the human body goes into overdrive and is able to see, hear, feel, and evaluate at hyperspeed. I studied this new thing as it leaped, while it was still in the air. Slight yet bulky. Small yet managing to appear hulking. Hairy, apelike. Weaponless. Not a threat. I ruled it from my attention before it landed.

Still with that battle speed upon me, I saw the demon on the table as it bent its knees and jumped to the floor. The old floorboards shattered beneath its weight, its bizarre feet buried in fragments and shards of wood that pierced its flesh. Its blood splattered into the room, reeking of acid, black as tar. The thing roared in agony, but it didn’t leap out of the hole it had made. It just stood there, ankle-deep in splinters of pain.

The other, smaller form had landed, flat-footed in the smoke, and was searching the room. And I knew who it was. If I hadn’t seen her in the camo uni before, I might not have recognized her. The ensemble was homemade, a one-piece, hand-tied, quilted outfit of green, brown, black, and tan strips of thin cotton cloth. Each strip was attached to the base garment with thread or knots. Irregular lengths of green yarn rippled from it in the hot wind of the fire, with rare pinkish, strawberry red, purple, and blue bits of thread interwoven. It was Margaud’s lightweight ghillie suit, made for wearing in the heat and wet of Louisiana, but this time it was soaked from the torrents pouring outside and hanging weirdly, the strips of cloth flapping wetly, her boots making muddy puddles. Around her was a glow of power, a pale reddish light of a ward, the kind witches sometimes make and sell to humans, a one-off spell contained in a charm. A miniward. Short-lived and weak, but better than nothing. And it also seemed to have some don’t-see-me properties, as no one looked her way but me.

Lucky shouted and threw a flaming blast of power at the frog thing. Nothing happened to it, the fire parting and rising to smack into the smoke overhead. Adding to the heat. Edmund crouched from the heat, his swords still flashing. Vamps were highly flammable. Ed had to get out, and soon.

Margaud lifted her legs and mimed stepping forward, without leaving the circle of the ward’s energies. The thing echoed her movements, but stepping out of the hole. And it all came together for me.

The first time I saw Margaud wearing the weird ghillie suit, I had wondered what she needed the suit for. At the time, I figured it was something she had made to celebrate her sharpshooter days, something she wore when hunting in the swamps and bayous, despite the occasional brightly colored bits of thread. Now I realized the uni was something more, something magical, a suit that she wore to protect herself and to . . . to call the thing in the bar? To control the demon?

Wondering if I could die from fire, from burning to death, I inhaled to shout, and started coughing. I hacked out the words, “Lucky, put out the fire.” And he must have understood.

The witch wrenched his attention from the swamp thing to me, then to the ceiling. His eyes widened in surprise. I don’t think he had noticed the flames until that moment. He pulled something from a pocket and threw it with one fist, up into the ceiling. It stuck and the flames twirled around it, whirling back the way they had come, toward the metal star stuck in the ceiling and the slight hole it had made there. Cool, wet air rushed into the room from the busted door. The roar of the fire diminished and was gone in seconds. But so was the light, the electricity ripped away, along with the flames. I saw the room in overlays of green and silver, and hot spots that continued to smolder.

The creature unsheathed claws from its muddy body and swiped at Clermont.

The vamp sidestepped the claws, the motion beautiful and neat, no wasted movement, no wasted energy. He cut again. Sidestepped. Cut. Sidestepped. The creature roared each time, but its wounds clotted over. Clermont stepped back and Edmund stepped in, cutting, cutting, cutting, lunging over and over. Just before each of the creature’s motions, Margaud moved, its body following hers in a peculiar, macabre dance.

Lucky was watching her, as I was, and he reached again into his pocket and withdrew something that sparked when it hit the air. He threw it hard, a baseball pitcher’s fastball. It smacked into the ghillie suit and stuck. Flames licked up, burning, even in the wet cloth.

The creature stepped forward and backhanded Lucky. The witch spun through the air and cracked into the pool table, bending in ways no human body was intended to. His ribs splintered with brittle snaps. The table was no longer on fire, and Lucky gripped the scorched felt, curling his fingers into it to stay upright. But I heard the bubbling wheeze when he tried to inhale. He had lung damage. He grunted and his face went white.

Margaud’s ghillie suit roared up in flame, and she screamed. The swamp thing walked to her. It wrapped her in its arms and the flames sizzled out, smothered in mud and swamp water. I could hear Margaud gasping and the stink of her terror was clear and sharp, even over the reek of burning homemade ghillie suit.

The demon turned from her and it seemed to have found its way. It stepped forward and struck at Clermont, its claws gouging deep into the vamp’s belly, sending him flying too. Edmund danced out of the way. The other vamp, the one who was down on the stage, groaned, catching the demon’s attention. The creature fisted its hands and raised them high. I tried to fire the M4, but it clicked. Empty. The mud thing brought its fisted hands down on the unconscious form. Bones splintered and cracked.

I reloaded the M4 with regular shot, my movements efficient and spare, Beast fast, but still too slow. I raised the shotgun and aimed at the thing. Then shifted my aim for Margaud. I had never killed a human except in defense of my life or in defense of another. I hesitated, uncertainty filling me. What if Margaud wasn’t actually directing the thing? What if I had it all wrong? I fired. The round hit the ghillie suit and spread. But nothing penetrated. The shot stopped, hot and smoking. And fell to the floor with pings. Her ward, which had seemed so weak, was more than it had appeared. Much more.

From the doorway came a crash and a deep rumble. A blackened claw bigger than the opening busted through, burned wood snapping and splintering. A yellow arm pushed the claw through. No. Not a claw. A shovel, with steel teeth along the bottom. What the drivers of heavy machinery called a bucket. It was the front-end loader that had been parked in the street. Jerking the bucket side to side, the loader ripped out the old entrance. The ceiling above shuddered, the weakened second floor trying to drop through. The creature and Margaud turned to the heavy vehicle. Edmund backed away from the mechanical claw, laughing with delight, his head thrown back with joy. Dang vamp. He was having fun.

For the first time in the fight, I could also see Margaud’s face clearly. She was perhaps the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, even in the silver gray of Beast sight, even with her face twisted in hate. The ugly expression was darker than the hell the swamp demon had been called from, foul, dreadful, seeking only pain and death.

The huge bucket with its steel claws jerked and tore as it worked its way forward, the tractor tires gripping on the damaged wood floor. The yellow machine was forcing its way inside like in some child’s film about sentient machines. The loader rolled inside, revealing Eli sitting in the glassed-in cage, his face like stone, his hands working the controls. The demon attacked the loader, throwing itself against the clawed bucket, Margaud’s body a mirror image, fighting an invisible menace. The bucket jerked forward and up, picking up the demon, the steel claws catching it at its middle and tilting, lifting. The swamp demon roared, its voice matching the sound of the huge engine. Eli carried the demon, rushing to the wall beside the stage. He slammed the bucket into the wall, the claws ripping through the demon and cutting into the plaster on the far side. Black blood sprayed.

The demon shuddered and screamed. Lucky hit with one of his dissipate spells. And the demon melted into a puddle of mud. Clermont whirled to Margaud. But she was gone. He clutched his middle, which was bleeding, and caught himself on a chair, holding himself upright, amazingly still whole, in the middle of the ruined blood bar.

Clermont gripped his side and belly, holding in what passed for guts in vampires, and made his way across the wrecked floor to the vamp on the stage. He rolled the unconscious, broken vamp over and tilted back the bloodsucker’s head, as if opening an airway. But . . . vamps don’t need to breathe. I understood when Clermont’s fangs snapped down and he bit his own wrist, holding it to the vamp’s mouth. The blood flowed fast for several seconds before the vamp’s eyes snapped open and he swallowed. He gripped his master’s arm and pulled it tight to his lips, sucking.

Lucky groaned and rolled over, clutching his side and ribs. He activated a healing spell, one I could see in the dark of the bar, which was probably red and orange, but in big-cat vision looked green and silver, shot with blue, in the weird colorblindness of the feline.

Edmund made a quick whip/slash motion and sheathed his swords. Elegant and beautiful. And if I was guessing right, he was a better swordsman than Leo Pellissier’s Mercy Blade. Better than Leo. Maybe even better than Grégoire, who was known to be the best swordsman in the entire United States. Edmund had been hiding things from us all.

The clatter/roar of the front-end loader changed to a cough and went silent. The plasticized glass door opened, and Eli stepped out of the loader cage and dropped to the floor, where he caught his breath and held it for a space of heartbeats. He moved away from the machine, his body stiff and slow. He was badly wounded to be showing any sign of weakness.

“Honest to God,” he said as he stepped to the wall where the bucket was stuck. His voice was just a hint breathy as he went on, “I thought Vin Diesel as Riddick had it all wrong, but there are movie mud monsters. And worse. This one melted on a wood floor and disappeared.”

“It’ll be back,” I said. “Its maker or controller, or both, didn’t get what she wanted. And she got away.”

“Who?”

“The person in the homemade ghillie suit. Margaud.”

Eli frowned, pulling the name out of his memory, making associations with a demon and a bar fight. “The sister of the two Hulk wannabes with the Amazon this afternoon? The one that made all this small-town, love-triangle, witch-vamp shit happen?”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t argue about the estimation or the language. Sometimes shit is the only word for a particular situation.

He looked around the burned blood bar. “Margaud. Makes sense.”

“Questions to ask Solene if we can break the circle. Or in the morning, if we live that long. You need vamp blood to heal. Edmund?” I called, looking around. He was gone.

“You need to shift back,” Eli said, as if we were debating. “And I don’t know where the slimy little bloodsucker is. I never saw him in the battle.”

“He was there. We’ll talk about him later. How long?”

Eli frowned, a downward quirk of his lips. “It lasted one-twenty-seven seconds.”

One hundred twenty-seven seconds. A little over two minutes. It seemed like an hour. But my partner was right. Where was my vamp helper? Why had he taken off after facing a mud demon and fighting our way out of a mess?

Clermont snapped his arm away from the healing vamp, licked his wound to constrict the fang holes, and stood. He walked over to Lucky, still lying half under the burned pool table. He knelt close to the witch and said, “We been played. Our children been played. Or entire peoples been played, by a human what can call her up a demon. We been enemies a long time. We been friends only since our families join. I say we stronger dat little time when we joined. I say I sorry I din’ see what happening to my boy and to your girl. I say I sorry I such an ass, even if you don’ take my sincere apologies.”

Lucky put his hand into Clermont’s and let the vamp pull him to a sitting position, his legs stretched out and his back resting against a blackened pool table leg. “I accept. And I offer you my own, how you say, sincere apologies.”

“We not much leaders we not able to see a common enemy.”

“Divide and conquer work best on dem what blind to dangers,” Lucky agreed.

“We not some dumbass politicians. We leaders. And right now, we need our strength. I offer you, Lucky Landry, father of my daughter-in-law, gran’father of my—of our—gran’boy, Clerjer, blood of my veins, to make you strong to fight.”

“Long as I don’ got to kiss you, I accept.”

“I’m told I kiss real good. Maybe I’m insulted, yeah?”

Lucky chuckled and his face wrenched in pain. “Okay. I kiss you. Hell, I kiss dat ugly frog demon if it fix my ribs. And I thinking I got lung problems.”

“Got you pneumothorax, you do,” Clermont said. “I hear air leaking and blood gurgling.”

I remembered the vamp leader was a surgeon, back in his human days.

“To fix you, I gone stick a needle like a tenpenny nail in you side right here”—he touched the witch’s side—“and den I’m gon’ drain my blood inside. Heal you fast. Den you drink some my blood and be heal for real.”

“I not gon’ wake up dead, am I?”

“No. You still be pain-in-de-ass coonass witch, what walk in de day.”

“Do it, den, wid my thanks.”

“Lucky? Clermont?” We all turned to the stage door where Bobbie stood, holding her grandson on her shoulder. “The vampire you sent to protect us says the fight’s over.”

“Vampire?” Lucky asked.

Edmund eased Bobbie away from the door and stepped out. Behind him came Gabriel, looking pink-skinned and healthy, and behind him, a gentle hand on his shoulder, came Shauna. So that was where Edmund had gone. To check on the people downstairs. Go, Ed. I nodded at him, a slight inclination of my head. He nodded back, his gaze serious and intense. Weirdly, Edmund walked to me and knelt at my feet, his swords back and behind him like wings. I looked down at the top of his head in confusion. What was this? I looked around in growing panic.

“Ed?” He didn’t answer. Just knelt there.

Whatever Ed was doing, no one else seemed to notice or care. The others—witches, humans, and vamps—ignored us and gathered at the pool table where they huddled together with their faction leaders in what was probably a group hug/blood-feeding/bloodletting. Eli, who was still moving stiffly and clearly needed to feed on a vamp sometime soon, looked over Edmund and me, chuckled softly, and turned his attention to the room, evaluating entrances and exits and possible close-quarters fighting. Not looking at the hugging. No longer looking at Ed.

From the doorway, Alex walked into the bar, saying, “Just gag me with a spoon and get it over with. All that huggy, kissy, mommy, daddy crap.” The brothers fist-bumped. Idiots. Every single one of them. And the worst was Edmund, still at my feet, his head bowed. I wasn’t sure what gave me the impression, but I had a feeling Ed was laughing at me.

I considered my vamp helper in light of the battle, the problem with humans, witches, a starving vampire, and a baby locked together in an underground lair, all afraid and angry, and decided it had turned out much better than it might have. “Get up,” I said, hearing a long-suffering note in my two words. Edmund stood with a flair that might have come from the Middle Ages or a Hollywood set. “Ed, I take it you taught the young vamp idiot how to feed without sex?” I said.

“Yes, my master,” he said, sounding quietly subservient and yet somehow managing to convey his hilarity.

“Having fun, are you?”

“More than you can possibly imagine, my master,” he said, with heavy emphasis on the last two words. He was determined to call me master. To get under my skin. Or to bind himself to me in some way I couldn’t comprehend.

“Teaching proper feeding habits doesn’t take long when one is experienced in such matters.” He added, “My master.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, thinking, No freaking way. I had enough responsibilities to deal with. “Once you get over the chuckles,” I said, “would you be so kind as to heal my partner? Eli’s hurt from when that thing knocked him across the room.”

“Yes, my master.”

“And since you can heal without sex, make sure you don’t annoy him with any come-hither pheromones or whatever you do to get sex. Because I’ll let him shoot you if you do.”

“Spoilsport,” he said, wandering over to Eli.

I watched as Edmund spoke quietly to the Youngers, and then presented a blade, hilt first, to Eli, and lifted his other wrist to be cut. Satisfied, I walked over to the huddle of BO citizens. “Okay. Get your crap together and meet me at the bed-and-breakfast because I need to know everything you know, and can guess, about the demon and about Margaud, and about her brothers, and everything about that dang wreath. Because no way is it all disconnected.”

In the corner of the room a flame flared up. With a pop of speed, Gabe raced for a fire extinguisher and put it out, kicking the smoking remains of drapery away.

“Fine,” I said. “First we make sure the fire is out. Then we talk.”

•   •   •

I got a good look at myself in my mirror as I changed out of my wet, smoke-damaged clothes, and the pelt I wore in my half form was pretty awe-inspiring. Knobby joints, retractile claws on my fingertips, narrow waist, no boobs to speak of, feet shaped like huge paws that had ripped my sneakers into ruined shreds, and a body of solid muscle, covered by a golden pelt. I shoved the cell into my jeans pocket and inspected myself closer. The brown/black nose looked a little odd, but the gold shining eyes totally made it work, especially with the gold nugget necklace. I had never thought this about myself before, but pelted? Even with the jeans and T on top, I looked hot. Weird. But hot.

Beast and Jane are not hot. Beast and Jane are best hunters. Beast and Jane are worthy of best mate. Beast and Jane are best at everything, Beast thought at me.

I chuckled under my breath, grabbed a robe, and went to shower off the smoke stink.

•   •   •

It was two a.m. before everyone was finally healed and the fire was deemed completely doused. The rain had drained to a drizzle, though water still shushed through the magnolia leaves, swirled in the streets, and pooled in the ditches and low-lying places. The witches were still encircled, studying the wreath, and not much had changed with them, except this time they weren’t wet. Seemed they had figured out how to add a water-repellent aspect to the electric dog collar ward.

Leaving human blood-servants to keep watch for changes in the witches’ activity level, others to keep watch for the demon and Margaud, we gathered in the living room of the B and B. I had quickly made notes on the things I needed to know, and I started the little tête-à-tête by saying, “The vamps of Bayou Oiseau never had a formal parley with Leo and his peeps. The witch coven never met with the New Orleans witch council. I thought both parleys had taken place. Honestly, I don’t have a crap-dang care why they didn’t take place. They will take place next week. Lucky, Clermont, nod if you want to keep your heads on your shoulders.”

It may have been the honest agreement that the meetings needed to take place, or it might have been my pelted and glowing-eyed aspect that forced them into compliance, but both nodded. Beast chuffed, feeling her power over the gathered. Beast is good ambush hunter.

I smiled, showing her teeth.

Clermont cleared his throat, laced his hands over his stomach, stretched out his legs, and crossed his ankles, every bit the relaxed gentleman. He was tall, lean, and gangly at nearly six feet, with dark brown eyes and blondish hair, a combination that seemed common in this area and had been replicated in the genetic makeup of his son. Somewhere he had found clean apparel and changed out of his smoky, bloody clothes. Now, like the first time I saw him, he was dressed in worn jeans, an ironed white dress shirt, a gray suit jacket, a narrow tie, and boots, which were ubiquitous in Louisiana. His reading glasses were perched on his head, reflecting the light. “Lucky and I been talking, we has. Already confirm appointment with New Orleans’ councils.”

“Good,” I said.

“Share, we do, all intelligence we know ’bout dat wreath. Corona. Breloque. It first appear in 1927, day de blood bar open. Professor be playing piano, lady singer singing, though I forget her name, it be so long ago. My sire, he dancing wid a local gal, blood-slave, she was, and thunderstorm outside. Rain pouring down like what it done today. Hard falling, it was. And there be a crack of thunder. And, like poof. It appear in middle of stage. All by it lonesome.”

Lucky said, “The witches heard about it. My family ancestors, the Bordelon sisters, asked to see it. The vampire said no. We not see dat breloque until my Shauna took it and brung it to us.”

Clermont frowned. Maybe Shauna would be considered a thief in the eyes of the courts, providing that the corona belonged to the vamps under some form of finders-keepers rule of law, but I couldn’t let that topic become the center of the discussion. Before anyone could accuse Shauna of stealing, I said, “And were either the vamps or the witches ever able to use it?”

“No,” Clermont said, his mouth forming a totally human smile. “Back before de electronic revolution, la corona sat on top my TV for years. Best rabbit ears dey ever was.”

Lucky laughed. So did I. And if there had been tension in the room, it dissipated. “Okay. So where was it kept when Shauna and Gabe got tricked into causing all this trouble?”

“It in my gun closet. Locked to keep the young ’uns out. Key hanging on my bedpost on leather thong.”

I looked at Shauna, who was pretty as a picture, sitting beside her husband, snuggled on the sofa. She looked abashed and tucked her head down under her husband’s chin, snuggling their child up close in her arms. The silence pulled like a long length of taffy, and she finally spoke into it. “When I saw Margaud and Gabe together in the bar, I went home, packed, got the key, and took the wreath. Then I strapped Clerjer into his baby seat on the airboat and went home to Mama and Daddy.” She turned her clear, blue gaze to her hubby. “I was a fool.”

“No, Shauna, my love, I was de fool,” Gabe said.

“You were all fools, but we don’t have time to list the ways,” I said, thinking Shakespeare, with the height, breadth, and depth of foolishness. “So what does the wreath do?”

“I can tell you that.”

I swiveled on my satin-upholstered chair to Alex, standing in the doorway. His skin looked darker than its usual caramel, and his hair was kinked high from the rain and the humidity. Except for the laptop, he looked like a nineties rapper, in boxy pants and oversized T-shirt. “I found it in the new database.”

That meant Reach’s database, the one he was still learning how to use. Alex turned the laptop around, and on the screen was a picture of a marble statue of a man wearing a wreath—laurel leaves standing up at attention—but this wreath was stone, not metal, and it was missing the lower part, the part with the writing. I started to say that, but Alex said, “It’s a statue of Julius Caesar, commissioned in the seventeenth century for the Palace of Versailles. And he’s depicted wearing what was called a civic crown. The civic crown, also worn by Napoleon and other kings, is the laurel leaf part of the corona. The lower part is what I’ll call a band crown, as seen on Greek kings and consorts, like you see on this silver coin, called a silver tetradrachm.” He displayed a picture of a coin with a woman’s face on it and then zoomed in with his fingertips on the touch screen. The crown was a narrow band and did indeed seem to have etchings on it that might—or might not—have been a match to the ones on the corona. “I haven’t actually seen one of the band crowns, but they were worn by queens or consorts in the BC era. And it shows these little marks. See? Here.” He pointed.

“Fine,” I said. “I see the marks and I acknowledge the research, but—”

“Someone combined the two crowns, a laurel leaf civic crown and a band, worn by a consort. A witch took the two concepts and melded them into one. Like this.” He punched a corner of the screen and a picture came up, which matched perfectly the corona in the street, surrounded by witches, standing, dry, in the rain.

Alex was tired, I could see it in his face, and beneath the stench of smoke and blood in the room, he smelled of caffeine and testosterone and adrenaline, a combo that said he had been bingeing on energy drinks. “Okay,” I said quietly. “We have a theory about what the corona was made from. Now we need to know where it came from and what it does.”

Alex heard the word theory and his shoulders slumped. Then his face brightened. “My research says this: ‘La corona does one thing and one thing only. It allows a misericord to attain human form.’”

I stood slowly. “Oh crap.” I looked at the windows. Outside, lightning flashed and distant thunder rumbled. “We might be in a bit of trouble.”

The misericords were Mercy Blades, the creatures who made sure that vampires didn’t keep their children alive after a decade, two at the most, in the devoveo. In other words, they administered the mercy stroke of death to the chained, insane killing machines that never made it through the vamp turning into true vampires. They were also Anzu. Storm gods. And . . . I had recently been struck by lightning during a storm. Holy crap. What am I missing?

“Jane?”

I jerked my head to Alex, who looked oddly concerned. I stood, digging in a pocket for my cell. “Yeah. I gotta make a call.”

I walked outside under the gallery roof into the drizzle that had started again. I pulled up my address list on the official cell, the one that my boss could trace, listen in on, and read texts from. I found the name Gee DiMercy, who was also known as Girrard DiMercy, aka Leo’s misericord, or Mercy Blade. An Anzu. Once worshipped as a storm god. Like a blue and scarlet Big Bird with a bad attitude. A storm god . . . I hit SEND and waited. The cell rang. Rang again. And then I heard a calypso dance number behind me.

I pulled a vamp-killer, spinning on one toe. Ducked the sword strike that was aiming for my head. Threw my body into a forward roll, tucking, landing on one shoulder and sliding under the swing hanging on chains. Gee laughed, and his laughter was exactly as I remembered from the first time I heard it—joyful, like a kid in a park, and I found myself smiling with him, even though I was hiding behind a swing, in the dark.

He didn’t attack again and I saw him sheath the sword, the steel a silver gleam in the porch light. “What are you? Kato?” I accused.

“That would make you the Green Hornet. And . . . a sidekick? Have I fallen so far in your estimation?” He swept a hand to his chest. “My heart breaks. However, I am not likely a secondary character, and I much prefer your first appellation—Zorro, the swords master hero.”

Gee DiMercy was standing under the porch light, his very-milky-chocolate-colored flesh cast in a slight yellow tint from the bulb. A V of chest hair was framed in the opening of his shirt, and a faint film of pale energies ran on and under his skin. His black hair was dry and longer than when I first saw him, loose and curling around his pretty face like a cap. His skin looked Mediterranean or Middle Eastern mixed with a hint of African. His features were utterly beautiful but full of mischief, like an angel who was pushed out of heaven for laughing during prayer. He was dressed in a draped-sleeve, open-throat navy shirt and blousy pants with boots to his thighs, but now he also looked younger, maybe fourteen years old in the poor light. But since it was all a glamour, he could look like anything he wanted.

I stood up, keeping the swing between me and the Anzu, no matter that he looked like a dance student rather than a swords master. Slight, delicate, and smelling of jasmine and pine, the commingled scents fresh, lovely, and dangerously disarming on the night breeze. I sheathed the vamp-killer, which would have been useless against the longer sword, even with Gee’s shorter reach. I had been taking lessons, but I mostly sucked with a long sword.

His gaze swept me from my feet to my head and said, “The pelt is lovely, but feathers would have been beautiful. Remember that you owe me a hunt.”

“I remember. Why are you here?” I asked.

“I am here for le breloque. It is mine.”

“And how do you figure that?”

“It was made for my kind by my goddess and friend. It was lost when one of us died unexpectedly. Until now, we did not know where it had landed.”

“Uh-huh. And how do you intend on getting it, seeing as the witches have it warded and protected?”

“Their magics are child’s play to one such as I.”

“Hmmm. And if they have a steel blade and stick you with it?” Anzus—Anzi?—could be wounded and even killed by steel. I had seen that myself.

Gee scowled.

“Right,” I said. “And if they decide that ‘finders, keepers’ is a more appropriate method of deciding ownership, and they attack in a coven of twelve, could they singe your tail feathers?”

His scowl deepened.

“Come inside and talk to the leaders I’ve managed to get in one place. The coven leader is”—I waved a hand into the slow, misty rain—“otherwise engaged.”

“She tries to use misericord magics, stored in le breloque. She cannot.”

“Whatever.” I opened the door and went into the bed-and-breakfast, pausing by the front door. Gee passed me, altering his apparent age to midtwenties before assuming a fists-on-hips, aggressive stance, like a sea captain, or maybe a pirate captain. All he needed was an eye patch, a parrot, and a stein of rum. “I bring greetings and a warning to your people. I am here in peace. But I will have mon breloque back or you will all die.”

If I’d been close enough, I’d have head-slapped him. Fortunately the witch and Clermont laughed at him. Edmund stood and pulled his swords. He stepped in front of the others and said, “I will not permit—”

The front window blew in and a mud demon shaped like a frog stepped through. Everything went to hell in a handbasket.

Eli fired two handguns, backing into the hallway.

Lucky dove across the room, throwing a fire spell that simply disappeared into the frog’s wide mouth, where it sizzled as the demon swallowed it, treating it like an appetizer. When he landed, Lucky flipped a table over on its side and ducked behind it. Clermont, Edmund, and Gee all turned on the thing and attacked, swords flashing. Black tarry cuts appeared on its sides and it roared with anger. I still had my shotgun, but the Benelli was useless in such close quarters. I’d hit one of the swordsmen. I checked the hallway and Eli was gone, and so was his brother. Eli had to have some toys in his room. He’d be back with military reinforcements.

The demon picked up the sofa where they had been sitting and threw it across the room. It crashed on the table hiding Lucky, and the table cracked, splintering. The furniture collapsed on the witch.

The demon’s arms extended two feet. It grew claws. It attacked the swordsmen.

They didn’t have a chance.

But . . . they were all using steel. I pulled a vamp-killer, with its steel edge and silver plating. “Ed!” I shouted. I lay the long knife on the floor and spun it to him. He bent and picked it up while making two cuts in the demon. No. Make that four. He was . . . Edmund Hartley was freaking fast. Seeing him fight next to Gee DiMercy made that abundantly clear. Holy crap. The vamp who was on the bottom of the pecking order in vamp HQ was amazing, a skilled, talented swordsman.

So why is he the bottom of the bunch in vamp hierarchy? Why did he lose his control of his blood clan? How did this guy lose a blood duel?

Before the thought was fully formed, Ed dashed inside the demon’s reach and cut a long gash in its belly with my vamp-killer. The black blood cascaded out. And this time it didn’t clot over. Go, me!

“Silver!” Edmund shouted at me.

I pulled two more silver-plated vamp-killer blades and slid them across the floor to Gee and to Clermont. They put their lives in danger of his long reach, dashing in and back out, but the demon squealed as they all began to make headway on bleeding the thing to death.

I whirled and went back outside into the rain. Looking for Margaud.

She was standing under the magnolia tree in Miz Onie’s front yard, leaning against the trunk of the tree, half-hidden in the low branches. This time she wasn’t guiding the demon with kicks, fists, and maneuvers. She was standing still, running with rainwater, a sodden mess. Shoulders hunched, she was staring into her cupped hands, shielded from the elements. Staring at something that had her total attention.

I pulled a small knife, one with a wide pommel and short blade. I drew on Beast’s stealth abilities and her speed. I bent and leaped across the ground, landing on a mossy patch of ground. Instinctively keeping downwind, in the shadows, I leaped again, landing beside the girl. Raised the knife. And bonked her on the head. She dropped like a stone. I caught her hands and picked out the thing in them. It was . . . a gris-gris.

Time slowed all by itself, the bangs and thumps from things breaking inside growing deeper in tone. The raindrops seemed to decelerate, not hanging in the air, but falling at half speed. My stomach cramped. This was not gonna be good. In fact, it was gonna be very, very bad. I could tell.

Gris-gris were small leather bags that had originated in Africa and were believed to protect the wearer from evil or to bring luck. Or to provide the wearer a method of birth control. Lots of things, depending on what the wearer and the maker wanted. They had become part of New Orleans’ voodoo, or vodoun, subculture, and they looked a lot like a Cherokee shaman’s medicine bag at first glance. This one was made out of leather covered with red silk fabric, tied with undyed hemp. It was about four inches long, less than three inches wide, a little large for a gris-gris. Like the shaman’s bag I had begun to wear in my soul home, gris-gris held herbs and small animal bones. And when used in dark magic, the spells they powered could become unstoppable.

I touched the leather, which was bumpy and rough—tanned alligator skin. There was a swatch of bristly hair tied into the hemp. I held it to my nose and caught the scent of wild boar.

I toed Margaud with my foot paw and she lolled limply, sluggishly. Still out. Moving through the abnormally slow rain, I carried the gris-gris to the porch and stood under the light. Inside, the fight was still taking place at half speed, and I could hear grunts and the sound of more breaking furniture. In the distance I also heard sirens. The light-sleeping Miz Onie must have woken even with the sleep spell, and called the county law enforcement officers. I wondered if they would fall sway to the sleep spell as they entered the city limits and if they’d get the unit stopped in time. The thoughts were useless things, mostly background, so my subconscious could worry about the real problem while my hind brain kept me breathing and my heart beating. A lot going on at the moment, and there were, after all, priorities.

One shouldn’t open a gris-gris.

It might unleash many things, even worse things than the demon inside the house. Or . . . maybe the gris-gris bag had been opened and that was how the demon had gotten free? Or . . . maybe there was something even worse still inside the bag.

I had the answer to any gris-gris. I pulled my silver cross from the lead-lined pocket in my jeans. I untied the hemp and pressed the cross into the gris-gris bag and shook it. Black smoke boiled out of the bag, tarry and sour-smelling. When the smoke cleared, I dumped the contents into my knobby-knuckled palm. Fragile bones, mixed dried herbs, a tooth, and three clay tiles fell out. The demon was part frog, part boar, part alligator—frog body and back legs, boar tusks, bristly hair, and a little twirled tail, alligator skin, frog mouth full of alligator teeth. And arms muscled like a gorilla. Using my index finger, I pushed around the contents. There was a jawbone of a very large frog or toad. The boar hair was tied with a string. The white tooth was probably an alligator’s. The tiles were rough, etched with figures of a frog, a boar, and an alligator. I rubbed one and it felt like dried mud.

Of course. I held it to the yellowed light and decided the mud had been mixed with sacrificial blood before it was shaped and dried. Something had died to make the gris-gris. It was black magic.

But Margaud wasn’t a witch. She was human. So where had she . . . ?

Things began to pop up and slide together in my mind, like some weird puzzle forming all by it itself. Margaud and her brothers were Moutons. The brothers had shown up at Lucky’s with Solene, the coven leader, who was Lucky’s sister. The Moutons were vamp haters from way back. Lucky was a vamp hater from way back. Solene hadn’t seemed any too happy to be sharing the town with suckheads. Solene and Lucky were related to the Bordelon sisters, one of whom had been their grandmother, and the sisters had fought the vamps to a stalemate in the town’s vamp war.

Had the Bordelon sisters used a gris-gris? Had they called up a demon?

Through the window something flew, slowly, ungainly, tumbling through the air. Gee DiMercy. But he didn’t fall, tuck, and roll. Blue and pink and lavender magics boiled out from his slight form and in an instant he sprouted feathers, spread his wings, and caught an air current. He glided across the yard, barely maintaining altitude above the ground. He flapped once as he crossed into the street, trying to make it over the witch circles. He wasn’t successful. His wingtips brushed the top of the electric dog collar and the hedge of thorns where they met at the top. Black and silver sparks flew, slightly faster than the rain. The acrid stink of burned feathers filled the air.

And the wards exploded.

The Gray Between caught me up, and time simply . . . stopped. The falling magics looked like slowly burning paper, blackening and scorching in arcs of heat, with flaming lights at the edges. Raindrops hung in the air. I didn’t look at the droplets. I knew better. They held the possibilities of future timelines, spreading out from this moment, from the decisions I made in this moment, possibilities that affected everything and everyone. If I looked at them I could be paralyzed, unable to act, afraid that anything I might do would mess up everything for everyone else. So I didn’t look. I didn’t even want to.

I dropped the gris-gris’ contents to the porch floor and crushed it all between my paw pad and the old, painted wood. It made a strange grinding sound, the tiles breaking. The cross hadn’t stopped him, so that meant that even this might not stop the swamp thing, but it should do something to the demon. Weakening it would help, at the very least. As I ruined the spell, my guts twisted horribly. The pain felt like someone was dragging my intestines out of my abdomen and braiding them into a long, plaited coil.

Nausea rose, tasting of blood and bile. I gagged. I didn’t have long.

When the tiles were dust, I walked back inside, where the fight was still taking place, found a small escritoire with paper and pens inside. I wrote a note to Eli explaining what I had figured out, about Solene Mouton probably helping Margaud, trying to drive a wedge between vamps and witches. I folded the page and tucked it into Eli’s hand, where he’d feel it in real time. Then I stuck the mud monster with a silver-plated blade about fifty times. Surely that should do it.

Satisfied I had done all I could do in here, I shoved off from the porch, leaping through the air, faster than time, splashing through raindrops hanging still in the night. Racing toward the center of the street. Seeing the wards as they fell, breaks appearing in long striations of fractured energies. Seeing, knowing the weakened places in the magics. I bladed my body through a tear in the outer ward, my pelt sizzling and stinking. I raced between witches and spun through the inner ward. It bent and gave and fell beneath me.

I took two steps through the center of the circle, stooped, and picked up the wreath. La corona. Le breloque. I pushed off the asphalt and landed on the far side of the witch circle. Moments later I was half a block away, bent over, retching. Blood pooled on the wet pavement beneath me. Time had returned to normal. Or I had returned to normal time. It was confusing. I gripped my middle and kneaded the twisted steel of my muscles. And once again the heavens opened up and rain assaulted the earth.

I looked up and saw, in the distance, Lucky Landry, Edmund Hartley, and Clermont Doucette walk from the ruined house and into the street. The vamps were no longer sporting swords, so crushing the tiles must have killed the demon, or sent him back where he came from. Whatever. I’d take it. The witches in the circle were screaming. I could hear them in the distance. The rain that had started above me raced across the street and hit them too. Lightning jagged down, the sound booming. It was close. I had no desire to be hit by lightning again. Once in my lifetime was enough. I looked around for the Anzu, wondering if he had called down the current storm.

I pushed up from the water-runnelled pavement. My other hand was . . . gripping the wreath.

I have the wreath.

I have stopped the demon.

And I might live.

•   •   •

I hid in the storm, walking away from the clamor in the main intersection of town and into the first weedy lot after the row of businesses and shops. The last business in the row had a newly applied sheet of plywood on the side wall, half-hidden by weeds . . . covering a hole. I remembered when the hole had been made. Lucky had thrown a bowling-ball-shaped keep-away spell at me and missed, trying to kill me when we first hit town. The nails holding the plywood in place didn’t hold up to the strip of metal I used like a crowbar to expose the hole into the beauty shop. It was tight, but I was able to step through and I shook myself like a dog, my pelt shedding water that went everywhere. Following the trajectory to the inside wall, I found another piece of plywood and pried it off too.

I ended back in Lucky’s shop and raided the beer cooler. Three beers later, even my skinwalker metabolism was feeling pretty good, if hungry. So I raided the refrigerated meat counter and settled to a table with a fourth beer, a beef roast of some unknown cut, a dish of pulled pork barbecue, a half loaf of bread, and some slaw that smelled heavenly, even to my Beast. And I ate most of it before Eli managed to pick the lock on Boudreaux’s Meats and get in out of the rain.

He closed the door behind him and switched on a small but powerful flashlight. He caught the broken plywood first. Then me. I figured Alex had found me by tracking my cell phone. I had hoped the rain and the magic had shorted the thing out. No such luck.

“You leave any for me?” Eli asked.

“Not only that, I made you a sandwich.” I pointed to the last sandwich, one I had really made for myself, but this was much better and made me sound unselfish. Maybe even noble, since it did involve food. Eli grabbed a beer and straddled the bench beside me. He gathered up the oversized sandwich and took a huge bite. I hadn’t known his mouth could open that wide.

“Not bad,” he said as he chewed. “But with Lucky’s meats, even you couldn’t make a mess of it.”

“Ha-ha.” I pushed over the open container of slaw. It bumped the edge of the flashlight and sent the beam rolling crazily for a moment. “I left you some, but there was only one fork.”

“You don’t got cooties, do you?”

“Yup. Girl cooties. But I’m pretty sure you can’t get them from eating after me.”

Eli chortled and nearly choked. When he got his airway clear he asked, “You got the wreath?”

“Yup.”

He nodded contemplatively as he chewed. Pulled his cell and sent a quick text before putting the phone in his pocket. He ate a bite of slaw and made appreciative noises that might have been This is good, if he hadn’t been chewing at the same time. He swallowed and said, “The demon melted into a puddle of mud and Margaud was unconscious under a tree outside. You do all that?”

“Yup.”

“That’s my girl.” He lifted a fist and I bumped it, but he wasn’t done. Carefully expressionless in face and tone, he asked, “You bleed much?”

“Not as much as last time. It was pretty bad until I got some beers into me.”

Eli looked over the table and onto the floor where I had started placing empties inside the wreath. “Eight beers?”

“So far.”

“You drunk?”

“Oddly enough, pretty much. I’m thinking that bending time does something wonky to my metabolism.”

“You’re still pelted.”

“Yeah. I noticed.”

“You and Bruiser ever—”

“No. Do not go there. Ewww.”

Eli chuckled and ate more of his sandwich and I realized he was teasing me. Through the bite, he asked, “What are you going to do with the wreath?”

“I don’t know. But for sure the vamps and the witches here won’t see it again.”

“And where’s the Anzu?”

I ate some meat, using my fingers to stuff it in. Licked my fingers. The paw pads felt weird on my tongue. I opened another beer. Drained it halfway. I kinda liked having a buzz, even if it meant I was going to be an alky and go to hell, according to some of my housemothers as I was growing up. “I haven’t decided about that,” I said. I picked up la corona and placed it on my pelted head at a jaunty angle. “Gee calls me little goddess. I think I’ll wear it for a while. You know. All goddess-like. With a crown. Before I decide.” I ate some more meat as Eli finished his sandwich.

“I guess we should pay for this stuff,” he said. “Think forty will cover it?”

I shrugged and Eli tossed two twenties into the light of the flash.

“You did it, you know,” he said. “You got the vamps and witches talking and the Moutons will be brought under the watchful eye of the newly appointed Bayou Oiseau Citizens’ Council.”

“Self-appointed?”

“Yeah. But it’s a multiracial, multispecies, multigender council, so it’s a start. And it’s better than what they had. Which was nothing.”

I pointed to the wreath on my head. “It’s what we goddesses do. We fix stuff.”

“True,” Eli said, his face amused. “Do you want or need to go back and accept kudos from the citizens council of BO?”

“No freaking way.” I scowled at him. “But I need to go back for my stuff and get the guys.”

“Already taken care of.”

“Swwweeeet.” I boxed up a mixed six-pack of cold beer and stuck it under my left arm. Picked up the M4, which had somehow ended up on the floor with the wreath, which had somehow found a way from my head to the floor. I nearly fell when I stood.

“Am I going to have to carry you to the SUV?” Eli asked.

“I don’t know. Things are kinda whirly right now. How far do we have to walk?”

“I texted Alex and your vampire babysitter earlier. There’s an SUV idling out front. It’s most likely them.”

“And if it isn’t them?”

“We’ll shoot our way out.”

I grinned at him, showing my blunt human incisors and elongated big-cat canines.

Eli said, “Edmund. He’s pretty good with a sword.”

“Yeah. I saw. Maybe better than Grégoire.” I placed the crown back on my head and adjusted my grip on the shotgun. Steadied myself on the table’s edge.

Eli was watching, not helping, which was good. He said, “Ed’s too good to have lost a Blood Challenge for clan blood-master. Too good to be wanting to be an Enforcer’s primo. Something’s up his sleeve. You got any idea what?”

“Plans and schemes and tactics and strategies all layered up with some hubris into a nice, neat plot to take over the world? Or at least the vampire world.”

“Think we can shoot our way out of that one?”

I tried to take a step and the world whirled slowly. “Pretty sure we can do anything, partner.” I put a hand on his shoulder to catch my balance. “Let’s go home before the delegation from Rome gets here and stirs the pot.”

“And where are you gonna hide the wreath until we figure who it belongs to?”

I already knew who it probably belonged to—the Birdman of New Orleans, or one of his kind. But I wasn’t ready to hand it over. Not yet. Maybe not ever. “Looks like I’ll be renting another safe-deposit box. A big one this time. And we’ll need to wrap the interior with lead.”

“You’re getting quite a collection of magical trinkets.”

I grunted. I knew that. And I didn’t like it one bit.

“We’ll need to come back and gather up the principals for a parley with the NOLA fangheads and witches,” Eli said.

“You think you can get the helo? I could go for a kidnapping and forced negotiations at knifepoint if we could do it fast.”

Eli nodded. “I can make that happen. Are you going to shift back into human anytime soon? Or are you too drunk?”

“I am not drunk,” I said. “Not exactly. But I don’t think I can shift back anytime soon. And I probably shouldn’t let the witches see me like this.” I pointed to my face and body in a little twirling motion.

Eli’s mouth resisted a smile. “You think they’ll try to take you prisoner?”

“Witches can try,” Beast said through my mouth.

Eli led the way to the door. “We’ll get out of here before anyone knows what’s what. The lead foil came in last week. We can line your bank boxes anytime you want.”

I nodded. “Let’s go home.”