Black Arts: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (5 page)

“Katie wasn’t informed of the party. The girls were out on the town together, not working for her.”

I tried to put the two sentences together into something that made sense. And then it hit me why Katie was so predatory. “They were working a side job? One without Katie’s approval and one that Katie didn’t get a cut of?”

Troll nodded, then shook his shiny bald head. “I didn’t think so at the time, but with them disappearing, I’m startin’ to reconsider. I was the pickup driver, and I know the girls were there one minute and gone the next, ’cause I talked with one of the waiters. They wouldn’t have gotten into a car with people they didn’t know, so either they left with someone they knew or they were taken.” He ran a hand across his scalp, thinking. “They know better than to stiff Katie, so . . . I don’t know.”

I chuckled at the double entendre and Troll managed a smile. “Unintentional,” he said.

“Sure. Send me photos of the girls. I’ll check it out and see what I can find. On another note, my friend Molly is missing. Her husband thought she might be coming to New Orleans to see me, but she didn’t.” I tapped the paper on the bar top, thinking. “She didn’t see me, that is. I don’t know if she actually came to New Orleans. We’re looking into that. So, if you hear anything about witches, call?”

Troll nodded. “Will do.”

“Now tell me about picking up the girls.”

“Nothing to say. They called for a ride home from Guilbeau’s, per orders of Katie.” I looked my question at him and he said, “For their safety, they call after dark, even on their nights off. When I got there, they were gone.”

I sighed. “It’s never easy.”

“That’s why you get paid the big bucks, Legs.”

• • •

Back at the house, I checked in with Alex. He was hunched over his tablets in the living room, working. The TV was on, the big screen divided into four sections, MSNBC, FOX, a March madness college basketball game, and a black-and-white rerun of an old
I Love Lucy
show. Counting the four tablet screens, he was watching eight screens, all silent except for the Lucy show, with the laugh track turned up high. Evan sat on the couch with his kids, one snuggled into either arm, watching the show, holding the children as if they’d vanish if he let go. Eli was nowhere in sight, but it was after dark, and time for his nightly chat with his sweetie, Sylvia Turpin, the sheriff of Natchez, so it might be an hour before I saw him again. The front door window and the back windows were boarded over, and oddly, the door had strips of silver duct tape running in horizontal bands across it. I didn’t want to know why.

I bent over Alex’s chair, my weight on one arm on the chair back, and asked softly, “How’s it going?”

“Same thing I’m telling him.” He pointed a finger at Evan. “So far, nothing. Leave me alone.”

“Yeah. No.” I swatted him on the back of the head for the rudeness. “My friend, his wife, we’ll ask as much as we want.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled, sounding like the teenaged boy he was. My plate was still on the table, covered in plastic wrap. I picked up a fork and my own electronic tablet and carried them, my cell, and my plate to the stairs, far enough away to not be bothered by the sound track of Lucy roping Ethel into some kind of mischief, but close enough to keep tabs on my extended family.

I shoved in a mouthful of cold steak, chewing while I opened a file and typed in the pertinent info on the case, which I listed as KATIE’S GIRLS. When it was all in and documented, I located Reach’s name under contacts on my cell. I hadn’t called the intelligence specialist in months, not since we got back from Natchez. The reprieve had been good for my pocketbook, and with the Younger brothers as my new partners, I wouldn’t be needing his services nearly so often. But somewhere inside, I had missed Reach’s snark. I pressed the SEND button.

“Speak to me, oh Mistress of the Dark,” he answered.

I let my mouth curl into a smile. “Mistress of the Dark? You used to call me Money Honey.”

“You went for a much
Younger
man.”

I chuckled at the play on words because it was expected, not because it was funny.

“Alex isn’t as good as me, but he isn’t bad,” Reach said.

“Well, the Younger man is tied up in a search. Are my rates still current?”

“Vamp search rates?”

“No. Two missing twentysomethings, working girls who didn’t come home from a party that was most likely a totally human sex party, but could have been a sex-and-blood party hosted by vamps. I have no data on that yet.”

“Your rates on nonvamp stuff is good. Give it to me.”

“First girl is a witch in hiding, Ailis Rogan, aged twenty-four, looks fourteen, street name is Bliss, Caucasian with black hair and blue eyes. Sending her DOB and numbers via e-mail.” I double-checked the data from Troll’s piece of paper and my tablet as we talked. “Next girl is Rachael Kilduff. Twenty-two. A new tattoo and multiple ear piercings. I’m expecting pics of both girls shortly. I’ll forward them when I get them. The party was at Guilbeau’s.” I spelled it for him. “They called for their driver at exactly two twenty-two this morning. When their driver arrived four minutes later, there was no sign of them.”

“Yeah? Nice place. Five stars and just as many dollar signs. Your party host had money, lots of money if it was a large party.”

“Good to know. I’ll check out the place tonight. Gotta go.” I tapped the END icon and closed the cover. It was one of the newer models, part cell, part tablet, part movie theater, part reader, with more computing power than I would ever need, and with a built-in armored shell, designed by a tech company owned by Leo. The cell was designed for the military, but it came in handy for other violent lifestyles too—like vamp hunting.

I scooted over as Big Evan carried his two children upstairs to their room. Over his shoulder he said, “You can come up for story time.” It was a grudging offer, but it was better than anything else I had from him lately. I sent the e-mail file to Reach and scraped the last of my cold supper off the plate and into my mouth.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I said, satisfied that he didn’t sound more irritated or tell me to choke myself, and followed him up the stairs. Whether he liked it or not, he needed my help, but that didn’t make Evan Trueblood like me much. I settled onto the foot of Angie’s bed, shoving the guns I still wore back and out of the way, and waited while the children said their simple nighttime prayers. After the “Amens,” Evan pulled a padded wingback chair between the beds and sat, opening a thin copy of
Little Red Riding Hood
. The book looked ancient, the corners bent and worn, and the cover real leather, embossed and stained and dyed decades ago. And the author’s name on the cover was Eldreth Everhart. Dang. An Everhart had translated Grimm’s
Little Red Riding Hood.
How cool was that?

“Once upon a time,” he read, “a little girl lived in a pretty village near Derbyshire, close by the forest, on the edge of a flowing stream. Her name was Philomena Everhart, but because she wore a red riding cloak, everyone in the villages nearby called her Little Red Riding Hood. One morning, while the dew was still on the roses, both red roses and white roses, Little Red Riding Hood asked her mother if she could visit her granmama Theodosia Everhart, because Theodosia had been visiting the queen for a long while, and Philomena had missed her granmama.”

“Daddy’s a wolf-ees!” Little Evan shouted and giggled.

Wolf?
Beast asked.
Hate pack hunters. Thieves of meat.

This wasn’t the first time the toddler had called his daddy a wolf today. Just to be on the safe side, I took an exploratory sniff. No. Big Evan hadn’t been bitten by a werewolf. He smelled witchy. I curled up around Angie Baby’s feet as Big Evan continued to read.

“‘That is a splendid idea,’” he read, in a high-pitched voice, “her mother said. Philomena’s mother packed a nice lunch basket for Little Red Riding Hood to take to visit her granmama.”

The children giggled, and I laid my head on my arm, listening. No one had read me stories as a child, so this was . . . amazing. Really amazing. Big Evan reached the line about Granmama. “The wolf crept up to the door, lifted the small latch, and raced inside. Poor Granmama screamed, but the wolf gobbled her up!”

“Our gramma woulda put a spell on him!” Little Evan said.

“She would turn him into a frog!” Angie Baby said.

“A spider!”

“A ant!”

“Shhhh,” Big Evan said, sounding stern, but with poignant laughter twinkling in his eyes. I knew without asking that the poignancy was because Molly was missing.

Both children giggled and some foreign, incomprehensible emotion bubbled up from deep inside. I batted tears from my eyes. When had I become so freaking weepy?

“The wolf burped, a full and satisfied burp, and patted his tummy where Granmama poked and pushed and kicked in his hairy belly,” Evan said.

“He burped!” Angie said. Little Evan made a fake burping sound, long and gross-sounding. And I laughed through my tears, caught in the good humor of my favorite people in the entire world. And knowing it was up to me to find their mother.

“But the wolf was wily, and he knew that Little Red Riding Hood would never come inside if she saw a wolf. So he looked through Granmama’s chifforobe to find a nightgown and bed jacket that he liked. He added a lace sleeping cap to hide most of his ears and, to hide his wolfish scent, dabbed Granmama’s lavender perfume behind his pointy ears and under his paws.”

“’Cause wolf-ees stinks!” Little Evan shouted.

“Yes, they do,” his father said. “Wolves smell stinky like wet dogs and rotten meat.” Which wasn’t far wrong for the smell of werewolves.

Big Evan went on reading and reached the last line. “Little Red Riding Hood and her granmama opened the basket packed by Philomena’s mother, and shared a lovely lunch with the huntsman. And then they had a long chat.”

Little Evan looked at me said, “He vomicketed her up. Buuurrrpurp.”

“Yes, he did,” I agreed. “Gross, huh?”

“Gross. Night, Aunt Jane.”

“Night, Little Evan.”

“Mommy and Daddy call me EJ.”

“Short for Evan Junior,” his father explained.

“I like EJ,” I said. “It’s a big boy’s name.”

EJ rolled into the curve of his arm and mumbled what sounded like “I’m a big bo.” And closed his eyes. He was asleep. That fast.

I uncurled and kissed Angie Baby’s cheek and left the room to their father. Standing just out of sight, I watched as Evan pulled out his flute and played a soft melody; he was setting wards on his children for protection and health, a form of prayer and power for an air witch. The notes were plaintive and melancholic and held all the need and loss he was feeling for his wife, the mother of the children he loved to distraction. When he was done, he stood for a moment, before leaving the room. In the doorway, he blew a last note, a minor key of longing. And stepped into the hallway.

He turned and saw me, standing there, watching. And stopped as if frozen. Before he could react, could tell me to get lost, could fuss at me for being some kind of desperate, childless Peeping Tom, I stepped into him and laid my head against his chest. My body rested against his huge torso, his heartbeat hard and steady on my ear, his breath arrested in surprise. My head was tilted down. It was a pose of submission, the nape of my neck exposed. I held my position until he exhaled, his breath warm on my neck. And his arm lifted to wrap around me. It was like being hugged by a heated brick wall.

After a long moment he said, his voice a rumble through his chest, “You
are
going to find her. Right?”

I nodded, his shirt rough on my cheek

“The wards are set to keep them safe and to augment their immune responses. If Angie wants to sleep with you . . . she can. I’ll know when she gets up and where she goes, but I left the ward on the room open.”

I sobbed once. Totally unexpected. And wrapped my arms around Evan. “I missed you too.”

He laughed, the sound like logs tumbling over one another. “Yeah. Well . . . Oh. Once I go to bed, if you want to open the doors, come get me first.”

“You’ll set a big honking alarm?”

“Like the Fourth of July and the Blitz all at once.”

There wasn’t a human-built security system made anywhere by anyone that equaled one of the Truebloods’. They had started out as works of art, and then gotten better with time.

CHAPTER 3

She Calls You Sugar Lips?

It wasn’t quite nine p.m. when I tapped on Eli’s door and heard my partner laugh, his voice a soft caress. “Come,” he said louder.

I opened the door and stuck my head in. His room was spotless, so well organized I wouldn’t know anyone lived there if not for the slender, muscle-bound man stretched out on the bed and the ereader on the bedside table next to the nine-millimeter. I looked at the gun and at him and he shrugged. “I know. We have babies in the house. It’s locked up when it isn’t on me.”

I wanted to fuss but decided not to comment. I said, “We have a paying job—missing persons. I need to check out a restaurant. You wanna come along?”

“Gotta go, Syl. I love you. Yeah, tomorrow.” He laughed, his face changing, going all soft and romantic. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had never seen Eli laugh, not like that. And
I love you
? When did they go from
I’ll show you my gun if you’ll show me yours
to
I love you
?

Eli shut off the cell and grinned at my dropped jaw. “What? Never seen a man fall head over heels before?” I blinked as he holstered his weapon, strapped a small .32 above his boot, strapped a short-bladed knife to his inner arm, and grabbed a jacket. “We looking for vamps?” he asked.

I clicked my jaw shut. “No and no. Rachael and Bliss went missing this morning just after two. Looks like they were at a party, working without Katie’s approval.”

“Let’s go. You can fill me in on the way.”

We informed the other two adults where we were going, with orders to call us the moment any news about Molly came through, and went out the duct-taped front door. “The replacement windows and door glass will be here tomorrow,” Eli said. “And I’ve been thinking about ordering some of the vamp shutters. What do you think?”