Miss Esmee gasped and Eli chuckled. I sipped my tea to hide my smile and said, “No offense at all, Jammie.” I pointed with my fork. “Good pig.”
“Thank you, Miss Jane,” he said, sounding serene.
After a meal fit for a carnivorous king, I took my personal gear upstairs and picked the tiny bedroom I’d napped in the last time I was here. The mattress was that memory-foam stuff and no way was I giving that up to one of the guys. The upstairs had eight bedroom suites and five baths and slept sixteen easily, more in a pinch. They could make do with whatever other room they wanted, and if it didn’t have the memory foam, well, too bad.
Tossing my bag on the bed, I cleaned up in the attached bathroom, braided my hip-length black hair, and let it hang down my back. I put on fresh black jeans, ironed by one of the girls at Katie’s Ladies, and a tailored dress shirt created for me by Leo’s fashion designer—of course the MOC of the Southeastern states had a fashion designer on retainer. It was a shirt that worked well with any of my jackets to hide my weapons—in this case, my Walther in a spine holster, a six-inch silver-plated blade, and four stakes. I tossed extra magazines for the .380 into a fanny pack and pulled on the green snakeskin boots. Western boots might be more ubiquitous in Texas than in Mississippi, but not by much. Everyone wore them in this part of the country when they weren’t wearing Gucci, Ferragamo, or Prada stillies—or cheap knockoffs of same.
With time to spare, I dropped to the bed, because what else was I going to do for half an hour? And the mattress was so tempting, all fluffy with a down comforter to keep off the chill. Arms above my head, the backs of my hands against the inlaid headboard, my boots crossed at the ankles and dangling off the mattress, I was instantly besieged with memories, images that had been dredged up by my subconscious to ambush my mind the moment I stopped.
Misha as a thirteen-year-old girl, her long chestnut hair in a ponytail, the tip pulled around front and held between her lips. She had been delicate, shorter than me—though that wasn’t odd, because even at twelve I’d been tall—and held herself, arms hugging, shoulders hunched, eyes wide. She had a habit of standing against the wall, where her back was safe. Like prey. She had watched and listened as the other girls in the group house tormented me. Not helping. Not defending. In my mind’s memory I studied her, my eyes closed against the winter light pouring through the blinds. And with the hindsight of years, I realized that she had probably been an abused child, maybe for years. Scared. Scarred. Memories holding her down.
That abuse explained the cautious and nearly compulsive way Misha went about her life and studies, always working bent over her desk, always finished with a long-term assignment a week early. Her tiny room was always spotless and neat, with nothing at all on the bureau or desktop. Compulsive—that was the word for her. Watchful, worried, fearful, and compulsive. Needing control over her life.
On the nice soft bed, I blew out a breath, hearing the air whisper raggedly out. Why hadn’t I noticed her wounds back then?
The other girls had ignored her as they had ignored me, as long as the housemother, Belinda Smith, had been in the room. I had liked Belinda. She had been the best of what an alpha woman should be; strong enough to keep us all in line, and gentle enough to teach us what we needed to survive when we left Bethel Nondenominational Christian Children’s Home. I had even liked Misha a little, as well as I could like anyone back then, as I learned how to speak English and tried to catch up in school. I did catch up—eight years of learning in two years. And Misha had been there, on the sidelines, watching, silent, back-to-the-wall prey.
And then there was Bobby. My strongest memory of him was the day I left the children’s home at age eighteen, a couple days after the birthday they had assigned to me when I was found wandering the mountain woods. Bobby Bates had come to tell me good-bye—and to try to talk me into staying. He had been prey too, his red hair bright in the afternoon sun, his freckles a cinnamon spatter. He was standing with his shoulders hunched, arms crossed, hands under his armpits, eyes staring at the asphalt. Afraid. He had always been afraid.
Prey, the insistent, soft voice had whispered in my mind. I hadn’t known then that the voice was Beast, looking out at the white man’s world through my eyes. I’d thought the voice meant that I was insane or maybe a psycho in training. With long practice, I had shoved the voice down deep, ignoring it. It had hacked with amusement but subsided, watching. Waiting.
Like me, Bobby wasn’t like the other kids at Bethel. But while I was just different, he was a little slower than most, both physically and mentally. Bobby was seventeen going on ten. And, like me, he was lonely. Looking back, maybe we had all been lonely and I’d simply not been able to see it.
Bobby had been picked on mercilessly by the other kids, except when a group-home parent was nearby, of course, or a counselor was watching. When no one was looking, his life had been a constant torment until I’d taken him under my wing. It had been the middle of winter when I was . . . fifteen?
I already had a rep as a fighter at the school, but despite how tough I was, from the first day he came to Bethel, something about Bobby called to me. He was like a day-old kitten mewling in fear. I fought for Bobby, protected him, made sure the other kids left him alone. My threats and fists had meant that no one picked on him even when I wasn’t around. Once Bobby left Bethel, I’d never returned to the children’s home.
And now the two prey were here, back-to-back in vamp territory. Crazy.I must have napped, because I woke with a start when my doorknob squeaked. I moved Beast-fast, and when the door opened I had risen in bed, back curled like a half sit-up, with a Walther, round chambered, held in a two-hand grip, aimed at the door. The Kid backed up fast into the hallway, hands up in the universal peace gesture. Except on him it was more like the universal “I’m stupid” gesture. In one fast sequence, I pointed the weapon at the ceiling, released the magazine, unchambered the round and tucked it into a pocket, and set the weapon on the bed.
“You have lived with a soldier and with me for months now. You want to explain how you can still be such an idiot?” I demanded.
“Sorry. I was trying to see if you were awake and I didn’t want to wake you if you were sleeping.”
“And if I’d been standing here naked and screamed, what then?”
The Kid laughed. Seriously, he laughed. Idiot.
I rolled to my feet and stretched. The catnap had done me good physically, but had done nothing for my crabbiness. “I’d have shot you, and you’d have deserved it.” That shut him up. “What time is it?”
“You have half an hour to get to your talk with the reporter. Eli said he needs to pick up a few things in town and he’ll drive you.” The Kid shut the door without waiting for a reply.
I wanted to yell, What if I want to ride Bitsa? But I kept it in. Irritable, I freshened up in the small bath and pulled a casual jacket out of the single piece of luggage I’d brought. It was wrinkled, but I slid into it anyway. With my new muscles, it was snug across the shoulders, but the fabric was stretchy.
When I turned off the lights, I peeked into the adjoining room just in case one of the guys had claimed it. The room looked untouched, but I locked the bathroom door on that side anyway. Despite the years in the children’s home, where nothing was ever really private, I’m not good at sharing.
On the way into town, I studied the intel sent to me by Reach, mostly Natchez’s Clan home, blood-masters, heirs, and primos—the basic building blocks of vamp society. Eli was content to let me read. I liked a man who didn’t chatter and who didn’t expect me to chatter. His eyes were taking in the scenery, charting roads, locations of businesses, alleys, and empty storefronts. Recon. Part of his training, and part of my nature. We made a good team. He slowed down as we passed by the three-story building where we’d had a firefight not that long ago. We’d killed a lot of vamps, like, fourteen vamps, which was a lot of vamps. The place looked deserted. Eli said nothing as he motored on past, and I stuck my nose back into the research.
Natchez, which is perched high upon a bluff above the Mississippi River, is the first major port north of New Orleans and had once been a key hub of trade and steamboat travel. Unlike most of the rest of the South, Union troops had decided not to burn it to the ground in the Civil War, using the port instead to move troops and gear and to secure the waterway. After the war, Natchez had been left with most of its charm: lots of fancy, prewar buildings, antebellum homes, churches, graveyards, and old live-oak trees swathed in moss—as well as its notorious past. Its location had allowed it to maintain its infrastructure and rebuild faster when most other towns around the South had suffered harder and longer.
During the Reconstruction, carpetbaggers brought in trade opportunities, work opportunities, and an influx of cash for the newly impoverished whites and the newly freed slaves, many of whom were trained as dockworkers or mule handlers or seamstresses or hat makers, as well as the freemen of color who had been educated doctors and poets and lawyers, many of them land owners who had owned slaves of their own. The town survived and thrived.
Eli dropped me off in front of the Natchez Grand Hotel, not coincidentally one of the hotels Reach had suggested I stay in. The place was redbrick and—arguably—had the best location of any hotel in town, boasting views of the historic old downtown on one side and the Mississippi River and the river walk on the other. I took the elevator up to the top floor, where Misha had a two-bedroom suite, and knocked. I sensed a person on the other side of the door, and felt myself studied for a moment through the peephole, Beast’s instincts alerting me to surveillance. The door opened to Bobby’s smile-wreathed face.
“Jane!” he shouted, and grabbed me in a bear hug that cracked my back.
I was prepared for this one; Bobby had always been a hugger. A silly smile on my face, I hugged him back, squeezing him hard. Bobby believed that the harder the hug, the more love was in it.
“I missed you, Jane.” Bobby rocked me in his arms—discomfortingly similar to the way Miss Esmee had—and his red hair tickled my chin and cheek. He had changed, his body filling out, and he was taller than I remembered. But his scent was familiar: baby shampoo, foot powder, and Bobby. For some stupid reason, tears gathered in my eyes as I held him.