I sat on the arm of a chair, a position that allowed me to see the doorway in my peripheral vision and Troll full on. It also gave me leverage to launch myself in any direction without a change of balance. Troll grinned at my choice as if he’d had a mental bet on it. Considering that I hadn’t seen this chair before, and that I suddenly scented Katie on the air, maybe the bet was more than mental. I wondered if she was in the foyer watching on the security screens. I said, “Mithrans. As in the mystery of Mithras in ancient Roman lore?” Troll looked impressed until I said, “The whole thing is on Wikipedia, you know. Anyone can look it up. Not that the vamps and the Mithrans have been linked absolutely. Unless you just did. I might have to update the site.” I was joking, but Troll didn’t seem to catch that.
He glanced at his laptop in irritation and I grinned. The real world was catching up with the vamps. Mithrans. Whatever. They couldn’t like it. However, more than half of what was available about vamps in books and online was bogus, fiction, or wishful thinking, sometimes a mixture of all three. And nowhere was there an explanation of why vamps were affected by Christian symbols. It was my personal quest to find out about that, not that I’d had any luck.
“Leo’s muscle planted the camera,” I said. “Bet on it.”
Troll sat back in his chair, bemused but not disagreeing, obviously wanting to ask how I knew with such certainty. I changed the topic to see what happened. “I’m going dancing tonight,” I said. “Where in the Quarter do you recommend?”
“Dancing?” He couldn’t quite keep the startled tone out of his voice.
“Great way for a gal to smell out any problems in the city.” Literally. “The rogue chased down and ate a working girl last night. I’m up for seeing if it comes after me.”
“You couldn’t pass for a working girl in your dreams.”
I grinned. “I clean up good. I’ll drop by on my way out. Maybe you’ll think of a place.”
Back at the freebie house, I streaked on dark red lipstick and wrapped my braided hair up in a turban with Beast’s travel pack in the folds. I strapped three crosses around my waist so they dangled inside my skirt, hung one around my neck in plain sight, and strapped a short-bladed vamp-killer to my inner thigh, not where a dancing partner would find it unless we were doing the tango and got real friendly. I put two full-sized stakes into my turban and two handmade, silver-tipped, collapsible travel stakes into specially sewn pockets in my undies. The purple and teal skirt rode low on my hip bones and the peasant top rode low on my breasts, the tie open, a skin-toned jog bra beneath. Sexy, but showing nothing. The skirt whispered around my calves with each step.
I swished on a little bronzer to brighten my natural skin tone, drew on some sparkly gold eyeliner, and slipped into the new dancing shoes. In the mirror, I tested the movement of my skirt in a little maya hip move that looked like sex. Satisfied, I snapped off the bath light, made sure the house was secure, and closed down the laptop, standing in the dark house, thinking.
I had spent an hour in an online search into the mythos of the American Indian skinwalker, coming away with a confusing battery of images and legends. There was nothing that sounded like me, not exactly. Certainly nothing sane or free from evil.
The doorbell rang, interrupting. The house was dark and I moved through it by memory and the illumination of outside streetlights through the windows to the front door. I smelled the cigar before I saw him. The Joe. Rick. I threw the locks and opened the door, swished my skirts forward, saying, “Well. Looky what the cat dragged in.” I couldn’t resist the taunt. Rick’s eyes bulged at the sight of me. I was afraid I’d have to catch them and stuff them back in the sockets. I chuckled and said, “Thanks for the compliment. Lemme guess. Troll sent you over.”
“And me,” a soft voice said from the street.
I looked over the speechless Rick’s shoulder and spotted his companion. She wore a short flared skirt and T-shirt, dancing shoes, flashy jewelry, and lots of makeup. “Bliss?”
“Miss Katie sent me. She said I could help?” She looked uncertain. “She gave me a week’s wages to miss work.” She started to say something else and stopped. The scent of fear was faintly bitter on her skin. I had no idea why Katie had sent her to me but I didn’t like it.
“It should be safe enough tonight, Bliss,” I said. “All I’m looking for is a really stinky vamp. He should smell sorta . . . decomposing.”
“A rotting vamp?” She put a hand on her hip, rings flashing and bangles clanging. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“Nope. And Bliss. I’m not prying, but what do you know about your birth parents?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Bliss was more than a rogue vamp lure and vamp sniffer-outer. She was also Katie’s eyes.
Before we left, I wrote down the address of the Cherokee elder for Rick and asked him to track down the owners of all property within three miles in any direction. It was a lot of land, and the research would keep him occupied and out of my hair, doing stuff I hated. Then I locked my door and left with the two, Rick’s cigar leaving a trail on the air even a human could follow.
Three abreast, we walked through the Quarter, taking our time in the heat, heading for Bourbon Street. We were passed by tuxedo-clad waiters on the way to work, couples out for a romantic night, small groups of men looking for a good time in strip joints, and a few vamps out trolling for an early dinner or maybe just a snack to hold them over till later.
I spotted a group of young witches glamoured to look like older women, and I wondered what they were doing and why they needed a disguise. Bliss watched the group, her face tight with concentration, and I wondered what she saw. I wondered a lot of things and I had very few answers. She and Rick chatted as we walked, and I felt their eyes settle on me often, their curiosity like a blanket held around me. But I had nothing to say, and let my silence build.
The air was hot, muggy, and heavy, as if it carried extra weight, as if lightning and tomorrow’s rain infused it, waiting. I perspired in a smooth, all-over sheen and my new skirt brushed my legs and thighs with each step, the moist air swirling around me as I walked. The amethyst and chatkalite necklace and my gold nugget lay together around my neck, the stones warm. The voices and people we passed were relaxed and slow. The ambiance was heated, as if dance had already found me, as if I had slid into the rhythms and steps and was already mellow. I breathed in, sorting out the various scents.
The smell of seafood, spices, hot grease, and people filled the air. Food and liquor, exhaust and perfume, vamps and witches, drunks and fear, sex and desperation, and the scent of water. Everywhere, I was surrounded by water, the power of the Mississippi, the nearby lakes, the not-too-distant reek of swamp. The overlay of coffee with chicory, the way they brewed it here. The scent combinations were heady.
The streetlights hid as much as they revealed, like an ageing exotic dancer hiding behind fans or party balloons. Music poured from bars and restaurants, rich with jazz licks and dripping with soul. Together, it brought Beast close to the surface. I could feel her breath in the forefront of my mind, hear her heartbeat. Her pelt moved against my skin as if ready to break through.
There were a few cops on foot, their presence meant to bring a measure of security to the tourists. But the officers were nervous, each with a hand resting on gun butt, faces and eyes hyperalert, radios transmitting information to them in a steady stream. They were all twitchy.
Besides weapons and Kevlar vests, NOPD cops carried GPS tracker devices. Each had a built-in “officer panic alarm,” activated by pressing a button. If a cop pressed it, an alarm went out to dispatch, transmitting the officer’s GPS location, calling for all officers to respond. And it made an awful racket, an ear-piercing whoopwhoopwhoop.
The devices hadn’t helped the cops the rogue had killed. Had they not carried them that night? Or was the rogue so good at mind games that he took them all over before they could press a single button?
Cruising every street were media vans, local affiliates of CBS, NBC, ABC, a FOX News van with a picture of Greta Van Susteren painted on the side, even a local cable van. The reporters were looking for local color and anything they could get on the killer of cops and prostitutes—each hoping for an exclusive they could parlay into bigger ratings and increased personal fame.
Cops and reporters notwithstanding, the streets were less crowded than I expected, far more empty than the first night Beast hunted. The word about the killer vamp had done a number on the crowds. I had never been in the French Quarter on a Saturday night, but I had a feeling the bar and restaurant traffic was down. Not good. I had mental images of armed men taking to the streets in packs, searching for the rogue. Killing any unlucky, handy vamp.
Our walk ended up at the Royal Mojo Blues Company. The smell of fried food and beer and the sound of live music blasted its way into the street, the house band rocking. The RMBC had an outside dining area, a bar, food that smelled hot off the grill, and a dance floor. And the people not on the streets? They were inside. The place was packed. My feet were tapping before I reached the door. After a preliminary sniff to rule out the presence of rogue, I headed to the dance floor, losing Bliss and Rick in the crowd.
A black woman with the voice of an angel blasted a foot-stomping seventies piece by Linda Ronstadt. She was backed up by five other musicians on drums, keyboard, bass, and guitars. A selection of wind instruments rested in a rack.
Conversations merged into a background roar, with Beast picking up a few words here and there: flirting, business complaints, a drug deal taking place sotto voce between two patrons near the bar. No vamp discussions. And the only vamp scent in the joint didn’t smell fresh, though it was familiar. Couples and singles were on the floor, so dancing alone wouldn’t make me stand out. I flowed onto the floor, into the crowd. Into the heat and swirling smoke and started to move. I opened with a corkscrew and shifted into a maya. One of the courses I took between children’s home/high school/teenaged misery and the freedom of RL—real life—was a year of belly dance classes. The best thing about belly dancing was the freestyle moves it added to my repertoire. On a dance floor? I smoke.