Raven Cursed

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Bloody, Damaged Jeans and Nefarious Intentions

“Can you take photographs of the spell in Evangelina’s basement?” Molly asked. “That will tell us what kind of spell—”

“And what kind of demon,” Evan interrupted.

“—she’s using,” Molly finished. “And yeah, that too. You should be safe enough from the demon as long as you don’t set it free.” My eyebrows went up.

“Just keep back from the ward containing it,” Evan said.

“Uh huh. Ducky,” I agreed and headed out, having learned one important thing before I drove away from the Trueblood house—never kick a hornet’s nest. The witches and their human sisters were making battle plans, gearing up to rescue the other members of their witch family. Once everyone was safe from the power-draw, they would meet to discuss what to do about Evangelina. Battle by committee. It would take forever. The girls still didn’t want to believe that their elder sister was the cause of the sleeping spell, but with Big Evan on my side (and hating every moment of knowing I was right) and the other witch sisters not answering their phones, they were coming around.

First I had to shift and heal the wound in my thigh. The pain was now a constant throb, and I was feeling light-headed from blood loss. I needed to shift and heal, hunt, shift back, get some food into me, and check in on Grégoire, Rick, Kem, and Derek—a lot to do in the few hours left to me before dawn. I didn’t like it when my personal life and my work life overlapped; it just complicated everything. But there it was, a perfect description of my life—complicated—and Evil Evie was using my job of guarding the parley to make it worse.

I pulled my vehicle off the road onto an overgrown track I had spotted several times while making the run from Asheville to Hot Springs. The fog was more dense than before, sending down splatters as rain condensed out of the clouds. I stripped in the front seat and slid naked from the SUV to the ground, my body instantly wet and chilled, as the mist curled cold fingers around me. I found rock easily and lay out on it, shivering, blood loss making me feel the cold with an unaccustomed intensity. I didn’t have my fetish necklace, but I had my emergency cat tooth. I lay my head on my arms, closed my eyes, and thought about Beast. The pain hit.

I shook pain away. Growled low. Jane did not leave cold dead cow meat. I hungered. I sat up, front paws together, head high, and listened/smelled/looked, tasted the soggy, white air, felt it wet my pelt. Night was silent. Empty of prey. Heard only mice moving in grasses. I tilted ear tabs from side to side. Far away, heard dogs moving in night, loud, chasing away prey, following a female who was in heat, too focused on mating to hunt.

I lay on stone, hungry, angry at Jane. Licked at healed wound. No blood on pelt. No scar on Beast-leg. With head bent back, heard faint sound of chewing down mountain, away from dogs. Rabbit? Mouth watered, stomach gripped in claws of hunger, hurting. Empty. Many rabbits. More-than-five rabbits. Rabbits are good food. Silent, following sound, I moved down mountain, pawpawpaw. Angled into slow breeze to keep big-cat smell from rabbits. Beast is good hunter.

Later, I sat in grassy field, parts of three dead rabbits at my paws. I licked hot blood from my jaw and muzzle. Good taste after good hunt, chasing, killing rabbits. With killing teeth, picked rabbit paw up from ground. Crunched hard and swallowed. Good hunt. Belly full. I put a paw on rabbit ribs and licked, rough tongue pulling bits of flesh from bones. Good hunt.

Yeah, and the gardener will be happy you ate his pests, Jane thought at me. Can we shift back now? I have work to do.

Jane needs to mate. Play with Ricky-Bo was good, but Jane needs mate who is big and strong. Will take Bruiser. And Leo.

Jane made stuttery thoughts, too fast for Beast to follow. And what about Rick?

Will take Rick too. I stood and padded into trees while Jane thought about that. Back to car that was truck. Ess-u-vee. Silly name for truck. Liked Bitsa. Liked Fang. Ess-u-vee was ugly.

The fog was starting to thin and dawn was close when I came to myself sitting in the front seat of my vehicle, buck naked, shivering, starving, the mountain lion tooth jabbing my thigh. I dressed and drove back into Asheville, checking my messages as I maneuvered the road. One was from Bruiser, “Call me ASAP.”

I was sleepy, tired, no longer in pain, and starving. One thing I missed about Louisiana was the little mom-and-pop eateries scattered everywhere throughout bayou country, serving fried delicacies like boudin balls and fried squash and fried green tomatoes. Beer and colas. Spicy fries. Here, if I didn’t find a Mickie D’s or one of its nationwide contemporaries, I’d have to wait until I was back in the hotel for room service. Luckily, I found a Cracker Barrel open early and pulled in for a pre-sunrise breakfast with the truckers. Triple orders of pancakes with sides of eggs over easy, sausage, bacon, and ham filled the ache in my belly. I pretended not to notice the sidelong glances of the truckers at the quantity of food I ate. It was hard work keeping up with the caloric needs of shifting, but the energy of shifting had to come from somewhere, and I didn’t have access to magic, so food it was. Lots of food.

Over my fourth cup of tea, I returned the call to Leo’s line in the New Orleans’ Clan Home. I was pretty much living on the cell and the Internet these days. I was becoming a modern kinda girl at thirty. Or however old I was.

“Jane,” Bruiser answered, warmth in his voice. “How are you?”

Beast, sat up inside my mind, attentive. Interested. “Bruiser,” I said. I should have done the obligatory small talk about health and the parley situation, but, despite sounding like an ill-bred heathen, I got to my point. “I got your message.”

“Yes. Leo has given me permission to tell you about Evangelina Everhart.”

My tone careful, I asked, “How is Leo?” We both knew that my question referred to Leo’s state of mind. Since getting his Mercy Blade back, everything indicated that the dangerous dolore state of grieving had passed for the Master of the City of New Orleans. And though he had sounded perfectly sane when we chatted, with vamps, I always have doubts.

“He is well. He sends you his best.”

Uh huh. Sure he does. I made a noncommittal sound.

“Lincoln Shaddock did not arrive for tonight’s parley,” he said. “Do you know where he is?” When I didn’t reply. He went on. “Do you remember the defensive spell the witch sold Leo as final protection for his day-lair?” I grunted in the affirmative and poured more tea, Evangelina had provided a spell of protection to Leo, the odd-shaped hedge of thorns, during the witch-vamp parley that she had walked away from. The fact that Bruiser was bringing this up, indicated that he, too, was beginning to think that Evie was a big part of our current problems.

“It was defective,” he said. “It should have been spherical, but it was cylindrical.” I had noticed the unusual shape, and sipped my tea, thinking about Evangelina and the witch/vamp problems in New Orleans. “For reasons unknown, it appears that Evangelina was working with the werewolves in their campaign to destroy Leo. He banished her from his city and the negotiations are ongoing with the local witch covens.”

Leo banished her . . . ? I sat up slowly. “That is something I should have known before ever coming to Asheville, before I agreed to head up parley security.” Dang vamps and their secrets. “How did you discover she was working with the wolves?”

“When Leo found that you were going to attack and take down the wolves to save Rick LaFleur.” Bruiser’s voice went empty, as if he knew I was not gonna like what he had to say next. “He instructed me to contact Derek privately.” Derek Lee and his men—my men, supposedly—went with me to save Rick. I felt cold all over, as if I’d fallen into a snowmelt stream. “Once they had LaFleur safe, and you were on the way to the Clan Home, they captured a wolf. They brought him to us. Leo . . . convinced him to tell us everything.”

They had taken an injured wolf to Leo, and no one had told me any of this. “Convinced him,” I said, the word grating. Bruiser didn’t reply and I knew that the convincing hadn’t involved happy drugs and good liquor. It had involved painful coercion. Maybe much worse. “Is the wolf still among the living?”

“No.”

No. And no apology for torturing a werewolf to death, either. I breathed out slowly. Yeah, the wolves should be put down, but not like that. “Do we know why she was after Leo?”

“No. Our wolf didn’t know why, only that she was willing to work with the pack.”

“Thanks for the information.”

“Come home, Jane. When this is over. Come back with Grégoire. To m- . . . To us.”

To Leo the torturer and Bruiser, his secret-keeping helper. I closed the phone and drank my tea, staring at an old sign for shaving cream, hanging on the wall. Not really seeing anything.

Foolish kitten, Beast thought at me, superior and insulting, as if she swiped a paw at an importunate kit. Bruiser would be good mate. Strong.

After dawn on Friday morning, I parked down the road from Evangelina’s, studying the old Everhart place, when I saw her shadow against the curtains. Heat zigzagged through me like lightning, and I pulled a vamp killer. I could go after her, right now, and take her down, tie her up, and haul her to Grégoire. I would have to hurt her, maybe hurt her bad, to get her immobilized before she called a demon onto me. If she could even do that. I didn’t know. Maybe if I cut her, a leg wound. Yeah, that’ll stop her. Not.

Indecisive, I hesitated a moment too long, and the lights inside went off. Evangelina left the house, looking about twenty, slender and curvaceous, wearing a floaty, diaphanous dress in a maroon floral print and little three-inch heels, red, with open toes. Not clothes for working at Seven Sassy Sisters. Her wardrobe had once been conservative. Now there was no hint of the matronly, stern woman she had been. Evangelina got in her little red sports car and drove off. A sports car? When did she buy a sports car?

I waited long enough to be sure she hadn’t forgotten something, before leaving my vehicle, my camera and cell in my pockets. I stuck my hands in my pockets with them, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, for a six-foot-tall Cherokee girl with bloody, damaged jeans and nefarious intentions. But I passed no one before I turned down the narrow street and melted into the greenery. I studied the witch circle in the ground and the lines that marked the inside. There was no pentagram, just the odd broken lines, lines that looked half familiar but meant nothing.

I snapped a few pics and stepped onto the porch, expecting a ward to be up at the house to keep out intruders, but I felt nothing until I touched the lever handle at the back door. The desire to go inside hit me like a padded baton. I wanted to go inside Needed to. I pushed the door open.

Beast pressed claws into my mind and growled. I paused, and she bit down with her canines, the pain like knife blades inside my skull. I gasped at the sudden headache and was able to pull my hand from the lever. But it was hard. As soon as my fingertips cleared the metal, the compulsion left me and I remembered to breathe. I took a step back. “Crap,” I whispered. The door, already open, swung inward in welcome, a pretty little trap for anyone wanting to steal. Getting inside was gonna be easy. Getting back out might be a problem.

Good thing I hadn’t rushed in to try to take down Evangelina. It was possible that I’d have been inside too fast for Beast to save me. A chill sank talons into my spine at the thought.

I walked back to my vehicle, head down, scrutinizing my boots. Thinking. I remembered the scarf folded so neatly on the floor of the SUV. Blood magic—likely two different spells with the same power source, the blood-diamond—was being used against the two-natured and against the Everharts. And unless the helpful valet had shaken the scarf, I had some red hairs from Evangelina’s head at my disposal.

I carefully unfolded the scarf and found twisted hairs caught in the weave. I refolded it to keep from losing them, and carried the scarf back to the house. Standing on the back porch, I could hear the gurgle of the creek at the bottom of the hill, see the sunrise brighten the garden. The dogwoods were already turning, leaves tinged with crimson. Using the scarf, I opened the door. I felt nothing of the compulsion. “Sweet,” I murmured.

I entered the house and stood inside the door, closing it after me. Magic danced along my skin like static electricity, hot and pinging, as if the air was too dry, superheated just to the point of pain. Though humans might not have been able to see it, the interior of the house was illuminated with a soft pink glow, magic permeating the walls, floor, and furniture. Careful to touch nothing that might be holding a magical charge, I gripped the scarf in both hands, using it to open the door to the basement.

The lights weren’t on downstairs, but a bloody glow lit the walls of the stairwell, and illuminated the painting at the bottom. It seemed to move, as if it were a TV screen, with active participants instead of a static surface painted hundreds of years ago.

I turned on the lights and made my way down. Stopped at the bottom. The hedge of thorns trap was still glowing with red and pink energies, scarlet motes bounding around it, the magic smelling tart, acrid. Black and scarlet sparks fluttered through it, but now they were stronger, more numerous, racing over the surface of the ward. Some areas of the ward were totally black, like heavily smoked glass, with no trace of the red energies. The demon was more substantial, easier to see, half man, half bird, or half man, half fallen angel. He had human calves and feet, torso and sexual organs, with a bird chest, wings with fingers where they might have been had the wings been arms, and a half-human, half-bird face. Human eyes over a raptor beak, but pinkish, with red lids. And inside with him were the two wolves.

I had no idea how Evangelina had kept the demon in the ward while she put the wolves in with him. But considering the compulsion spell, maybe they just walked inside without disturbing the outer ring. Like a one-way valve, allowing in anything that wanted to cross, but letting nothing inside cross back out.

The demon had been eating the wolves. While they were still alive. Gorge rose in my throat. Blood coated the floor of the circle with a gummy, gelatinous residue. The wolves were smiling about it, holding hands, staring into one another’s eyes like goofy teenagers in love. The big guy, Fire Truck, was missing chunks of thigh and buttocks. The little guy was missing an arm and chunks of muscle, but the lethal wounds had healed. Sort of. Which meant they had shifted, even with the silver wounds from Evangelina’s ceremonial knife. The wolves clearly hadn’t been given food or water to make up for the caloric drain, and they were emaciated, loose flesh hanging on their frames. I stuffed the scarf under my arm and took a dozen digital photos of the trap and the thing inside with its dinner. I didn’t know if it would photograph at all, didn’t know if digital cameras would go all pixilated near witch magic. I checked the shots, and was gratified to see that most came out, and tucked the camera back in my jeans. I took some more shots with my phone, and sent them to myself.

This close, I felt the compulsion of the come-to-me spell and gripped the scarf tightly. The demon stared at me through the scarlet and black energies. I knew not to talk to demons. I knew that to engage them in discourse was stupid, but I did it anyway. “She’s making you solid, isn’t she?”

He gestured, a tossing motion with his human-looking hand, as if what his captor wanted was unimportant. He had talons on the end of his fingers, black as a raven’s and twice as sharp. “She thinks to control me.” His voice was guttural, as if he didn’t speak often. And his accent was odd, as if he came from elsewhere, or from nowhere, mangled by the beak. “She thinks to use me for her vengeance.” He breathed in, the action like a man inhaling an expensive perfume.

“You are Tsalagi,” he said. “You are of the blood of The People. I have fed upon the Tsalagi for many centuries. No one controls me. Not even . . .” he breathed in again, as if scenting me. “Not even your grandmother, little yellow-eyed child.”

I jerked, the muscles of my shoulders twitching, my hands twisting the scarf. He smiled, which was just plain horrible. There was dried blood on the beak. His tongue darted out, like a sapsucker, tasting the air.

“They called you Dalonige’i digadoli, when you were born with golden eyes like your father and tsa lisi, your grandmother.” Horror swept through me. And longing. He knew me. From before. I put out a hand and Beast slammed down on me, biting me so hard I felt her teeth pierce my skull, creating the mother of all headaches. I had taken three steps toward the trap and I quickly stepped back. The demon laughed. “Yes, I was there when you were born, watching, waiting to see if your mother would survive or if I might take her.” He tilted his head, birdlike, fast. And he whistled, a raptor’s hunting call, long and piercing, but not one I had ever heard before. “There was much rejoicing when you opened your eyes that first time.”

My heart was thudding. He had known my family? Or just plundered my fractured memories and woven a story? Was this why no one should indulge in conversation with a demon? Because they knew everything you did, everything you wanted, and weren’t averse to lying and twisting truths to get you to do what they wanted? Yeah. That felt right. I took a breath, steadying myself. And shifted my foot back a step. Another. Toward the stairs.

He went on as if I weren’t making my escape. “But when you were five summers old, your grandmother, who was Ani gilogi, panther clan, tried to tie me into the skin of one of her beasts, the pelt of the tlvdatsi. To avenge herself on the white soldiers who killed her son.” I swallowed, and my throat was as dry as sandpaper; the muscles ached with the motion. “She was a fool,” he said. “I left her to die in the snow, her blood black in the moonlight. I thought to find you, but you had vanished into the night and the cold, and I was free. So I took the lives of many of the Tsalagi that night, and many more over the next weeks. I took the days they had left to them, had the white man not forced them on to the long march, and I left them dead. With their days as my own, I walked as human for many years, taking what and who I pleased.”

My breath was too fast, my heart pattering, rabbitlike. This thing seemed to know everything I had lost about my past. I vaguely remembered the Trail of Tears, when the U.S. government broke its covenant with the Cherokee and forced us onto the long march west. So many had died of the cold, of hunger, and illness. Or to the claws of this thing.

He also knew what I wanted—to fill the empty places in my past, in my soul. I wanted to listen to him now, and he knew it. His eyes were the black of The People’s eyes, dark and wise and kind, and he gestured with the fingers of one hand, to come closer. I didn’t. He said, “I have all the secrets you desire to know. All the truths you have forgotten.”

I pressed the scarf against my mouth, smelling Evangelina in the weave. Tasting tears I hadn’t known were falling. Beast bit down. Shattering pain took me, and my vision went white for a moment. I put out a hand and my elbow bumped the wall behind me. I staggered and swore, and caught my balance. When the pain cleared, I could breathe.

“Go,” Beast snarled. “He is part of the hunger times. He is part of the fire times. Run!”

“Come to me and I will tell you what you desire,” the demon said. I backed to the left. My heels bumped the bottom stair. “I knew your father. I can tell you—”

“Jane?”

I stopped. Lincoln Shaddock? I heard metal clinking. Lincoln rose, a ghostly image seen through the hedge of thorns. Metal clinking louder, he stepped around the ward. The smell of vamp blood hit me. And sickness. The stench of infection cleared my head. Lincoln was wearing rags. Blood coated his lower legs. He was wearing silver shackles, the bindings made in such as way that any movement cut into his skin. Black and red streaks ran up his calves, infection from the metal poisoning. “Listen to me, girl.” As he spoke, some of the desire to listen to the demon passed. “Tell Leo, I’m mighty sorry. Then get him to safety.”

“Why?” I asked, my voice dry and breathy.

“Because when Evangelina sacrifices me at moonrise on the full moon, the demon will be bound and will come after him.”

I nodded once to show I had heard, my movement erratic. “How are you avoiding the call of the spell,” I asked. “You’re two-natured. You should be walking inside the ward.”

“The summoning and binding aren’t complete. Blood from a living-undead Mithran will complete it, but only on the full moon.”

“Okay. Got that,” I whispered. “Why does Evangelina want to hurt Leo?”

“All I know is the word Shiloh.” Lincoln dropped, landing with a hard flat thump on the black floor, his hands barely catching his weight before his head banged down. “Ask the right people,” he whispered. “Ask the right questions.” He collapsed with a short sigh and closed his eyes, the sun outside and the silver taking their toll. He was asleep, in the undead sleep of vamps. He’d be hungry when he waked. I should have tried to set him free, but that would have meant getting closer to the demon. No freaking way. I turned and ran, stumbling up the steps. Falling. Catching myself on my forearms, bruising. But the pain cleared my head, and I held the scarf like a lifeline as I made it to the top of the stairs and out of the house. Only when I was back at my car did I remember that I’d left the lights on and doors all open. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t going back in there. Not for nothing. I sat in the sunlight in my SUV, in the warmth created by the sun through the windows, clutching the scarf that had saved my life. And trembled.

When I could think more clearly, I drove to a little store, bought three bottles of ginger beer, which was like ginger ale but dark and sharp-tasting, and four homemade pastries, consuming them standing at the counter, needing the calories, and ignoring the anxious glances of the proprietor at my bloody, torn clothes. When my shakes had passed and I had my head on straight enough, I sent the pictures to Big Evan’s phone, and was careful not to look at them for fear the desire to go back and learn more may take me over. By the skin of my chinny-chin-chin I had gotten away from the big bad wolf. Or the big bad raptor—a demon of The People.

I couldn’t fight this thing alone. I needed to call in the cavalry, but I didn’t know who to call, who I could trust to keep Molly alive. With the heater on high, I drove back to Asheville.

I made my room without running into anyone I knew, stripped, and climbed into the shower. I stood beneath the scalding water and let it parboil me, trying to thaw the cold in my soul left by the nearness to the ancient evil. When I was warmer, I dressed and went to the drawer holding my Bible and crosses, the only defense against evil I knew. I put on three silver crosses, held the Bible on my lap, and turned on the gas fire with the remote control as I scrolled through my phone contacts for Aggie One Feather’s number.

Guilt wormed under my skin like bamboo shoots under fingernails. I hadn’t told Aggie—my Cherokee teacher, the elder who was helping me find my past—that I was leaving New Orleans. I hadn’t said good-bye. I was a coward and an idiot. And if the thing in the circle had claimed to be anything other than a Cherokee demon, I’d go on being a coward and an idiot. I checked the time on the cell—nine a.m.—and hit send. Aggie answered on the second ring.

“Hello. How can I help you?”

I thought about that for a moment. Only an elder would answer the phone like that, knowing the odds of it being a solicitation call. “Aggie One Feather.” I paused. “Egini Agayvlge i, in the speech of The People. This is Jane Yellowrock,” I took a breath, “Dalonige’i digadoli. Yellow Eyes Yellowrock. I seek council.”

“How may an Elder of The People assist?” There was no snark in the words, no sarcasm.

I swallowed and said, “First of all you can forgive me for acting like an idiot and taking off without telling you I was leaving.”

Aggie laughed, the sound soothing. “There is nothing to forgive, Dalonige’i digadoli. You have a life outside of my counsel, outside of the sweathouse.”

I do. I did. But it was way more than that. It was the parts of my life staring at each other across a chasm of decades, across a sea of cultures and religion and history. Parts of myself that were bifurcated, broken, torn. Parts that didn’t know how to heal or how to accept the other.

I could almost see Aggie, sitting at her kitchen table, a plate of fresh baked cookies and a bottled Coke frosted with white before her. Her calm reached out across the airwaves and settled around my shoulders like a warm blanket. I relaxed, only now aware that I was tense. I took up my guilt in both hands as if to strangle it, and said, “I haven’t been back to see you since going to water. I ran away from your guidance and took a gig in Asheville to put space between us.”

“No,” she said gently. “You accepted the job to put space between the parts of yourself. The Christian child with the white man’s upbringing and the Tsalagi and our ancient ways.”

Crap. I was so totally transparent. I looked down at my hand in the firelight, at the shadows and light that moved across my skin. I was at war with my selves and I didn’t know how to knit me together into a single whole. Aggie knew this, even if she didn’t know what I was, or where I came from. “Yeah. Change is hard. Acceptance is harder.”

“You will find yourself, Dalonige’i digadoli. You will like what you find at the end of that journey. You will like being whole, though the way of the Christian may have to work hard to accept the way of the Tsalagi. How may I help you?” she asked gently.

“It’s pretty heavy stuff.” When she didn’t reply I said, “A mostly Irish Celt witch has trapped a demon in a binding circle to summon and drain the two-natured to accomplish—I don’t know what. The witch is looking younger, prettier, and a lot less stable. The thing in the circle is black, misty, has wings and claims to be Cherokee. Do you know what it is?”

Aggie One Feather took a slow breath between her teeth, the sound shocked. “No. But I will ask my mother.”

“I need to know how to kill it.”

After a long moment, she said, “If it is a true demon, they cannot be killed. They can only be bound and banished.” Aggie’s voice sounded calm, steady, not like she wanted to run from me and my problems. Kudos to her for that. I didn’t think I’d sound so serene in her place. “And the ceremony to banish a demon to the underworld is lost in time. No one knows of it. I cannot help you Dalonige’i digadoli.” I hadn’t really believed it would be easy, but a heavy misery flowed over me at her words. “But I will ask others. Give me your numbers. I will call when I know more.”

I gave her the number to my fancy cell and to my throwaway cell, the one I used when I didn’t want Leo to have access to me. Of course, if Leo could listen in on my conversations, then giving out that number meant he had it now, but it couldn’t be helped. Modern communication came with a price: total lack of privacy from anyone with the money to buy the access, and with the will to listen.

When I hung up, I opened the Bible at random and started reading. I hadn’t read anything holy in months. I hadn’t wanted to. But now, with the coercion of the demon and my own emptiness, I needed something. Something to fill me. To protect me. Because I was close to being . . . afraid. Yeah. Afraid. The emptiness inside me was a yawning maw with killing teeth and I was poised on the lip of the darkness. The scripture I opened to in Deuteronomy six wasn’t exactly comforting.

Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;

(For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

A cold sensation swept through me, like a frozen wind. Had I done that? Gone after other gods? The gods of The People? The gods of my own life, my job, my friends, my own wants? Yeah. I had. I wondered if God would forgive me for that. Before I closed the Bible I flipped to the New Testament at random and read in Luke six:

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:

“Okay,” I said aloud, not sure what I was reading, but willing to accept it. I closed the Bible. “Okay, I can forgive. Forgive what?” Instantly I saw the face of yunega, the white man who killed my father. I saw the shadows on the cabin wall as the other yunega raped my mother. I felt the chill of the cooling blood as I painted my face in promise of retribution.

I jerked out of the memories and put the Bible down, staring at it, the worn pages looking ordinary, powerless, in the dull light seeping around the blinds. “Okay. Not so easy, then,” I murmured. I hadn’t forgiven the murderers and rapists, even after more than a hundred years.

I closed the old Bible and went online. Reach had sent me some files, a huge one on Thomas Stevenson, Shaddock’s scion who had gotten free and was probably hunting humans for dinner. I didn’t bother to open it. Instead I opened the one labeled Evangelina Everhart Stone. The file was full of info pulled off the Web and other places, and it mentioned her in a lot of contexts: her graduate and post-grad work at the University of North Carolina; a stint at UNC Asheville as a part-time professor; in Charlotte at Johnson & Wales University’s College of Culinary Arts; a few years teaching at Shaw University; the opening of Seven Sassy Sisters’ Herb Shop and Café; a newspaper spread about her cooking classes at the restaurant, which had been before I knew her. She had returned to UNC Asheville as a full professor, and married a professor named Marvin R. Stone, and they had one daughter, Shiloh Everhart Stone.

I remembered the body rolled in the carpet behind the couch. And the girlish bedroom, dusty and closed off. Neither husband nor daughter had lived there in years. I did a search for Stone but he had disappeared off the map. So. Hubby might be wearing a carpet, but he wasn’t alive.

Reach had provided me with a file on Shiloh. The contents were thin. Shiloh had been a mediocre student, better at art and poetry than math and science, and had disappeared at age fifteen. And reappeared in New Orleans, in a shelter for runaway teens. Crap. Shiloh had run to New Orleans—Leo’s city. The chill I’d been fighting settled in my bones.

Shiloh disappeared from the shelter before her mother could get to her. The police report said three of the girl’s friends had watched as she was yanked into a dark car, maybe a Lincoln or a Park Avenue. The car squealed off before the friends could do anything. Shiloh had been kidnapped. In New Orleans. In Leo’s main power base.

Quickly, I minimized the screen and opened a different file, one provided by NOPD, listing all the witch children who disappeared in their city, kidnapped and never found. Shiloh E. Stone was on the list. I compared the date of Shiloh’s kidnapping to the dates other witch young had vanished. Three others had gone missing in the same month. “Oh crap,” I whispered. I knew what this case was about, now. As with most things vampy, this situation went back a lot of years, the originating event buried beneath the weight of time. But now I had the single thread that tied the disconnected parts together. Shiloh Everhart Stone.

I opened more of my own files and discovered that the policeman who had taken the report was R.A. Ferguson; he had filed the report as a runaway, not as a kidnapping. Shiloh was a witch kid. He hadn’t cared about a nonhuman child who disappeared, had, in fact, hated them. I had met Ferguson, just before an ancient vamp had rolled him and sucked the hatred out of him along with his blood. I hadn’t tried to stop the vamp.

Evangelina had lost a witch daughter in Leo’s city, in Leo’s territory, likely to the vamp witches who were sacrificing witch children to the pink blood-diamond. They’d been trying to create a cure for the long-chained—scions who never found sanity. Evangelina had known that. She had claimed that her appearance in New Orleans was for parley—to negotiate peace between vamps and witches, and compensation to the witches for the loss of their children, not that there could ever be sufficient compensation for the loss of a child. But she had really gone there to kill the man she held responsible for her child’s death. Leo Pellissier.

Evan hadn’t known about Shiloh running away and being kidnapped, which meant it was likely that Molly hadn’t known either. Evangelina had kept it all secret until she spelled her sisters to enact vengeance on Leo. Shiloh had run away from home. Had Evangelina killed Marvin by accident, later? Or had Shiloh seen Evil Evie kill her father and then run away? Crap. I’d never had a family, but as an investigator, I knew that family secrets were the very worst. They destroyed so much. Sometimes they destroyed everything, as if, after decades in the grave, the dead reached out to shatter the living.

Molly had never told me the story of Shiloh, so Evangelina had likely not told her sisters. Probably because she had killed her husband. I called Evan and left the info about Shiloh on his voice mail. He needed to know. They all did. But for some reason, I didn’t mention what I feared had happened to Marvin Stone. Coward. I was a coward.