Black Arts

CHAPTER 18 We Never Found the Body

“What the—” I jumped back from the table, standing, knocking over my chair, sending it crashing to the floor, and nearly exposing myself to Aggie and her uni lisi in my haste. There were long bloody scores down my thigh, and something hanging from my linen drape. “What is that thing?”

Uni lisi said, “Oh, you don’t be silly, lil’ girl. That’s just a tabby kitten.” With a gnarled hand, she reached over and removed the kitten still dangling from my sweathouse dress and cuddled it with the other, much bigger cat in her lap. “You a good kitten, ain’t you, KitKit? And you a good mama,” she said to the larger cat in her lap.

To me she said, “KitKit is a adventurous li’l thing. Gonna be tiny, but smart. Good mouser. Already litter box trained. And goes outside most times.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. I knew a pitch when I heard one. “No.”

“Oh yes. I see in a vision. You gonna take KitKit. She gonna save your life, she is.” Lisi tittered a laugh, happy as could be.

“No.” I backed away from the table. “I leave home often, and she’d be alone. I don’t have a car. I can’t take her places, like the vet. And I don’t have mice. I do not want a cat.”

The old woman squinted her eyes and met mine full-on. She was determined in the way only the old ones can be, and it was like being pinned on an insect board, steel through my wings and legs. I felt my shoulders draw in in defense. “Hmmpf. You taking this KitKit. You don’t fight it. She yours.”

A knock came at the front door, and I raced away to answer it. Eli stood in dawn’s dark, blinking against the porch light, and I jerked the bag from him, hoping it was my clothes. “Wait out here,” I demanded, and slammed the door in his face. Buying time, I hoped. I was doing a lot of hopeful things, but I had a feeling things were not going my way.

I raced to the tiny powder room and slammed that door too. It wasn’t the first time that Eli had come to my rescue with clothes and a ride, but it was the first time he’d been to the One Feathers’, and I’d just as soon keep them all separate. But I could feel disaster lurking.

I shoved my legs into my panties and jeans and my old, worn black boots, not bothering with the socks in my haste. Yanked on bra and shirt and raced out. And was too freaking late. Eli was sitting at the kitchen table, the Kid to his left, chatting with the two women. And the dang kitten sat on Eli’s lap.

“We do not have time in our lives for a pet,” I said.

“He’s cute,” the Kid said.

“And one does not turn down the gift of an elder of the people,” Eli said, obviously quoting information he had just been given, and not bothering to hide his evil twisted grin. He stood, cradling the kitten in his arm. “Thank you for the gift, Mizez One Feathers. We’ll take good care of her.”

I rolled my eyes; it was childish, but I couldn’t help it. Yet I still remembered my manners, the ones pounded into me at the Christian children’s home where I grew up. I forced out the proper words. “Thank you for the sweat and the dreams, Egini Agayvlge i. And thank you for the hospitality of your home and food, Uni lisi. You have been most gracious hostesses. And”—I plastered a smile onto my face and lied through my teeth—“thank you for the kitten.” If it sounded as if I was cussing instead of offering thanks, who could blame me?

“You welcome,” Uni lisi said, standing, patting my face. “You a good girl.”

• • •

“You’ll need to buy a litter box and cat food,” I said as we crossed the Mississippi River on the way home. Rain splashed at the windshield, and Eli turned on the wipers and the heat. I slouched against the front passenger door and shoved the kitten off my thigh and into the backseat. “And don’t look to me to feed it or clean the box. I’m not gonna.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the Kid said. “And hey, call Jodi.” He handed me my official cell, which seemed to have survived the accident. I checked my messages and saw that Jodi had called four times. I hit the button and the fancy cell dialed her private line at NOPD. I knew that Leo and any of his people would now know I was back in service, as he kept tabs on me through the electronics he paid for, but there was nothing I could do about that. Leo was like a big black spider spinning his web into everything, even my soul home.

“Detective Richoux.”

“Yellowrock here.”

“So you aren’t dead.” She didn’t sound happy about me being alive.

“No. Sorry about the mess.”

Jodi laughed roughly, and I could nearly see her rubbing her head as if she had a headache. “Yeah. Well. Your good-looking roommate cleaned most of it up. He taken?”

“Yes. By a cop in Natchez. But if they have a spat, I’ll send him your way. He likes crappy coffee and guns.”

“My kinda guy.”

Eli slanted his eyes my way. “You pimping me out, Legs?”

You should be so lucky, I mouthed at him.

“I told you last night that I have info for you. I started a search on your missing working girls, something I could do because of Bliss’ connection to witches,” Jodi said.

“You found Bliss?”

“No. Just info. I discovered that she was adopted at the age of two, and when she reached puberty and her gifts started to express themselves, her parents kicked her out. I have an address for you if you want.”

I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see the gesture. “I’m not interested in talking to people who would kick out a kid for being who and what she is. Even if the kid is torturing cats, she needs help, not kicking out.”

“Okay. So anyway, just today, when researching Bliss’ connection to other witches, I found a link to somebody you might be interested in. Someone who relates to Molly. Shiloh Everhart Stone. Name ring a bell?”

I sat up slowly, fingers tightening on the cell. Shiloh was Evangelina Everhart Stone’s missing daughter, a runaway who went missing, here in New Orleans ages ago, and who had been dead for years. She was also Molly’s niece. Shiloh? Pieces started dropping like dominoes falling, but I couldn’t quite see the picture they made. “Tell me,” I breathed.

“We thought we had identified her body back last decade. We were wrong. The dentals didn’t match and we didn’t catch it. Change of investigators. It fell through the cracks.” Her breath made a moaning sound over the line, an electronic, mournful noise. “We never found her body.”

I hadn’t known they had an ID. I hadn’t known they were wrong. But it all fit the picture that I couldn’t quite see. “Okay.”

“She might be alive.”

“We’ll be right there,” I said, closing the cell. To Eli I said, “NOPD. Yesterday.”

The SUV pulled off the bridge and headed for the main police department building. As we drove, I texted Rick’s Soul about the thing that had attacked me in the street. It was short and sweet. “Something like you attacked me in the street in NOLA. Call for details if interested.” Duty done. Now I could stop thinking about it. Then I checked the e-mails from the vamps who had responded to my query about the party at Guilbeau’s. And came to a stop on one.

According to a vamp from Clan Arceneau, Jack Shoffru had been there. At the party. So had Adrianne. And they had gotten together then. Hooked up was the phrase the vamp used, and while it felt all wrong for a vamp to use the modern phrase, it also felt all kinds of right. Jack and Adrianne had met at the party. And everything since then had gone wrong for the rest of us.

I was still putting things together when we reached the woo-woo room. “You look awful,” Jodi said to me. “And is that cat hair on your clothes?”

I looked down. “Yeah. Sadly.” I looked back at her. “Thanks. You look awful too.”

She was still wearing the shoes she had worn to the vamp shindig, her body smelled of exhaustion and anger and sweat, mascara was smeared under her eyes, and if she had started out wearing other makeup, it had succumbed to the hours since, all of which led me to believe that Jodi hadn’t been home yet to shower, change, or sleep. She looked at her watch, which was odd to see. So few people wore watches these days, using their cells to keep track of the time. Cells that didn’t work down here. Right.

“Long day. Long two days,” she amended. “I need sleep.” She looked over my shoulder, which was difficult for a woman so much shorter than me. “You have no social skills, so I introduced myself to Eli and Alex this morning, after the party, when they came to pick up your busted bike, clothes, and other assorted crap strewn all over the streets. And let me tell you, that is not my job, keeping track of you. You made a huge mess, and tied up traffic in the Quarter for two hours. . . .”

Yada yada yada. I tuned her out, set a hip on the table edge, and let her rant for a while. Eli leaned against the wall and took in the woo-woo department’s war room, the room with all the whiteboards and the pictures of missing witches. Alex sat in a chair, head bent over his electronic tablet in the typical geek way of avoiding contentious situations.

When Jodi ran down, I said, “Shiloh?”

“She was turned shortly after she disappeared,” Jodi said. “She’s still in the devoveo, in a lair somewhere. Probably.”

Now, that I didn’t see coming. A peculiar icy distance flowed through me, crackling with surprise, as I tried to fit that into the picture of vamp history and politics I had put together when I talked to Leo and Del and—

“Made by who? Leo?” Eli asked.

My head wrenched around so hard I feared my neck would twist right off. “Leo?” Something else I hadn’t considered. Heat raced through me, furious, blazing anger. “That lying, evil bloodsucker,” I growled. “I shoulda staked him after I wiped the floor with him.”

“That sounds like something I would like to have seen,” Jodi said wryly, “but no. Not Leo. A vampire named Renee Damours, formerly of the Damours blood-family and of Rousseau Clan, now presumed deceased.”

The anger racing through me had no place to go, and I took a breath, trying to calm it, but deep inside, Beast was growling. Showing killing teeth. Kitssss, she hissed inside me.

My fists bunched and my fingertips burned with pain. I had killed Renee, as Jodi well knew. She had been there the night when I killed several Damours at the same time and place where I had staked Adrianna. And taken the blood diamond. And if Adrianna hadn’t been crazy as a loon ever since, Leo would have known I’d had the diamond because he’d brought Adrianna back from her second death. Which meant that Leo had done the Vulcan mind-meld thing with her to bring her back from whatever insane and broken place she had been in, but the shattered shards of Adrianna’s brain had clearly not given him that info. However, maybe he had learned from her that that Shiloh was a fanghead, chained to a wall somewhere. But he hadn’t told me.

And Adrianna had hooked up with Jack Shoffru. Which meant that what Leo knew about all that stuff, so did Shoffru. The vamp Leo had subjugated and drunk from. Full circle.

Leo knew about Shiloh. And he hadn’t told me, even when he held me, comforted me. But then Leo was nothing more than a cruel, sick suckhead.

My head started throbbing as anger heated my blood and all the domino pieces began to form a pattern. I had been about to put it all together when the soul-thing hit me in the street. And I had forgotten. Memory loss? Maybe part of the head-banging I’d taken in the wreck?

If Adrianna knew about the chained vamp-scions and who they were, then that also meant that Jack Shoffru had learned it all at some point. Jack, who had possibly taken the Damours to Louisiana from their island hell, who might have known about the blood diamond from way back when. I’d bet every dime in the business account that he had been in New Orleans off and on long before he applied to Leo for a safe haven. Leo might not have known that before he drank down Jackie, but he surely knew it now. Which was why he gave me tacit permission to kill the pirate or his people if I thought it necessary.

“Alex?” I asked, my unfocused gaze on the ceiling tiles. “The party where Bliss and Rachael disappeared, trailed by Jack Shoffru. It was a coming-out party for vamps newly released from the devoveo. How many newly risen vamps were there?”

He started keying on his little tablet, his head bent so low I could only see his crown and his curly, lank hair. “Not sure how many actually showed,” he said, “but it looks like twelve were invited,” the Kid said, his tone telling me that he was putting it all together too. “No names on the info we have yet, but young vamps.”

Like the ones turning to dust. The falling dominoes, which had been creating a pattern, stopped dropping. What if Jack Shoffru had been there? In the building. Not just tailing Bliss and Rachael. But in the building itself. And what if Shiloh had been there too? Without Leo’s permission.

“The tail car with Jack Shoffru in it, following the car Bliss and Rachael were in. What if it didn’t lose them? What if the car caught them and took them and then went over the bridge?”

“Checking,” the Kid said.

“And I’m going for a cola,” Jodi said, when she caught a glimpse of the screen on the Kid’s tablet. “There are things I do not want to know.”

I gave her a halfhearted wave as she left the room.

If Shiloh was at the party . . . what if Jack had taken her on the way home too? I took a slow breath, remembering the unknown vamp in the car. What if Shiloh had been the redheaded vamp? “Holy crap,” I whispered. And who was the other vamp? The one with the nose ring?

And Molly? If she knew her niece was in the city and newly risen as a vamp, and if someone had told her Shiloh was in danger, would she have come here? Yes. And without telling Big Evan, in order to protect him. She would have come to New Orleans, and come to get me, just as her note to her husband said she intended. But Molly hadn’t called me.

What if she thought I was mad at her for not calling before and thought the best way to get me over my hurt feelings was to show up on the doorstep? And what if someone was watching for her and took her as soon as she got to the city . . . ?

But why? Why take her? Why take the girls? But Molly had gone back to her hotel room. Slept there. Or . . . someone had switched the pillows. Left the damp towel. Taken her things. Left a note Molly had been forced to write.

“No . . .” The pillows on my first visit to the hotel had been blinding white. On the second visit they had been cream colored. The pillows had been full of Molly’s scent, but I hadn’t bothered to sniff the sheets. Someone had exchanged the pillowcases, and I had been so scent-involved I hadn’t noticed it until now.

It all fit. And I was an idiot. I cursed under my breath.

I turned back to Eli and Jodi. “And Leo was planning a swearing-in ceremony at his soiree, to welcome in all the new scions, but Adrianna caused a scene and someone got in through security, so he called that part off. What if—” I stopped and waved that thought away before it was fully formed. I had been about to ask what if Leo was in on it, but that made no sense and Leo always made sense even if it was only vamp sense.

“What if Shiloh was one of the new scions?” I asked instead. “What if he didn’t know she was an Everhart? Her last name was Stone.” The pieces were there, but still suspended, hanging in space. Waiting for . . . something. But what? “Do you have a picture?” I asked Jodi. “A picture of Shiloh?”

Jodi walked to the center whiteboard and removed the center photograph, one of three she had been studying the last time I had come to see her. Crap. She had been researching Shiloh, probably ever since I mentioned her. The girl in the faded photo was about fifteen, with long straight red hair and dark eyes. And a pointy, not quite perfect nose. I handed it to Alex and the Kid twirled his tablet so I could see the photo taken as the girls rode away from the party. The red hair and the nose were a good match for Shiloh. I pulled my cell and started to dial Del, but remembered that there was no reception in the bowels of NOPD’s woo-woo room. I didn’t ask permission as I picked up a landline and dialed Adelaide’s number.

“Adelaide Mooney,” she answered.

Fury whipped through me; unexpectedly, I felt pelt abrading my skin. “Primo,” I spat, trying to keep the threat out of my voice. “Tell me about Shiloh Everhart Stone.”

Adelaide huffed a breath. “What are you? Psychic? I just put it together. We had her as Shiloh E. Stone. She wasn’t one of Leo’s scions, but just another rescued scion from a failed blood family.”

All the domino/puzzle pieces shifted again and even before I asked, I saw the picture they all made, and I knew the answers. “It’s all my fault,” I said.

I settled slowly to the floor, cradling the landline receiver to my cheek. Idiot, idiot, idiot. I should have put it together the moment Leo said Shoffru had come for the diamond.

“The party at Guilbeau’s was hosted by one Bancym M’lareil,” Del said, “but we believe that being was an agent of, or an alias of, Jack Shoffru. We think he was after a lot of things, the Damours’ estate and real properties, the Damours’ scions, and when he tracked down the scions, that meant that he also had info on Shiloh. And who she was before she was turned.

“And he brought, to the party at Guilbeau’s, Molly Everhart, as his guest. I just discovered that from one of the attendees.”

My heart plummeted and thumped painfully before settling into a fast, irregular beat.

“I’m. . . I’m so sorry, Jane. I should have looked into it earlier.”

It all made sense. I closed my eyes. And it was all about the Damours’ estate—the most important and powerful part of the estate—the blood diamond. Except that Jack thought Molly had the black magic jewel because she had been there, on camera when Evangelina died. It never occurred to him that I had it until much later, after he had Molly, and had drunk from her often enough to learn most of her secrets. And because Jack hadn’t come directly for me already, Molly had somehow kept that from him for a long while.

Earlier, I had considered the possibility that Shoffru had hired someone to search out something. There had been plenty of time for a good detective to put together the events the night the Damours died. A good investigator—maybe like Reach—would come up with my name in about two seconds of research. Was Reach working for someone else and giving them info on Molly? On me? I could end up hating Reach, if he was involved with this in any way.

I loathed that gem. It was cursed.

Almost as bad, there were other magical toys from the time of the Damours and the blood magic they practiced on Saint Domingue, and later in Louisiana, like the charms used on the two humans who attacked my house. And maybe someone had even more of them and was using them, just as the vamps had used them in Natchez. Maybe they were using something that helped mask the killer inside vamp HQ when he killed Hawk Head.

It all made sense if Molly knew that Shiloh was alive—undead—when . . . What? Jack, maybe, called her in Asheville, and told her, and maybe told her he already had the girl, even though he didn’t. Yeah. It all made sense if Molly had come to save her niece from him. And with Molly his captive, Jack had gotten Shiloh, taken her—after the party.

“Talk to me, Del,” I said. “I think Shiloh and Molly and Bliss and Rachael may all be in Shoffru’s hands.”

Adelaide hesitated for a moment as if weighing the wisdom of giving me more info, and then she swore softly. “I got most of this secondhand. But after the Damours were brought to the sun,” which was vamp for killed true-dead, and this by my hand, “Leo found the Damours’ lairs and confiscated all their chained scions. The long-chained ones were taken care of by Gee DiMercy.” Which meant the ones who had been insane for more than twenty years had been killed. I thrust out my jaw, trying to decide if the Mercy Blade was really merciful or just another killer like me.

“The others, well, when you finished with the problems and the hoopla in Asheville, Lincoln sent a first-generation Shaddock Mithran home with Leo. They’ve been using that Mithran’s blood to bring some of the witches caught in the devoveo to health and sanity. Leo wanted to make sure it worked before he announced it, and then he wanted to make a big production of it as a way to impress the European Council,” she said. “As a way to keep them from coming. But the timing didn’t work.”

“Holy crap,” I breathed. “The night of the Guilbeau’s party, Shoffru already had Molly under his control. He was tailing Molly’s niece, the blood-child of the Damours, who, according to vamp law, was part of their estate, and who he probably knew was a witch, and who shouldn’t be sane yet because of that. If he was in with, or at least talking to, the Damours before I killed them true-dead, he probably also knew her history and her full name. But either way, he knew who she was—he had to—and therefore who she was related to—Molly.”

“And so, he wants Molly, why?” Del asked, sounding confused.

And there it was. I took a slow breath and said, “Leo drank it out of Shoffru. I guess he didn’t tell you. I have a piece of the Damour estate. I have the blood diamond, a black magic artifact, powered for centuries by the souls of sacrificed witch children.” I heard a hiss in the doorway and opened my eyes, looking up from the floor to see Jodi standing there, shock forming on her face.

“Is it in a safe location?” Del asked, her voice cutting, lawyer-sharp.

“Yeah. It’s safe.” I stared into Jodi’s eyes, seeing the betrayal, the fury starting to form. Yet, inside me, the pieces continued falling into place, and I almost saw the picture they made . . . if . . . “Del? How many people knew about the young Damours vamps being brought out of the devoveo?”

“Everyone,” she whispered. “Everyone.”

I closed my eyes. The last of the uncertainty and anger filtered out of me, leaving an empty hole in the center of my gut. Everyone knew. Everyone but me. Because I had been out of the loop, hiding away from Leo because he had hurt me and I was bound to him. And now Molly and Shiloh were in danger because of it. And somehow, possibly, though I couldn’t see how now, the vamps-into-dust problem could be—had to be?—related. Because Shoffru had been part of the Damour clan? Yeah. So he probably had some black magic mojo artifacts himself. Like something to make the magical blips on the security cameras in Leo’s HQ during the party. I dropped my head and cussed again, softly, under my breath.

I heard shoes tapping quietly on the floor and Jodi appeared at my side, her dancing shoes in my field of vision. She reached down and put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing slightly. My face must have been a mess for her to do the whole pat-pat, there-there thing, especially after I kept info from her. Jodi didn’t do girlie any better than I did most times. And it must really be bad for her to be kind when she was so angry.

“If people would just tell me things,” I whispered. Louder, my voice sounding tired, I said, “I need any and all addresses for the Damours’ estate property. Send them to my cell. And tell Leo that he was right. Shoffru is after the blood diamond and he now knows everything Leo knows about it. He lured Molly here to get it only to discover that she didn’t have it. And he knew about Shiloh and he took her after the party at Guilbeau’s. At some point, he and Adrianna got together and shared blood, and went to work together. By now Shoffru may know I have it. I’m surprised he hasn’t contacted me to demand it in exchange for Molly and Shiloh.”

Though I had to think that Leo had put all that together already and was using me to get rid of Shoffru for him. I shook that thought away and went on. “Shoffru is using the people closest to me to get the diamond.” I closed my eyes. “Del? Wake Leo up. Tell him that I’ll give Shoffru anything he wants to keep them safe. Understand?”

“Not really,” Del said, sounding all prim, proper, and lawyerly again, “but I think from your tone that Leo will understand perfectly. I don’t have the Damours’ estate addresses at my fingertips. I’m still trying to get settled here and learn my way around. But I’ll send you the addresses and coordinates of the lairs the moment I get them, along with the addresses of any locales where Jack Shoffru has been seen or might lair.”

It could be too little too late, but it was a start to making sense of the vamp-into-dust problem, the missing Bliss and Rachael problem, and finding Molly. I forced a smile, my lips feeling stiff and thin as I focused on Jodi. “Thanks. I’ll keep you informed.”

“Yeah. You better,” she said. “And if humans are in danger in my city, you let me in on the action. Understood?”

I nodded. I understood perfectly. And I had no intention of obeying her. I wouldn’t be calling in any law enforcement until I had done what needed doing, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I was learning to control my big mouth.

I hung up the phone and looked at my pals. The Kid’s head was still bowed over the tablet, a smear of black and gold visible on the screen, oddly familiar. I pushed myself to my feet and said to Jodi and Eli, “I need to talk to Bruiser and Big Evan. And then we’re going to find and rescue Molly and Shiloh Everhart Stone, the newest vamp in New Orleans. And probably Bliss and Rachael too.”

I had finally understood what was going on. But more important, I had finally understood what I was, who I was. I was War Woman. And this was my fight.