Blood Trade

CHAPTER 20 I’ll Get Well Later

We were back at Silandre’s, the place looking more garish by daylight than it had by night, and that was saying an awful lot. Buddy and Bubba’s ATV was still there, parked near the kitschy plastic flamingoes. I stepped from the SUV, feeling again that strange tingle of magic I had noticed Under the Hill, but it passed over and was gone. It left me feeling unsettled, but I had no idea why. Shrugging to relieve unexpected tension, I turned my attention to the saloon.

The white-painted board siding had so many coats of paint on it that it looked nearly flat, rippled instead of stacked. The windows were mostly old blown-glass panes, the few replaced panes having a different refractivity and clarity than the older ones. It hadn’t shown in the dark, but the gaudy pink paint on the woodwork was two-toned. Bleagh. But, then, I’m not a girly kinda gal and don’t care for pink, especially the bright, brassy shades Silandre had chosen.

The front door was unlocked, and when we entered, a brass bell over the door rang with a tinkling sound. It hadn’t been there the last time we were here. Someone had been moving things around; the front room was no longer overcrowded with kitsch and there were no fanged dolls at all. However, the place was so filled with commercial scents that I couldn’t smell anything but the floral-fruity-lavender-cherry-spice combo. I holstered the nine mils I hadn’t even known I’d drawn and pulled the M4, cradling it in my arms.

A young woman stuck her head out of the middle room and called a cheery, “Hello. I’ll be with—” Her accented words came to a complete stop as she focused on the weapons. She had sounded vaguely Russian as she spoke, and now her eyes went wide with fear.

I held up a hand, fingers spread. “It’s okay. We’re here with Big H’s permission.”

“Hieronymus,” Eli corrected.

“Yeah. Him. We’re not here to hurt you or anything.”

Moving slowly, the girl came out from the wall, revealing a slight frame, long, straight hair, and dark eyes. She looked like a child, willowy but tall for her age, the way girls look when they have grown a foot in a year, all knobby knees and elbows below a pink shirt and plaid skirt. Much like I had looked during my first year in the children’s home.

I had no idea what she was doing here or if Big H’s people had cleaned up our mess in the back. We had left an awful lot of blood in the back room. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Nostrana,” she said. Yeah. Middle or Eastern European.

“Have you seen Silandre?” I asked.

“No. She has not been here.”

“How about the back room?” Which was a coward’s way of asking if Big H’s cleanup crew had gotten all the blood out.

Nostrana shrugged. “Someone purchased the entire set, I think. The room was empty when I arrived two days ago. I have been rearranging everything, making it into a doll room.” She stopped, biting her lip, as if she had said too much.

“Nostrana,” I tried to pronounce it like she had, all liquid sounds and sophistication, but it came out sounding flat and Southern. “You work for Silandre?”

“Three days a week, and during the three days of the full moon and the one night of the new moon. It is odd schedule, but I am exchange student in university, so I can make it do.”

“There’s no university anywhere near,” Eli said, sounding cold and hard and managing to call her a liar.

Nostrana’s head came up and she firmed her lips. “I take classes on Internet. And I take bus to campus three days a week.”

“Long trip,” Eli said, still disbelieving, this time almost snide.

“Is not your concern. What do you want?”

I smiled. Nostrana was no pushover. “To look around,” I said, sliding the shotgun into the spine sheath and showing both hands open and empty. Reluctantly, Eli holstered his weapons, but he kept a hand on one. When Nostrana didn’t object, I walked through the disordered room toward her. And felt the tingles on my skin. I stopped. This didn’t make sense. “You’re a witch.”

Her eyes narrowed and she reached into a pocket. “Also not your concern.”

“Witches are disappearing in Natchez. Have you been approached by anyone? Been followed?” I asked.

“No.” Her left hand clutched something in the pocket.

“No need to use magical defense on us,” I said. “We’re going.”

“Please. Quickly. And not to come back unless Silandre is here.”

I jerked my head at Eli and backed away, stepping carefully to the front of the saloon/store and out into the meager sunshine without turning my back on her. I didn’t speak again until we were back at the SUV. “Witches are missing. Vamps are turning into cockroaches, and Nostrana is a witch working for a vamp.”

“If she was telling us the truth,” Eli said.

“She smelled of the truth.” Eli gave me an odd look, one I’ve come to associate with me admitting to being anything nonhuman. Like most of the other times, I ignored it. “I need to talk to Francis.”

Without commenting, Eli started up the SUV and we rode along the Under the Hill streets and passed by the old warehouse/bar where we had fought and survived. Once again, a surge of magic hit me, a sharp, bitter tang in the air. “Stop the car.” Before Eli had come to a complete stop, I was out of the SUV and moving between buildings, following the scent. Within three steps, Eli was behind me. In my pocket, I felt something hot and I dug a hand in, pulling out the coin the tribal elder had given me in the church-that-wasn’t. The silver coin was hot to the touch, the temperature variant a sure sign of witch magics. I reached into another pocket and touched the pocket watch. It too was heated. And stank of old blood.

“Here. It’s here.” I turned in a slow circle, holding the coin out before me, feeling the coin heat and cool, like a childhood game—“You’re getting hot! Cooler. Cooler. COLD! Hot again!” Leading me toward the middle street . . . and as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone.

The coin was now neither warm nor cold and the watch was my body temperature. Maybe the change in temp had been my imagination. Maybe I’d been palling around with supernats for so long that I was starting to scent magics everywhere. I dropped my arm. Stuck the coin in my pocket. The old blood smell of the watch clung to my fingers. “Crap. Okay. Let’s go home, Eli.”

He raised his brows. “You’ll tell me what this little jaunt was about later.” It wasn’t a request. More a command.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Let’s go.” While he drove, I texted. A lot.

• • •

There wasn’t much left of the winter afternoon when we got back to Esmee’s. “I have some dirty work in the garage,” I said.

“We killing the vamp?”

“Francis? I hope not. But we may have to cut off his clothes.”

Eli’s forehead wrinkled. “Say what?”

“Francis is one of the new spidey vamps. I’ve been smelling old blood on Francis, stinky stuff.” Stinky stuff like the pocket-watch amulets, but I didn’t share that with Eli, not yet. “Francis is healing even without blood meals. I think our boy may have something on him that’s helping him heal and transform, maybe even controlling him somehow. It might be what allowed de Allyon to do what he did and control the vamps under him so well, and take over other cities, and be a Naturaleza in a world where all the other vamps were Fame Vexatum.”

Eli shook his head, but I thought it was in surprise, not negation. I pulled out the pocket-watch amulet.

“Didn’t you ever wonder why the priestesses and the European council allowed de Allyon to keep his own territory, operating as a Naturaleza in open violation of the Vampira Carta? And no one tried to stop him?”

“So far as we know,” he hedged.

“So far as we know,” I agreed, as Eli pulled the SUV to the garage. “He had to have something on the other vamps, some kind of weapon or way to protect himself until he discovered the vamp plague.”

“A witch circle,” Eli said, surprised.

“Exactly. Powering some kind of amulet or objet d’foci,” I said, playing on objet d’art, “that allowed him to do all kinds of stuff. Then he discovered the vamp plague and he decided it was the perfect weapon to expand his power base.” I flipped open the pocket watch, catching a whiff of that almost-familiar stink. Remembering where I’d first gotten the amulets—off Naturaleza vamps and humans sworn to de Allyon. “This isn’t powerful enough to be the amulet or focal object. But I think it’s tied in somehow.”

We left the vehicle, walking into the daylight. It wasn’t bright and the sun was hidden behind layers of clouds, but it was daylight. It would do. Inside the garage, the shadows enfolding us, we stood, letting our eyes adjust.

Eli said softly. “Francis is one of the revenants. He’s faster and stronger than anything I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah. And what I’m thinking is that some of the revenants have been killed true-dead more than once and brought back. And that every time they get brought back, there are more changes.”

Eli let that sink in a bit, staring off at the horizon. “What’s your strategy?”

“I’m gonna tell him to strip. Then when he doesn’t, I’m gonna pull his cage into the yard, out back where the kids can’t see it happening, and let him burn for a while. Then if he doesn’t give me what I’m looking for, I’ll kill him and cut his clothes until I find it.”

“You sound mighty cheerful about it.”

“I am.”

Eli shrugged with his eyebrows, which was really cool, and followed me into the dark.

• • •

The interrogation didn’t take long. Even with his accelerated healing powers, Francis Adrundel was no match for the sun. After two minutes outside, smoking and blistering and screaming, he emptied his pockets. I picked up the pocket watch and tucked it into my other pocket. I didn’t know what the watches did, but I had an idea that getting them together could eventually be a problem.

Once I was done, I called Clark, Big H’s primo, and asked him to send some blood meals by to feed Francis. The thing he was becoming had to die true-death eventually, but so far, he’d been useful. I wanted him kept undead.

• • •

I had timed it well. An hour before sunset, I called my escorts into the dining room. Bruiser was back, with no explanation of where he had gone, Soul was dressed in silver-colored gauzy clothing that reminded me of moonlight, and Rick was glowering, wearing earpieces with his magic-spelled music coming from them. Brute and Pea looked beautiful and cute and deadly. Part of me wanted them on my team, and the other part of me knew that would be a mistake. I’d eventually have to kill the wolf and I really didn’t want to kill anything that an angel had cursed.

“Soul, can you do another magical scan for Misha? Or maybe a scan for a full witch circle?”

“I have tried questing,” she said softly, “and found nothing because of the interference. All I could detect was the massive magical energies in Natchez and Under the Hill.”

“Okay. Bobby and I are going for a ride,” I told them.

“You think he can dowse for you while he’s awake?” Eli asked.

“Only one way to find out.”

“I’ll come along.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Soul, will you look after Charly?”

“Certainly.”

“The rest of you eat, hydrate, and gear up like you’re going to war.”

Rick and Bruiser looked each other over and didn’t move. Rick’s glower heated up, his eyes starting to glow that weird shade they did when his cat was scratching on his spirit. He was looking at Bruiser when he growled, “Why?”

I wanted to say, Because I said so, but that might not be effective on my crew. “Because things might get hairy.”

“Are you going to tell us your plans?” Soul asked.

“Sure. Right now, I’m trying to narrow down the locations where Misha might be prisoner. As soon as we get back, we’re going to rattle some cages until a pretty flower falls out.”

“Lotus,” Soul said, sounding pleased.

“Bingo. And I’m not picky how we get our info, begging PsyLED’s pardon,” I added. I stood and checked my pocket watches. Each was in a separate pocket, so they couldn’t touch. Just in case.

• • •

The sun was setting, a red blaze on the western horizon, amazing from where Bobby and I stood dead center of Under the Hill. The Mississippi was a mighty, roiling monster, currents twisting and diving, carrying debris beneath the surface to reappear farther on. The river air was heavy with moisture and chilled with winter.

Two barges moved upstream and one down, all heavily laden. The long call of the barges sounded and were answered, like the mating calls of water birds. A riverboat casino docked near shore advertised in neon, a startling purple scene of palm trees and three round circles above them that looked like something on a slot-machine screen or gambling chips, or maybe three full moons.

As we watched, the river changed color, tinted bloody by the falling sun. Behind us, to the east, clouds still massed on the horizon, as thick and roiling as the river, blackened by the coming night. The first stars of night were out, brilliant in the icy air. A police car rolled by, its engine noise muted by the wet night.

High on the hill behind us, the night lights of the city of Natchez burned bright. On the streets around us, a few tourists were wandering, taking in the sights—not nearly as many as usual, thanks to the deaths that were making the news. Eli was patrolling the streets and yards, unseen somewhere nearby.

It was the first night of January’s full moon—the full moon known by many American Indian tribes as the Full Wolf Moon. The silvered orb was still below the horizon, but soon it would rise slowly behind a final thin layer of clouds, like a virgin bride dressed in lace veils.

Which was pure poetic crap. It was an icy ball of rock trapped by the gravity of the Earth. I knew that. But every ancient culture on Earth had revered the moon, had planted by its cycle, married and buried by its cycle, traveled by it, harvested by it, sailed by it. Animals mated by it, especially cats of all kinds. And Beast thought it was beautiful. For that matter, so did I. Just not poetic. No way.

It was . . . useful. Yeah. To ancient peoples. And to Beast when she hunted antlered bucks in harvest time, and skinny, cold deer of any gender in snow time. Useful. That was the moon.

Beside me, Bobby laughed, the sound familiar and comforting somehow. He put his cold hand into mine and I clasped it. Without looking away from the sunset, I said, “You should have brought gloves.”

“But I need to feel the watch. Bare skin is best for that,” he said, sounding like the grown man he was, sounding sure and certain and in control. This was a new Bobby, not the child of my youth, despite the remembered, childlike laughter.

“Are you sure of this?” I asked for the umpteenth time.

“No. But trying is the only way. And Misha is dying.”

I blinked back tears at the misery in his voice. Misha was his family. Misha had taken him in when his own family failed him or died out. Would I have done the same? I wanted to think that I would have taken Bobby in, but I had to doubt it.

“You always doubt yourself,” Bobby said.

I started. “You a mind reader now too?” I asked harshly.

Bobby shook his head, and I saw it in my peripheral vision. “No. But your magics change color when you don’t believe in yourself. They go all green and muddy, like the river down there.”

I held in my sigh. I had forgotten how much Bobby saw of the physical world when he was a child. It had translated into the metaphysical world as an adult. He’d grown into his magic in a totally natural, perfectly fitting way.

I managed a smile. “So I’m muddy?”

“Kinda muddy,” he agreed, nodding, not hiding his smile.

As he spoke, the last red sliver of the sun vanished below the horizon. The far shoreline was lit by Vidalia, Louisiana. Here on the Natchez side of Under the Hill, the lights were fewer and glowed less brightly, the moon witches in Under the Hill having made certain to leave off porch lights, to work by candlelight while inside, hurrying to gather supplies until the moon was ready to rise. Then the witches would be outside, in gardens and yards, in copses between trees in the woods, in well-marked circles, absorbing the moon’s power, working their craft.

“The moon will be up in ten minutes or so,” I said. I took his elbow and pulled Bobby off the sidewalk onto a patch of grass at the curb.

Bobby breathed out and let go of my hand. He closed his eyes and dropped back his head, as if he were falling asleep on his feet. But his hands rose, fingers splayed, as if searching in the darkness, waiting for a gift to be placed in them. “Magic is everywhere here,” he said, his tone a thing of wonder and delight. “So much magic.”

He threw out his arm in a slow, broad sweep, to include all of Under the Hill. “There’s small circles everywhere tonight. I never felt so many witches before.” He pointed upstream. “There’s a small coven there, all from the same family. Misha would say it was nicely balanced.”

I tilted my head, studying him. That was an odd thing to say. For a human.

But . . . not for a witch.

Misha? I sucked in a breath, grabbing a puzzle piece that might not fit anywhere. It might not belong in the image I had been constructing at all. Or it might be the one missing piece. Misha was a witch? The evidence said no. I remembered the smell of the three in the closed hotel room the day I got to town. Human—all of them smelled human—and I had a sense of smell Beast-acute. Even Bobby smelled human. Bobby, who had magic and shouldn’t smell human.

This was crazy. Misha had never smelled witchy, not ever. But witches don’t come into their power until they hit puberty. I had no idea how old Misha had been when she became a woman grown, as the old saying went.

But . . . Charly’s illness—witch children were prone to childhood illnesses and cancers.

Charly was wearing an adult-styled pearl ring that was too big for her finger. Misha had worn a pearl necklace that first meeting. Had the scent of magic been spelled away? Was their jewelry spelled to shield them from discovery?

Softly, I asked, “What kind of witch is Misha?”

Bobby laughed, the sort of laugh he might have had had he been born differently. “Mish thought you would figure it out. Charly wanted to tell you right away, but Misha said to wait. She never let us tell anyone, to protect Charly. She said her being a witch didn’t matter because she had the spell to hide what she was.”

“The spells are in the pearls?”

“Anti-witch-detection spells,” he said with a quiet laugh.

So much for my sense of smell. “But then she came here to write the book,” I said.

“But it still didn’t matter,” he said, “because she wasn’t going to see witches. She was going to see vampires.” He dropped his hands and lifted his head, surprise on his face when he looked up at me. “Are you mad, Jane?”

I had never been good at hiding things from Bobby Bates, and he could read my reaction on my face. As honestly as I could, I said, “No. I’m not mad.” But Misha had been wrong about her being a witch not mattering, because any vampire would have known Misha was witchy the instant the vamp bit her, and no Naturaleza would have turned down a free meal. Misha had gone for a story and research and to find a vamp willing to donate some blood to her daughter. And now she was most likely part of the witch circle I was looking for, being used for God knew what.

But Bobby had no way of knowing that, and I wasn’t going to tell him. The poor decision and the possible catastrophic results weren’t his fault. It was Misha’s for making the decision, and maybe a little bit my fault for not figuring it out already. I was too dependent on my nose, and maybe always had been.

“Moon’s up,” Bobby said, holding out his hand. An instant later, I felt it too, and the magic in Under the Hill increased dramatically as witches everywhere settled into circles, bathed in moon power.

I pulled the pocket watch from my pocket, and Bobby stepped back fast. “That is ugly and it stinks, Jane.”

I turned it over. It was just a cheap pocket watch, base metal with a flying duck in bas-relief on its cover. As far as I knew, no human had noticed the spell smell. “Ugly how?”

“Bloody magics, like rotten meat. Like dead things dug out of the ground.”

Which was an apt description for a vamp, in many ways. “Do you still want to do this?”

Bobby scowled and jerked his left hand at me, demanding.

The plan was to test the waters by letting Bobby hold one pocket-watch amulet and see if he could pinpoint the witch circle that powered it. Then, if nothing happened, we’d try it with two pocket watches, then with three. Of course, there was no safe way to test my method, but I had been holding the watches and they hadn’t hurt me.

I settled the watch into Bobby’s palm and he drew in a hissing breath, as if the thing burned him, but he wrapped his fingers around it tightly and closed his eyes. Instantly his hand lifted and he pointed, one finger rising from the watch. “There. I think—”

Bobby fell, midword, midgesture. Only my Beast reflexes let me catch him before his head hit the ground. I grunted as I let him down gently. Eli rushed up, a vamp-killer in one hand, his small sub gun in the other, his eyes covering the street and houses and even up in the air. As if maybe vamps could now fly. Which gave me pause.

I checked for a pulse and an airway. Bobby was breathing and his heart was steady and strong. I peeled back his fingers to reveal the pocket witch—and the blistered flesh beneath. I swore softly, and Bobby coughed out a laugh. “You gonna get in trouble, Jane.”

Relief swept through me. “Yeah. Mouth washed out with slimy soap. Then put on toilet detail for a month.”

“Crapper detail,” he said, laughing. “Owww. My hand.” He looked at it and his eyes went wide. “I’m hurt, Jane.”

Eli knelt, opened a small med kit, and squeezed a packet of gel on the blisters. He popped a second packet and placed it over the gel, and closed Bobby’s hand gently around it. “Those are second-degree burns. We need to get him to a hospital, but this is a coolant. It’ll take out the sting for now.”

I couldn’t see the writing on the packet, but I figured it was some high-tech military dealio. I had more immediate worries. As I helped him to sit up, I asked, “Bobby, has this ever happened before? Passing out? Getting burned?”

He strained up and balanced on his unhurt arm. “No. But it doesn’t matter. Give me another watch.”

“No way, Bobby boy. I’m not letting you get hurt again.”

“Misha needs me. Charly needs me. I’ll get well later.”

“When you two finish arguing,” Eli said, “I texted Soul. She said to put Bobby in a circle with the amulets and see what happens. It won’t hurt him that way.”

“How do we make a circle?”

“Do I look like a witch? Security expert here. You’re the magic-using part of the triumvirate.”

“Bobby?” I asked. “Have you ever been put in a circle? Do you know how?”

“Misha just draws a ring in the dirt.”

“How about drawing one with a piece of chalk on the sidewalk?” Eli asked.

“Nope,” Bobby said. “Those TV shows and books are wrong. It has to be a complete circle. Breaks in the circle let the power out or in, and the rough sand on the surface make it not complete. Chalk can be used on a clean floor, though, if there are no cracks in it.”

Which was way more than I knew. As I watched, Eli started kicking a circle into the soil with his combat boot. I stayed kneeling and scooped the loosened soil out of the narrow trench. We quickly had a circle around Bobby, with a small area still open. He looked so alone sitting on the ground, his face pale in the moonlight, his freckles like dappled shadows.

“I’ll take the amulets now,” Bobby said. “And will you open them so I can see the faces? Please,” he added, politely, the years of children’s home manners showing.

Curious, I put the three pocket watches in the circle with him, opened the amulets, and turned the faces so they were easy to read.

“Thank you. May I please borrow an ash stake, Jane?”

I handed him two ash stakes. “The stakes are for what? Killing vamps while you’re . . . You can’t stake vamps while you’re in a circle.”

Bobby grinned and folded his legs, guru fashion, and put his injured hand in his lap. “If I have to move the watches, now I don’t have to touch them, so I won’t get burned. And I’m a dowser, remember? Wood might help.”

I felt like an idiot. Dowsers sometimes used wood to find . . . whatever they were dowsing for. “Oh. Yeah. Right.”

With his right hand, Bobby took up an ash stake and positioned the watches in a line in front of his knees, each about an inch apart. He looked up at the moon, now partially visible between brightly lit, scudding clouds. “Okay. Close the circle, Jane.”

“Then what? Without a witch to power the closing, nothing will happen,” I said, knowing I was procrastinating, worried that Bobby would be hurt worse.

“I think I can do it. I’ve watched Misha do it.” He nodded once emphatically. “I can do it. I know I can.”

I pulled a vamp-killer. “If something goes wrong, I can cut the circle with iron and silver and pull you out.”

“It might burn you.”

“To quote a friend of mine, ‘I’ll get well later,’” I said. Bobby gave me a thumbs-up. I closed the circle.

He dropped his head back again, like he had done earlier. One minute went by. Then two. With Beast vision, I saw the circle in the torn soil begin to glow softly. Unbelievable. Bobby had activated the circle. He wasn’t a witch, but the little guy had more magic than I had thought.

At Bobby’s knees, the pocket watches began to glow as well. I smelled the faint stink of blistering flesh, and Bobby hissed with pain. Bobby was being injured. I raised the knife, ready to bring it down on the circle, severing its ties to the Earth.

“No, Jane,” Bobby said. He took a sharp breath of pain and raised his head to normal. “Not yet. I’m not finished.” As he spoke, the three pocket watches before him shifted slightly. My fist tightened on the knife handle but I held off the blow to the circle as the amulets aligned toward some point that I couldn’t name. It wasn’t the North Star, sunrise, or sunset, which meant—

A hard smile thinned my mouth. The three watches were aligned with the source of their power. The number twelve on all three watches pointed toward the witch circle that might hold Misha. That meant searching as many as twenty buildings and grounds or maybe as few as five, which was way better odds than before. It meant we might find her tonight or tomorrow night. The smell of burning flesh rose on the air. Bobby was in trouble. I raised the knife to cut the circle.

“No!” he said. “Not yet!” Bobby was breathing fast, the smell of burned flesh growing stronger. He lifted the ash stake and held it in both blistered hands, just like a dowsing rod, as he studied the amulets. He looked in the direction they were pointing and the stake aligned with the same direction, but more specific. He said, “That house. That one there with the purple trim. Misha is there.”