Blood Trade

CHAPTER 4 Have Stakes, Will Travel. Amusing.

An hour later, cops were swarming all over the Ryder place, and the Kid kept us updated on what the cops found. Four bodies, two adults and two children, all in advanced stages of decomp. COD was officially undetermined, but from police chatter, it sounded like a vamp attack. If that was true, then Big H had decided to handle things himself instead of following through on the threatened lawsuit, or Ryder made some vamp mad, or . . . or . . . I didn’t know what. Something was really hinky here and I wasn’t a big believer in coincidence. No matter what was really going on, I should give a heads-up call to PsyLED. Which meant calling Rick.

Esmee was taking her nap, Eli was going through the stolen electronic files on the vamps, and the Kid was helping while illicitly listening to the Vidalia police channels. Jameson was clanking around in the kitchen, listening to opera, and the maid, his wife, who had nodded politely to me before scuttling away, mop in hand, was cleaning. I was in the middle of nothing and feeling antsy, so I took my cell and went for a walk on the grounds. The backyard was enclosed by an eight-foot-tall brick wall and boasted a multicar garage, a pool, and gardens that my friend Molly would have adored. I didn’t see any of it as I walked, holding the cell phone in my hand, staring at the contacts list on the bright screen.

PsyLED had issued new rulings that went into effect in the New Year. Now when humans were injured or killed by possibly paranormal means, law enforcement and private citizens were required to call PsyLED so one of their investigators could take psychometric readings. Rick was the special agent in seven states in the Southeast, including Louisiana and Mississippi. The cops would call. Eventually. But jurisdictional conflicts meant it would be later rather than sooner, and valuable evidence might be lost. I had almost asked Eli to make the call, but that had smacked of cowardice and so here I was, in the winter-chilled garden, surrounded on all sides by dormant vegetation, my knees knocking and a thumb poised over the phone. I put a foot on a garden bench and spun around so that I was sitting on the bench’s back, feet on the seat, the garden spread out around me. The live oaks and magnolias near me whispered to one another, birds twittered and squawked, and two gray squirrels raced around a tree trunk, chittering, tails snapping. I could smell rain on the breeze. I really didn’t want to do this. I hit SEND.

I had a mental image of Rick pulling out his phone, staring at the screen, knowing it was me, and remembering the last time we spoke, when I accused him of trying to kill me. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was so stupid. With my idiotic accusation, I had caused irreparable harm to a relationship that could have gone somewhere.

After four rings, I heard Rick say, “Jane.”

That was it. Just my name. Not hello, not missed you, not a rampage, which might have meant feelings for me. Just my name. I sighed slowly. “Yeah.” I wanted to say, How are you? Do you forgive me for being stupid? I miss you. Instead what came out was, “I think it’s possible that vamps drained and killed a family of four in Vidalia, Louisiana. And there are Naturaleza vamps in the area.”

“Business,” he said.

I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or not. “Yeah. I guess.”

After a moment he said, “Do the local LEOs know?”

“Local law got a tip. They don’t know the COD yet. It’s my understanding that the bodies were too far gone to make a determination without postmortems. But they’ve sent for the local medical examiner, so they’ll know soon.”

“Why are you informing me instead of the local law?”

Because I wanted to hear your voice. No way was I saying that. “They’ll get around to it. A national-media type claims to have spoken to him recently, but if the smell is anything to go by, he musta been doing that while dead. The timing is hinky. I thought you’d like a heads-up.” But I wanted to hear your voice. Okay, I was being stupid and girly. But I wanted to hear his voice.

“Where are you and how did you find it?”

I filled him in on everything except the B and E, and when I was done, he said, “I’ll make a call. I’m in Tennessee right now and don’t know if I can get away, but someone will be coming. They’ll take over.”

Which meant that someone would discover that Ryder’s office had been burgled. Oh, goody. I didn’t respond, and after an uncomfortable silence, Rick disconnected. I closed the cell and sat in the weak winter sun, beating myself up.

When I stood, I noticed a large stone beneath the nearest maple tree. Pocketing the phone, I walked over to it and realized that it wasn’t a stone from here or from anywhere around here. It was rounded and vaguely flat on top, maybe eighteen inches high, and, weirdly enough, it was pink. Pink, white-veined marble. I bent over it, and two feet away in the brush, I spotted a rusted steel pole about three feet tall with a verdigris metal lion on top. A mounting block and horse tie, remnants of a nonindustrial past, a slave past, if the age of the thing was any indication.

I sighed again and made my way back inside. I so did not fit in here. Not at all.

• • •

Back inside the house, I discovered that an hour had passed and that the Kid had made headway on our stolen e-records and on Mish. He had discovered how my old acquaintance had used her reporter’s job contacts to get a nonfiction book deal on the nation’s vampires and the people who feed them, love them, care for them, or hunt them. Harder to find was info about Charly, but the computer whiz had succeeded without even being asked. The little girl had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL. Her doctors narrowed the diagnosis to a type called T-cell ALL, a form of the disease that had a less-than-rosy prognosis. Charly had started on something called induction therapy, chemo with a mix of drugs I couldn’t pronounce. Then her white count dropped and the oncologist took her off chemo for ten days to allow her body to gain strength. He had given her permission to travel as long as she didn’t overdo it.

Misha had ten days to do the research that would allow her to write a book that would help pay for her daughter’s possible cure. She had been desperate when she called Reach to get him to help her make contacts in the vamp world, and already one of her contacts was dead. I thought about Misha doing anything she could to raise enough money to protect her daughter. And I remembered one of Beast’s memories of a male big-cat invading her den and killing her young. Beast had tracked down the cat, ambushed him, and killed him. There was a common thread there, one that made me uncomfortable for reasons I didn’t understand.

As dusk drew closer, I joined Eli in the breakfast room, where paperwork was scattered across the table. Eli glanced up at me and without preliminaries said, “Cops are doing their thing with Ryder. You maybe oughta call your gal pal now. Get that guilt off your soul.”

“That obvious?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I punched in Misha’s number and was shunted directly to voice mail. I said, “Your contact, Ryder, is dead. Call me.” To be on the safe side, I texted her the same message.

With nothing better to do and a gut feeling that things were going to go very wrong very soon, I dove into the research sent to me by Reach and the scant intel collected by the Kid. There was something about this town. Every time I came here, things seemed to get so freaking complicated.

• • •

It was after dark when I got dressed for my interview with Big H. Going into the presence of unknown vamps was never safe, despite the PR that let the world think they were sexy and sparkly and only mildly dangerous fun. I wanted to go in to his presence armed to the teeth, but sometimes carrying a big stick could actually start a fight. For this howdy-doody interview there would be no leathers. I had brought dress pants in a winter-weight wool, and I pulled them on over stretch leggings, and stomped into my green snakeskin Lucchese boots. Into each boot went a sheathed knife, one with the hilt visible and one hidden deeper down. I wore a white silk shirt with billowy sleeves and a velvet vest with slits for the throwing knives and silver stakes, which I limited to three each. The loose-sleeved jacket was tight across my shoulders—all my clothes were, but I would put off a trip to Leo’s designer as long as possible. The old woman terrified me. My hair I braided and twisted up in a high bun, and put more stakes in it, pushed down so I could ride in the SUV without stabbing myself.

From a shelf in the closet, I removed the box I used for my jewelry. It was a Lucchese boot box, old and starting to show the wear, but it did the trick, and though I had no intention of dressing up, the box also held some of my protective gear. I opened the flap, and sitting on top of the socks that protected my small collection of jewelry was a carved bone coyote earring. I had no idea how I’d gotten the earring, which was a mystery for another day. I’d woken up from a crazy dream and it was lying on the bed beside me. Just the one. And I didn’t wear earrings. This one tingled of magics, as if it had been spelled once long ago, but something about it was still magically active, literally. The little sucker moved around. I kept the coyote in a sock. I had put the two magical pocket-watch amulets inside socks too, and now they cradled the coyote on either side. Weird. But then, my whole life was weird these days.

I dumped the pocket watches into a sock together again, and wiped my fingers on my pants. The amulets smelled like meat. Like thinned blood. Kinda gross. They were not something I wanted to keep, but since I had no idea what they did, I was loathe to toss them into a river or something. From beneath the socks, I removed a black velvet box. Inside was my chain-mail throat protector, which I latched on, the silver over titanium cold on my throat and chest. I put the boot box away.

• • •

At seven-thirty, Eli and I were driving through the dark, on our way to the meeting with Hieronymus, bristling with weapons and with Leo’s vamp med kit resting on the back seat. Though silence was usual between us, this time Eli said, “So. How do you want to handle this?”

“Too many unknowns. When I do this kind of thing I just fly by the seat of my pants.”

“And if the vamps go into a feeding frenzy for some reason and attack?”

“We were invited, so I don’t expect trouble. That said, if something goes wrong we shoot, stake, and run.”

Eli actually smiled. “I love my job.”

I answered his grin with one of my own. “Yeah. Me too.” I went back to studying the photos of the vamps I was to meet, photos the Kid had loaded up into an electronic pad that looked like something out of the future. Big H reminded me of a bust of some ancient Greek king, but bald. Like, the guy didn’t even have eyelashes. And then there was his love and heir, Lotus, a lovely female vamp from somewhere in Asia. In one photo, she was standing next to Big H and she looked like a teenager, her black hair a veil of silk drawn to one side and hanging below her waist, wearing some kind of kimonolike robe and scarlet shoes. H’s sons, Zoltar and Narkis, were next in the file. Zoltar meant “life,” which the vamp no longer possessed, and Narkis meant “daffodil.” I shook my head. Vamp names were weird. The boys were prettier than their father, but not by much. I also looked over the profiles of the local clans’ blood-masters, primos, and secondos. There were photos of bars and warehouses and businesses in the file too, properties owned by vamps.

“We’re in On Top of the Hill,” Eli said of the old historical district. “Destination?” I gave him the address, turned off the tablet, and set it in the side pocket of the SUV.

Hieronymus didn’t ask us to meet at his Clan home, which was an antebellum plantation home outside of town, but rather in an old warehouse in Natchez Under the Hill. Under the Hill had been changed drastically by the earthquake of 1811, an earthquake so violent that it altered the course of the Mississippi River. The eddies, floodwaters, violent swells, floating debris—including trees and fully laden, crewless boats carrying whiskey, furs, flour, hardwood lumber, and other items from the North—landslides, and avalanches had taken off over a hundred acres of the old streets. And when they were rebuilt, and then rebuilt again under General Ulysses Grant, they were much different from the original.

There were three Under the Hill streets, each over a half mile long, forming tiers or terraces, running parallel with the river. Each street cut into the slope, making sharp-angled hairpin loops on the ends that put Lombard Street in San Fran to shame, while innumerable little cross-street alleys zigzagged up and down the hill between houses and gardens and businesses. Earlier incarnations of Under the Hill had offered no attempt at beauty, but once vamps came out of the coffin, when Marilyn Monroe tried to turn the president in the Oval Office, it was discovered that vamps had made Under the Hill their home, digging into the earth of the hill, making dwellings and businesses in the half-cavern buildings. With Beast vision overlaying my own, like my version of 3-D glasses, I could see witch magic everywhere—reds, yellows, silvers, and greens all infused with black and silver and gold sparkles of power. It seemed concentrated in three places, one location on each street, the three forming the points of a triangle with the apex at the hilltop.

We were meeting at a warehouse on the middle street, Tin Alley, near the old McHenry’s Gambling Establishment. The building was an old redbrick two-story and was situated on a corner, up against the sidewalk. The twelve-foot-tall wooden front doors were banded with rusted iron and open to the night air. Music, sounding like live stringed instruments, flooded through and into the street. The windows were narrow and covered with solid iron shutters, sealed tight. The place was a firetrap, with limited exits and gas lighting—I could smell it on the night air—and vamps were flammable. How stupid was all this? It had to be something to do with the history of the city and Big H’s clan, something ritualistic. Vamps were big on history and ritual, having lived through most of the former, and the latter allowing the predatory hunter clans to live in proximity to one another without all-out war.

We drove around the block before parking, weaving between the fancy cars of the fanged and wealthy. Vehicles lined the streets, as there was no parking in front or at the side, only a tiny lot in the back that was packed with cars secured behind a twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence with razor wire on the top. Inside it were a dozen black Lexuses, three Caddys, and one old Bentley, its cream paint gleaming under the streetlight. At each car stood a human blood-servant—security types—armed and dangerous. Several smoked, and I lowered my window an inch to test the air. Floating over the herbal scent of vamp and the stink of gas lighting, I smelled cigars, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and marijuana.

“Sloppy.” Eli said.

“Yeah. And no limos, no armored cars; just ordinary cars right off the car lot. That’s odd.”

“Or you’ve been spoiled by Leo and his über-rich cronies.”

Which wasn’t something I wanted to consider, but was a possibility.

Along the side street, the building boasted three arched openings sized for horse-drawn carts and wagons, solid-looking wooden doors closed over them. An alley ran along the other side, a windowless brick expanse two stories tall, the upper story painted with an old ad for Brown & Williamson Tobacco. The back of the building had only one entrance on the ground floor and it was sealed shut, guards standing to either side, both wearing vests with small sub guns of a make I’d never seen, tucked under their arms.

Eli murmured a soft curse. “They’re carrying German UMP .45s. Even people with military connections have a hard time getting those, and they cost a fortune. Now you know why there aren’t any limos. They put their money into firepower.”

I pulled on Beast’s night vision to get a better look. I had seen pics of the UMP on the H&K website. It was a vicious little weapon. Not worth a dang at any distance, but it would chew a body in half at close range.

Fully automatic weapons were never covered in the constitution’s ruling on citizen militia members owning and carrying guns. They were not used for hunting. They were used for killing sentient beings. Period. Which is why I didn’t carry them, own them, or want them around, despite the number of such weapons Eli owned, and despite how handy they would be against vamps.

I looked over the guards’ heads to see a second-story door open for fresh air. “I don’t like the fact that there’s only one door open on the ground floor.”

“I’ll stay by the entrance while you talk business.”

“And shoot anybody who tries to lock us in.”

“That’s the idea.” We were both packing silver shot rounds, so shooting a bad guy with fangs meant he’d likely stay down. Shooting a human with anything had the same effect, but I was not here to kill anyone. That was not in the plans.

Eli parked the SUV one block down, doing a fast parallel parking job but with one front tire on the sidewalk. When I looked my question at him, he said, “Saves us time if we get blocked in and have to jump the curb.”

I studied the area and realized he had chosen a spot that would let us pull out over the sidewalk and down a side street. I was used to bikes and they were easy to get out of narrow spaces, so I didn’t think about getaway routes as a matter of course. Eli made me think outside my own coffin-sized box. I got out to adjust the weapons on my person, and the smell of vamp hit me like a wrecking ball. I put a hand on the SUV to steady myself and sniffed. A vamp smorgasbord met my nose and I opened my mouth, drawing in air over my tongue. Beast reared up in my mind and sniffed with me, parsing the scents.

Good vampire smell, Beast thought.

I grimaced. Not that long ago, Beast had thought vamps smelled like things to hunt. Not so much now that she was chained to Leo—something I had to correct as soon as I figured out how. My new mantra: Get free from Leo.

I adjusted my weapons, chambering rounds but safety-ing everything. Popping Velcro loops, making sure the blades would slide free, and hearing Eli do the same on the other side of the vehicle. There would be a tug-of-war at the door, Hieronymus’ goons trying to take weapons off me and me not letting them go. I had a statement to make and keeping my weapons was going to be part of that. I wasn’t dressed in vamp-hunting armor, but I wasn’t dressed like a little old lady for Sunday church either. I repositioned the ash and silver stakes in my bun, fanning them out like a deadly halo. I’d had to smash them into the hair on the ride because they kept hitting the top of the SUV.

This event should be a simple business meeting, but with vamps nothing is ever simple. They were always trying to see who was an alpha predator and who was prey. So this little conference was going to be a dance on a knife blade, poised and balanced, having to prove myself on one side but not going too far and getting myself sucked dry on the other. I was much better at getting myself in trouble than anything else, but no way was I coming across as prey.

Lastly, I pulled a dirty white handkerchief out of the glove box and tucked it into my décolletage. I saw Eli watching and I said, “Insurance.”

It was a hanky with Leo’s blood on it. The scent claimed me as his. Bruiser, Leo’s primo, had marked me with it once to keep me safe. I’d been ticked off about it back then. Times had changed. Or maybe I had changed.

In theory, the MOCs of one city were supposed to respect the life and “property” of another MOC, but it didn’t always work that way in real life. I had no idea if Leo had enemies in the crowd I was about to meet, enemies who would kill me to tick off the blood-sucking fiend I worked for. Come to think of it, Leo likely had enemies everywhere.

For safety reasons, I had to go in looking like the Enforcer I was, but, technically, I wasn’t here in the capacity of Leo’s Enforcer. I was here outside of that job description and the safeguards it provided, so a little scent reminder of the biggest bad among the Big Bad Vamps might be a good thing.

“Ready?” Eli asked. I nodded and headed toward the door; Eli fell into step a little behind me at my left. I could hear the roar of voices and the plink of music from inside and smell the vamp scent. It made my nose itch. Ahead of us, two male vamps walked arm in arm, heads together, either chatting or necking—which had a totally different meaning with vamps. The wind swirled and they both slowed, turning to look at us, catching our scents. I saw human-looking eyes widen before the vamps seemed to disappear. Even over the distance I could hear the pop of displaced air as the bloodsuckers achieved super vamp speed.

“Oops. Most vamps don’t like my scent,” I said as a warning to Eli. “They smell another predator.”

We kept moving, and three steps later two armed blood-servants rushed out the front door, weapons at the ready. I took a slow breath and felt Eli do the same, though neither of us missed a step or seemed to tense visibly. The humans pointed small submachine guns at us, but we just kept walking. Along the street, the security types moved in, forming a loose half circle near the door. The music from inside went silent. So did the voices.

“Looks like our cozy couple spread the word that something dangerous is approaching.” Eli said.

“Afraid so. And here I thought being an invited guest would make it easier.” I could think of four ways to handle this: stop and chat and get strong-armed, shoot them all and likely die in the ensuing firefight, run like my pants were on fire and lose total face, or take them before a fight could even start.

I drew on Beast and felt her pawing, milking my mind, her claws bringing on a headache. Strength flooded my system with a burst of Beast-adrenaline. My pace didn’t alter, but I smiled—a Beast-type smile, all teeth. I felt her looking out at the world and knew my eyes were doing that weird glow thing they do when she’s close to the surface.

We reached the door. I acted like the thugs weren’t there and put one foot on the single step. The two guys from inside moved quickly in front of me, close enough to make a wall of their chests and guns. I didn’t slow. I hit out fast, striking one in the side of the neck with my right fist. Pivoted hard. Kicked the other in the left knee. It was so fast and balanced, it worked like a single move. I heard a gag, a pop, and an agonized scream as I pushed between them and they started to fall. I walked into the warehouse-turned-party-room as if I owned it, trusting Eli to make sure I really did. Behind me, the sounds indicated that Eli further incapacitated the men I had taken down, and then started in on the rest of the security. Good thing vamp blood heals their servants’ injuries so well. My booted feet rang on the old wooden floors in the silent room as I left my backup behind.

I took in the place and the occupants. One big room on the lower level; lots of small tables and chairs. The seating was from various time periods and cultures: long couches in the Roman style; pillows, rugs, and hookahs in the Persian style; some odd seating that must have been African or maybe South American, the chairs low to the ground and carved from dark wood, dished like dough bowls. Weird.

Vamps in black tie and evening gowns were everywhere. Humans half-frozen in position looked to their masters for orders. From the loft overhead I smelled humans and blood. They had set the blood bar upstairs, with matching spiral wrought-iron staircases on either side and exotic, scantily dressed human blood-slaves at the bottom, like advertisements. The place reeked of vamps and blood and sex and sickness, but the sick stench was elusive, so I figured only a few vamps here had it. The vamps themselves couldn’t smell the disease, which was how it raced through them with such speed. Vamps shared a sick blood meal, and the partakers all became infected.

As the security detail tried to rush through the front doors and Eli reacted, I spotted Hieronymus against a wall on the lower level, sitting in a big peacock-style chair made of wood inlaid with green and blue mother-of-pearl and paua shells, delicate and beautiful.

I turned on Beast-speed and darted to him. Stopped fast, my boots sliding for the last few inches on the wood. “I’m Jane.” I flicked a business card into his lap. Behind me were grunts and thumps as thugs and their weapons hit the floor.

Big H stared at me with eyes that were bleeding slowly vampy. “You profane my presence with weapons and attacks upon my people?”

“You block the door and meet guests with guns?”

Hieronymus looked past me at the doorway while I studied him. He was paler than most vamps I’d met, and though his face was unlined, he had probably been older when he was turned than most—maybe forty human years. He wasn’t classically pretty, which was rare in a vamp, and, like in his photographs, his head was totally bald. The only hair I could see was a thin fringe of eyelashes, which hadn’t been present in the pictures I’d studied. He wore a tux, tie, cummerbund, and shirt all in black, and had an ancient copper chain around his neck, over the fancy clothes. Dangling from it, in the middle of his chest, was a sliver of corroded metal shaped vaguely like a toothpick, wrapped with copper wire. It was a peculiar fashion accessory—butt-ugly. It hadn’t been around his neck in any of the photos I’d seen of him.

The front door slammed shut and I heard something heavy fall. Keeping my host in sight, I risked a glance in that direction and saw Eli standing with his back to the closed and barricaded door, nunchacku in one fist, brass knuckles on the other, and blood on his face and thigh. “Any trouble?” I asked him, letting the words drawl.

“Negative.” He slammed his weapons into their hidey-holes and drew two handguns, holding them at his sides. He wasn’t even breathing hard. And only because I knew him fairly well could I tell he was having fun. Uncle Sam trained its killers well.

At his feet, five humans lay, all out cold, and I chuckled at the sight. Their weapons were in a pile in one corner. I shifted my attention back to Hieronymus. Big H sniffed the air once, taking in my scent. He cocked his head as if processing the signature and stared at me for a time that I could measure in my own heartbeats and that lasted way too long. He was doing that dead-as-a-marble-statue thing they do, where they don’t blink or breathe and you just know that in a fractured second they can be on you and drinking dinner. My chest started getting tight, my breath wanting to come too fast. Tension spread into the room like a wave of polluted water. I did not want to have to fight all the vamps in this building, but I could feel their bodies aligning toward me and their eyes boring into me as if picking which pulse points would be the most tasty.

I didn’t see his heir, Lotus, in the crowd behind him, but it looked like enough of his people had shown up that they could drain and kill us before I could fire off a single shot. Tension skittered up and down my spine like an army of fire ants, and I broke into a hot sweat that the vamps had to be able to smell. I worked at keeping my breathing slow and measured, but much more of this and my knees would be knocking. I decided to go with bravado. “Let’s start over. I’m—”

“Jane Yellowrock,” he said, reading my card as if he had never heard of me. “Have Stakes, Will Travel. Amusing. This is your motto?” He had an elusive European accent, the kind that likely started a thousand years ago and had undergone dozens of changes as languages transformed and evolved through the following centuries.

“My mission statement and company slogan. The weapons and the motto are for rogue vamps, Naturaleza vamps, and vamps targeted by the local ruling council as dangerous to their way of life and continued undead health. I’m not a vigilante. Much. I’m a licensed hunter. And as for the little display at the door, why hire me and my team if a few poorly trained human security toughs could take our weapons away? You want to hire the best? You’ve met us.”

Big H breathed out and leaned back, letting his body lounge against the pretty chair. I remembered to inhale. “You are impertinent,” he said. It wasn’t a question, and it was the truth, so I didn’t reply. I’d been called worse. “You are here with Leonard Pellissier’s acquiescence?”

“Not exactly. I work on retainer, under contract, like we’re proposing to do.”

“His Enforcer works on retainer?” It wasn’t exactly a question, more like a stunned recap.

“The Blood Master of New Orleans, Sedona, Boston, and Seattle, and all of the Southeast except Florida, needs more than one Enforcer. I’m his . . . part-timer.”

“It is not possible to bind more than one Enforcer,” he said.

Which was news to me. So I just raised my eyebrows, stared him down, let one corner of my mouth relax in what might charitably be called amusement, and waited. Never admit you’re wrong when silence lies that you’re right. Not that long ago, I’d have felt guilty about letting a falsehood persist. Now I just let it hang. And let my partner beat up humans. And didn’t even think about it. I was so going to hell.

“Leo released you to work for me.”

I let my smile rise. “Not only that. His laboratory in Texas came up with a cure for the vamp plague, so you won’t have to keep drinking down humans carrying the antibodies.” Big H sat up slowly, his hands resting on the inlaid chair arms. “I brought a supply with me,” I continued, “and will be giving out the cure to anyone who needs it. If we can come to an accommodation.” Which didn’t exactly say that I had permission to cure someone Leo was ticked off with, but I was going to hell already, so in for a penny, in for a gallon of blood.

Hieronymus’ eyes bled back to fully human. He lifted his fingers to his neck and stopped, then dropped the hand. As he did, I caught a whiff of the sick scent of the vamp plague. Big H had the disease. “You have this cure with you?”

“Not on my person, but it’s available to me. Leo is powerful enough to be . . .” I searched for a word and settled on “magnanimous.” Which didn’t actually make him magnanimous, but I didn’t say that. Skirting the truth with a vamp was scary business, because they could often smell a lie and they could always smell nervousness.

“I will validate our proposed contract, including the changes your legal advisor, Alex Younger, has suggested.”

I nearly dropped my jaw at the thought of the Kid as a legal advisor. And he had done what with my contract? “Ummm,” I said.

“You will destroy the Naturaleza who run rampant and wild through my countryside, and I will pay you the agreed-upon price—”

“Couple questions,” I interrupted. Big H frowned. Master vamps don’t get interrupted often. “How many are there, what steps have you taken to correct the problem, and where do you think they’re hiding?”

“My Enforcer was killed trying to track them down. Witnesses said he was attacked on all sides by the Naturaleza and torn to shreds. He is mourned and will not be forgotten. My primo, Clark, has all other details.” He waved a negligent hand at a nondescript human man to his left. Clark was a medium guy. Brown and brown, maybe five feet seven, slender, wearing—yes—brown.

Clark stepped forward, bowed slightly, and handed me a leather folder. “Estimates on numbers are imprecise,” he said. “Originally we thought less than twenty, but before he was killed, our Enforcer staked four who were later seen on the streets.”

“Naturaleza are hard to kill,” I said. “Locations?”

“They have been spotted all over the county and in Vidalia as well. We do not know where they lair.” Lairs were jealously guarded daytime resting places for vamps, so I wasn’t surprised, but it did make my job a lot harder. “If we knew where they were, they would be dead now,” he said, sounding just a bit snippy.

Big H was clearly done with question time. “I will accept the largesse of my sworn master,” he said, “and the cure he can provide my people. If you also negotiate a parley that repairs the rift between my master and me, I will provide you a generous bonus. The business details you may discuss with Clark at a later time. You will attend me before dawn with this cure.”

Before I could reply to that order, Big H stood, lifted his arms, and raised his voice. “My people. We have a guest. Meet and speak with Jane Yellowrock, the Enforcer of Leo Pellissier. She brings good tidings from my master and a cure for the plague that infects some few of us. Rejoice and enjoy the festivities.” Some of his people applauded and a number of others moved forward with unseemly haste. Scuttled like bugs was more like it, but I was feeling generous. I figured they were sick vamps needing the cure.

Hieronymus extended his hand, palm out, holding them back, and passed me a business card. “This is Clark’s contact information. Whatever you need, all assistance we can provide, is yours. And”—he gave me a fangy smile—“we are very generous.”

“Good to know.” I pocketed the card, in case my electronic genius didn’t have all the contact info already.

He handed me a microdrive shaped like a shark’s tooth, which was way snazzy. “The dossiers of the Mithrans you have permission to deliver true death to, and descriptions of the ones who were never mine and who are unknown to us, the ones brought by Lucas Vazquez de Allyon, may his soul rot in hell.” Big H dropped his hand, I pocketed the shark’s tooth microdrive, and was surrounded by vamps. Sick vamps. Desperate vamps.

I do not like being surrounded by vamps, especially plague-ridden ones who wanted to shake my hand, kiss me on both cheeks like some Old World mafia family, and tell me all their symptoms. I didn’t know if they were trying to thank me or infect me. But I survived the glad-handing and, promising to bring the cure to the MOC’s Clan home before dawn, slid out the front door as fast as I could. Eli covered my rear.

There was no security committee waiting on us this time, and though I didn’t race back to the SUV, I didn’t saunter either. Eli gunned the engine and had us two blocks over before my heart stopped stuttering and the rhythm evened out. “Crap,” I said as we curved up the hill and into the old downtown.

Eli gave a twitch of his lips, which could have been indigestion, but I chose to interpret it as mirth. I called Alex. When he answered, I said, “What did you do with our contract? Without telling me. Are you insane?”

“No way. I showed it to Eli. He agreed.”

I narrowed my eyes at my driver, who was chuckling, and wondered if I could take over the driving and shove him out into the street. And then maybe run over him a few times. “Nobody screws with my contracts.”

“We just added two tiny clauses,” Eli said. “One that lets us take the head of any vamp who attacks us unprovoked, and one that lets us take the head of any vamp not on the list who has gone over to the Naturaleza.”

I thought about that for a while as the tires sang on the pavement. I wanted to find fault with the clauses but they were good ones, ones I should have included myself, and would have to add to my standard boilerplate. “Let’s say I decide not to kill you both for changing my contract. And you both agree to discuss stuff like this with me and let me handle it.”

Eli scratched his chin and said, “We’re supposed to be partners of a sort. How about we buy in to Yellowrock Security. Alex and I have a little money from our parents’ estate.” He named a figure that made me blink. And then mouth it, trying to blend that six-figure number into my lifestyle. You coulda picked me up with a spatula. I had no idea what to say, so I said nothing. Taking my silence as a positive response, Eli went on. “If you agree, we could actually organize this company legally instead of flying by the seat of our pants, Jane style. Get tax stuff and insurance stuff handled, Liability insurance.”

Which I had never thought to need, but if I was going to have partners and hire humans to work with me, I guess I needed it. All of it. Crap. I never intended to be a part of big business.

So I thought about that a while too. About not being in charge, not making all the decisions, not having my way all the time. And about having backup all the time. And having the boys stick around.

“I’m not saying yes.” But my mouth went on as if part of my brain had been thinking about this for a long time. “But if I was, I’d be thinking that I get sixty percent,” I said. “You two split forty. I handle all legal matters, with your input. Salaries to be decided, commensurate with company earnings, and expenses to be discussed at a later date. And you can stay with me as long as you like.”

“Done,” Eli said, as if the division of the company that had recently been mine alone was exactly what he had been considering before he made his offer. A glow moved out from my torso, making me feel light and kinda weird. I realized I was happy. Content. For all intents and purposes, I had just sold forty percent of my company. And my life. And I was happy about it. A small smile started and I let it take over my mouth all by itself.

We made it halfway back to Esmee’s before Eli said, “So. All of your meetings go like that? The one with Hieronymus, not the one with me.”

“Pretty much.”

“How much of that was bullsh . . . malarkey?”

I laughed under my breath. “Not all of it.”

“Good. Because that means it isn’t a hidden lie that has us being tailed.”

“Crap.” I looked over my shoulder and saw three cars in the distance. “Which one?”

“All of them.”