Skinwalker

CHAPTER 8 A warrior woman

I sat at her table and she smiled down at me as she handed me a partially frozen Coke, the old-fashioned bottle crusted with ice, ice crystals gathered in the top. The woman was spare and muscular, but older than my first thought. Maybe mid-fifties, maybe older, but not a strand of gray traced through her black hair. Her eyes were full of life, laughter and, oddly, compassion. I took the Coke and drank, and when she offered a plate of cookies still warm from the oven, my shivers dissipated along with my sense of trepidation. How can you stay worried when someone gives you warm chocolate chip cookies? Beast’s hyperalert state was still with me, however, hunched deep within, silent and watchful.

“My name is Aggie One Feather.” She paused. “Egini Agayvlge i, in the speech of The People.”

“I’m Jane Yellowrock. Jane”—I took a breath—“Dalonige’i.”

Aggie sat across from me, holding her own Coke. “You know some of the speech.” Her voice was soft, melodious, the gentle voice of dreams and nightmares both.

“I don’t remember much of the old words,” I said, my voice and English grating by comparison. I lowered my volume and tried to find the melody and rhythm of the old speech. “When I hear it, maybe it will come back to me.”

“How may I help you?” she asked, the question similar to the traditional words of the shaman.

Shamans were tribal helpers, there to assist, free of charge, any who asked, whether for healing ceremonies, counsel, or more practical help. I remembered this. I remembered. I looked at my icy hands on the frozen Coke. I had no idea what I was going to say until the words fell from my mouth. “Are there old tales about a creature called a liver-eater?”

“Yes. Several. Why do you ask?”

Shock slithered through me, snakelike. “Because I was hired by a representative of the vamp council to hunt down whatever is killing and eating tourists and cops. I followed it. And according to a very good source, what I saw last night was a liver-eater.” Beast coughed with amusement in the deeps of my mind at the idea of being “a very good source.”

Aggie stiffened. The skin around her eyes tightened, the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepening. “Why do you think this?”

Because I smelled it? Because I followed it here in cat form? Rather than reply, I said, “The thing I saw looks like a vampire, smells like something rotten, and hunts in the woods and swamp behind your house. I followed it here.” Ah, crap. Yep. That came out of my mouth.

Aggie sat back. “Ahhh,” she breathed, sounding relieved. “I read about the rogue vampire in the newspaper.” She tilted her head, watching me. I tried to interpret her body language and expressions, but they were too swift, too ephemeral. “Why would it come here?”

“It was interested in your sweathouse. It circled it several times.”

“You saw this creature?”

I paused, remembering the scene in the alley, the form bent over the girl’s body. “Yes.”

Aggie watched me as myriad thoughts, speculations, and conclusions raced behind her eyes. I had a bad feeling that I shouldn’t have come here. “What clan are you?” she asked.

The question was unexpected, but the answer was there, instantly, for the first time in more years than I could accurately remember. Surprised, I said, “My father was ani gilogi, Panther Clan.” I caught a fleeting image: a mountain lion pelt and a man’s face. My father . . . An image of shadows on upright logs followed it. I couldn’t tell what the shadows meant, but I knew it was something bad. I said, “My mother was ani sahoni, Blue Holly Clan.”

My shivers worsened and I let go of the frozen bottle, clenching my cold fingers. Other images, senseless fragments of memories, stabbed me. A shadowed cave wall, a vision of snow, a memory of freezing cold. A fire in the center of a wooden longhouse. Drums, softly beating, a four-beat rhythm, the first beat strong. And the smell of sage, sweetgrass, and something harsh like tobacco burning. Beast gathered herself, but not to leap. To watch. To stalk. She had said my past was hidden in the depths of my mind. Now it seemed as if the past was pushing to the surface, like a spring from far underground. Would I finally remember the years I had forgotten? Was I going to remember who and what I was? Breathless, I asked, “You?”

“My mother is ani waya, Wolf Clan, Eastern Cherokee, and my father was Wild Potato Clan, ani godigewi, Western Cherokee.”

Which could be a problem, my unreliable memory told me. Long ago, before the white man gathered us up and sent us into the snow along the trail west, there had been bad feeling between some families of Wolf Clan and Panther Clan. Remembrance of insult and blood feud was often generations long among the Cherokee. Had the conflict been resolved? Clans passed through the matriarchal line, so perhaps the bad blood had been worked through. My memories shouted that there was a problem, but it was all fractured and shattered.

“My great-grandfather was Panther Clan,” she added, as if acknowledging something important. And perhaps it was significant. Tribal relationships were valued by the elders. I remembered that, in the mishmash of my past.

The sound of drums still echoed in the back of my mind, insistent, and the reverberations brought fear. I would dream about this. And it wouldn’t be good.

“What are your parents’ names?” she asked.

“I don’t remember. I was found in the woods near the Old Nation. I was hoping . . .” Impossible hope burbled up with memories, the need of all orphans, to discover their blood kin.

“You hoped I could tell you?” she guessed. “Send you to your clan, your people?” I nodded. “I will help if I can. If you are of The People,” she said gently. “But from your eyes, I see that you are not full-blooded Cherokee. What are you?” Aggie asked.

I stood so quickly her eyes didn’t follow. She tensed. Half rose. I forced myself to stop, hands high on the jambs in the doorway of her kitchen as if hung, suspended over a fire, from deer antlers thrust through the flesh of my back. Where did that image come from?

Aggie flattened her hands on the table, her palms hugging the surface. She relaxed one joint at a time, slowly. I turned to the kitchen, hands out as if balancing, and remembered to breathe. Beast restrained herself, gathered tight, close to the surface. Claws flexed. Ready.

“Forgive me,” Aggie said, controlled, subdued, motionless as the air before winter snows. “I didn’t wish, didn’t intend, to cause you pain.”

“Why did you ask me what I am?” The words were half growled, and I saw her flinch, the reaction minuscule. Everybody was asking me that these days.

Aggie shrugged, a slight lifting of narrow shoulders. “Your eyes proclaim you are part white. And I see something in you, a shadow of something . . . old.” She pointed to my stomach, between my ribs. “There. Like two souls in one flesh. They do not battle, but live in uneasy harmony.” When I said nothing, when the moment stretched into discomfort even for a shaman, she blew out a breath and took a cookie, ate it. Visibly gathered herself and her thoughts. “To answer your first question, the liver-eater is a skinwalker.”

Breath caught in my throat, hot and burning. I don’t know what she saw on my face, but she paused again and waited as if she thought I might speak. I looked Cherokee. Had spoken a Cherokee word. In the years in the children’s home, I had read Cherokee tribal history, mostly through the old writings of James Mooney, hoping that I would find something that correlated with my splintered past, but nothing I read had sounded like what I was. I found my breath, shook my head, and gestured for her to continue.

“It is also called skinchanger. There are several tribal stories about liver-eater. In one, she is female. In her human form, she is usually a grandmother and so is respected and trusted for many years. But when she is aged, and the greed for youth and power overtake her, she seeks to replace what she has lost and temptation leads her into the practice of evil. She changes her skin for another human’s. This is the blackest of magic.

“Our stories tell us that when she gives over to evil, the skinwalker has one long fingernail that she can insert into a child and remove the liver.” When I still said nothing, Aggie went on. “Another skinwalker is Callanu Ayiliski, the Raven, Moker. He likes to steal hearts.” Her eyes studied me, missing nothing.

“The liver-eater is usually referred to as a skinwalker who has gone mad. Skinwalkers can be a nasty bunch,” she said. “However, in distant times, before the white man came, with his lusts to always have more, before the Spaniards in metal helmets came to enslave us, skinwalkers were the protectors of The People, keeping our ancestors safe from evil and evil magic. Only when they became old, and after the white man came, did many turn from protection to darker tasks and black magic.” Her voice fell silent.

Aggie watched me, her body loose, tranquil, her eyes seeing more than I wanted her to. “Some call liver-eater Spear Finger. U’tlun’ta.” She pronounced it like hut luna, which was a different pronunciation from the word in my distant memory, but it was a word I remembered from the legends in Mooney’s books. Aggie smiled. “I see that you know of Spear Finger.”

I nodded. “Is there any chance the liver-eater is a vampire instead of a skinwalker?”

“No. Vampires are foreign. They came with the Spaniards, the first white men.”

I nodded slowly, though it didn’t make much sense. Deep in the house, I heard the soft turning of fan blades, the sound of the motor driving it a steady hum. The refrigerator ticked, popped, and an automatic ice maker dumped ice cubes with a clatter. I moved back to the table and sat in the chair. “The words between an elder or shaman, and a seeker in pain, are protected, aren’t they?” I asked. “Like discussions between a psychologist and patient?”

Aggie inclined her head. “Somewhat. If you tell me you are going to kill someone, I will put the needs of The People, and even the white man, before yours. But if you come for counsel, I will help as I may, and retain your confidence.” She tilted her head, like a bird studying the ground from a tree, amusement playing at her lips. “You aren’t going to kill anyone, are you?”

“Yes. I am.” She twitched, a faint movement of shoulder blades, and her amusement slid away. “I’m going to kill the thing I followed here. It’s an old rogue vampire, a male. I’m sure of it. But my source . . . my source says it’s a liver-eater, not a vampire.”

After a moment, Aggie said, “Skinwalkers, before they turned to evil, were of The People. They lived among us from the earliest times as protectors, as warriors, sharing our history.” Aggie shrugged. “When the white man came, much was lost, much changed. I have heard it said: The skinwalkers shared the blood of The People. The liver-eaters stole it.”

Beast’s focus sharpened. Blood. And the strange scents caught in the bit of fabric that carried the rogue’s saliva and the blood of his victims, and the stink of rot. Beast went still, as if she understood, but if she did, she didn’t explain it to me. I needed to get back to the house and take another sniff of the bloody cloth.

But suddenly Aggie was talkative, her placid eyes intent, her mouth turned up in a smile. “My favorite story of the crone liver-eater is about Chickelili,” she said, “whose name means Truth Teller. Chickelili is a little snowbird, and the only one who tells the truth about the crone. Since Chickelili is little, nondescript, and has a small voice, her words are drowned out by the jays and crows, until a little boy listens and warns the parents that the killer of children is near. The message of the story is that the small voice is sometimes more important than loud ones.”

I stared at her, not knowing what her words might mean, but knowing that an elder seldom spoke unless there was great truth in the story, truth that was pertinent to the current situation. Little voices? I flashed on Katie’s ladies sitting at the dinner table.

“This creature you saw near the sweathouse. Does it have a long fingernail?”

I thought back to the vision of it in the alley, the prostitute’s body cradled in his arms. Then the brief glimpse as it lunged up the wall. “No. I didn’t see one.”

“Could you see its energies?” she asked.

“Gray light, black motes. I smelled them on the wind,” I said, and felt instantly foolish.

Aggie nodded. “Yes. I see that. You are a tracker of evil. A warrior woman, like the great ones of the far past.” I felt a blush start at the praise, and shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden chair. “I will set wards and burn smudge sticks at dusk,” she said, “to cleanse the taint of any evil that may be nearby. And my mother and I will watch in the night.”

“Your mother?” I asked, surprised.

“My mother is only seventy-four, and is still vibrant. My grandmother passed last year.”

Things clicked in my mind. “Her bones are buried in the back? Near the sweathouse.”

The same things clicked in Aggie’s mind and the animation drained from her face, showing me a clearer picture of her age. “You think this creature, this rogue vampire you hunt, is after the bones of my ancestors,” she said, her voice so low it was like grass in the wind. “Or after one of us to have power over the bones of my family and the magic in them.”

It made sense, and unknown knowledge fell into place in my mind; it made a lot more sense than anything Beast was thinking. “Having the bones of an elder who shares a bloodline buried nearby helps boost a shaman’s power, yes?” I said. Aggie nodded once, a jerky motion, full of fear. More gently, I said, “If the thing I’m chasing is a vampire, and if he turned one of you, could he call upon the ancestors, the macheiaellow, to give him strength?”

Aggie whispered, “Perhaps. It depends on what he knows. What magic he has.”

“He’s old,” I said. “Very, very old. Several hundred years, I’d guess. How many generations of ancestors are buried out back?”

Aggie dropped her eyes to her hands; she laced her fingers on the tabletop. “My grandmother, her mother and father, and my great-great-grandmother, who slipped away from the Removal—the Trail of Tears—and settled here.” If I reacted to the mention of the Trail of Tears, Aggie didn’t see it, her eyes downcast. “The bones of my sister, who died when a child. My uncle and his wife, who was a white woman but who joined us when she married. My grandmother’s brother, much older than she. Seven of the blood of The People, and one who joined us.”

“That’s a lot of powerful bones in one place,” I said.

“I’ll let the dogs loose tonight, to guard the yard,” Aggie said.

“Aggie,” I said gently. “It killed two of your dogs already.”

She closed her eyes, as if to block out the truth. But when she opened them again, they burned with fury. Low and fierce, she said, “I’ll kill it.” Her hands clenched on the table, small and dark and fragile, but with a terrible underlying strength of purpose. “If it comes here, I’ll kill it.” She took a breath that seemed to ache as she drew it in. “Do you have a cell phone number?”

I pulled a card out of my T-shirt pocket and placed it on the table between us. Aggie took it up and rubbed it gently, as if feeling the texture of the paper, but I knew she was feeling my energies stored in it. “You have decided to keep your true nature from me?” she asked.

“I’m sorry.” I bowed my head deeply as I had seen my father do so long ago. My father! The memory of his face rose in my mind, nose sharp and cutting. I blinked back tears at the new/old memory. As formally as I could, I said, “I give thanks for your help. I’ll provide protection as I’m able. For now, may I know who owns the property behind the house and into the woods and swamp?”

“The property borders on the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, so the government owns most of it. I’m not sure who owns the rest, though there is privately held land dotted all around here, like my family’s land.”

Park land. Crap. That meant the rogue vamp had acres and acres to roam, and no one to stop him. Except for me. And this stern, delicate shaman. “Thank you for your time,” I said.

“I offer my counsel and the use of the sweathouse. If you go into battle ill prepared, you fight to lose. I sense it has been some time since you went to water. Purification and smudging will help you, center you, let you find what you seek.”

Some time. Yeah, you could say that. The weight of decades pressed onto me, heavy and fraught with pain. “I may take you up on that,” I said.

Aggie pursed her lips. “You’re lying to me. You have no intention of taking me up on anything. Why not?” She cocked her head, little bird fashion. “Is it the same reason why you won’t tell me about yourself?”

I backed to the door, my eyes on hers, my most disarming smile firmly in place. This woman was way too smart for me to hang around any longer. “Thank you, Grandmother, for your help and counsel.”

She made a sound I hadn’t heard in years, but which was instantly familiar. Sort of a snort, a pshaw, and a single syllable of negation. It was very much a sound tied to The People, as “alors” is tied to the French, and “cool” is tied to generations of Americans. “Dalonige’i,” she said, and I stopped at the sound of my name. “It isn’t a traditional name. It means more than yellow rock, you know.” When I lifted my brows in question, she said, “It also means gold—one reason why the Nation was stolen from the Cherokee, why The People were set on the Trail of Tears, so the white man could dig dalonige’i from the earth of the Appalachian Mountains.”

This time I didn’t react to the words, but I knew she still saw more than I wanted anyone to see. “My thanks,” I said again. And I backed out her front door onto her stoop, into the heat and bright sun.

I kick-started my bike and took off for home. As I rode, I considered what I had learned, not about myself—that was for later reflection—but about the thing I chased. Beast was wrong. It wasn’t a liver-eater—I had seen it and it had no long fingernail. It was a vamp. A seriously whacked-out, flesh-eating, rotten-smelling vamp to be sure, but a vamp. A vamp gone way bad. An old, mad, rotting rogue.

Though my nose wasn’t as good as Beast’s, I still had better olfactory senses than any human. Standing in my backyard, I held the bit of cloth to my nose and breathed in, parsing the pheromones and proteins that made up the four distinct scents, three of them human and heavy with fear, alive when their blood was spilled. Perhaps Beast’s memory helped, but I could actually partition the human scents into one female and two male humans. And beneath it all was the scent of the thing I was chasing. I drew in its chemical signature. Vamp. Definitely vamp. Weird vamp, rotting vamp, but vamp. I shuddered with relief, allowing myself a small moment to relax at the certainty. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a skinwalker gone bad.

Returning to the bit of cloth, I isolated the differing chemicals in it, finally detecting the faintest tang of the woman the rogue had been with. Caught the smell of sex. And something even fainter, that I hadn’t placed. Or perhaps hadn’t remembered. I breathed in again. Shivered. Breathed in yet again, this time through open mouth, tongue extended. Chill bumps rose on my skin. My breath stopped. The scent of The People. I sat down heavily, landing unsteadily on the steps to the back porch. Is the rogue vamp I’m hunting . . . Cherokee?

One hand on the top, supporting my weight, I jumped the brick wall over to Katie’s at just after five, over at the spot where the security camera had once been secreted. As I jumped, pivoting my weight on one arm, I took a quick look. No camera. There was a small scar on the brick. Since it was gone, and I therefore wouldn’t give away what I was doing to whoever had put it there, I gripped the top of the wall and let my body swing against the brick, in a rappelling stance. I sniffed the site and was surprised at the commingled scents I found.

On top, fresh and bright, was the smell of the Joe. Rick LaFleur. He had removed the camera, likely at Troll’s command. Beneath the Joe’s scent, however, was another, fainter scent, and the weird thing was, I recognized it. The camera had been placed by Bruiser, the muscle who worked with Leo Pellissier, the head of the vamp council in New Orleans.

Why would Leo feel it necessary to keep an eye on Katie? It smacked of nasty politics in the council. Big surprise there. I pushed off from the wall and landed softly. Turned to the house and was surprised to see Troll standing in the open back door. He made a snorting sound, his gaze measuring the wall. He was holding himself up with both hands on the door, his skin the pallor of old parchment, yellowed and brittle, especially the dull dome of his bald head.

I stuck my hands in my jeans pockets and strolled over, trying to look like every human could drop from a fifteen-foot wall without injury. “You look like death warmed over,” I said.

“Anybody ever tell you that phrase is insulting to the members of a vampire’s household?” His rough voice sounded even more scratchy than usual, dry as stone dust.

I laughed, feeling a bit mean, not liking myself for it. “No, but I’ll try to remember that. You get enough blood from last night’s donation?” And that was why I was angry. A vampire nearly killed someone I was sorta starting to like, and he wasn’t ticked off, so I had to be, right?

“Not enough from Rachael. But Katie allowed me a small drink from her wrist.”

I didn’t react, though anger and disgust pinged through me. Yuckers. Troll stepped aside and I walked in. “You still look awful,” I said.

“I’ll survive,” he said. “But you’re in trouble.”

“Yeah?” I felt my hackles rise and wanted to growl. “With who?”

“Katie had to go out last night to feed, to make up for the blood loss. Between what that bastard Leo took, and what she gave back to me—before she fed—she was depleted. She won’t be up early tonight, and she won’t be feeling too well when she does rise. So if you have anything to tell her, you might want to run it by me first.”

Confused, I said, “And all this has to do with someone being mad at me?”

He said, pointedly, “Katie told you to be here by dawn to report. You didn’t show.”

Crap. I remembered that, now. “At sunrise I was on the other side of the river, the Jean Lafitte park, on the trail of the rogue vamp. Unlike Katie, I can’t turn into a bat and fly home.”

Troll chuckled, the sound oddly sad. “Don’t let Katie hear you say stuff like that. She hates the myth that vampires turn into bats. In fact, with the exception of a few fiction writers who happened to get it right, she’s pretty pissed at everything the media has portrayed about her kind.” He turned on lights as he led me through the house. “So. Bat talk aside, you want to tell me what you discovered?” I filled him in, succinct to the point of brevity, with no mention of Beast, of course. He said, “Huh,” when I finished, and pointed to the dining room. I figured I was dismissed and went in.

The girls were gathered around the table again, all of them looking sleepy eyed and a bit wan. Especially Rachael, who was lounging back in her chair. There was a bandage on the inside of her elbow at the antecubital vein. Dark circled beneath her eyes and she was sipping something neon green through a straw in a crystal glass. It looked and smelled like Gatorade. Not the sort of drink that belonged at the formal table with all the silver, china, and crystal. I’d never understand the rich and dead or their servants.

Miz A appeared, her wrinkled face seeming more creased but smiling in welcome. I resisted kissing her cheek as if she were an old auntie, which was a weird impulse and could get me slapped, or worse, and said, “I don’t guess I could have the meal I didn’t get last night?”

A smile repositioned the wrinkles all over her face. “Tonight’s steak is bourbon pepper, but you may order it served rare if you like.”

“I like. And if it’s not asking too much, I’d also like a baked potato and iced tea. No wine.” She nodded.

When she left the room, tottering on legs that seemed weak beneath the long skirts, I looked over the “girls.” I needed to find a way to get them to open up to me. Sorta like I had once needed to get a house full of twelve-year-old girls to open up to me, when I was first sent to the children’s home. I wondered if bonding would be any easier now that I was twenty-nine—according to my totally fictitious though totally legal birth certificate—and spoke English.

Tia smiled sweetly if a bit sleepily at me and ate something green from a salad plate. The silk robe was gone. Tonight she wore a silk lace bustier that shoved her boobs up proudly, an opal necklace nestling in her cleavage.

My gaze settled on Christie, who was wearing about fifty tiny braids—a lot like the way I often wore my hair—and a face full of silver in her eyebrows, nose, ears, even around her collarbone. The silver rings had chains running through them, connecting her nostrils to her ears and points between, all dangling little bells. Bells everywhere, even up under her peekaboo bra, which had the cups sealed with latches tonight. Thank God. The girl, who couldn’t be more than twenty, was wearing a dog collar with wicked-looking spikes. Christie shook her braids back when she took a bite of salad, and the bells tinkled.

To fit in, I tasted the salad, mixed greens with lots of spices in the dressing. Something bacon-y, which I instantly loved. “Christie,” I said, chewing, “I like the bells.”

She raised the mismatched rings in each brow, considering. “Lucky you.”

I laughed. Nope. It wasn’t going to be easier now that I was grown. I hadn’t fit in then, with a bunch of orphaned or semiorphaned girls, and I wouldn’t fit in now with a bunch of . . . girls. “Christie, you and Rachael. Tell me what you know about the vamps in this town. Especially the council.”

The girls looked at each other and at me. “Not much about the politics,” Christie said.

“Does Leo visit any of you? For . . .” I didn’t know how to phrase it and I just stopped.

Christie laughed, the sound taunting. “For blood? Sex? Or maybe combo entertainment, fun and games and dinner afterward?”

I managed to keep a blush under control. “Yeah.” I stuffed in another bite of greens and broke off a piece of roll. It was flaky and sweet and left traces of butter on my fingers.

“We all get a visit from Leo when we first come here,” Rachael said, her vivid eyes on me and her voice toneless. “He gets first try. He calls it the dark right of kings.”

I had heard of the divine right of kings, where a monarch had the right to deflower any virgin or use any woman he fancied, often on the night before her wedding. It was archaic rape, similar to the slave owner visiting his slave in her cabin, or having her brought to him. No way to say no. Rape in any form had always brought out the—I half smiled at the thought—the Beast in me. Rachael looked at Christie when I smiled. I didn’t need Beast’s nose to tell me Leo scared the crap out of Rachael. Leo Pellissier was shooting to the top of my list of people I didn’t like. I needed to interview the bloodsucker. My grin twisted in grim satisfaction. “I need to talk to old Leo, but since I burned him with a silver cross yesterday, I doubt he’ll be agreeable.”

Rachael looked at me, nervous laughter burbling in her chest. “You burned him? And he didn’t kill you?”

“He thought about it. Katie healed him. If she hadn’t, I might’ve had to stake him.”

The table went silent. No one moved. Every eye was on me.This sort of thing had happened occasionally when I was in the home, when I said something that came out weird. I looked at the little witch, her white skin and jet-black hair contrasting in the candlelight. This girl had touched me on some level the first time I saw her. I had felt a subtle connection, which had to be a mistake, didn’t it? But it was there, nonetheless, and my voice was softer when I said, “Bliss, right? What did Leo say when he . . .” The correct word eluded me.

“You have trouble with this, don’t you,” she said. It wasn’t mocking. The tone was gentle, almost pitying. “With what we do, I mean.”

I almost said, “You could be with a coven learning how to do witch stuff,” but I caught myself. Just in case she didn’t know what she was. “Where are you from?”

Bliss lifted a shoulder, and I realized she was wearing a silky gauze top that laced across the front like an old-timey corset if it had been put on backward. Her small breasts were pushed up and fully visible through the cloth, a necklace dangling between them. Suddenly I felt like a voyeur. “I was raised in foster care, so that means I’m from everywhere and nowhere.”

So that meant she might not know she was a witch. Katie knew, didn’t she? Couldn’t vamps smell witch? I’d have to ask. “I have trouble with it, yeah.” I looked around the table, making eye contact. We had finished our salads, and I didn’t have to be told that the meal was more silent than usual. Without even volunteering that I’m a predator, I make people wary.

“Any of you have an idea who the rogue vamp is? Maybe someone’s been acting different? Maybe something weird about one of Katie’s vamp customers? She has vamp customers, right?” They all nodded, and from the force of it, I gathered that Katie had a lot of vamp customers. “A vamp acting weirder than usual? Even someone who smells different?”

“They all smell weird,” Bliss said.

“No, they don’t,” a dark-skinned woman said. “But you’d have to define weird in totally different ways to cover some of Katie’s clients.” I was pretty sure her name was Najla.

“How do they smell?” I asked.

The other girls looked at Bliss. She said, “Like old leaves. Sometimes mold. If they haven’t bathed in a while they can smell like old blood. You know. Like a woman in her period. I have a really good sense of smell,” she insisted.

I’ll bet you do. I could tell this had been a sore point with the others. “Do any of them smell sick? Infected?”

“No.” Bliss glanced around the table. “I know you think I’m crazy, but they all smell.”

Before any of them could reply, I said, “Najla, right?” to the dark-skinned girl. She had an on-again, off-again accent that I couldn’t place, but then accents weren’t my strength. Like Bliss, I was better at scents. “Let’s talk weird. First, where are you from? Wait,” I said as the girls laughed and Najla narrowed her eyes at me. “That didn’t come out right. What I meant was, I want to hear about weird and vamps, but first, I’d like to know where you’re from.”

“None ’a your business,” she said.

“Katie says it is,” Miz A said as she shuffled back into the room. She was pushing a cart that smelled of spices, charcoal, and meat. Beast rumbled appreciatively. “Anything she wants to know, you tell her.”

Najla tossed her head. “My parents and I emigrated here from Mozambique when I was four.” I rotated my fingers, giving her a little tell-me-more gesture, and she said, “From a place called Namaponda. You might find it on a map. If the map was big enough.”

“And your parents?”

“Dead.” When I waited, she grudgingly said, “Car crash when I was fifteen. Katie took me in. Don’t look at me like that. I was turning tricks on the street to buy food. She brought me in, made me finish high school before she would let me work. Tried to send me to college. But I was good at making men happy.” Whatever she saw on my face made her bristle. “I want to retire before I’m forty. What other job can you name where a girl fresh out of high school can pull down two hundred K a year and retire in less than twenty years? Name me one.”

“Modeling. Acting. Music business.” Grudgingly I added, “If you’re lucky.”

Najla nodded emphatically. “I never had a lucky day in my life except the day Katie found me. I got close onto a mil in stocks and bonds and gold. I’ll have two mil, easy, in five more years, with compounding interest and dividends, assuming the market goes where I think it will.”

I was shocked. Two million for turning tricks? Najla laughed. “I can see it now. You think a girl should work hard and retire at sixty-five. That’s bullshit.”

Miz A slapped Najla on the shoulder as she set a plate in front of her. “Miss Katie don’ allow dirty talk at the table.”

Najla rubbed her shoulder. “Sorry,” she mumbled. Miz A put a plate in front of me. The steak hung off at ten o’clock and four o’clock and leaked bloody juices into the trough of the china and onto a larger plate beneath. The potato was stuffed with all sorts of goodies, including bacon and sour cream. I smiled, my mouth watering. “Thank you. This looks wonderful.”

“Nearly two pound of Black Angus, yeah. Tom say you like meat.”

“Tom is my hero. So are you. So is the cook.”

Miz A chuckled and finished serving the girls. I had enough etiquette training to know I had to wait until we were all served before I dug in. And enough self-restraint to resist Beast, who woke up at the scent and wanted me to eat the meat with my hands. “You may eat,” Miz A said. I watched and picked up the proper fork and the serrated knife. And cut into the steak.

When I put the first bite into my mouth I groaned. The girls all looked at me. “Sorry,” I said as I chewed. “This is the best piece of meat I ever put in my mouth.” Which made the girls break up and dig into their own meals, laughter reflecting off the walls like tinkling silver.

Inadvertently, I might have just made friends. Bordello humor. Who’d a thunk it?