Blood Trade: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (23 page)

Bobby said, “There’s a little room with a table and liquor downstairs.” He looked at Charly as if to make sure she was breathing. “I’ll go take a bath and put on my pj’s. Then I’ll make sure Charly is still okay. Okay?”

“Okay,” Soul and I said together. We stood in the hall as Bobby went to his room and closed the door. Within seconds we could hear water gurgling through the old pipes in the even older house. Without discussion, we went to the wet bar on the lower level, as if Bobby’s word had made it so.

The bar was more walk-through than actual room, with doors on all four walls to the dining room, butler’s pantry, wine closet, and billiards room. The walls were antique wood with a patinated copper bar, soft lighting, modern fridge, blender, ice maker, and bottles, bottles everywhere, and not a drop to drink, as far as I was concerned. For me, liquor was no flavor and all burn, and since the alcohol did nothing for me intoxication-wise, it had no value at all.

Soul closed the doors and lit a candle on a small round table tucked in a corner between two doorways, and sat in a chair. I slid a hip on a bar stool and poured a large glass of water, drinking it down fast. I had no idea when I’d last drunk anything, but it had been before we left for the hospital. I poured another glass as Soul settled herself and turned off the lights, leaving only the single flame as illumination. I went still as she closed her eyes, not wanting to distract her.

I focused in with Beast-sight, and though they were weak, I saw her magics. They were a soft, mutating glow hovering almost out of sight, as if contained beneath her skin, and leaking only the barest minimum to the surface. They were more an iridescence than the intense hues of Molly’s magic. Whatever she was, Soul wasn’t a witch. Her magics were more like the magics of the outclan priestess, Bethany Salazar y Medina. Bethany was a black-skinned shaman from Africa, and was an accomplished healer for humans and blood-servants and vampires, and I’d take Misha to her before I’d let the child die, no matter what Bruiser’s data on ALL had said about the healing power of vamp blood on leukemia. Bethany was nutso, but she was powerful.

The candle wavered in the small room, moving with Soul’s breathing, in and out, back and forth. The shadows seemed to thicken in the corners of the room, and the glow seemed to thin and lift from Soul’s flesh. Her lips were moving, but no sound emerged, and she kept her eyes closed as she raised both hands to the candle flame. “Where?” she breathed, and she dropped in a hair. The flame raced up from root to tip with a sizzle of sound, a flare of brightness, and an awful stench. “Where?” she said again, and repeated the action, adding to the reek in the room. “Where?” She burned the final hair.

Her magics rose from her skin to coalesce into a single thread, twining up with the stinking smoke, straight for the ceiling twelve feet overhead. But three feet from the copper-coffered ceiling, the smoke angled hard right and shot out of the room.

“Your friend is alive,” Soul said without opening her eyes. Pointing, she said, “That bearing. Within ten miles.”

It was crappy directions, but it was better than we had before. I spotted a pencil under the bar and marked the spot on the wall where the smoke disappeared. “All we need now is a compass,” I muttered.

And maybe for me to transform into a bloodhound again.

Ugly dog. Good nose,
Beast thought instantly.
Good nose for finding mother of sick kit
. Which was high praise from Beast for any other animal. She hated it when I shifted into other creatures.

From upstairs at the back of the house I heard a thin wail start, the scream of a terrified child. “Nononononononononono!” It was Bobby, not Charly. I snapped open a door, hearing it ram into the wall, and raced to the second floor.

CHAPTER 12

The Idea of You Shackled
and Bound Is Appealing

Bobby was standing in the middle of his bedroom, dressed in superhero red, white, and blue pajamas. His eyes were open but unfocused, and his wail rose and fell like a metronome, not sounding even remotely human. He was reaching toward the window, the fingers of both hands pointing into the dark. I raced there, but when I looked out, there was nothing except the ground below and the twisting limbs of an old live oak. The night had clouded over and rain had started to fall, a melodious patter on the winter-hard ground and in the stiff green tree leaves.

In the night-dark window I saw Soul reflected, her silk clothing the blue of the ocean, her silver hair like storm clouds. “What did your friend say about Bobby?” Her voice cut through the wails as I turned to her. “That he was a divining rod?”

“Dowsing rod,” I said, over Bobby’s unbreaking scream. He didn’t pause in the awful sound, not even to breathe, but continued the wail with each inhalation as well as the exhalations. I reached for Bobby but paused before I touched him. I didn’t know what to do. His doorway filled with the others, Eli and his brother, Bodat, Esmee in her nightgown, and, in the shadows, Rick, wearing all black, like the cat he was.

I turned to Soul. “What do I do?”

She shook her head, but said firmly, “Whatever feels right.”

I completed my reach and took Bobby’s hands in both of mine. A shock detonated through me, intense magical energies throwing me to the floor. Beast batted my mind with a paw, claws extended, catching the magic that coursed through me and tossing it away. The breath I took ached as if I had breathed fire. My eyesight cleared and I realized I was on my knees, Bobby’s hands still in mine. He was watching me, his gaze full of trust. “Thank you, Jane,” he said. “It hurts when it happens.”

“What,” I croaked, coughed, and tried again. “What happened? What was that?”

“It was magic calling. It wakes me up sometimes.”

“Of course,” Soul breathed. “Dowsing rod. He pivots toward magic; he followed my spell. I am betting that we will discover that the finding flame I used and Bobby’s hands both point to the exact direction. The direction of Misha.”

I forced myself to my feet and hugged Bobby. “Get in bed, little man. You have babysitting duty tomorrow.”

“While you rescue Misha?” he asked, hope pulling his face up in childlike joy.

“I hope so. That’s the plan as it stands now.” I pointed to the tall bed in the corner, the sheets and linens folded back like at a fancy hotel.

Bobby ducked his head in understanding and crawled in, closing his eyes. “Night, Jane.”

“Night, Bobby,” I said.

•   •   •

None of us had slept, and there would be no rest tonight either. We needed to follow up on the few clues we had—and I needed an update on it all.

I entered the dining room, where an impromptu meeting was in progress, my favorite kind of meeting, one with mounds of food. There was thinly sliced rare beef; some kind of fowl carcass with a smaller mound of bird meat that had been pulled from the naked bones; a plate of pale, smoked, thinly sliced cheese; interwoven avocado and tomato slices; varieties of lettuce, pickles, and assorted green sandwich fixings. Even hot peppers and two kinds of onions, which, by the smell in the room, were huge favorites of the Kid and Bodat. Suddenly I craved all the green stuff, a decidedly weird feeling until I remembered that I hadn’t shifted into my Beast in ages. My human body required a more green-based diet than my animal one did. I smeared mayo onto rye bread and stacked the avocado and tomato, pickles, lettuces, and the bird meat, which turned out to be smoked goose. I constructed and listened as the Kid recapped what we had so far. I even put fruit on my plate.

I also ignored Rick and Soul, concentrating on my own people, or tried to. But Rick was dressed in black jeans and a long-sleeved tee, sitting in a corner chair, one leg drawn up and his bare foot hanging off the chair seat. Bare feet. I loved a man’s bare feet. They held such promise. I leaned against the wall, sandwich in both hands, and bit into it. I moaned softly, closing my eyes, seeing Rick on the dark of my lids, spread out on my bed, his abs clinching as he laughed at something I’d said. He—and the sandwich—were both totally delicious.

I was in so much trouble.

“We have a general direction for Misha and indications that she’s alive,” Eli said, bringing me back to the room. I focused on his words and chewed, paying no attention to Soul’s intense scrutiny. “As the distance from this house increases, the directional arc of error increases, but close in, it isn’t too bad.” He laid a paper Natchez city map on the table; it was marked with a red triangle, the apex at Esmee’s house. The triangle widened to include most of the old uptown, the riverfront, and, oddly enough, most of the city across the river: Vidalia, Louisiana. I looked up at Eli and he inclined his head, agreeing that it was a coincidence worth investigating if my clues in Natchez continued to be staked.

“Yeah. My bro, the ace Ranger, has a direction based on Soul’s spell and Bobby’s dowsing. Bodat has contacts in county records that point us in the direction of properties that were owned by Silandre and her cohorts in the past, under different names, and then were inherited”—he made little bunny-ear quotations in the air around the word—“prior to the sixties, when the vamps came out of the closet. We’ll narrow them down to locations within the arc that Bobby and Soul established in their direction hunts.”

Eli took over. “The properties were passed on through the inheritance laws to Silandre herself, of course, but under different names to protect the vampire identity. The different names opened up an entirely new set of research opportunities, and the boys have been compiling and cross-referencing the names.”

“Which,” the Kid hesitated and glanced up at his brother, revising whatever he’d been about to say. “Which revealed past—” He stopped again, and finished with, “Past
relationships
between Silandre and that Esther vamp.” I figured he’d been about to say something crass about them in bed together. Again.

Bodat said, “Yeah, she went both ways, dude—AC/DC. Girls and guys.” I wanted to slap the back of his head, but Eli beat me to it. “Bodat reared back in his chair. “Dude, what was that for? Whadid I say?”

“Stop with the comments.
Dude
,” Eli said. “Ladies present.”

Bodat looked at me and shook his head in confusion, clearly not putting the word
lady
into the same column as me. And then he looked at Esmee and said, “Oh. Like, sorry, uh, ma’am. Sorry.” He looked over his shoulder at Eli and said, “You coulda just said, dude.”

I hadn’t really paid attention to Bodat except for registering his pizza scent, and I wasn’t surprised that he was pudgy around the middle, with soft arms and droopy flesh, old before his time through lack of exercise and improper diet. On the other hand, the Kid was toned and fit, his arms showing muscles through the T-shirt material—the result of being forced into an exercise plan and better diet by his Ranger brother and his depressed housemate (me) for several months. “Anyway,” Bodat said, “we also looked into them hanging with Zoltar and Narkis, and we got nada. No such luck. Other stuff is more interesting, like a relationship between Silandre and Leo Pellissier.”

“Silandre and Leo?” I asked around my sandwich, trying to cover my mouth.

“Yeah,” the Kid said. “Silandre and Leo had a . . . a
thing
before the Civil War, and she ran a . . . a brothel”—he smiled his delight in finding a word other than
whorehouse
—“here in Natchez for his uncle Amaury. When Leo took over as his uncle’s heir, he gave her the house.”

“Our city was rife with prostitution back in the day,” Esmee said, sounding almost proud, crossing her ankles and lacing her fingers around her belly. “By some counts there were over a hundred catering to the plantation owners, the dockworkers and bargemen from the north, and visiting Yankees. Quite the moneymakers, they were. My great-great-grandfather owned such an institution in Under the Hill. I should look this up in the family histories to be sure of the address. I do believe it might still be standing.”

Eli’s brows went up at the pride in her voice.

Esmee added, “Oh yes. Early travelers described our fair town variously as ‘a gambler’s paradise, a sinkhole of iniquity, and a resort of the damned.’ That is a quote, though I don’t recall who said it, precisely.” She preened. “My children are horrified at the histories. But the young tend to be such ninnies. Don’t you agree?”

Smothering a grin, I chewed, thought, and decided not to reply to the question. “Hmmm. Vamp squabbles and wars and romances can go back for dozens of human generations, practically lost in time. But for them it’s all like yesterday and they still get mighty unhappy about past slights and fights and betrayals. Okay. Soooo. Leo may know stuff about Silandre.”

“I am quite certain that my master knows much about many of his sworn Mithrans.”

The scent hit me. I whirled to the doorway, in the middle of swallowing, and nearly choked. I had to put down my sandwich or drop it.
Bruiser.

Speak of betrayal. Speak of the devil.

The memory rammed through me. Bruiser holding me down, letting Leo drink from me. My heart thudded painfully. I forced myself to inhale slowly. His scent filled my nostrils. It was . . . not the same, not
quite
the same, as I remembered. And I didn’t know why.

The energies and pheromones in the room stuttered and realigned yet again. Rick dropped his leg to the floor. He was professionally interested in the MOC’s primo. He was personally interested in my reaction to the primo. Soul sat forward. The boys dropped their heads and shoulders and as if looking at tablet screens, studied the rest of us beneath lowered brows. Eli was watching my reactions, amused. Which ticked me off.

The teens were whispering, “Dude, isn’t that MOC’s top human blood meal?”

And, “Be polite, man. He’s like,
right here
.”

Soul swept her hair back. She was interested in Bruiser in both professional and very personal ways. Her nostrils fluttered. She liked the way he
smelled
. Beast rose in me and I felt my eyes do that glow thing, which meant she was looking out at the world through me.
Mates,
she thought at me, struggling for control of my mind.
Will fight for mates.