Fox in the Quarter (3 page)

“How about this?” I said, moving closer to him and toying with a button on his shirt. Who knows why I was in such a mood to practice my feminine wiles. “I’ll get this case solved tonight, or at the latest tomorrow night, and if I run into trouble, I won’t bother you or yours with it. Then if I’m killed, you can tell everyone ‘I told her so?’”

He bared even white teeth without a hint of fang. “Woman.”

“Do we have a deal?”

He puffed out his chest in a display of breathing when he didn’t need to. I had the impression Silvano tried to seem a bit more human to appeal to me. As if I had such a love of humans. “I want to help you. I don’t want to see you killed.”

“That’s very sweet of you, Silvano, and I greatly appreciate it. Aren’t you meddling in my affairs by coming here tonight? After all, I’m not one of your people, even if I am vampire.”

All fake emotion disappeared, and he was a statue. “Very well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t.”

M
y tracking
by scent led me to Bourbon Street, to a restaurant that served Chinese food. This didn’t surprise me. After all, if I visited a foreign country, I imagined I would be searching out the nearest pizza or burger place after a few days. Okay, salad, because a girl’s habits of watching her figure… No, wait, I’m a vampire.

In reality, I stood outside the restaurant thinking about myself as a normal living human. Yuki wasn’t inside the restaurant. Sometimes I fell into the habit of imagining a different life just as short-term diversion. As I approached the door, petal soft feet touched my shoulder, and since the feeling wasn’t accompanied by a scent, I figured Kit had returned.

We entered and paused just inside the entrance to scope out the place.

“Rue,” came a high-pitched screech from across the room. Georgia, a human who knew I was a vampire and had latched onto me no matter what I said to her, came hurtling across the room. “What are you doing here? Surely, you didn’t come to eat!”

I pealed her off my arm. “Keep your voice down, Georgia. We would like a table, actually, somewhere I can see the entire restaurant.”

Georgia looked behind me. “We? Never mind. I’m glad to see you. Want to hang out later?”

“I’ll be sleeping later.” I couldn’t help glancing at her hair. Georgia’s hair was fried with chemicals, dead I’d say because she dyed it way too often. The colors were always something outrageous. Today, she had gone with forest green. Maybe it had been a accident this time. Since I kept running into her at various restaurants, I wondered if she also kept losing her jobs because of her habit. I had never dared ask for fear of getting myself caught in a web of conversation I couldn’t escape.

“I get off at eleven thirty,” she told me. “That’s plenty of time for us to have some fun.”

“Georgia, I’m working, and I have to take advantage of the night. You understand, don’t you?” While I spoke to her, I surveyed the faces of the patrons. Several sets of eyes locked onto me, but I was used to that as well. None so far seemed suspicious. “That table looks good.”

I nodded to the spot I wanted, and Kit stirred on my shoulder. “Is she here?”

“No.”

“No?” Georgia said, thinking I was talking to her. “Not this one? What about—”

“This is fine.” I sat down and accepted a menu she offered, probably from habit. “I thought you were a cook.”

“Desperate times, my dear. A woman has to pay her bills. Red wine?”

I agreed about the bills. Georgia had had a comfortable living before she found her husband was cheating, and in a fit of well,
something
, had given up everything. The way she flitted about as if she were on top of the world, I wasn’t sure if she regretted her actions.

“Yes, thanks.”

She finally let me alone so I could take in my surroundings. I sat quiet and opened my senses. Listening to conversations brought me nothing of importance. Yet, Yuki’s scent stopped cold in this restaurant. Were there some underground dealings here? I tried sensing if magic had been cast, but I had no idea how to know that, other than possibly scent or vibrations.

“Kit, can you tell if there are magical beings here or if they have cast any magic here recently?”

He made a small noise of impatience and stirred from one shoulder to the other. While his sharp eyes took in every movement of the people surrounding us, I didn’t get the impression he learned anymore than I did. “I can’t interact well with the physical realm. I can’t smell at all or track. I can’t sense more than a few feet in front of me.”

I recalled how he had calmly unlocked the hotel room door for us and not been affected by the stench or presence of the man hiding there.

“So you’re not actually here in this restaurant?”

“I exist here, but most of me is at home.”

“I don’t know how that’s possible.”

“Accept that it’s true.”

A man walked in from somewhere in the back of the restaurant. He wore a white suit and black shirt with a gray tie. I winced at the outfit, but at least he was handsome. Green eyes and blond hair, he walked with what I had heard my son Jake call swagger. A quick sniff told me he was human, but there was more to him. A bracelet the lanky man wore on his wrist—a gold anchor hanging from a gold chain—cast an odd glow. When I scrubbed a hand over my eyes and looked again, the illumination was gone.

The man worked the room, grinning and chatting with the patrons. Everyone seemed to know him, and women fluttered and blushed at his attention. I wrinkled my nose when he looked in my direction. He flushed and turned to greet the couple two tables away.

Georgia reappeared with my wine, and I thanked her and pretended to take a sip. She started to drop into the seat across from me, but spotted the popinjay and froze.

“Do you know him, Georgia?”

She offered a nervous giggle. “Kind of. He’s my boss.”

“He owns this restaurant?”

“His family does. I guess you could say he’s one of the managers, and I better not let him catch me sitting around chatting rather than working.” While she said this, she seemed hesitant to walk away. The woman tried desperately to look both busy and stay beside me. I decided not to tell her she was failing since I had other questions.

“Georgia, can you see that bracelet he’s wearing?”

She craned her neck to see. “Oh, isn’t it gorgeous, honey? I’m not big on jewelry,”—this claim was punctuated by the rattling of the sizable voodoo charm necklace around her neck as it bounced against an old Mardi Gras piece—“but I wouldn’t mind owning something like it. Must have cost a pretty penny.”

“Does it glow?” I asked then.

She frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind. You better get back to work. I don’t want to get you fired.”

“All right, but I’ll stop by your apartment at the end of my shift, okay? We can find something to do.”

I gave up trying to discourage her. At last the man made it over to my table, and he flashed me a set of perfect pearly whites. “Hello, I haven’t seen you here before, or I would have remembered. I’m Keith, and you are?”

I opened my mouth to speak and started to reach for the hand he extended to shake when the bracelet glowed again. The anchor moved to flatten against his inner wrist, and a symbol appeared on his skin in brilliant blue before it faded. I gaped in amazement, but Keith jerked away as if I had burned him. We hadn’t even made contact.

“You’re not welcome here,” he whispered, the flirtatious nature he had oozed a moment ago gone. “Get out.”

I sat as still as a statue and then raised my glass slowly to my lips. The small sip hit the back of my throat like lightning and dropped as a stone into my stomach. Somehow, I kept a straight face. “It’s interesting you think you can make me leave when this is clearly not a private residence.”

He paled and gripped the back of the chair across from me. When he spoke, his voice cracked. “V-vampire?”

I offered my smile, which was becoming famous for looking more threatening than inviting. The weapon worked wonders, and the man began to pant. His nervous gaze darted around the restaurant, and I noticed several other humans come to full alertness. All of their heartbeats picked up so much it was almost deafening. Their emotions ranged from nervous to terrified to even excited. That last one startled me.

Keith raised his chin. “I’m not afraid to kill you right here and expose you for what you are.”

“Really?” I tilted my head to the side. Anyone looking on might see an average height man with a decent if a tad thin build threatening tiny little me who scarcely made it past his shoulder in height. Yet, he must be kidding if he thought he could get the better of me on any given day. His family’s money must have made him delusional. “Let’s say you could realize this absurd dream. You would be dead before sunrise, and every person in here would have their memories wiped. That is, if your friends don’t join you in the afterlife.”

He ground his teeth.

I raised the glass again to my lips but came to my senses just in time. “Now, then. I’m looking for a young woman. She’s eighteen, Japanese. Her name is Yukiko Mori, and this restaurant is probably the last place she was seen. We can discuss it here, or we can talk in your office.”

Rage burned in his eyes. Decisions and consequences tumbled over each other in his head, no doubt, and at last he nodded to me with a brief look at his men. “This way.”

Keith snapped his fingers, and a waitress scurried up to clear away my wine glass. I followed the human toward the back. I wasn’t sure how things would go, so I was on guard. What I found most interesting was that just as the man had neared my table and before the symbol on his wrist activated, Kit had left me.

K
eith’s office
turned out to be a nicely appointed area, far bigger than one would assume a restaurant’s manager would enjoy. Perhaps I should categorize it more like a private back room, and all the cozy couches and the bar, complete with a private bartender didn’t change my first impression.

I followed Keith into the room, and another three men entered after us and shut and locked the door. Since they were all human, I didn’t worry that they were built like refrigerators. The leader, who had been walking ahead of me, stopped and turned, moving too close.

“What do you want with her?” he demanded. “Better yet, who sent you?”

Wow, this was starting to sound like a bad B movie. I raised a hand to give him a friendly push. When I say friendly I mean, I resisted cracking his ribs in the process. What I got was another surprise. This night was shaping up into a real party. I said Keith was blond with green eyes. Well, his disguise slipped when I touched him. Rather, his glamour rippled, and I saw past the illusion.

Squinting, I walked full circle around the man. Whatever he had used to hide his true appearance had fallen back into place, so he looked the same as in the dining room. “You’re Asian,” I said.

He grabbed hold of the anchor on his bracelet and held it out toward me. “Back off, vampire.”

The other men moved nearer, but they seemed to be holding back, waiting for his signal.

“Is that like a cross or whatever?” I reached for the anchor, but I wasn’t actually going to touch it. I was ignorant, but I wasn’t stupid. The jewelry held power in some way, and it had revealed to him that I wasn’t human, if not that I was a vampire. My words had exposed that fact to him.

“Get away from her, Habiki,” one of the men said. “They move fast, and that bracelet’s—”

“Shut up, you fool!” Keith, or I supposed I should call him Habiki since his friend revealed his real identity, did follow his buddy’s advice. A click sounded in the room, and I glanced over to find one of the other men had brought out a gun. He aimed it at me while he moved closer to Habiki.

I held up my hands. “Now, guys. Let’s not be foolish. Your customers are going to hear the noise. Someone will call the police, a lot of explaining…paperwork…”

My mouth shot off, but up until now no one had taken a volley at me. I knew I was fast, but how fast was a bullet? Was I faster, and if I wasn’t, how badly would it hurt? My thoughts turned even darker when I began imagining all kinds of horrors, so I tried to keep my mind focused on the problem.

“If you fellows will give me the girl, I will be out of your hair.” Deciding my hands being up gave off an air of fear, I raised one to my short-cropped hair and raked through it. Then I struck a negligent pose. “By the way, bullets can’t kill me. Just thought I’d let you know.”

The big man wiggled the gun at me. “Silver bullets can.”

I smirked. “Nice try, buddy, but those aren’t silver.”

Habiki grabbed the gun from his friend and cocked the trigger.
“These
bullets will bring you down.”

That’s when the blue light appeared again, at the end of the barrel when he fired. I had time to realize the gun included a silencer. Saw that in B movies as well. The bullet tore through the air, but I ducked to the side. A thrill raced through me to learn I was indeed faster than a bullet.

Fire raged through my shoulder and radiated out across my chest. If I didn’t know better, I would think I was having a heart attack or that I was shot! I glanced down and blinked at the hole in my cute new top. Blood strained all around it and was spreading outward.

I cried out and fell to my knees, head bowed. Note to self, getting shot hurts! Instead of the pain decreasing or at least dulling while I went into shock or something useful, it grew as if the bullet were trying to burrow all around my shoulder. Surely, that was impossible.

Above me, Habiki gave an order for the others to get out of there. I forced my head up. “No you don’t. You’re not going anywhere.”

As I wobbled to one foot, the bullet reactivated. I choked in pain and fell again. The thing needed to come out. For want of anything better to do, I shoved my fingers through the hole and into my shoulder. The bullet was spinning, and when I grabbed hold of it, the metal burned my fingertips. Somehow, I managed to get it out and dropped it onto the floor. More blue light illuminated tiny symbols etched in the bullet. The light winked out, the spinning stopped, and the symbols faded almost to invisibility.

“What are you doing, Habiki? Shoot her again!”

No way was I suffering like that a second time. I zipped out of the way of the shots fired, but each bullet had a life of its own. They followed me when I darted like tiny heat-seeking missiles. I batted them away using metal trays for serving drinks.

When the men found that I wasn’t going to be taken down so easily, they ran to the door. Too bad a very angry werewolf flattened it before they could get there. Nathan bounded in, shifted into wolf form and growling and snarling. I wondered how many humans he had shown himself to before he got there.

Nathan took out the first enemy, and from the way he shook the man between powerful jaws, I wasn’t sure if the man would get up any time soon.

“Nathan, don’t kill them!”

I zipped over to him much slower than usual with the shoulder injury. Still, I was in time to toss a pillow into the beast’s jaws rather than the human’s throat. Nathan showered us all with stuffing. He tossed the ruined pillow aside and leaped at Habiki and me. I caught him around the neck and thrust him back.

“Darn you, Nathan. Calm down!”

My arm muscles ached attempting to keep him under control. Nathan wiggled and wrestled in my hold. When he turned those sharp teeth toward my arm, I cracked him over the head, and the puppy yelped.

“Now, if we question—” I began.

Habiki threw what looked like a super ball onto the carpet, and as soon as it hit, an explosion of scent filled the air—a disgusting scent—a smell that gagged both Nathan and I and left us quivering on the floor. Thank goodness the scent didn’t last long. As quickly as it appeared, it dissipated, but Habiki and all of his men were gone.

I climbed to my feet and stumbled to the front of the restaurant. Not one of the customers or the staff was anywhere in sight. For a moment, I worried about Georgia, but with my body weakened and my sense of smell damaged for the moment, I couldn’t help her.

I walked back to the private room to Nathan. Now the foolish beast sat as if he were a good and well-behaved doggy, the fraud. I put my hand on my hip. “Where is that other man, the one you were chasing?”

Nathan ducked his head.

“Honestly, Nathan, you can’t kill humans. You know better than that.”

I sensed the heat of the wolf’s anger lessening, and soon Nathan stood before me in his human form. Rather than stare at the perfect specimen that a muscular werewolf was, I turned my head. He moved to the couch and grabbed someone’s jacket to tie around his waist. I doubted it fit well since he was so big, but I managed to resist finding out for myself.

“He’s not dead,” Nathan said when he was decent. “I lost him.”

“That’s impossible. You can track down anyone.”

He grinned. “Thanks, but they’re using runes.”

“They’re what?”

He rubbed his nose hard, and I assumed that sped up his healing process. Then he squinted at the floor. One of the metal trays had managed to catch a bullet. Nathan picked it out.

“Be careful. That thing burned my fingers,” I warned him.

“Don’t worry. It’s dead now.” He strode closer so I could get a better look. “See these symbols? They’re called runes. It’s a type of magic the humans and some others are able to use. The thing is it’s pretty specialized.”

“What’s that mean?”

He shrugged his big shoulders, and I wanted to sigh for old times sake. “I mean, they have to inscribe onto the item what they want to happen.”

My eyes widened. “You mean like having the bullets act like missiles?”

“Is that what they did?” Nathan let out a low growl at sight of my wound, but I scratched behind his ear to keep him calm. He was a pretty protective kind of guy, which was one of the things I liked about him. However, it was also his weakness. Nathan’s anger could set off at the drop of a hat, and he would be useless for anything other than a killing machine.

“The bullets and that stink bomb.”

We both grimaced at the painful memory, but then I was distracted when I sensed Kit had returned. Obviously since Nathan didn’t react to the little fox sitting on the bar, I knew he couldn’t see him. I decided not to talk to Kit either because Nathan was too unstable right now.

“Why don’t you go find some clothes? And don’t shift again tonight. I’ll go catch a quick meal—
alone.”

Nathan looked at me oddly for the emphasis I put on my words, but they were meant for Kit. My friend never tried to go with me to feed. As much as Nathan accepted and cared for me as a friend, his kind thought mine were disgusting when it came to eating, and it was kind of mutual.

“Did you lose a lot of blood?” He tried to look down my blouse, but I smacked his hand away.

“No, but any loss triggers my hunger. I’m hardly hanging on here. We’ll meet back at my apartment in half hour?”

“Is that enough time?”

“I’ll make it enough. I don’t know what those men will do to Yuki. We have to get moving, but I will be a danger to her and them if I don’t feed. And hopefully you didn’t give the restaurant patrons a show tonight!”

He coughed and rubbed his neck then looked around. “Oh heck, I guess we have some explaining to do.”

“What?” My nose hadn’t healed all the way yet.

“The cops are coming. Violet is angry. I can feel it from here.”

I patted his back. “Good luck, my friend.”

“Rue!”

He shouted to my back as I vacated the premises as fast as my vampire abilities could take me. The night had been eventful enough without running into another werewolf who also happened to be a policewoman, who also hated vampires. Lately, I thought Violet was coming around, but we weren’t there yet. Since she and Nathan were good friends, he could handle it while I took care of my own urgent needs.