Skinwalker (17 page)

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?

I really love rock and roll

I learned little that was useful over dinner, at least not about the rogue. If I ever needed to tie up a lover and whip him, however, I had plenty of info. I think the girls just liked to see me blush.

Katie hadn't arrived by the time I finished my meal, so I left without seeing her. However, on the way out, I took a circuitous route, openly scoping out the place, and found Troll in her office. He was leaning over that ancient desk, bent over papers, his laptop turned so I couldn't see the screen. That seemed significant, so I pulled on Beast's stalking attributes and stepped into the room, silent as the predator Katie had called me.

Troll turned as I approached, which gave credence to the old legend that when a vamp willingly shares blood, some of its speed and extra-keen senses get passed along. Faster than I could focus, Troll hit a key and the screen went blank, but the man himself smiled, a welcoming expression that surprised me.

I said, “I see you removed the camera from the back fence. Any reason why Leo Pellissier would spy on Katie?”

He frowned. “Leo didn't put up that camera. He couldn't. Spying is against the Vampira Carta.”

I laughed, a sharp cough of sound. “The what?”

“The Vampira Carta.” He lounged back and I spotted the .45 on his other side, within reach. Troll was antsy or scared or something worse. I guessed that getting one's body drained of blood could do that to a guy. “What do you know of vampire history?” he asked.

“Frankly, except for finding new ways to kill them, vamps don't interest me much.”

The easy humor left his face. “In Katie's presence you use the term ‘vampire' or the more proper term, ‘Mithrans.' ‘Vamp' is insulting.”

I sat on the arm of a chair, a position that allowed me to see the doorway in my peripheral vision and Troll full on. It also gave me leverage to launch myself in any direction without a change of balance. Troll grinned at my choice as if he'd had a mental bet on it. Considering that I hadn't seen this chair before, and that I suddenly scented Katie on the air, maybe the bet was more than mental. I wondered if she was in the foyer watching on the security screens. I said, “Mithrans. As in the mystery of Mithras in ancient Roman lore?” Troll looked impressed until I said, “The whole thing is on Wikipedia, you know. Anyone can look it up. Not that the vamps and the Mithrans have been linked absolutely. Unless you just did. I might have to update the site.” I was joking, but Troll didn't seem to catch that.

He glanced at his laptop in irritation and I grinned. The real world was catching up with the vamps. Mithrans. Whatever. They couldn't like it. However, more than half of what was available about vamps in books and online was bogus, fiction, or wishful thinking, sometimes a mixture of all three. And nowhere was there an explanation of why vamps were affected by Christian symbols. It was my personal quest to find out about that, not that I'd had any luck.

“Leo's muscle planted the camera,” I said. “Bet on it.”

Troll sat back in his chair, bemused but not disagreeing, obviously wanting to ask how I knew with such certainty. I changed the topic to see what happened. “I'm going dancing tonight,” I said. “Where in the Quarter do you recommend?”

“Dancing?” He couldn't quite keep the startled tone out of his voice.

“Great way for a gal to smell out any problems in the city.” Literally. “The rogue chased down and ate a working girl last night. I'm up for seeing if it comes after me.”

“You couldn't pass for a working girl in your dreams.”

I grinned. “I clean up good. I'll drop by on my way out. Maybe you'll think of a place.”

Back at the freebie house, I streaked on dark red lipstick and wrapped my braided hair up in a turban with Beast's travel pack in the folds. I strapped three crosses around my waist so they dangled inside my skirt, hung one around my neck in plain sight, and strapped a short-bladed vamp-killer to my inner thigh, not where a dancing partner would find it unless we were doing the tango and got
real
friendly. I put two full-sized stakes into my turban and two handmade, silver-tipped, collapsible travel stakes into specially sewn pockets in my undies. The purple and teal skirt rode low on my hip bones and the peasant top rode low on my breasts, the tie open, a skin-toned jog bra beneath. Sexy, but showing nothing. The skirt whispered around my calves with each step.

I swished on a little bronzer to brighten my natural skin tone, drew on some sparkly gold eyeliner, and slipped into the new dancing shoes. In the mirror, I tested the movement of my skirt in a little
maya
hip move that looked like sex. Satisfied, I snapped off the bath light, made sure the house was secure, and closed down the laptop, standing in the dark house, thinking.

I had spent an hour in an online search into the mythos of the American Indian skinwalker, coming away with a confusing battery of images and legends. There was nothing that sounded like me, not exactly. Certainly nothing sane or free from evil.

The doorbell rang, interrupting. The house was dark and I moved through it by memory and the illumination of outside streetlights through the windows to the front door. I smelled the cigar before I saw him. The Joe. Rick. I threw the locks and opened the door, swished my skirts forward, saying, “Well. Looky what the cat dragged in.” I couldn't resist the taunt. Rick's eyes bulged at the sight of me. I was afraid I'd have to catch them and stuff them back in the sockets. I chuckled and said, “Thanks for the compliment. Lemme guess. Troll sent you over.”

“And me,” a soft voice said from the street.

I looked over the speechless Rick's shoulder and spotted his companion. She wore a short flared skirt and T-shirt, dancing shoes, flashy jewelry, and lots of makeup. “Bliss?”

“Miss Katie sent me. She said I could help?” She looked uncertain. “She gave me a week's wages to miss work.” She started to say something else and stopped. The scent of fear was faintly bitter on her skin. I had no idea why Katie had sent her to me but I didn't like it.

“It should be safe enough tonight, Bliss,” I said. “All I'm looking for is a really stinky vamp. He should smell sorta . . . decomposing.”

“A rotting vamp?” She put a hand on her hip, rings flashing and bangles clanging. “You're kidding me, right?”

“Nope. And Bliss. I'm not prying, but what do you know about your birth parents?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“It doesn't matter.” Bliss was more than a rogue vamp lure and vamp sniffer-outer. She was also Katie's eyes.

Before we left, I wrote down the address of the Cherokee elder for Rick and asked him to track down the owners of all property within three miles in any direction. It was a lot of land, and the research would keep him occupied and out of my hair, doing stuff I hated. Then I locked my door and left with the two, Rick's cigar leaving a trail on the air even a human could follow.

Three abreast, we walked through the Quarter, taking our time in the heat, heading for Bourbon Street. We were passed by tuxedo-clad waiters on the way to work, couples out for a romantic night, small groups of men looking for a good time in strip joints, and a few vamps out trolling for an early dinner or maybe just a snack to hold them over till later.

I spotted a group of young witches glamoured to look like older women, and I wondered what they were doing and why they needed a disguise. Bliss watched the group, her face tight with concentration, and I wondered what she saw. I wondered a lot of things and I had very few answers. She and Rick chatted as we walked, and I felt their eyes settle on me often, their curiosity like a blanket held around me. But I had nothing to say, and let my silence build.