I scanned through, back to the beginning. “I get the whole Naturaleza thing, hunting, drinking down, and killing any human a predator wants, but the Fame Vexatum. Is that what I think it is? Starvation?”
“Yes,” Soul said. “The Holy Roman Church forced it upon the Mithrans living in Rome at the same time the drinkers of blood were forced to write the laws of the Vampira Carta. For the Mithrans of the time, it was be destroyed or adapt to the humans and their world. They adapted to living within human law by developing their intellect instead of the instinct of the hunter. They adapted by acquiring many blood-servants and slaves to feed from, rather than killing to survive. They adapted by developing their compulsion skills to make humans love them and want them. They adapted by never, ever drinking enough to satisfy or satiate. The Fame Vexatum stole much of their raw power from them, but left them with mental gifts no one had expected.”
I grunted in agreement. “Which is why they’re all so slender. They’re starving to death. Or undeath. Whatever. And the Naturaleza don’t starve, so they get beefier and a lot harder to kill. But the silver resistance is new. So is the buggy thing.” Flipping to the next page, I made a soft snorting sound. “The Kid thinks the abundance of blood did something different to Esther. That it made her more powerful than the other Naturaleza.” I flipped to the last page to check the Kid’s documentation on Esther and said, “He got this stuff by joining a social media site for Natchez blood-slaves? Un-freaking-believable what people put on the Web and think it’ll be kept secret.” I put down the pages. “So if magic is involved, then maybe a BBV kidnapped the witches and created the coven, and . . .” my mind raced, putting possibilities together to see if any of the puzzle pieces fit.
At my side, Soul inhaled sharply, the breath a faint whistle of surprise, and started tapping away madly on her laptop. She didn’t enlighten me about her little gasp.
I said, “Maybe the coven is tied to a focus, an amulet that lets the leader—maybe Esther, maybe someone else—do some new magical thing and not react to silver.” I stared up at the copper-coffered ceiling, thinking. “Maybe the whole walks-like-an-insect is a side effect? Or a mistake? Something some vamp is trying to make go away so she can be supervamp?”
“Possibilities. Not evidence,” Soul said, sounding distracted. “If your theory is correct, then Esther McTavish is likely also sick with the vampire plague,” Soul said, “but isn’t succumbing to the disease.”
I folded the pages and creased them back into thirds, thinking, and reached for the amulet I had tossed aside. “Yeah. I see that.” Feeling the cheap metal under my thumb, I stroked the amulet, the oily, greasy sensation on my fingertips and the odd stink of blood rising to my nose. “Maybe she’s made a full circle and is using an amulet and magic from the kidnapped witches to keep healthy. Maybe the silver resistance was a lucky side effect? Maybe now she’s trying something new with the spell, and the vamps are going all buggy?”
“Again, we have too much information and not enough evidence,” Soul said, which summed it up nicely. But Misha was still missing and we were no closer to finding her. “You should consider applying to work for PsyLED,” she added. My eyebrows would have bounced off the ceiling if they hadn’t been stuck to my face. Soul chuckled and waved away her words. “It wasn’t a job offer. It’s just. . . you have an interesting way of thinking. Of putting things together that don’t seem to match at first. Like with your friend Camilla and her interest—”
As if conjured, my cell rang, interrupting Soul. It was the number assigned to Camilla Hopkins. Misha. I answered, “Yellowrock. Misha?”
“Jane.” The voice was hoarse, the way people sound when they’ve been screaming for hours or when they haven’t had water for two days. Or both. My body flushed, then locked down hard. I stood, gripping the phone. Soul stood, staring at me. “Take care of Charly. Okay? And Bobby.” The line went dead.
I immediately called Mish back. I was sent to voice mail. “Misha. Call me back. Misha!” Not that she could pick up midcall. I closed the phone and my eyes, instantly seeing the memory of Misha, standing with her back to a wall, arms holding her middle, eyes wide, watching me being teased, as two older girls tossed my sneakers back and forth. Before I learned to fight and made a place for myself in the home—which Misha never did. I blinked back tears and strode from the room, pulling a throwaway cell and dialing the Kid. If anyone could find Misha’s location from a fifteen-second cell phone call, it was him. But to back him up, I also called Reach and put him on the job. I got them to track and triangulate, if possible, any incoming calls to my official line or from the number Misha used to call me. It was a testament to my emotional state that neither guy told me it was impossible.
Needing to do something—anything—I left the house and headed to the garage and the prisoner caged there. The steel side door closed behind me, leaving me in the dim light that passed through the windows of the garage doors, windows that someone had covered with black paper secured with packing tape. I clomped across the concrete and flipped on the overhead fluorescents. The lights were blinding, and my well-aimed kick slammed into the silvered cage so hard, it scraped across the floor and bumped into the far wall. “Wake up, Francis!” I shouted. Adrundel rolled over and stared up at me, his eyes totally vamped and his fangs showing. He hissed. And lunged at me, talons reaching through the cage, the stink of burning rotten meat filling the garage.
“Sometimes when the poop hits the fan, we should block it and run,” I told him. “Sometimes we should haul off and knock it for a loop, back at the spinning blades. Wisdom is knowing two things. One is which time is which. The other is that no matter what you do, you’re gonna get crap on your hand.” I kicked the cage again, harder. The vamp inside lunged at me. And I laughed.
“Who is your blood-master? Is it Esther McTavish?” When Francis laughed at me, I kicked the cage again, and this time Adrundel was flung loose to bounce against the barbs of the cage. His blood stank of metal and rot and sickness, some of the scents almost buried beneath the stronger smell of fresh vamp blood. “Where does Esther lair? Give me a place, or you have no value to me alive.”
He growled at me and shivered, sticking his hands into the pockets of his ragged pants—the only article of clothing that was left to him. He looked cold and miserable in the unheated garage. His chest had healed, skin over concave ribcage, and I could see each breath he took and the irregular beating of a heart pulsing in the notch where the ribs came together. There was no carapace and no indication of new limbs. I’d have to remember to tell Soul when I got over my mad. I kicked the cage less violently, more to make my point. And I pulled a vamp-killer from a spine sheath. Francis Adrundel got a totally different look on his face.
“I wasn’t joking earlier about your head being worth forty K to me. Alive, you’re worthless.”
“Esther had a place she kept in town. One of those historical-society houses.”Vivid joy shot through me, hot and vicious. I kicked the cage again and spun the knife so the reflective silver caught the light. “Healing from silver poisoning is a nifty talent, but it doesn’t help much when your head is disconnected from your body.”
“You are one crazy bitch.”
“I’ve been told that by better people than you,” I growled. “Address.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t care at the time.” I reared back and he quickly added, “But it was off of Orleans Street. I know that much. It had a tower on the front corner.”
I sheathed the knife and pivoted on my heel.
“I need blood. Human blood. I’m starving!”
I paused, thinking. “I’ll have more questions. When I ask them, if you answer sufficiently well, I’ll see about getting a blood-slave in here to feed you. Fame Vexatum.”
“I am a Naturaleza,” he said, nearly spitting the words.
“And that makes you a dead fanghead. Forty K, remember? Think about it.” I closed the door to the garage after me and went to Bitsa. Someone was sitting in a deck chair, positioned in front of my bike, holding a pocket knife, whittling. Whittling? I couldn’t remember seeing anyone whittle, not ever, except on TV reruns of Mayberry and in Western movies.
I cocked a hip. “Whadda you want?” I demanded.
Without looking up, Eli smiled, that tiny quirk of expression almost impossible to catch unless I was watching for it, and sliced a long, sharp sliver from the wood. It tumbled off his hands to the ground, joining dozens of others there. “I want you to chill, babe.”
“I am not your babe. And I’m plenty chilled.”
“You’re raging mad, worried about your old school friend, who you feel that you somehow failed way back when. You’re even more worried about the child upstairs, who may be dying of cancer. You’re upset because your boyfriend-who-isn’t is here and acting like an ass. You’re upset because a beautiful woman has a relationship with him when you don’t. And you haven’t been laid in ages.”
Laughter bubbled up in me at the final comment, and he glanced at me under lowered brows before returning to his work. Some of the tension eased out of me with my laughter, and when it had run its course, I said, “That is such a guy comment.”
“Yeah. It is. But it’s true. You’ve been depressed, impossible to live with for weeks. Now you’re here, finally doing something, and nothing is going right. And then Rick shows up. And his Soul. And you get punchy mad. By the way, is our prisoner still alive?” Another curl of wood hit the ground.
“Marginally. If undead is actually considered alive.”
He gave me that twitchy smile. “So. You need to hit someone? Spar a bit?”
I blew out the rest of my irritation. “Thanks. Yeah. Maybe later. Right now, I need to check out an address our prisoner gave me. “You want to ride shotgun?”