Broken Soul

The slight, dark-skinned chef shoved a full plate at me and batted his eyes. Deon was wearing mascara and some kind of glitter eyeliner. His hair was swept back and around in an Elvis Presley swirl, with little pink bows at the sides that matched his skintight pink tee. “What are you all gussied up for, Deon?” I asked. “You been taking lessons from HBO reruns of True Blood?”

“Lafayette Reynolds is my idol, Tartlet. He be frisky and outrageous. Like me.”

I shook my head and ate another sushi piece as he answered my original question. “These lovely tasteful pants is in case some reporter-man want a ‘hot man on the street’ interview after your house blow up.” He pranced away, showing off his glitter shorts with the word HOT spelled out across his rump. Matching pink sneakers did a dance move, accompanied by a come-hither gesture directed at Eli.

The former Ranger backed almost into the next room. Fast.

I burst out laughing. Deon was more flamboyant than a Bourbon Street cross-dressing stripper, and no way was the local news going to interview him for their Bible Belt viewers. Most of the citizens liked to pretend that the steamy side of the city, with its strip clubs, nudie bars, and cross-dressing musical revues, didn’t exist. As Deon would say, Au contraire, sweetie. Deon’s outrageous antics and excellent hors d’oeuvres were perfect for Katie’s Ladies. Some of the city’s most upright, Bible-thumping leaders and media moguls were regular customers here, and, in private, many of them thought the three-star chef and, um, entertainer, was delightful.

Eli, not so much. I wasn’t sure whether Deon really had the hots for my partner, or just liked yanking his chain. Maybe both. Eli wasn’t generally homophobic, but the recent zealous attention had made him a little gun-shy.

“Civilian,” I muttered the insult to Eli. “Big man can’t take a little honest adoration?”

Eli shook it off and retook his stool, to focus on the screens. Deon turned his attention to making more sushi as some of the girls came down from their rooms upstairs to see what was going on. The set of Eli’s shoulders relaxed as scantily clad females joined the mix, and the scents of lotions, perfumes, hair products, and sex pheromones filled the room. By their scents, I recognized Christie, Ipsita, and Tia, who started to drape herself all over Alex until I cleared my throat. She halted mid-drape and sat instead on a stool, arranging her body over the bar in a languid pose. Alex gave me a nasty glare, which I also pretended not to see.

We had some rules in our little family group. One was no cussing. The other was no hookers, no matter how refined and smart and expensive, until Alex was of legal age, cleared of his legal troubles, and could afford their rates. At that point, any ensuing diseases and emotional and legal fallout were the responsibility of the Kid. Until then, the girls were off-limits.

On the central screen, the robot was nearly at the porch, casting long and tangled shadows from the lighting set up by the emergency workers. Some helpful bomb squad member had placed a six-foot-long ramp from the street to the porch, and the robot made a ninety-degree turn, rolling up to the bomb box. I shifted my attention to the screen whose footage originated from on top of the robot. The black-and-white picture showed the box clearly, an ordinary cardboard box, totally taped up. Innocuous looking to the eye. I’d have picked it up and carried it inside except for the smell of things that shouldn’t have been there. Though ordinary humans wouldn’t have detected it, C4 plastic explosives had a faint but peculiar scent, one that stayed in Beast’s memory.

On one side of his body, the robot carried a miniature X-ray camera and the footage went all shaky as the handler turned the robot, vibrating the top-mounted camera. Moments later digital images appeared on a different screen. Eli sighed, a faint breath of sound, but even without it, I knew it was bad. Eli launched into instructor mode. “C4 is composed of explosives, chemicals used as a plastic binder, a plasticizer, and usually an odorizing taggant to help detect the explosive and identify its source, chemicals such as DMDNB.” I didn’t ask what that was and fortunately Eli saw no reason to educate us. “The explosive in C4 is RDX, also known by the boom jockeys as cyclonite or cyclotrimethylene trinitramine.”

I thought a moment and then let my mouth relax into a smile. Boom jockeys. People who rode the boom of an explosion. “Funny, funny man,” I muttered.

“It looks like you might have four ounces in there, which is enough to do a lot of damage to your house all by itself if you’d brought it inside before it detonated, but the big package of nails inside is the real bad news.”

I felt cold all over. If the bomb had gone off inside, everyone within projectile range would have been injured. Maimed, scarred, possibly dead.

Eli leaned forward, pointed at a shadow on the screen, and added, “That might be a cell phone. If so, then a cell call to the device would be the trigger mechanism.” He pointed to another shadow. “However, this might be tied to a detonator . . . here”—he moved his finger higher—“to go off if you ripped the tape and opened it.”

“Wait a minute. Someone sent a bomb to Jane?” Christie asked, finally waking up enough to understand what was going on. There was near reverence in her voice, as if getting a bomb delivered was cool or something. In her world, maybe it was.

Today, Christie was decked out in yoga pants and a near-transparent tank top. No bra, but spiked matching nipple rings that looked downright painful. She wore her usual metal-studded dog collar, one only a vampire dominatrix would have worn. In the human BDSM community, a dog collar was usually worn by submissives, but in the vamp BDSM community, the dominatrix wore one. Because when a vamp tried to drink her down, it hurt. A lot. Ditto for the nipple rings. There were tiny little barbs on the ends, turned so they wouldn’t hurt her but would hurt anyone getting too close. Part of me felt, Ewww. A second part of me just thought people were weird. And yet a third part was horrified that I had learned so much about stuff like this—and that it didn’t bother me that I had.

Christie had one foot up tight against her butt on the stool and the other out to her side and up on the bar in what looked like a stretch capable of ripping the average person’s pelvis apart. “A bomb! That is so cool!” she said.

“It’s not something to be proud of,” I said mildly.

“It means that somebody thinks you’re important enough to try to commit a federal crime over,” she said. She had a point. And that should bother me. A lot.