Cold Reign

“Good to know. HQ, James,” I instructed.

“My name isn’t James,” Shemmy said, helpfully.

“Picky, picky, picky,” I said.

CHAPTER 11

Did You Know You’re Being Tailed by PsyLED?

On the way to HQ, we got notice from Scrappy, Leo’s secretary, that a small cruise ship was trying to dock and that all sorts of local, state, and federal officials were on site. Leo wanted us to check it out. Of course he did, in a rainstorm that was getting, if possible, worse. This night, like the previous one, was never-ending, and I’d had only a half hour nap, at best.

By the time we made the necessary blocks and avoided one-way streets and congestion caused by the storm, the ship was motoring back down the Mississippi for international waters. I got a quick look at the boat, hoping I could tell if it was the invisible ship in Lake Borgne, but I couldn’t tell diddly. I watched the byplay of the multiagency law enforcement and government people standing and gesturing in the rain.

Bruiser said softly, “On site is one state senator, two ICE agents—immigration officials—two suits from the Secret Service, four marked cars. Two FBI agents, there.” He pointed to the man and woman with oversized umbrellas. “Two detectives from NOPD out in the middle of the night, when there are currently no dead bodies and no weapons of mass destruction. All of this is anomalous.”

“Why don’t you go to talk to them?” I said. “I’m the MOC’s female Enforcer. You can be one of the guys.”

“Or you could just kill them and save us some time,” Edmund snipped.

I swiveled in my seat. “Or you could swim to the cruise ship, climb on board, find out who’s there, what they want, and save us even more time,” I said.

Edmund made a sort of blowing noise and looked away again. I had a feeling the smell of the blood bottle was still getting to him.

“What was in the bottle?” I asked him. “Whose blood?”

“It was . . .” He shook his head. “I do not know. But it reminded me of the aroma of mixed blood, when the Mithrans gathered and Katie was put to the earth, to heal.” He was watching me as if he wanted me to say something, admit something. No way was I admitting that I’d been there in bubo bubo form. Not happening. An uncertain silence built.

Bruiser looked back and forth between us. Having nothing to add to the conversation, he opened the door and said, in one of the typically British turns of phrase that occasionally slipped out of his mouth, “I’ll try not to delay you unduly.” He left the limo, walking to the gathered officers, his body limned by the headlights. He was beautiful, and his butt, in the wet leathers, was simply amazing.

“Stop,” I said to Eli before he could tell me to get a room. My partner chuckled evilly.

Moments later, Bruiser walked back, his body again caught in the lights, rain falling lightly onto him. He got in and said, “No one will talk to us, officially. But I know one of the officers. He’ll talk to Leo. HQ, Shemmy.”

“A cop in Leo’s pocket?” I asked as Shemmy slid the limo into gear.

Bruiser said, “The officer’s father was with NOPD back in the day. He warned Leo about a small group of officers working directly under the mayor of the time. They were planning to get something on Leo, make it look as if he had killed a child, stir public sentiment. Leo was able to head off the trouble, and the officers left NOPD and went to work in other fields. Leo offered the man a boon in return for his information. And he then fed that man his own blood for two years as he fought and beat cancer, an aggressive stage four colon cancer. In Leo’s pocket. Yes.”

Which made me feel all slimy for suggesting it was something else. I didn’t like Leo, but in his own way, he did some good.

My cell pinged and it was Alex. “You’re on speaker,” I said.

“I have all the security video of the ship attempting to dock,” Alex said. “And by the way. Did you know you’re being tailed by PsyLED?”

“I knew,” Shemmy said. “We picked him up on way to the docks. But he was holding back, so I waited to tell you.”

“Rick,” I said, a growl to the name. “Next time tell me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shemmy said. “Sorry ma’am. He’s parked just down the block in the alley. Shall I pull up next to him?”

That made me grin. “Sure. Block him in. Let’s consider it an invitation to a private tête-à-tête.”

The limo made a three-point turn as if we were on the way out, at the last moment maneuvering closer to the mouth of the ally, blocking it, and throwing the narrow space into deepest shadow. Rick got out and walked to the limo, though prowled was more in keeping with his grace and balance and catlike movements. He leaned in my open window, studying us all with eyes that saw more than a human’s would.

“Were there vamps on board?” I asked.

His Frenchy-black eyes flicked to me and back to Bruiser. “I’m sure that if Mithrans were aboard, they would have notified the Master of the City according to proper protocol,” Rick said, his voice bland with the lie.

“Riiiiight,” I said.

“Who called you about this incident?” Rick asked. “Nothing went out over the usual channels or the airwaves.” None of us answered. “Move along, nothing to see here.” He stood and went back to his car.

Alex said over the cell, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”

Eli’s lips twitched, his eyes going from me to Bruiser and back. “Did you really threaten to kill the PsyLED special agent?”

“She did.” Bruiser’s face softened. “HQ, Shemmy. Alex, let’s see the security footage of the ship trying to dock and its passengers trying to disembark.”

“Sending it to the limo computer system,” Alex said. “Flip up your screen.”

Bruiser raised the extra-wide video screen covering the privacy panel. The scene had been captured by several cameras, from different angles, and we watched as a dozen men in military camo and automatic rifles surrounded the space where the gangway—gangplank?—would have touched U.S. soil. On board, a small clump of black-clad humans seemed to be trying to dock the ship. There was no audio, but we got the general idea. A lot of posturing. A lot of shouting through a megaphone. A lot of head shaking. Eventually the ship pulled away. Nothing happened. So who was aboard besides the crew in black? Who were the passengers and why were they denied permission to dock? If it was vamps, they would never do something so public for no reason. And if there were old and powerful vamps on board—the EVs come calling before the agreements were reached—they would have had the ability to get the humans to do anything they wanted, at least long enough to get several vamps ashore and drink from them. Unless one of the cops was a witch. A well-prepared witch might have shielded the law enforcement types from being rolled. If there were vamps on board. There were too many unknowns.

Eli said, “I don’t get it.” I studied the agents and cops on the screens. “Let’s get stills of the plainclothes people and see if we can match them up with known local witches. Send the stills to Jodi and Lachish Dutillet.” Jodi ran the woo-woo department of NOPD. Lachish was the leader of the NOLA coven. If one of them didn’t know the witch, then he or she was very well hidden.

“Can we get video from farther downstream and from across the river?” I asked.

“You think this might have been a ruse? Yeah, okay. If it was the European vamps, they knew they wouldn’t be allowed ashore,” Eli said.

I lifted my thumb, twisting the palm open, in a What else could it be? gesture.

“It’ll take a while,” Alex said, “but yeah, I can pull from private security video.”

Shemmy said, “HQ is down one block. Just so you know, the PsyLED agent tailed us here.”

“Of course he did,” I muttered. But Rick didn’t try to follow us through the back gate. He rolled away through the rain into the darkness. Over the coms system I heard Alex say, “The cruise ship that was trying to dock? It just vanished. The Coast Guard vessel following it downriver said it was there one second and gone the next. They’re tracking it by its wake now, but it’s nearly impossible in the dark.”