Dark Heir

New Orleans’ pretty, aboveground vamp lairs were never what I was expecting, not with my Asheville background of mountain caves and underground nests. Here, they were usually aboveground, often delicate and sweet-looking, painted in pastels like lavender and morning-glory pink and sunshine yellow. So unvampy.

Leaving most of my visible weapons on the car seat, I went through the small gate to the front porch, rang the bell, and stepped to the side of the door, out of the way. The door was solid wood, old but well preserved, painted charcoal, with a bronze mail slot in the middle.

Eli waited at the street, the SUV idling and a nine mil loaded with silver aimed at the door, just in case the vamp we were looking for answered his own door in the daytime.

The woman who opened the door was surprising. She stood maybe four feet six and was even skinnier than I had been before I bulked up; she probably still shopped in the children’s department. Her hair was bobbed straight at the chin and dyed a stunning shade of pink, a color that enhanced her remarkable eyes—an emerald so vivid that I forgot to sniff her out. Literally. When I did take a breath of the ice-cold air that was billowing out, she smelled of lilacs, sea salt, copier toner, and blood-servant. She was wearing a severe, dark green suit and a frilly blouse in a pale shade of jade green. On her lapel she wore a brooch composed of clustered pearls and an emerald that even I knew was priceless.

She lifted her arched, pink eyebrows and asked, “May I help you?” Her voice was Minnie Mouse with a severe cold, both high-pitched and husky.

I passed her a business card—the personal one that read, JANE YELLOWROCK, and below that, HAVE STAKES WILL TRAVEL. It was sort of a joke, one appreciated by the older blood-servants and vamps who remembered the black-and-white cowboy TV series. The pink-haired woman was no exception. She tittered.

“Do I welcome a modern-day paladin onto the premises?” Before I could respond, she motioned me in with a grand gesture. “Welcome, Ms. Yellowrock. Will the elder Mr. Younger be joining us as well?”

I motioned Eli in and heard the distinctive sound of a round being ejected from the chamber as he walked up to me. He handed me my sidearm, which I rechecked and holstered. The woman didn’t bat a lash. She closed the door behind us and gestured to us to sit, saying, “You may call me Pinkie. I fulfill the requirements of maître d’hôtel here at Acton House.” On someone else the nickname and the hair might have been laugh-worthy, but on Pinkie it worked. She was tiny, but there was something about Pinkie that demanded respect and good manners. She had an accent I couldn’t place, but it wasn’t French, Spanish, or Germanic. Maybe Swedish? Or some kind of Russian-type language?

As in most houses of its kind, the front room took up the full sixteen-plus feet of house width and the rest of the house went straight back, each room opening into the next, until a stairwell offered other alternatives. The furniture was period antiques: lots of carved dark wood, curlicues, marble tops, blackened mirrors in gilt frames, old paintings of unsmiling humans and vamps in stiff poses, uncomfortable-looking furniture, old rugs, lots of doodads, and that pervasive old-house smell—camphor, dry-rotting wood, delicate cotton, and fading vegetable dyes. The couch I sat on was as hard as a board and stank of old horsehair and dust mites.

Pinkie took a seat on a tiny upholstered chair, just big enough so that her toes touched the rug beneath. She was wearing patent leather Mary Janes. She was adorable. A weird part of me wanted to hug her, but I had a bad feeling that underneath the cuteness, she was armed and dangerous.

“How can I help you?” Pinkie asked. “The new primo was not very forthcoming, except to say that I was to have the private room keys in hand.”

“We need to see the lair of Joses Bar-Judas,” I said.

Pinkie’s forehead formed neat little rows of wrinkles in confusion.

“Joseph Santana,” Eli said. “That lair. It’s supposed to have been locked for decades.”

“Since he vacated the premises under unusual circumstances,” Pinkie said, nodding. “Yes. Room two-oh-one. Come with me, please.” She stood and led the way through the next room, which was a formal dining room with a gas-log fireplace. Over her shoulder, as she moved to the right and into a short landing, she said, “I’ve always wanted to see the best guest suite.”

“Guest suite?” I asked. “This is a what? A vampire boardinghouse?”

“Yes. Of a sort,” she said, starting up the stairs. “Acton House was widely used back in the day, before the Mithrans acquired the property they now use as their Council House. Visiting Mithrans had special needs and requirements back then, don’t you know. Humans to safeguard them by day, to give them alibis when necessary, protection from light, access to suitable paramours, healthy blood supply, safe and comfortable sleeping arrangements, and access to European five-star chefs. Acton House provided it all, and we still do, when called upon, though at the moment, our rooms are empty.”

“You’ve never taken a sneak peek at the sealed room?” Eli asked.

“Of course not,” Pinkie said, surprise in her voice and in her scent. “That would have been a betrayal of trust.” Our footsteps were hollow in the wide stairwell, and faintly, I heard a tinkle, as of metal tapping metal. We passed a heavily curtained window that let in no light. “Though I didn’t know it when I took this contract—not back then, so long ago—taking that peek, as you put it, would have contaminated the scene with my skin cells, my hair, and my scent. I do watch all the latest crime shows,” she said, as if letting us in on a big secret. “An addict of them, in fact. And I’m aware that a sealed crime scene is most important.” Her pink head nodded in agreement with herself, shiny pink hair rocking back and forth.

We reached the second floor and entered a very narrow hallway leading back toward the front of the house. The hall was no more than twenty-four inches wide, and as I looked both ways along it, I saw four doors to the rear, one at the stairs, and one at the front. Six rooms, maybe four of them bedrooms, assuming some of the vamps shared a bathroom.

“So you didn’t seal the room yourself?” Eli asked from behind me.

“No. Certainly not. I haven’t been caretaker here that long. My predecessor, Professor Acton himself, the scion of the owner, followed the orders of the heir of the master of the city at the time and sealed the room. It was sealed the very morning that young Master Pellissier gave the order. No one has entered since.”