Dark Heir

The Kid had a listing of places where dead humans had been found since sundown—three homeless people drained and dead not far from Louis Armstrong Park. And more recently, places where strange lights had been seen and horrible smells of smoke had been detected—four locations that were near water. The Kid had hacked the NOPD network, which no one mentioned because we needed the intel he had discovered. He pinpointed the sites on a map and sent them to our cells. Each location was farther from the park, as if the stink of burned flesh and odd, unexplained fires had been leapfrogging, moving uptown and beyond, toward the Garden District, which made something in the back of my mind feel all squirrelly, as if that direction made some kind of sense that I didn’t want to think about.

The Kid stayed busy uploading all the intel to our cells as we debriefed and reweaponed up and found new boots. Blades clicked and slid into sheaths, the schnick of chambers sliding and magazines snapping closed punctuated the commentary as Eli gave us the short version of his time in the pokey. It was succinct. “I was taken in.” Schnick, snap, slide, tap-tap, clack, schnick. “Made my one call to HQ.” Repeat of same sounds but faster. “Leo made a couple calls to the mayor and the governor.” Soft slide of blades being checked and repositioned, leather against steel. “I was let out.”

I couldn’t be as succinct, but I told the guys about the failure of the snare of thorns trap, about Molly trying to get to the blood diamond, about Sabina being burned, and about Brute chasing Santana. I ended with, “I can’t trust my best friend and I don’t know what to do about it. Or about anything else either.”

The Kid said, “The first time Molly misused her gift was when?”

“In Evangelina’s garden, fighting her sister off. She stole the life force of every living thing in the garden to keep her sister from killing us all.”

“And the blood diamond was present?” Eli asked.

“Pretty sure Evangelina was using it at the time,” I said, sitting on the couch to pull on my last pair of combat boots. All I had left after this were my Western Luccheses, and no way was I going to ruin the pretty boots on a hunt for a big-bad-ugly. Boot shopping was in my near future. “She had already called the demon in her basement, so, yeah, she had to be drawing on it.”

“Molly’s magic was tainted in the garden, before she came into contact with the angel Hayyel,” Eli said, testing the movement of a gun into and out of a holster. That statement seemed important too, but nothing was becoming a cohesive whole in the front of my brain. “And since then, she’s been wavering close to out of control.”

I nodded. “The angel Hayyel did good stuff and bad stuff to us all. It seems kinda weird that he did nothing to Molly.”

“That we know of,” Alex said. “Anything might have happened then.”

“And KitKit?” Eli asked. “Was the cat there tonight?”

I had forgotten about the cat. “No.” I sat back on the couch and closed my eyes, feeling a little weird, doing this in front of the boys, as I breathed in, sniffing for the cat. I placed the highest concentration of cat scent at the stink of the litter box in the back, in the utility/laundry room, and the whiff of cat food from upstairs. The next strongest concentration of cat pong came from behind me. I got up and followed my nose through the kitchen into the butler’s pantry. The cat was curled, asleep, on the top open shelf, among some dusty teapots I hadn’t had a chance to investigate, her small tail hanging down.

Back in the living room, I said, “Molly doesn’t want the other witches to know she has a familiar.”

“Peer pressure,” Alex said, seriously, nodding. “She’s afraid they’ll make fun of her.” Which wasn’t what I was thinking, though it fit.

Eli said, “She needs to take the cat with her all the time because now her affinity for the diamond grows every time she’s anywhere near it. It’s black magic just like her death magics, and they feed off each other.”

I looked at my partner in surprise. For a former active-duty Army Ranger who, until recently, knew nothing about magic, the guy had come a long way. “Makes sense,” I agreed. “The cat has a den on the top shelf of the butler’s pantry. Alex, can you handle Molly if she comes back while we’re gone?”

Alex lifted a shoulder. “When I hear her coming, I’ll throw the cat at her. If that doesn’t work, look for a warty frog hopping on the keyboards when you get back. Find me a princess to kiss me. I want tongue.”

“Gross,” I said.

“Fried frog legs,” Eli said with a slight twitch of his lips.

Alex flipped his brother off and we left the house on that loving family moment.

CHAPTER 18

The Stench of Barbecued Vamp

Eli’s SUV had been released by the police to Leo, and a lower-level blood-servant picked us up out front and drove us to vamp HQ. Eli and I dropped the driver off around the block from the Council Chambers when he said he could get back through the mob safely, and I figured he knew about the secret entrance in the outer wall. We headed into the night, following up on police reports, answering calls from Jodi, and talking to the vamp who had interrogated Juwan—meaning drinking from him until he was blood-drunk, making him take a sip or two of vamp blood, and then reading his mind, which essentially made Juwan a plaything. It was the way vamps fed, and when it was with the human’s agreement, it was legal, if morally questionable. When the human was not in agreement, it was . . . despicable. Making me despicable for ordering it. But if it helped me stop the Son of Darkness, I could live with despicable. The conversation was pithy and not very informative.

“Yo. Edmund. You’re on speakerphone. You get anything outta Juwan?”

“Jane. Such a pleasure to talk with you. Are you certain I can’t do anything to share that pleasure with you?”

Eli laughed. More a snicker, really. And it was too dark for him to see my scowl. I wanted to swat both of them, but Edmund Hartley was inside vamp HQ and I had a feeling that swatting Eli could get a bigger hit back.

“Eddie. Focus. This is business,” I said.

“Eddie?” Eli said, incredulity lacing the word.

“You wound me, my darling Jane. When my only desire is to ravish you with sensual delights and bring you to intense heights of carnal satisfaction.”

Eli’s eyebrows went up. It was stupid and, with us in the middle of chasing down a murdering vamp on fire, not the right time, but I laughed, which was what Edmund intended. If I could like a vamp, I liked Edmund, and I still wanted to discover his story, but another time, another place. “Yada yada yada,” I said.