After first making sure no one was watching, I grabbed a handhold and jumped the fifteen-foot-tall brick fence to my landlady's and rang the bell at the back door. Katie's Ladies was the oldest continuously operating whorehouse in New Orleans, and her ladies' primary clients were vamps. Even with vamps, there was pillow talk afterward. Or maybe during--what did I know? But I'd learned something of value to an investigation before, when I went to visit.
Troll appeared after only a moment, yawning, a meaty fist covering his mouth, his bald pate shining as if freshly waxed in the dim sconce lights in the hallway. "Morn-awn," he said through the yawn, his big teeth seeming to reach for air. "You must be psychic."
"Why's that?"
"Some of the girls are up. Having a snack in the dining room. Help yourself." He slung a thumb haphazardly toward the dining room. Seemingly offhand, as he headed left toward Katie's business office, he added, "Bliss is with them."
Guilt stabbed me, as I'm pretty sure Troll intended. I hadn't seen Bliss since I ditched the little witch in a ladies' room in a French Quarter club, bleeding profusely from a vamp bite, while I went tearing off after her attacker. I'd not even thought about leaving her bleeding--maybe to death--at the time, so intent was I on catching the young rogue. Since Molly came to visit, I hadn't been over here much, compounding my inattention. "Yeah. Thanks," I said. I stuck my hands into my jeans pockets and meandered right.
I heard their voices and caught their scents from three feet outside the door, and stopped, listening, quickly determining that four of the "ladies" were having a midmorning snack of coffee, tea, chilled boiled shrimp, and pastries. I picked out the voices and scents of Bliss, Najla, Christie, and Tia, who was rhapsodizing about her latest vamp conquest. My mouth turned up with real amusement at what she'd taught him to do. I hadn't even known sex was possible in that position, especially while a vamp had his fangs buried in her femoral artery. She finished with "Mr. Tom says Carlos is ready to make an offer for me, and I'll be his blood-servant for, like, a hundred years, which is way better than a human man who might dump me when I get old, and I won't get old anyway with Carlos. Well, I will but not for, like, forever."
"Come on in, Jane," Bliss said, when Tia paused to draw breath.
"Why come you thinking she out there, girl?" a strangely accented voice asked. "What? You smelling them again?"
It had been years since I'd been teased and bullied by the girls in the children's home where I was raised, but it still got to me, even if I wasn't the actual recipient of the persecution. "Bliss has a real good sense of smell," I said from the hallway. Hands still in my pockets, I stepped into the room. Giving the bully a look with just a hint of Beast peeking out, I added, "No need to be mean."
"You eavesdropping, Janie?" Christie asked, her irritation a sharp tang on the air. "No need for you to stand in the cold like a lost child looking in. There's room at the table for one more, even if you are an inhibited and stuffy little churchgoer."
"Christie!" Bliss said.
"She's right," I said, as I pulled a chair out with my foot and sat. "I am Christian and I guess I'm pretty inhibited--by your standards." I looked at Tia and smiled gently. "For instance, I'm not flexible enough to hang from the ceiling while a vamp is feeding on me, especially not there." Tia giggled, the sound childlike and innocent, which, thanks to the parents who sold their daughter out of the trunk of their car for drug money, she would never be. To Bliss, I said, "But I'm also a Cherokee, and I'm learning about the spiritual practices of the People, hoping to study their magic."
Bliss looked quickly away, her face shutting down. Bliss was still in the witch closet (or maybe she didn't know she was a witch?) and any mention of magic use made her uncomfortable.
I poured myself a mug of hot green tea from a carafe on the table, and a warm lemony scent wafted out. I was pretty sure it was a sencha green, with lemon grass, ginger, and chamomile for flavor. I added two spoonfuls of sugar and stirred, tilting my head to look at Christie. Today her hair was braided into two plaits like a schoolgirl's and her face was bare of her usual harsh makeup. She wore no rings or chains through her multiple piercings, and for once she was mostly covered, if you counted a sheer robe over baby doll silk nightclothes as covered. I'd seen her at the dinner table dressed for an evening out with more exposed, pale skin than this. But even covered and without the steel through her flesh, her expression was worldly and jaded and watchful. Christie had always been just a bit cruel to me, as if I might want to steal what was hers.