I shouted over the wail of the alarm. "I'm assuming you're here to finish what you started when you came to burn me out."
The wail of the witch alarm went silent and I started, the thirty-second siren preset into the ward by Molly leaving a deaf hole in the fabric of the universe. If we don't have them immobilized or dead by then, it's too late, she'd said, with a sweet grin. My heart squeezed tight with pain. Someone had the children. Someone had stolen them. I flipped the vamp-killer, the silver catching the light.
"Someone has taken the children," I told him, though I couldn't say, for sure, why I bothered.
A hint of emotion flickered in the back of Leo's eyes, chased like leaves in a winter wind. He blinked slowly. Took a short, shallow breath. The corner of his mouth lifted, almost unwillingly. He chuckled.
With the sound, his eyes bled back to human, laughter always forcing a vamp back from the killing edge. They can't laugh and be vampy at the same time; it's two distinct parts of them, one part still human, one part predator. The red bled out of his sclera and he stood straight, instantly regaining a human aspect. He took a deep breath, the motions bizarre after the inhuman posturing.
"Why are you here?" I asked, my voice soft in the odd hush. "Is it because I co-opted Bethany to heal Molly?"
"I . . . I don't know. . . ."
"Is it the Dolore?"
Something faint crossed his face, so fast the flesh seemed to ripple, as if a fragile sanity was torn like rotten silk. Almost as quickly, reason and control reentered his eyes. I kept the Benelli trained on him, the vamp-killer ready. He blinked slowly; black eyes looked me over, this time with a cool perusal. He brushed a strand of silky black hair from his olive-skinned face, flesh paled from centuries away from the sun, and when he spoke his voice was coolly wry. "I can't be killed with shotguns."
"You can if they fire rounds hand-packed with silver flechettes."
Leo tilted his head and let his smile widen, looking me over now like an entirely different kind of predator, making me acutely aware that I wasn't dressed for company. Wasn't, in fact, dressed at all. I flipped the knife so it was point forward. "And the knife is a silver-lined vamp-killer. Neither will kill you dead instantly, but you may not wake the morning after either."
Leo had a really good smile, charming, disarming, his lips mobile and full as he met my eyes. The hard, deep, full-on vamp power rolled over me. I could feel the desire to lower my weapons. Resisted. Hanging on to Beast-induced fight-or-flight response.
"I am master of this city. Silver will not kill me easily. You have had a Rousseau as guest?"
It took me a moment to realize he had changed the subject. "No."
"Rousseau scions who stink of witch blood attacked your home, in the company of two female witches, Rousseaus I do not recognize. One is a powerful master. Intriguing. I should know every Rousseau. I have been among them in their clan home. These do not live among the Rousseaus."
My heart raced. The Rousseau Clan. Recently allied with Mearkanis and St. Martin, I remembered. Against Leo. I knew Bettina Rousseau, the clan's blood-master. I would have recognized her scent.
He shook back his hair, which brushed his shoulders. "Bethany is fragile and such energy exchange is draining to her. You will accept that no one except me asks her for healing." He said it like a command. My brows went up. With complete disregard for the gun and knife--and me--Leo turned and went back through the dark kitchen. Closed the outer door. I could see the glitter of his eyes through the shadows. "Unless you wish me to join you in your bed, get dressed. We have much to discuss. I'll make tea." And with that, Leo, the master of the city of New Orleans, turned his back on me and went to my stove.
Feeling idiotic and not sure why, worried about this new, less stable Leo and the effects of the Dolore, I closed the door to my bedroom and set the weapons on the bed. I pulled on undies, jeans, and a long-sleeved T. Fuzzy socks. I twisted my hair back and tied the long wet length of it into a knot, remembering something I hadn't recalled until now, a sharp clicking as I shifted into Beast. I'd had beads in my hair. Now they were lying in the dust and broken rocks of my garden. Inconsequential. The brain latching on to foolishness to avoid a horror.
Uncertain of the state of Leo's mental health, I slid four stakes against my scalp like my usual hair sticks, reloaded my derringer with silver shot, and tucked it into my waistband. It wasn't much against the speed and killing power of a master vamp, but it made me feel better.