“Only if it was necessary. And this is necessary.” I sat on one of the small chairs, one made when humans were Grégoire’s size, not my six feet in height. My knees rose high and I felt ridiculous, but the position made Grégoire pause, and he flipped the knife, holding it in such a way that he couldn’t throw it in a single move. But he didn’t put it away either. I smelled a fresh scent in the room, overriding the smell of vamp blood, slightly acrid, and I eyed the blade. Poison? That was ducky.
“Leo knows that Immanuel was killed and eaten by a black-magic user. The thing that posed as Leo’s son and heir for decades was a skinwalker, like me. But he had gone off the deep end.” At the confusion on Grégoire’s face, I said, “He’d gone crazy. When skinwalkers get old they lose mental stability and do what Immanuel did. They eat humans. Immanuel is the only other skinwalker I’ve seen in”—I shrugged, not knowing how to finish this—“in ever.”
“Leo knows this?”
“He knows some of it. He sent me the bones Immanuel collected. But he doesn’t know everything. Like how fast I am. Or how strong.” Or that I can now bend time. Yeah. Not that either.
Grégoire took a breath he didn’t need and blew it out in a sound that was all French, a pah of disgust. “Leo still grieves. Perhaps it is wise to let sleeping dogs lie, as you Americans say.” He shifted his head on the pillow and smiled. “I moved my right big toe. I can feel the sheets.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “Because I have to ask about your Mithran family.” Grégoire frowned, the expression looking hard and remote and wrong on his young face. I kept my eyes on the knife in his hand. I could shift and heal from most wounds, but a poisoned blade might have unexpected consequences. “Is there something here in the Council Chambers that Reach might have discovered? Something that Satan’s Three might want?”
Grégoire’s eyes shifted slightly before meeting mine. If I hadn’t been living with Mr. Minimalist in all things emotional, I might have missed it. I’d have to remember to thank Eli. “What does Leo have that they might want?” I whispered.
“Should I speak of my master’s secrets? Of the weapons that keep us safe?” he asked. “I have not forgotten that you once saved my life and my clan. For this, I will not kill you. I will think on what you seek to learn and the dark things hidden here.”
I frowned, but I’d heard that tone in vamps’ voices before. I was about to be kicked out. Before he could, I said, “Thank you for the box of papers.”
Grégoire didn’t reply. “If you will not feed me, you are dismissed. And tell the next blood-servant to enter.” Grégoire turned his head, but he didn’t let go of the knife he still held. I stood and left the boudoir, leaving the door open for Katie, who looked me over with cool disdain as she entered. Or rather, she looked me over the way she might something icky she found on the bottom of her shoe.
My attempts to see Leo were thwarted by Derek himself, standing in front of Leo’s door. “Per the MOC. You can come back at dusk,” the former marine said. “Not before.” And from the look on his face, Derek was ready and willing to enforce the edict: it wasn’t worth fighting for. So I headed out.
It was two hours after dawn when I finally made it back to my house, and in through the door on the back porch. The front was still sealed off with crime scene tape, and if I’d been someone not connected to the household of the Blood Master of the City, I’d be in a hotel. I needed to sleep, but my body was too wired, and my mind was too busy making lists of things I needed to do. Eli headed upstairs to repack his gobag and then to crash for an hour or two. Even Uncle Sam’s finest needed to sleep sometime.
I was brewing a pot of tea when my cell rang with a familiar local number and I answered it with the name of my business, just in case it wasn’t who I thought it might be. “Yellowrock Securities.”
“Jodi here.”
I smiled into the cell. “Long time, no see.”
“Yeah, well, if you’d keep people from leaving bombs on your doorstep, you might get some social time.”
“Ouch. Did you catch that?”
“I got dragged into the paperwork, liaison, and media side of things. Thanks in great part to the general knowledge at NOPD that I know you.”
Jodi was the head of the woo-woo department, working to solve new and cold paranormal cases. She had been given the promotion as a way to punish her for knowing the wrong people, supernatural people, but it hadn’t worked out quite the way her superiors expected. Instead of sitting forever in her basement cubicle, Jodi had been thrust into cases with the vamps and the three-initial law enforcement departments. The ATF, the DEA, the FBI, and the longer acronym, PsyLED, to name a few. Jodi was making waves in state and national law enforcement and rubbing elbows with the rich and fangy. She now had media power, enough that her superiors’ intent to ruin her career had backfired. She was fast-tracking up toward a glass ceiling that the family of known witches had never made before, or at least not in Louisiana law enforcement.
“So what did they discover about my bomber?” I asked, hoping she’d share things most victims didn’t have access to.