I shoved the glasses on top of my head.The sky was golden, fuchsia, and violet, the sun balanced on the horizon. It made me squint, but a deal was a deal. “I was tracking the rogue. It covered a lot of territory last night. It ended up here. There’s tracks for it getting inside. No tracks for it leaving.”
“What time did it get here?”
I shrugged, trying for cooperative. “Tracks in the mud in the woods suggest it was some time ago, before sunrise. When I got here, they were dried around the edges, starting to crumble in. Weird tracks, by the way. Like something a witch worked on. Like maybe he’s got access to a spell that appears to alter the shape of his feet. Or something.”
“I saw them. Witches can do that?” she asked. It was real curiosity. Real worry.
“Either that or the rogue can change his body shape. You decide.”
Jodi looked over her shoulder at the crime-scene van and the techs who were walking from the house. “Since vampires came out of hiding, we’ve been speculating on what other nonhumans might be out there.”
I chuckled. “Werewolves?”
“Maybe. Why not?”
“I guess there could be, but I never heard of any. No trolls, no pixies, no fairies either.”
“Would you tell me if you did?” Her eyes were back on me, piercing.
“I would definitely tell you if I had ever met a troll, a werewolf, a pixie, or a fairy. Yes.”
She seemed to accept that, and why not? It was the truth. I do truth pretty well. She looked back to the woods. “We’re going to get casts of the tracks.” When I didn’t respond, she said, “So, you think he used a witch spell to alter the shape of his feet.”
“Or to alter the shape of any tracks he left. If witches can do that. I never asked.”
“I have a contact at a coven. I guess I can ask.” She didn’t sound real thrilled about it. Jodi was still staring at the woods when she said, “The house belongs to the Broussards—Ken, twenty-seven, Rose, twenty-four, no kids, no pets. A neighbor saw Ken’s personal vehicle leaving this morning near sunrise, when she was nursing her baby. Looks like he broke in, killed them, and then stole Ken’s truck.” When I still said nothing, she looked at me, her head rotating slowly on the stem of her neck. “He ate them,” she said.
I didn’t change my expression. Didn’t tense. Didn’t react in any way. I just waited.
“He ate them just like he ate the cops. But this time he didn’t try for subtlety. He hurt them. He tore them”—her words stopped as if her throat closed off, as if a hand choked off her air, but when she took up her narrative her voice was steady—“apart, like a wild animal. Like a pack of wolves.” She shook her head and her neck muscles creaked, she was holding them so tightly. “The only thing left in any way intact was one head and the lower sections of the extremities. Elbows and ankles down. Even the brains were dished out.”
That was new, but I didn’t alter my stance. It seemed the only thing that made Jodi Richoux gabby was silence. I could do silence real well. I waited. “Why did he eat them?” she asked. “Why did he leave the lower limbs? What is he? It. It had fangs. Or a knife with dual blades, about eight inches apart.”
When I realized that the questions weren’t rhetorical, but were a request for knowledge, I said, “I can speculate.” She nodded for me to go ahead and focused tightly on my face, as if to read my soul through the pores of my skin. “First, there isn’t much meat in the lower extremities except for the calves. And that’s only a few mouthfuls—” Jodi flinched, just the barest twitch, but I saw it. It was hard for her to accept that humans were being hunted and eaten. “—even on a well-built man. It—he—was looking for food. I’m guessing he has something wrong with him that makes him need blood and meat. A lot of meat. And human and vamp meat both work for him.”
I sat up and Jodi’s gaze followed me intently. I was ravenous when I shifted. If he was shifting several times a night, or if his shifting wasn’t voluntary, but at the whim of his own body, he’d need huge amounts of protein, massive amounts of food. And humans were the biggest, most available, easiest-to-catch-and-kill food supply on the planet. That made perfect sense. But I couldn’t say that to Jodi. I said, “I think maybe he’s not just rogue, but sick. I think the meat he’s eating is helping him to control his condition.”
“I didn’t think vamps could get sick. I thought that was the purpose of drinking blood for eternity—immortality and all that crap.” Her tone was derisive. Jodi might be Katie’s liaison at NOPD, but Jodi didn’t like vamps. Not at all.
“Maybe it’s rare.” I watched her take that in and mull it over. I waited another beat and said, “I need to see the crime scene.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Then I’ll call Leo Pellissier. I figure he can pull strings and get me in.”