“Shut up,” Jodi said to him.
I laughed. “What you really want to know is how I found the rogue when you couldn’t and why the vamp council hired me when they had enough money to hire the French Foreign Legion. Then you want me to promise to bring you anything I find out, including any interesting facts or info on my boss and her cronies, the vamp council.”
Jodi opened her mouth, then closed it on whatever she had been about to say. Her eyes had sharpened, however. I grinned at her. Ate another cookie. Let the silence build in the kitchen. After a few minutes, Jodi said, “What are you?”
I hadn’t expected that. It was one thing for the supernatural community to know I wasn’t human. It was something else entirely for mundane law enforcement to know; cops might tell PsyLED. I held myself still when I wanted to spring across the table, claws slashing. Beast was awake and listening. Beast was of a mind to gut them and ask questions while they die. I held her down. After a pause a fraction too long, I put a thoughtful, agreeable tone in my voice and said, “I’m the best rogue-vamp tracker on the East Coast.”
So. Who squealed? The only ones who knew I wasn’t human were Katie, Troll, Bruiser, and Leo. I bit into another cookie and talked around the crumbs. Back to being rude, crude, and deliberately disagreeable. Back to giving the cops something to think about other than my more subtle reactions. “I don’t have an aversion to sunlight or silver, I like garlic and old Bela Lugosi movies, and I attend church. I can’t do spells and my witch pals tell me I’m not one of them. So I guess that makes me human, though that often puts me in bad company.
“I’m licensed to carry in most of the southeast states, and could get a waiver in the rest of the states.” I swallowed and went on. “I have a hundred-percent track record. Most recently, I took down seven of seven in a raving-mad, young-rogue blood-family. I’m proficient, though unrated, in street fighting and swordplay, and I’m a good marksman. All that you can get off my Web site. I’m guessing you want to know something not on the site.”
I raised my brows and let my most insolent grin start. “I’m straight. I wear size seven shoes. I like steak. Oh, wait, you know that already. I like to dance, and this verbal boogie with you two makes me think I’ll go dancing tonight.” I shrugged.
“One thing you left out.” Jodi flashed a small black case at me, about the size of a pack of cards. It had a dial on it, like a Geiger counter, and the needle was pointing a little over halfway along the face, at sixty-two. The sight of it chilled me to the bone. Crap. Crap, crap, crap. Beast raised her lips and showed her teeth in threat. I smiled and ate another cookie. “Why you set off my psy-meter,” Jodi said.
Sixty-two was halfway between a vamp at midnight and a moon witch on the full moon. Pretty dang powerful. I had wondered what I would read. Psy-meters, or psychometers, had been written up years ago in policemag.com. They were expensive, and, according to the magazine, only used by federally funded law enforcement agencies like the FBI, the CIA, and PsyLED. I had figured I would never see one, but here was a psy-meter in little old New Orleans. Lucky me.
“I hang around witches,” I said, my tone nonchalant. “I have some powerful witch amulets. Molly washed my clothes before I left Asheville.” I shrugged, lifting one shoulder, and ate another cookie though the crumbs stuck in my throat. “Pick one. I don’t really care.”
“We don’t much like witches in New Orleans,” Herbert said.
“Why not? They did their best to steer Katrina and Rita and Ivan back into the gulf,” I said. The cop’s face twisted in prejudice and hatred. Ahhh. I’d found his hot button and the reason he was brought to visit me. Beast could smell the adrenaline bead into Herbert’s sweat. This guy was a serious witch hater. Which ticked me off.
“Not their fault that one coven didn’t have the power to send major storms packing,” I said, flicking crumbs off my T-shirt onto the floor. “Mother Nature’s bigger than any one family. But they did get Katrina to drop from a category five to a cat-three at landfall. You gotta give them credit for that.”
He stood, placing his hands on his gun butt and his night-stick. “Don’t gotta do nothing.”
“You gotta be a dickhead,” I said, mildly. “No help for it.”