One hand on the top, supporting my weight, I jumped the brick wall over to Katie’s at just after five, over at the spot where the security camera had once been secreted. As I jumped, pivoting my weight on one arm, I took a quick look. No camera. There was a small scar on the brick. Since it was gone, and I therefore wouldn’t give away what I was doing to whoever had put it there, I gripped the top of the wall and let my body swing against the brick, in a rappelling stance. I sniffed the site and was surprised at the commingled scents I found.
On top, fresh and bright, was the smell of the Joe. Rick LaFleur. He had removed the camera, likely at Troll’s command. Beneath the Joe’s scent, however, was another, fainter scent, and the weird thing was, I recognized it. The camera had been placed by Bruiser, the muscle who worked with Leo Pellissier, the head of the vamp council in New Orleans.
Why would Leo feel it necessary to keep an eye on Katie? It smacked of nasty politics in the council. Big surprise there. I pushed off from the wall and landed softly. Turned to the house and was surprised to see Troll standing in the open back door. He made a snorting sound, his gaze measuring the wall. He was holding himself up with both hands on the door, his skin the pallor of old parchment, yellowed and brittle, especially the dull dome of his bald head.
I stuck my hands in my jeans pockets and strolled over, trying to look like every human could drop from a fifteen-foot wall without injury. “You look like death warmed over,” I said.
“Anybody ever tell you that phrase is insulting to the members of a vampire’s household?” His rough voice sounded even more scratchy than usual, dry as stone dust.
I laughed, feeling a bit mean, not liking myself for it. “No, but I’ll try to remember that. You get enough blood from last night’s donation?” And that was why I was angry. A vampire nearly killed someone I was sorta starting to like, and he wasn’t ticked off, so I had to be, right?
“Not enough from Rachael. But Katie allowed me a small drink from her wrist.”
I didn’t react, though anger and disgust pinged through me. Yuckers. Troll stepped aside and I walked in. “You still look awful,” I said.
“I’ll survive,” he said. “But you’re in trouble.”
“Yeah?” I felt my hackles rise and wanted to growl. “With who?”
“Katie had to go out last night to feed, to make up for the blood loss. Between what that bastard Leo took, and what she gave back to me—before she fed—she was depleted. She won’t be up early tonight, and she won’t be feeling too well when she does rise. So if you have anything to tell her, you might want to run it by me first.”
Confused, I said, “And all this has to do with someone being mad at me?”
He said, pointedly, “Katie told you to be here by dawn to report. You didn’t show.”
Crap. I remembered that, now. “At sunrise I was on the other side of the river, the Jean Lafitte park, on the trail of the rogue vamp. Unlike Katie, I can’t turn into a bat and fly home.”
Troll chuckled, the sound oddly sad. “Don’t let Katie hear you say stuff like that. She hates the myth that vampires turn into bats. In fact, with the exception of a few fiction writers who happened to get it right, she’s pretty pissed at everything the media has portrayed about her kind.” He turned on lights as he led me through the house. “So. Bat talk aside, you want to tell me what you discovered?” I filled him in, succinct to the point of brevity, with no mention of Beast, of course. He said, “Huh,” when I finished, and pointed to the dining room. I figured I was dismissed and went in.
The girls were gathered around the table again, all of them looking sleepy eyed and a bit wan. Especially Rachael, who was lounging back in her chair. There was a bandage on the inside of her elbow at the antecubital vein. Dark circled beneath her eyes and she was sipping something neon green through a straw in a crystal glass. It looked and smelled like Gatorade. Not the sort of drink that belonged at the formal table with all the silver, china, and crystal. I’d never understand the rich and dead or their servants.
Miz A appeared, her wrinkled face seeming more creased but smiling in welcome. I resisted kissing her cheek as if she were an old auntie, which was a weird impulse and could get me slapped, or worse, and said, “I don’t guess I could have the meal I didn’t get last night?”
A smile repositioned the wrinkles all over her face. “Tonight’s steak is bourbon pepper, but you may order it served rare if you like.”
“I like. And if it’s not asking too much, I’d also like a baked potato and iced tea. No wine.” She nodded.
When she left the room, tottering on legs that seemed weak beneath the long skirts, I looked over the “girls.” I needed to find a way to get them to open up to me. Sorta like I had once needed to get a house full of twelve-year-old girls to open up to me, when I was first sent to the children’s home. I wondered if bonding would be any easier now that I was twenty-nine—according to my totally fictitious though totally legal birth certificate—and spoke English.