Skinwalker

Tia smiled sweetly if a bit sleepily at me and ate something green from a salad plate. The silk robe was gone. Tonight she wore a silk lace bustier that shoved her boobs up proudly, an opal necklace nestling in her cleavage.

 

My gaze settled on Christie, who was wearing about fifty tiny braids—a lot like the way I often wore my hair—and a face full of silver in her eyebrows, nose, ears, even around her collarbone. The silver rings had chains running through them, connecting her nostrils to her ears and points between, all dangling little bells. Bells everywhere, even up under her peekaboo bra, which had the cups sealed with latches tonight. Thank God. The girl, who couldn’t be more than twenty, was wearing a dog collar with wicked-looking spikes. Christie shook her braids back when she took a bite of salad, and the bells tinkled.

 

To fit in, I tasted the salad, mixed greens with lots of spices in the dressing. Something bacon-y, which I instantly loved. “Christie,” I said, chewing, “I like the bells.”

 

She raised the mismatched rings in each brow, considering. “Lucky you.”

 

I laughed. Nope. It wasn’t going to be easier now that I was grown. I hadn’t fit in then, with a bunch of orphaned or semiorphaned girls, and I wouldn’t fit in now with a bunch of . . . girls. “Christie, you and Rachael. Tell me what you know about the vamps in this town. Especially the council.”

 

The girls looked at each other and at me. “Not much about the politics,” Christie said.

 

“Does Leo visit any of you? For . . .” I didn’t know how to phrase it and I just stopped.

 

Christie laughed, the sound taunting. “For blood? Sex? Or maybe combo entertainment, fun and games and dinner afterward?”

 

I managed to keep a blush under control. “Yeah.” I stuffed in another bite of greens and broke off a piece of roll. It was flaky and sweet and left traces of butter on my fingers.

 

“We all get a visit from Leo when we first come here,” Rachael said, her vivid eyes on me and her voice toneless. “He gets first try. He calls it the dark right of kings.”

 

I had heard of the divine right of kings, where a monarch had the right to deflower any virgin or use any woman he fancied, often on the night before her wedding. It was archaic rape, similar to the slave owner visiting his slave in her cabin, or having her brought to him. No way to say no. Rape in any form had always brought out the—I half smiled at the thought—the Beast in me. Rachael looked at Christie when I smiled. I didn’t need Beast’s nose to tell me Leo scared the crap out of Rachael. Leo Pellissier was shooting to the top of my list of people I didn’t like. I needed to interview the bloodsucker. My grin twisted in grim satisfaction. “I need to talk to old Leo, but since I burned him with a silver cross yesterday, I doubt he’ll be agreeable.”

 

Rachael looked at me, nervous laughter burbling in her chest. “You burned him? And he didn’t kill you?”

 

“He thought about it. Katie healed him. If she hadn’t, I might’ve had to stake him.”

 

The table went silent. No one moved. Every eye was on me.This sort of thing had happened occasionally when I was in the home, when I said something that came out weird. I looked at the little witch, her white skin and jet-black hair contrasting in the candlelight. This girl had touched me on some level the first time I saw her. I had felt a subtle connection, which had to be a mistake, didn’t it? But it was there, nonetheless, and my voice was softer when I said, “Bliss, right? What did Leo say when he . . .” The correct word eluded me.

 

“You have trouble with this, don’t you,” she said. It wasn’t mocking. The tone was gentle, almost pitying. “With what we do, I mean.”

 

I almost said, “You could be with a coven learning how to do witch stuff,” but I caught myself. Just in case she didn’t know what she was. “Where are you from?”

 

Bliss lifted a shoulder, and I realized she was wearing a silky gauze top that laced across the front like an old-timey corset if it had been put on backward. Her small breasts were pushed up and fully visible through the cloth, a necklace dangling between them. Suddenly I felt like a voyeur. “I was raised in foster care, so that means I’m from everywhere and nowhere.”

 

So that meant she might not know she was a witch. Katie knew, didn’t she? Couldn’t vamps smell witch? I’d have to ask. “I have trouble with it, yeah.” I looked around the table, making eye contact. We had finished our salads, and I didn’t have to be told that the meal was more silent than usual. Without even volunteering that I’m a predator, I make people wary.

 

“Any of you have an idea who the rogue vamp is? Maybe someone’s been acting different? Maybe something weird about one of Katie’s vamp customers? She has vamp customers, right?” They all nodded, and from the force of it, I gathered that Katie had a lot of vamp customers. “A vamp acting weirder than usual? Even someone who smells different?”

 

“They all smell weird,” Bliss said.

 

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