Skinwalker

Beast is not cute, she thought at me. I took a steadying breath and said, “I recognize you two, and Leo, and Katie.” My blush deepened. “But who are the rest of the . . . um . . . vamps and . . . um . . .”

 

 

Brandon took pity on my stumbling and stepped to the mural, pointing. “Arceneau, our blood-master, Grégoire”—he indicated a blond man who looked like he was fifteen when he was turned, like a child beside the lithe and muscular twins—“currently traveling in Europe. Ming of Mearkanis”—he pointed—“now believed to be true-dead, and her blood-servants Benjamin and Riccard. Rousseau and his favorites, Elena and Isabel. Desmarais with his Joseph, Alene, and Louis. Laurent with her Elisabeth and Freeman.” The phraseology had taken an old-fashioned cant, and I wondered if the mural took them down memory lane, bringing out archaic wording.

 

Brian took up the instruction. “St. Martin, and his blood-servant at the time, Renée. And Bouvier with his favorite, Ka Nvsita.” I reacted with shock. The girl in the painting had long, braided black hair, coppery skin, and lost, lonely eyes that seemed to have a familiar amber tint, much like my own. Her name was Cherokee for dogwood.

 

Anger rose in me, hot as burning heartwood. “Is she still alive?” I asked, swallowing my anger, to burn in my stomach with sour, acidic fire. I forced my hands to unclench.

 

“No,” Brandon said. “She died in the twenties. She was a good kid. Her father sold her to Adan Bouvier when she was eleven, back in, what was it?” he asked his brother.

 

“Maybe 1803 or ’04? She was mature when we came to servitude,” Brian said.

 

Her father sold her. Like chattel. The vampires hadn’t made my tribeswoman a slave; her own father had. I remembered then that selling their own, like cattle, was once the way of The People. I nodded and moved on down the hall and out of the house into the fresh air before I tried to kill a twin. “Thank you for the tea and the information,” I said when I had myself under control, standing on the porch. “I may call with questions.”

 

“And we may answer,” Brian said.

 

“Or we may not,” Brandon said.

 

I forced a smile on my face, slid into my jacket, strapped on the helmet, kick-started the bike, and got away.

 

I spent the rest of the afternoon meeting and greeting the blood-servants who worked security in other clan blood-family houses in the Garden District. After sunset, I motored back home, taking my time through the District and the Quarter. Sunday in the city that parties forever was laid-back. Tourists and citizens went to church, mass, or brunch and then visited museums, strolled along the river, shopped, or had dinner at a quiet restaurant. The Quarter’s bookstores, cafés, and small shops did big business. Then came nap time, nearly officially sanctioned nap time in the European style.

 

At night, the public went back out and started it all over again, the wealthy sitting in elegant restaurants and the penny-pinching back in the cafés. Music played on every street corner. Magic acts and comedy acts spilled into the street along with jazz and blues and every other form of American, African, Island, and European music. Despite the rogue, despite the media vans patrolling the Quarter, and despite having to travel by taxi rather than risk the dangers of walking the balmy streets, people were having fun.

 

I would join them in a skinny minute, but I had a command appearance at a party full of vamps. I was not looking forward to it at all.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 13

 

 

You may call upon me

 

 

I checked myself out in the closet mirror, halfway disgusted at the prospect of spending time at a vamp party when I could be tracking down the rogue, and halfway scared to death—and not only at the thought of being surrounded by vamps. My one little black dress was V-necked, thigh-length microfiber that could be scrunched into a travel pack and never show wrinkles. The dress had a built-in bra, was skintight across my chest, plunged enough to make a man look twice, and had narrow straps, and the skirt moved well for dancing. The skirt fabric was cut into various-sized squares that hung point down from the asymmetrical waist and fluttered around my legs. In three-inch heels, my legs looked like they went on forever. I did a little dance step and the squares flipped up higher here and there, showing more skin.

 

I adjusted the length of the chain until the gold nugget hung a half inch above the neckline, between my breasts. Put on earrings, the old-fashioned kind that held on with screws or little hinged bobs. I had my ears pierced when I was a teen and wore earrings like all the other girls. But the first time I shifted, after I was free and out on my own, my lobes came back healed. I tucked the panther tooth the twins had discovered into the specially made pouch in my undies—the one that usually held a collapsed stake.

 

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