Skinwalker

“Will do. And Jane? Get this guy.” His voice broke, and I realized he was grieving for his bloodsucking boss. I had a quick memory, snapshot sharp, of Troll held against the wall by the rogue’s will. “Take him out,” he said.

 

“Sure,” I said, uncomfortable with his emotion. How did you grieve for a piece of meat? “I’ll get him.” I plugged in the cell to charge it up and took a look at my hair. The snarl would not do for a funeral. And how was I supposed to hide from a big group of vamps who could scent-search as well as Beast? Big question and no answer. Not yet.

 

I spent the next few hours doing the scut work of the security and investigating business—records search and paperwork. I started out studying the boilerplate of contracts with blood-servants and the security dossiers of the five missing vamps that came by scooter messenger. Leo was willing to let me have access after all, not that there was much in them. The files had been well scoured of anything interesting beyond name, date and country of birth, and vamp bloodlines back to an original vamp sire. It was interesting to see the interconnected and twisted relationships all the way back to AD 700 in one case, but little was really useful. So far as I could tell, there was nothing linking the five missing vamps. I was wasting time.

 

I called the twins, Brian and Brandon, asking about anything they might have heard, which turned out to be nothing. The five vamps had just vanished from their secret lairs. They did invite me over anytime, sounding quite interested in seeing me, which did a lot for my ego, and they tendered an invitation to a party for the city’s security-specialist blood-servants, to take place at a shooting range that served beer and pizza. Networking in the city of vamps.

 

Online, I discovered where land deeds and real estate records were kept, and that New Orleans records were not all in one centralized place. They were in lots of different places and in various states of integrity. I could have called Rick, but there were some hands-on security tasks I couldn’t delegate, especially to a guy who seemed to have his own agenda. Before leaving the house, I looked up criminal records of the missing vamps. Nada. Zilch. Their financial records were no better and no worse than the ordinary human’s. Some lived on savings and investments, and some lived on credit; some had been wealthy, and some hadn’t. They still had nothing in common.

 

Tia came over in the middle of my search with the address and map to the vamp cemetery. She was sleepy and looked drugged, but it was vamp I smelled on her, not chemicals.

 

I cranked up Bitsa and rode to the Orleans Parish Civil District Court, and then to the Notarial Archive Office on Poydras Street to check records and look for recent land purchases, building permits, and similar activities that involved vamps. The Notarial Archive Office had been recently painted but smelled like mold and stagnant water to my sensitive nose—maybe remnants of Hurricane Katrina. There were a lot of records to go through, all the way back to the early eighteen hundreds, and what I found didn’t seem to have anything to do with my hunt.

 

Clan St. Martin had published a book on Mithrans, due to be released in twelve months. They had used the proceeds from the sale of a horse farm near Springhill to finance it.

 

Clan Arceneau was cashing in city and parish public works bonds and investing in land.

 

The mayor’s wife, Anna, had recently purchased fourteen parcels of swampland south and west of New Orleans.

 

Clan Bouvier was hurting for cash, if the recent sales of their land was any indication.

 

Nothing jumped out at me and said, “Here’s where the bodies are buried, who the rogue is, and where he hides.” More wasted time.

 

I did stumble upon the original deed to Clan Pellissier land, made to one Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier, Marquis. I also discovered a deed to a graveyard that changed hands; it was the same cemetery I needed to visit tonight, privately held land, unlike human cemeteries in the area that were owned by churches or by the city. The deed to the vamp graveyard had been signed over in 1902, by Leo, to one Sabina Delgado y Aguilera. Not a vamp name I recognized, and not something I really needed to know. Altogether, a total waste of time.

 

I was on my way out of the building, late afternoon sunlight hitting me hard, when I ran—almost literally—into Rick LaFleur, on his way inside.

 

If he was surprised to see me he didn’t show it, and dang if he didn’t look good in jeans, T-shirt, and the same old sandals he’d worn once before. He stopped two steps below me, one knee bent, and pushed his sunglasses back on his head. “The vampire hunter,” he said, a wry tone in his voice that I couldn’t interpret.

 

“The Joe,” I said, in the same tone. “You got that info I was looking for on land deeds?”

 

“Most of it. I’ll bring it by. You had lunch?”

 

Faith Hunter's books