Jelani swept out a hand. “Follow me.”
Moonlight glowed off Jelani’s black gloves, their shape too perfect and too stiff. Prosthetics. Both his legs below the knees were missing, too. Bones didn’t know how Jelani had lost his arms and legs, but he knew it had happened before Jelani became a ghoul. The only thing that didn’t grow back after being cut off from a vampire or a ghoul was his head.
But what he didn’t know was why they were moving away from the cemetery, instead of inside its gates.
“You’re not lost, are you, mate?” Bones asked with cool geniality. He’d had meetings with Marie before, and they were only ever held in the cemetery’s underbelly, right below where her empty grave was. Marie Laveau had nothing if not a sense of irony.
Jelani half turned, but didn’t slow his stilted pace. “If you fear to follow me, then by all means, walk away.”
A snort escaped Bones as he stopped. “Trying to shame me into stupidity? Not bloody likely. Half an hour ago, someone made a very credible attempt to kill me, and now you want me to meet Majestic somewhere aside from her normal place. Tell me why, or I will walk away, and then you can explain to her why you felt it beneath you to prevent that.”
Jelani paused, his face still in profile. “Majestic is not here. She bid me to speak in her stead.”
Bones’s brows rose. Marie was notorious for handling requests, threats, or punishments herself, but she’d sent her lackey Jelani to meet with him? It made him even more curious to discover what this was about.
“Right, then,” Bones said. “After you.”
Jelani led him to Lafitte’s Blacksmith House, the oldest bar in the Quarter. Bones ordered a whiskey, neat. The ghoul didn’t order anything. His gaze kept flickering around, either waiting for something, or from nerves. Bones moved his hand to rest almost casually near his pockets. He had several silver knives lining his trousers and sleeves, in case of vampiric trouble, though nothing but decapitation would kill a ghoul.
“Marie,” Bones prodded him.
“Majestic,” Jelani corrected at once.
Bones resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The formalities are over, so do pry the stick out of your arse.
Instead he said, “What does she want from me?”
Jelani reached in his jacket. His movement was slowed by his stiff, plastic hands, so Bones didn’t feel the caution he normally would have at the gesture. Then Jelani pulled out a manila envelope.
Bones took it, slipped the photos out discreetly, taking only a moment to flick his gaze over them and the pages underneath. Then he slid them back in their envelope and gave a hard, flat stare to the man opposite him.
“What makes you think they’re even still alive? There’s been hardly a whisper about the pair of them for half a century.”
Jelani’s eyes were dark brown, almost the same color as Bones’s, and his stare was equally hard. “They are alive, and they are in the city.”
“Because of some blood and bits of body parts found in an apartment?” Bones asked dismissively. “Any human could be responsible for the same.”
“It’s them.” Jelani’s tone was emphatic. “They’re repeating what they did forty years ago. Majestic was overseas then, too, and they came here just before Mardi Gras. By Ash Wednesday, fifteen people had disappeared. Now once again, the queen is away, and they’ve returned.”
Bones considered him. Either Jelani was a very good liar or he believed what he was saying. That didn’t make it true, however.
“I need more proof than missing tourists during Marie’s absence. Why didn’t I hear that they returned to New Orleans back then, as you claim? It’s not like such news wouldn’t have made the rounds, mate.”
Jelani was also careful not to say their names. “I smelled them both times,” he replied, not bothering to correct Bones calling her Marie again. “Majestic wants you to handle this quietly. Once it’s done, she will take the credit for their punishment, so it will not seem that she’s twice let murderers hunting in her city escape during her absence.”
Bones tapped his chin. It wouldn’t be an easy job. The LaLauries were infamous in both human and undead history. Louis was rumored to be around four hundred years old, and a powerful ghoul. Delphine was not quite two hundred, but what she lacked in Louis’s age, she made up for in viciousness.
“One hundred thousand pounds,” Bones said.
It was a steep enough price that Marie wouldn’t feel she owed him a favor, but low enough that she’d also know it was a friend’s rate. In truth, he might have done the job for nothing. The LaLauries were as nasty a pair as some of the other sods Bones had shriveled for free.
Jelani didn’t even blink. “If you finish the job by Ash Wednesday, the money is yours.”