The next day, Bones went out of the Quarter to a shop titled The Swamp Rat, noting with amusement the layer of ground brick sprinkled across the threshold of the door. It was a voodoo defense barrier, supposedly capable of keeping out anyone who meant the shop owner ill. Pity it didn’t work against people who didn’t believe in voodoo. Or vampires.
As soon as he stepped inside, Bones flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED and locked the door behind him. A wizened little man behind the counter glanced up, blinked… and then, of all things, tried to run.
Bones was across the room and over the counter in less time than it took the elderly shop owner to clear his seat. He chuckled as the man let out a spate of Creole that cursed Bones, his parentage, and several of his ancestors.
“Remember, Jean-Pierre, I speak Creole, so anything you say can and will be held against you and all that rot.”
“Debil,” Jean-Pierre said in English with a hiss. “I ’oped I’d seen the last of you years ago.”
“Now, mate, you’ll hurt my feelings. Don’t know why you take such an aversion to me. Your grandfather and I got along splendidly, and I know I’m glad to still find you here.”
Jean-Pierre’s eyes flicked around the shop, but it was empty of anyone but Bones and himself. No surprise there; the wares he had on his shelves were ugly, shoddy T-shirts and other miscellaneous gimmicky items, all in questionable condition and priced higher than most of his competitors.
But Jean-Pierre’s real business was voodoo. The shops along the Quarter were for the tourists or the uneducated. Jean-Pierre supplied genuine ingredients for the practiced, discerning buyer, and his family had been in the business since almost the inception of the city. He was someone who knew many of the city’s darkest secrets. And because Jean-Pierre had inherited the family trait of being immune to vampire mind control, Bones couldn’t just use his gaze to glare information out of him, more’s the pity.
“Now then, what did I want to ask you about? Ah, yes, redheaded bloke who goes by the name Ralmiel. Vampire, ’round my height, and has the most amazing new trick of disappearing into thin air. What do you know of him?”
From the expression on Jean-Pierre’s face, he did know something about Ralmiel, but he didn’t want to share the information.
Bones didn’t lose a fraction of his smile. “Need me to bash you about a bit before you answer? No trouble at all. Just let me know which bone you’d like broken first and I’ll get to it straightaway.”
“Debils,” Jean-Pierre hissed. “Nothin’ but grave walkers, the both of you, ’cept even the earth don’ want you.”
Bones waved a hand. “Yes, right, we’re all wretched blokes forsaken by God and Mother Nature herself, now get on with it.”
Bones really had no desire to start beating on the little man. That would take too long.
“Redheaded debil, he come ’round every so often,” Jean-Pierre said, spitting out the words. “He have fetishes made for him, use magic.”
“Vampires are forbidden from using magic. It’s one of the few laws Cain laid down for his people. I’m surprised Ralmiel uses it so blatantly.”
Jean-Pierre’s mouth curled. “Cain. God should have killed him for murdering Abel, not made him into a vampire as punishment instead. As for Ralmiel, those who see ’im use magic don’t live long enough to tell about it, I think.”
That would keep word from spreading, true enough. But a few people had to know aside from Jean-Pierre. “This magic Ralmiel uses, who makes it?”
“Don’ know.”
Bones gave Jean-Pierre a measured stare. “I won’t enjoy it, but I’ll either beat the answer out of you, or I’ll take you with me and keep feeding off your no doubt dreadful-tasting blood until you tire of being my snack and you tell me then.”
“Hope she curdles your blood to dust,” Jean-Pierre spat, but gave Bones a name. And her location.
“You ring me if you see Ralmiel again,” Bones instructed Jean-Pierre, writing his number on the back of one of the sloganed coasters for sale on the counter. This one had a tagline of “It won’t lick itself!” Quite true, that.
“And don’t make me end my long, friendly association with your family by doing something foolish,” Bones added, letting green flash in his eyes as he handed him the coaster.
Jean-Pierre took it. “I don’t cross debils. Too much bad juju afterward.”
Bones just nodded as he left. Quite true, that, as well.
It was Bones’s fourth day in the city when another murder was discovered. As before, Bones went to the scene to see what, if anything, he could use from it to track the LaLauries.