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I pulled into the parking lot of the Sandlapper Guesthouse, on 56, south of Chauvin, and wheeled between sheriff deputy cars, a CSI van, and video news vans. The deputies looked relaxed and at ease, so they had been there awhile and had everything under control, but the news teams were still active. Crap. I was gonna get filmed, appear on TV news, and then I’d have to explain to my business partners why I’d come back here, alone, without the team. They needed time off. They were human; I wasn’t. And the last job, here in Chauvin, had been draining. But that argument wasn’t going to fly, and I knew it. I’d deal with that later. For now, I needed to get to Harold and Clara.
I cut off Bitsa, set the kick, bungeed my helmet to the back of the seat, stuck my hands in my pockets to appear nonthreatening to the sheriff’s deputies, and headed closer, wearing a friendly smile. I kept my face turned away from the news cameras, but if the media wanted to know who I was, they’d figure it out. There weren’t that many six-foot-tall, long-black-haired Cherokee females anywhere.
The county LEOs—law enforcement officers—studying me wore distinctly hostile faces, hands near gun butts, and I paused at the youngest cop, a redhead with freckles and bright eyes. Trying for innocent, I said, “Hey. What’s going on here?”
“You need to move along, miss,” the older one said, his hand sliding over his gun. The small strap that kept the weapon seated came unsnapped with a tiny click of sound. Somebody was in a mood. But I was smart enough not to say it.
Before I could reply, the wind shifted, and I smelled the sickly stench of old blood. Human. I came to a stop, mouth open, breathing in air over my tongue and the roof of my mouth, scenting as my Beast did, with a soft scree of sound. I took the place in more carefully, smelling the old blood, the fresher stink of injured humans, and the nitrocellulose of fired weapons. By the smells, Harold and Clara were on the premises, wounded. I wasn’t sure how that was possible. Cops usually made sure any injured people were taken to a hospital right away.
I couldn’t shake the feeling this was connected to my last job somehow.
The cops were looking at me strangely and I attempted a smile while I took another breath. A hint of magic tingled on my tongue, an old and weary magic. Crap. Where were Harold and Clara?
The mom-and-pop hotel was built on stilts to protect it from high tides and storm surge. The extra height gave every room fabulous water views, with fish-cleaning stations, parking, and rentable, fenced gear lockers/storage units underneath the hotel proper. Fishermen loved it. So had I. Harold and Clara lived on the far side. And there were other ways in, instead of through the cops.
Not waiting to get permission to enter—which I wasn’t going to get in any case—I lifted a hand in what might have been interpreted as a farewell gesture and headed back to Bitsa. I pushed the bike farther into the shadows under the hotel. And slid into the darkness. I pulled my cell. The unit was top-of-the-line, a communication device built for the military, to deflect bullets and work off anything—Internet towers, satellite, Wi-Fi, anything. It also let the Master of the City of New Orleans, Leo Pellissier, keep tabs on my whereabouts. Which reminded me that I hadn’t called to tell him I was coming here. My bad. Currently I had text messages waiting, most from the Kid. I sent back a quick K, not bothering to read them. Alex was wordy and I could digest them later. Unzipping my motorcycle jacket, I drew the nine-millimeter semiautomatic, slid the safety off, and chambered a round without looking. Muscle memory. Handy thing, that. It was an automatic reaction, probably a stupid one, since I’d just been seen by the cops, but I couldn’t make myself put the weapon away. Instead I added to it. With my left hand, I palmed a blade, a silver-plated, steel-edged throwing knife. Silver was poisonous to most supernatural creatures, and everything that might hurt me could bleed. The TV cameras hadn’t followed me. The deputies were shooting the breeze with a medic crew. I’d been forgotten. Good.
As I ascended the back stairs, I evaluated scents. Except for human blood, the acrid residue from fired weapons, and the salty taste of the Gulf of Mexico, nothing I smelled was familiar. Not were, not witch, not vamp, not anything I remembered smelling before, and my repertory of scents was vast, compared to humans’.