“Thanks. Later, Big-cat.” I ended the call and set the phone down. I held up one finger so the vamps would understand that I needed a moment, and went to my living room, where I prepared three defensive workings and one offensive working. The defensive ones would turn an attacker into fried vamp, which would take a long, painful time to heal, even with access to healing, master vamp blood. The offensive one would kill them true-dead.
I checked on the children, who were playing together now in Little Evan’s room, bear and toy soldiers in some form of Godzilla bear versus the U.S. Army. I closed the door and opened the front door. Night air breezed through, still warm from the day, but holding the bite of deepening night. I took another breath and let it out, thinking, Bite. Ha-ha. Nerves. I prepared the easiest defensive wyrd spell, dropped the ward with a thought, and waited.
The vamps walked slowly up the drive, not moving with vamp speed, but like humans, which should have put me at ease but didn’t. Nothing a vamp could do could put me at ease, not with Big Evan gone and me with the kids to protect. The vamps stopped a polite three feet from the open doorway and I looked them over. One was wearing jeans, his red hair in a shaggy, mid-eighties style, his hands clasped behind his back. The other had dark brown hair cut short, wore a suit and tie, and looked like a lawyer at first glance. Until I looked down at his hands. They were callused (strange among vamps) and stained with dye or ink—a working man’s hands, not the smooth hands of most dilettante vamps, letting humans do everything for them. Something about the man’s hands set me at ease, and I nodded once.
The suited one bowed slightly again, something military in the action, and offered me his full titles, in the formal way of vampires who want to parley. “Jerel D. Heritage, at your services, ma’am. Of Clan Dufresnee, turned in 1785 by Charles Dufresnee, in Providence, and brought south when Dufresnee acquired the Raleigh/Durham area. Currently stationed with Clan Shaddock of Asheville.”
The other vamp said, “Holly, turned by the love of my life in 1982, and now serving with my mistress, Amy, under Clan Shaddock.” Unassuming history, no last name, making him very young as vampires went. More interesting, he was ordinary-looking, until he smiled, a fangless, human smile, but one that transformed him into a beautiful man. I knew why Amy, whoever she was, had turned him. It was that smile. He tilted his head in a less formal bow than Jerel’s and yet somehow turned it into a graceful gesture. “We come in peace,” he said, the smile of greeting morphing into true humor.
Jerel looked like a fighter and a gentleman from his own age, a bit stiff, too formal for modern custom, yet the kind of man who stood by his word. Holly looked like a dancer and a poet. Yet, possibly, Holly might be the more dangerous of the two because he looked so unvampily kind. Looks can be deceiving.
Reluctantly I said, “Molly Everhart Trueblood, earth witch of the Everhart witches. I grant safety in my home to guests who come in peace.”
The two seemed to think about my words before they carefully stepped in. They took chairs in my great room, the space and furniture sized for Big Evan, oversized leather couches and recliners and lots of wood. The smaller vamps looked like Angie Baby’s dolls in the chairs. The one in the suit—Jerel—said, “We come at the request of the Master of the City of Asheville, to ask if you recently came into possession of a teapot.”
My brows went up, and I barely managed not to laugh. This visit by vampires was about a teapot? I said, “I drink black China tea when Jane Yellowrock, my friend,” I enunciated carefully, to remind them that I had friends in high vamp places, “is here to visit. I prepare herbal teas as needed for health. I have several teapots. None recently acquired.”
“We received a call from the Enforcer’s partner Alex Younger, while we awaited your response to our visit,” Jerel said. “No insult was intended in our unannounced arrival. Please allow me to explain.
“The Master of the City, Lincoln Shaddock, was turned in 1864. When he was freed from the devoveo—the madness that assaults our minds after we are turned—the first thing he did was visit his wife, though this was strongly opposed by his master. The year was 1874, and his wife had remarried. The meeting was . . . unfortunate.”
“I’ll bet,” I said.
Holly smiled and Jerel frowned before going on. “The teapot we seek was his wife’s. It is a redware, hand-thrown, English-styled piece, salt-glazed in the local tradition, and painted with a yellow daisy.”
“I see,” I said, not seeing at all. My powers, my death magics, had begun to roil as he spoke. I held on to them with effort, trying to balance my waning earth magic with my growing death magic. “Again. I have acquired no teapot in the last few months and certainly not one like you described.”
“May we”—Jerel took a breath and his face twisted in what I might have assumed was human distaste, had I not known he drank blood for substance—“inspect your kitchen?” he asked.