“That’s it,” I said. “Best food in fifty miles.”
Beast thought, Good meat smell. Lucky is good hunter to hunt so much meat. Want to hunt with Lucky Landry.
Directly ahead of the SUV, catercornered from the church, was a saloon, like something out of the French Quarter—two stories, white-painted wood with fancy black wrought iron on the gallery, long narrow window doors with working shutters, and aged double front doors, the wood carved to look like massive, weather-stained orchids. The building’s name and purpose was spelled out in bloodred letters on a white sign hanging from the second-floor gallery, LECOMPTE SPIRITS AND PLEASURE. It was the town’s blood bar, and the only building without built-in crosses at every access point. I rolled down the window and took a sniff. Unlike the last time I was here, I couldn’t smell beer and liquor and sex and blood, only rain and magic. The bar was closed and someone had nailed a cross over the front doors. Somehow that felt like a bad omen.
Eli backed another few feet and his headlights fell on something that had been hidden in the shadows. A small group of people stood in the downpour, about ten feet away from the witches’ circle’s north point. People, standing, immobile, in the rain. Not breathing. Not doing anything. Suckheads. Watching the witches. Wet and undead and scary silent.
In the backseat, my babysitter vamp cocked his head and studied them. Softly he said, “Interesting.” But his tone said it was more than just interesting—it was unexpected, disturbing, and dangerous. Wordless, Eli backed down the street and turned into a narrow alley to bypass the intersection and the . . . whatever was going on there.
Miz Onie’s Bed and Breakfast was closed for the night, but the woman was a light sleeper and met us at the door before we could even knock, dressed in a fluffy purple housecoat with her graying hair up in twisty cloth curlers. She was not yet sixty, but was using a cane this time, and her gait looked pained.
“I see you come down de street,” she said, her Cajun accent mellifluous. “Come in out de rain. You rooms ready. Wet clothes go hang on de rack,” she pointed. Without waiting, she led the way up the steps and we followed her uneven, slow steps.
“Are you injured, Miz Onie?” I asked.
Woman is sick. Smells old. Cull her from herd?
No!
Beast chuffed, but I didn’t really know if she was being funny or hiding a serious question.
“Broke my ankle back a month ago. Doctor say it a spiral fracture and take longer to heal. Got to wear dis boot, which make clump-clump noise, but I making good progress.” She looked at the Youngers. “You not the same boys what come with Jane last time,” she said as we dumped equipment and gear in the hallway upstairs. “Them boys be U.S. military. Who you is?”
I remembered that Miz Onie had liked men in uniform and had given special attention to the men, including huge breakfasts and food left out to munch on all day. “Former U.S. Army Ranger, Miz Onie,” I said, “and his younger brother, Alex. And Edmund Hartley.”
She looked them all over, nodding to herself at the sight of the Youngers. But her eyes squinted when she got to Ed. I couldn’t tell from her body language or her scent how she felt about the vamp, but she didn’t kick him out. She turned for the stairs and her room on the first floor, walking hunched over, gripping her robe tightly closed with her free hand. “Breakfast at seven. Towels in each bath. This wet weather has me out of sorts and strangely sleepy, so good night, all.”
Once again she gave me the best room, on the front of the house, the green room, with emerald green bedspread, moss green walls, striped green drapery, and greenish fake flowers in a tall vase near a wide bay with soaring windows and a door out to a gallery. The boys were sent into the room Derek had used on the last visit, which had two twin beds and a view into the garden out back. Edmund was left standing in the hallway alone, until she pointed to a third room, a nook at the top of the stairs. He frowned as he took in the windows and the draperies—which could be opened to let in the light while he slept, if an enemy was so inclined to watch him burn to death in bed.
He raised his brows. “Doesn’t like Mithrans, I take it?”
“Not fond of anyone one but military boys.”
“I fought in the Civil War. Does that count?”
“Confederate?”
“No.”
“I’d keep it to yourself, then,” I said, tossing my sleepwear on the bed and my toiletries on the bathroom counter, and laying out my weapons with much greater care.
Patiently Edmund said, “Where am I to sleep, my master?”
Sleep with Beast!