Edmund gave me his meek look in return. He wasn’t bad at it, puppy-dog eyes and all, but I knew a fake when I saw it. Practicing that look in the presence of vamps might have given him extra acting skills, but having been a clan blood-master for so long had unbalanced it in favor of an underlayment of arrogance.
“Whatever,” I muttered. I looked at our prisoner. I didn’t have a real firm grasp on the proper response, except that it was equally formal. I sighed and pulled back the slide on my weapon, ejecting the round. I set it and the nine mil on the small bedside table and moved to the edge of the bed, where I sat again, empty hands dangling. I needed more downtime than I’d gotten. Vamp time was hard on a girl’s beauty sleep. “The Enforcer of the Master of the City of New Orleans and the Greater Southeast United States, with the exception of Florida, will hear you.” When he didn’t say anything I added, “Talk, Gabe. Make it clear, concise, and fast.”
“I the man who responsible for the troubles in this town, I am.”
That was pretty concise. I hadn’t paid much attention to Gabe’s voice when I was here last, trying to keep my skin on my bones and my blood in my veins. But his Cajun syllables were clear and pleasant, a higher tone that contrasted markedly to his father’s deeper voice. “Okay. Let’s hear your side.”
“A vampire man, a Mithran as the Vampira Carta say, he have certain needs.”
My head went back. “If this is about sex, I’m not interested in suckhead infidelity.”
“No, no, no. Not sex. Blood.”
Edmund didn’t bother to hide an amused grin. My prudishness was a source of cynical entertainment among the vamps. I frowned at him and caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the mirror over the vanity. My hair was everywhere, as if I’d fought a vamp in my dreams. I sighed and said, “Edmund, we’re safe here. Go check on the boys. No buckets of water.”
Edmund dropped Gabriel, saying, “As my master commands.” With a pop of displaced air, he was gone.
“Get up and sit”—I pointed to the floral upholstered chair I had just deserted—“and tell me what you did that got all this started.”
Gabriel rose from the floor with the fluid grace of the undead and took the small chair. He was dressed in rain-wet jeans and a camo shirt, work boots, and leather armbands worked in Celtic symbols with the logo of a rock-and-roll band. Around his neck he wore a leather thong with a tiny gold Celtic circle hanging from it. His brown hair fell to his waist, some braided, some hanging free, all of it wet and dripping, which might have made another man look like a soaked dog, but on Gabe, with his aquiline nose and almond-shaped eyes, it just made him prettier. When he bowed his head over his interlaced fingers, his hair touched the floor. It was a graceful gesture, and it was no wonder that the witch, Shauna, had fallen for the pretty boy. “Been a fool, I have,” he said.
That was a good start. I pulled a vamp-killer, which I placed at my side. His eyes went wide and he swallowed, a totally vamp reaction to the presence of a fourteen-inch-long steel blade plated with silver. I reached around and began unplaiting my braid, going for casual and killer all at once. I nodded for him to continue.
His eyes on the weapon, he said, “All dis mess”—he jerked his head to the outside in a gesture that was particularly Cajun and Gaelic and Frenchy—“might . . . pro’lly, have start when Shauna found dat I done drank—one time only—from someone else.” My eyebrows went up in surprise. “Shauna, she got baby blues after our lil’ boy, Clerjer, born.” It came out Clarshar, the name all pretty and flowing syllables of the expectation of peace.
The child had been the first vampire-witch baby born in the traditional human way, as opposed to a vamp turning, in ages. His name had been a hopeful blending of the names of the leaders of the witches and vamps in the small town, Clermont Jér?me Landry Doucette, the baby being the first and only thing bringing the two opposing groups together in, well, forever.
I nodded again, showing I understood.
“Shauna, her go anemic. Not have blood for me. I have to feed or I go”—his hand made a circle around his ear—“crazy in de head.”
I thought about that. Two young people madly in love. Baby. Weakness. One not able to feed from the other. Postpartum depression. It made sense, on the face of it, for him to drink from someone else. It seemed right and proper, the gentlemanly thing to do, to get sustenance from elsewhere. Except that for vamps, feeding and sex were usually synonymous. “Who’d you drink from?” I frowned at him. “I’m guessing that it wasn’t from your sire or a brother?” Gabe shook his head, his eyes back down in shame. I blew out a breath, and if my sarcasm was a bit strong, I felt it was well placed. “I take it she was pretty?”
“Yeah,” he said after a pause that went on too long. “She is dat.”
“And you had sex with her?”