“You knew about those?” Brandon said.
“Of course I knew. Derek and Pauline Easter are good, but they’re amateurs. The Kid is a felon with employment offers from the DOD. He’s better than good.”
The twins exchanged looks, one of those multilayered communication things twins can do. “We see,” they said together. I just narrowed my eyes at them and walked into the three-story house. It was larger and deeper than it looked from the outside, forty-six feet across the front, and twice that deep on its small lot. The central hallway led past a wide staircase in the foyer, the floors and stairs carpeted with Oriental rugs in shades of blue and gray and black. The dining room was off the foyer, with a hand-carved cherrywood table and chairs and loads of china showing through glass doors of the built-in cabinetry. Across the hallway from it was a parlor filled with antique upholstered furniture, statues, and objets d’art. Gilt-framed paintings hung on the right wall in the wide hall, and a mural graced the left.
The scent of coffee and tea lingered on the air from a butler’s pantry that separated the dining room from the expanded kitchen added on in back. There was also an old-fashioned music room behind the parlor and a library behind that. Staff quarters were on the left at the back of the house, for the servants, including security. Arceneau Clan Home was überfancy and überexpensive, tasteful in ways I had yet to become comfortable with. The cameras were set into the light fixtures, complicated things with sensors and on-off switches. When the place was swept for electronics, Alex or someone at HQ could deactivate them and then reactivate them once the EuroVamps felt secure. The cameras were everywhere. And even with my experience, I couldn’t spot them.
“Tell me about the gunfire,” I said when I was done with my inspection.
Brandon said, “In the middle of the lightning storm from one of Dante’s circles of hell, a car pulled up and six unknowns, male, jumped out and attacked the movers. Fists. Then blades. Before we could intervene, it escalated into gunfire. We got the movers under cover, but a neighbor had already called NOPD. Since it involved gunfire and was in an upscale part of the city, law enforcement showed up quickly. At which point it appeared that the gunmen would turn on the officers.”
“We stopped them,” Brian said. “I assume Alex will have acquired the security footage.”
Which I couldn’t wait to see. “Okay. Keep us informed,” I said.
I wandered through the ground floor of the house, and on the way out, I passed the mural on the wall, the one I had seen before, that attracted my attention on so many levels. I stopped to study it. Closely. More intently than ever. I realized that one of the vamps in the mural had dog fangs. Which Bruiser had to know. “Onorios,” I said, using my Enforcer tone. “This blood-family with dog fangs. Details.”
Bruiser stepped up on my left, one twin on my right, the other behind me. Onorio scents and heat enveloped me. “Bouvier,” the twin from behind said. His tone suggested that I should know and remember this already. Things were ticking in the back of my brain but not fast enough.
“Remind me,” I said.
Brandon, to my side, pointed. “Rousseau and his favorites, Elena and Isabel.” Rousseau was the formal way to refer to a clan head, though Rousseau Clan had been disbanded during the vamp war not long after I got here. His fingers moved. “Desmarais with his Joseph, Louis, and Alene.” The first names indicated a blood-servant or much lesser scion; the vamps were obvious by the fangy display.
Brian leaned over me, his body touching my spine. “Laurent with her favorites, Elizabeth and Freeman.” Freeman was black and gorgeous and I had little doubt why he was both free and a favorite. “Renee with his master, St. Martin.” He went quiet. St. Martin was associated with the Damours blood-family, the family of witch-vampires I had helped to kill. They had been powerful and evil and dangerous. And their red motes of power were still trapped inside me.
“Bouvier with Ka Nvista.”
The vamp master and Bouvier clan head at the time had dog fangs, which I hadn’t noted before. His blood-servant was Cherokee, her name meaning dogwood. She had yellow eyes like mine and she was likely a skinwalker, though no one who was alive both then and now had ever remarked on any similarity in our scents. She was beautiful, with long, braided black hair and lost eyes. Her master would have savaged her beautiful throat with the double fangs. “Bouvier and the Damours. Did they hang together back in the day?”
“Yes,” Brian said. “They did. As did other masters and scions from time to time. The Damours were a sensual and sybaritic family. They attracted many of the restless young, the dissolute elder, and the bored.” He didn’t sound particularly approving, which relieved me in ways I didn’t take time to look at too closely.
I pulled my cell and texted the Kid to go through the old records databases to look for all witch/vamps who used to hang with the Damours and see how common the dog-fanged vamps were among the group. But Alex had beat me to it, texting back, I started that research the moment the first dog-fanged revenant appeared.
Why? I typed back.
Because everything else bad in this fuc—messed-up city traces back to the Damours, so why not this too?”
He typed that so I could see his near-cussing. But he was right, and maybe he was more clearheaded than I was right now. Vamps were long-lived and had different views of future plans, potential goals, and multiple methodologies. They could harbor vengeance in their hearts for centuries before they enacted it against an enemy. It was called the long view.
Do any of Leo’s current scions have dog fangs? I typed back.
Checking. A moment later he typed back, No.
I pocketed the cell beneath my now mostly dry poncho and said to the three Onorios, “Thanks. I have things to think about.” They all stepped back, in synchrony, which felt weird, and created a passage out the front door. Just before I reached the door, I turned, retrieved the cell, and stepped back to take a couple of dozen photos, using several different filters, just in case I needed to reference it later. I sent them to Alex’s and my own e-mail addy and text number. Then I pocketed the cell again and left the house. Bruiser waited for me at the limo, holding the door open against the fine, misty rain, but when I slid in, he didn’t follow.
“Shemmy will take you home,” he said. “I need to be here at dusk with the twins and that’s only two hours away. You haven’t eaten sufficiently. I smell your hunger. Stop for something to eat. Cochon’s maybe.”
“Shemmy?”
“His father was Jimmy and his mother was Sheba. Not the queen.” His lips curled up slightly at beating me to the question.
“Shemmy it is. Does Shemmy have any special gifts, training, or abilities?”
“Of course. Your second insisted.”