“But the dog-fanged vamps are rising, walking, seeing, eating, and drinking. Making either the vamps themselves different or the method in which they were prepared for the grave different. Who are the vamp morticians?”
“Mateo and Laurie Caruso,” Edmund said, “of Caruso Family Funeral Services. For the last two hundred years and more.” He sounded unhappy about it. I had to wonder why.
“Vamps?”
“Yes.”
I thought about his tone and the unhappy look on his face. “Mateo and Laurie Caruso. Do they have dog fangs?”
“Yes.” He looked utterly saddened at speaking the word. The kind of sad that spoke of a personal history, one filled with heartbreak.
“You and Laurie. You used to have a thing, didn’t you.”
“If by ‘have a thing,’ you mean did we have a romantic relationship once upon a time, yes. We were . . . close.”
Bruiser got in the limo and began to wipe off on the fluffy towels. The storm had lessened again, and beyond the patting sounds of Bruiser’s towel, I heard nothing. “Shemmy,” I said, “take us to Caruso Family Funeral Services.”
Bruiser stopped patting and looked at me, then at Ed. Comprehension dawned in his eyes. “Oh. Bouvier clan.”
Just in case he wasn’t on our page, I said, “Dog fangs. All the risen revs had them. Heads, mouths, eyes, ears, legs, arms, everything works and nothing should work at all.”
“Yes.” The limo pulled away as Bruiser retrieved a small cell from a pocket of the limo and punched in a number. When Scrappy answered, he said, “Tell the Master of the City that his faithful Enforcer and his faithful Onorio are en route to Caruso Family Funeral Services.” He listened a moment, said, “Thank you,” and disconnected.
“Faithful?” I asked.
“There is only one funeral home in the city for Mithrans. If we have to kill the Carusos, I wanted to remind Leo that we do so while still being loyal to him.”
“Why?”
“Mithran funerals and burials are very circumscribed, sacred, and private affairs,” Bruiser said. “Almost holy. Without the Caruso family, there will be no one to provide the correct interment procedures for the city’s undead. Things will become difficult.”
“Uh-huh. Okay. I’ll keep them alive if possible. But if they’re raising the revenants or helping the people who are, then they go down. Unless I can use them.”
“Understood,” Bruiser said. Then he did a strange thing. He turned off his cell before gesturing that we all do likewise. We all did and then held the cells tightly beneath an armpit to muffle any remaining mic. “One thing you should know,” he said. “Leo’s eyes among the Europeans has not always been reliable.”
Leo’s eyes refereed to Leo’s Madam Spy. That she had not always been reliable suggested that she was either easily confused or a turncoat, a double agent, spying for Leo and giving intel to both sides. That sucked. And that was possibly deadly. I nodded and we all turned on our cells. I quickly texted Alex to find and turn off the security system at the funeral home. This was Enforcer business, not cop business. And if the morticians were EV spies, planted here a couple of centuries ago, then we needed to keep the Eurotrash from discovering that we were onto them.
Eli shook himself. Blinked. Looked around the limo until his gaze settled on Bruiser. “You killed a little girl?”
Bruiser repeated his previous statements, nearly word for word, his tone careful, his eyes on Eli’s hands, close to his weapons. “Her name was Joan Bennett. She stood four feet nine, and she looked like a child. She was staked and beheaded in nineteen forty-three for killing two of her human servants. Not a child. But you were seeing a child.”
Eli frowned, his eyes staring into a past only he could see. “A little girl blew herself up. Killed three of my men. Nearly killed me. She was maybe ten.” His eyes filled with tears and he blinked against them. “I saw her coming. There was nothing to suggest that she was a danger, but . . . I knew it. Somehow. And I didn’t take her down. I just watched her walk up to us and . . . If I’d just shot her, my men would have lived.” Eli’s expression didn’t change. His hands clenched and then released. Rain dripped off his fingertips. “I couldn’t do it. I knew what she was going to do and I couldn’t . . . couldn’t do it. I just stood there.” A single tear gathered and fell, trickling down his rain-slicked face. And still his expression was stone.
We all sat as he cried, silent, terrible tears. I wanted to take Eli’s hand, give him a hug, but I didn’t know how. The limo took corners carefully, Shemmy as involved in the pain as we all were. Outside, muted thunder rumbled. My magics stayed silent, contained.
Edmund slid across the seat to him and took up a towel. Silent as well, he dried off Eli, starting with Eli’s head, which he pressed like a benediction. Eli’s neck, shoulders, and arms. He dried Eli’s torso and slid to the floor to dry Eli’s legs and behind his knees. Down to his feet. From the floor, without looking up at Eli, Edmund said softly, “There is no going back. There is no revival of our humans. There is no erasure of our horrors. No healing except of time and she is a vengeful mistress, leaving scars that are forever. But there also is no proof of foreknowledge, only of twenty-twenty hindsight. You guessed. You did not know. Knowing is only for God.” Edmund lifted and dried Eli’s hands. He said, “Your hands are clean. Not stained with blood. You need not carry the blood of your men. Only their memories.”
Eli took a breath that quaked in a sob.
Edmund returned to the seat, next to my partner, his nearness a comfort if Eli wanted it. After that we rode in silence.
? ? ?
We pulled through Faubourg Marigny, a mostly residential area of the city, and Shemmy pointed out our destination as we rode by, a street-side recon. “You want the double-gallery house with the star jasmine blooming out front.”
It was the wrong season and too cold for jasmine to be blooming. The temps at freezing should have killed the flowers, even if the plant itself survived. A sense of unease slid across me. There were few two-story buildings in the nearby blocks, and the brick building housing Caruso Family Funeral Services stood out as different, even though it didn’t have a sign advertising its services. Like most vamp businesses, it didn’t publicize.
I said softly to Edmund, “Vamp funerals and the vamp mortician or morticians who reattached the heads of the dog-fanged vamps. I want to know everything.”
“Clan Bouvier began a climb to power as lesser Mithrans who provided services to and for other, more powerful Mithrans. They cared for scions in lairs, they cared for sick human servants who contracted diseases not eased by their master’s blood, they helped to care for and educate children of the body.”
Vamps sometimes were able to have children of their own bodies, though that was uncommon and I had no idea why. But such children were rare and cosseted and adored. I had killed the creature masquerading as Immanuel, Leo’s “child of his body.” Losing the person he had thought was his son had driven Leo nearly to madness. It was a miracle he hadn’t killed me.