I backed to the far end of the hallway where I could cover the entrances and the offices. No one was there, but we had once seen a small room with a witch circle drawn on the floor that allowed mutated vamps to transport in, just like in Star Trek, but without the crazy lights or sound, or Spock or Scotty at the controls. That was in Natchez too, and though this situation was nothing like the one there, something, probably the magic output here, kept reminding me of it.
I texted Alex again and got a text in reply: Security off. Pulled latest building plans. Retrofitted with electronic hurricane and vamp shutters. Walls insulated and soundproofed in 2009 with gel-foam liquid.
I typed back, K.
Got a note in reply. Get the dog-stinking-werewolf out of the house!!!!!! which made me snort out a laugh. Brute had a coat like the offspring of a Brillo pad and a long-haired sheep. When he got wet, he stank, and New Orleans weather meant he stank pretty often. That would get better if I’d bathe him. And Alex would complain less when I got him a mattress of his own. I made myself a note to stop by Walmart and see about a mattress. And a plastic covering like they used in nurseries and nursing homes to protect it from wet and smell. And a bleachable mattress covering. I never wanted a pet and here I had a full-time werewolf and a part-time grindylow. Again with the weird life.
Eli was still busy, and I had my cell out, so I checked my business e-mail. I hadn’t done that in a while and I had offers for two jobs back near Asheville. With an unexpected ache, the mountains in winter called to me. I had a sudden vision of a snow-covered chasm as viewed from some tall, bare-branched tree. The smell of the air was clean and sharp and frozen. Below me, a deer picked his way through the snow. Beast’s vision. Beast’s memory.
I closed the Kevlar cover and stuck the cell in my driest pocket. Maybe I needed to invest in a special dry-pocket something or other. I needed to do more research. There were advantages to being Leo’s Enforcer, and the pretty, pretty toys and gear were part of that.
“Fire in the hole,” Eli said, racing into the office near me, pulling me in after him. I got a glimpse as the others ducked into rooms too.
The whump was more muffled than I expected, shrapnel flying down the hallway, ricocheting off the walls. The freed door whammed against the wall. Soft light, like candlelight, brightened the hallway. The cloud of plastic explosive and detonator blew through the air, an acerbic scent that curled under my tongue and filled my mouth with bitterness. Behind it came the smell of the locked room. Dead things. Dead vamp blood, old and new.
Eli was just behind Edmund into the room. I moved slower. Holstered my weapons. According to the poster-board-sized note propped on one of two white enamel embalming tables, the Caruso family was long gone. It said, The Caruso family has returned to Europe. Please inform the Master of the City that we are no longer his to rule. Laurie Caruso.
“They knew we were on the way,” Bruiser said.
“There’s dust on the floor and evenly on the poster,” Eli said, bending over the paper. “They’ve been gone a while.”
I looked up at the dim lights. Some kind of battery backups. And a great idea. We needed that in our house. “Ten bucks says they left when the ghost ship entered U.S. territory, whenever that was,” I said.
“Ghost ship?” Edmund asked coldly but politely, his tone telling me that I wasn’t keeping him in the loop.
“You were asleep,” I said, resting my forearms on my weapons. I walked through the room, my wet clothing depositing drops here and there. I explained about the spelled ship in Lake Borgne as Eli checked for booby traps in cabinet doors and the body refrigerators along one wall. I found a bright yellow door marked with a red diamond-shaped fire hazard sticker. Eli cleared it and I went in.
The room was really a closet, metal walls, metal shelves, a sprinkler overhead, battery backup lighting. On the shelves inside the metal room were metal cans of chemicals: formaldehyde HCHO of various indexes—whatever that meant—formalin, something called pro-line primer, pre-injection and drainage fluid, things I felt were pretty normal for human embalming and should be pretty much the same for vamps. There were boxes of lye and an arsenic container. Arsenic hadn’t been used in human burial since the early twentieth century. I spotted a small refrigerator-freezer at the back, the kind advertised for dorms and small break rooms. There had been a larger refrigerator in the main room. I had to wonder why there was a tiny one in the fire closet. I squatted and studied the fridge.
“Babe?”
“Take a look at this. Think it’s booby-trapped?”
I moved back and Eli lay on the slightly dusty floor, his little mini flash checking out the rubber seals and the back. “Good place for a bomb,” Eli said as he worked. “Flammable chemicals everywhere. Contained space is good for creating a high aerosol concentration of said chemicals.” He rolled to his feet, back to the calm and fit Ranger I remembered. “I can’t see anything, but that’s not to say there isn’t a device on the inside, triggered upon opening. I suggest we leave it alone. If Leo wants it open he can get NOPD’s bomb squad in here.”
“Works for me,” I said, backing away and closing the door behind us.
In the main room, Edmund was studying the contents of a cabinet. It was full of supplies in small boxes. Musingly, he said, “The heads of the revenants were reattached with a pale pink silk. The traditional line for Mithran head reattachment is braided silk, a white or pale gray line.” He took a pink box from the shelf and removed a spool of silk. “This is what the Carusos must have used on the revenants. It’s pink and it feels”—he made a face as if something tasted bad—“odd to the touch.”
I took the spool of pink thread from Edmund’s hand and studied it. Outside, lightning bracketed the windows with brilliant light. The thread sparked. Hot, potent magic pulsed into my fingertips and I dropped the spool. “Holy crap on a cracker.” I shook my fingers and stuck them in my mouth. “I’m burned,” I said around the fingers. “Blistered.”
“Whatever is calling the revenants awake is tied to the thread they were preserved with,” Edmund said. “Interesting.”
Eli had checked out the big fridge-freezer and tied a long cord around the handles. He said, “Everyone out so we can open this.” We all moved out of the room for the opening, and with us all standing behind the now-broken door frame, Eli yanked on the cords. Without explosion or fanfare, the doors opened and bright appliance light spilled into the room along with refrigerated air. Overhead, the lights came back on, and I squinted at the glare. “Clear,” Eli said, coiling the cord and sticking it back in his pocket.