Flames roared as my hearing came back online. Heat like an oven blasted across the room. In the distance, sirens wailed.
Hunched over. Gathered and holstered my weapons. Crab-walked to the human who had been tortured and checked his pulse. He was long gone. I knew him, but didn’t remember his name. Jim? John? One of Grégoire’s people. He should have been in HQ, safe. I had no idea what had made him stay here or come back here. It had been a deadly blunder, whatever the reason.
Something darkened the doorway. I found a nine-mil in my hand again. Pointed at Gee DiMercy. “Get out,” he said. “The entire place is—” He spotted Bruiser on the floor. His eyes grew wide and a look of intense satisfaction settled there for an instant, like a bird touching down and pushing back off. The expression, whatever it had meant, disappeared.
“Why aren’t you with Alex?” I demanded.
“Edmund is with him, as are a quartet of Derek Lee’s liquor security. Arceneau Clan Home is burning,” he said to Bruiser. “The fire department has arrived.”
Bruiser nodded and reached around to the vamp’s face. He closed her eyes and stood. Her magics were a taut, twisted layer pressed tightly to her skin. She was still alive. Undead. Whatever. Bruiser lifted and carried her from the room. I followed. Gee went around front. Or flew over the house. Whichever.
Out front, Bruiser laid the vamp’s body into the backseat of the SUV. She was mostly unconscious, her eyes rolled back, her fangs out. She looked drunk. Gee walked up as the fire truck pulled into the driveway. Firemen in heavy gear piled out and began to disgorge hoses and axes and ladders. A rotund man was shouting orders. Rain fell in slow spatters, not much help against the fire.
Lightning struck close by. The Gray Between flickered on and off. Finally. Time did its little dance. I stood still, hating that the storm was in control and not me. I leaned against the SUV. Gee swiveled to me and focused on the space around me, where the Gray Between glimmered. He could see it. I said, “You told me that the storm wasn’t natural. That it’s magic. What kind of magic? Anzu magic?”
“Not a power I can control alone, but if you give me le breloque I can try to—”
“No. I remember you and the vamps and the witches fighting over that thing. Not happening. The storm. Is it witch magic?”
“Yes,” Gee said, sounding miserable, looking up into the night clouds.
I glanced back at the house. Flames were consuming the back, a raging inferno leaping for the windows. The wind, reacting to the heat, picked up. The blaze thrust, voracious, to the front door and the pure air that poured through it, feeding the fire. The kitchen and its bodies were a ruin. If I hadn’t used silver ammo no one would have known who had shot the humans. I’d be in an interrogation room as soon as the silver fléchette damage was discovered by the medical examiner. I wasn’t the only one who used the rounds but I was the best known.
Gee said, “Adan Bouvier, in the mural that is no more, was . . . is . . . a water witch with strong air capabilities as well.”
It was info I hadn’t asked for. When someone powerful gives me information for free, they usually wanted me to do their dirty work. I should have socked him and walked away. Should have. “I’m listening,” I said instead.
Gee looked up into the clouds. “If he is still among the undead, he is capable of creating such a storm.”
I remembered the black motes of power in the clouds, when the arcenciels were flying there, cavorting in real time. “Was Bouvier a friend of the Damours?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to Adan?” I asked. Adan was the fanghead who had owned Ka Nvista, a Cherokee slave with yellow eyes like me.
“There was an ‘incident,’” Gee said, “and though Leo told others he was dead, there are those of us who know the truth. He went back to France.”
“You think he’s the water witch causing this storm, either on shore with the others, or still aboard the invisible cruise ship.” I wanted Adan to be alive. I wanted it so much that my hands ached with the need. I wanted him alive so I could question him about Ka Nvista. About how she died. And more, about how she lived. And if there were more of us.
That hope, that need, I shoved deep inside, not sure when it had gotten loose.
“No,” Gee said, his dark eyes exploring the downtown skyline, then the uptown skyline, back toward the French Quarter and the river, then toward Lake Pontchartrain (downstream, upstream, river side, and lake side, in the parlance of the locals), as if scenting something only he could sense. He said, “I believe that he is on land. Here in the city. Any witch worth her salt can cast an obfuscation working over the ship and vanish in the storm. But creating a storm such as this, that takes a gift not seen on these shores in centuries. And not one practiced aboard ship, but with a witch circle, one drawn on the Earth.”
Bruiser’s cell chirped. He tapped the screen and said, “Alex?”
“I’m safe. Tell Jane her cell is off again.” His voice was manic, the way it sounded when he was overindulging on energy drinks. Eli and I had talked to him about the dangers of overdosing on them, but he was a geek teenager, ten feet tall and Kryptonite-proof.
I fished around and found my cell. It was in pieces; the only thing still intact was the Kevlar cover. I didn’t remember picking it up at the house. I didn’t remember breaking it, but it must have happened in the firefight inside Arceneau Clan Home.
“Did she bust another one?” Alex asked Bruiser.
I muttered something less than ladylike under my breath and tossed it to the SUV floor.
“Yes,” Bruiser said. “She did.”
“Ha! I owe myself five bucks.” He continued, “I got three things: Vamps coming ashore in a rubber dinghy while the attention was focused on shore during the original altercation with the Feds and ICE. Brandon’s and Brian’s current whereabouts. And Grégoire’s attackers/kidnappers on camera after they left HQ.”
I stood straight. “Yeah? Grégoire first.”
“Timeline: The EV vamps carried Grégoire out through the side entrance of HQ and gave him to two humans. He was bound and bleeding and unconscious. The humans carried him down the street and put him in a car. I got a partial plate. Found the car on the way to Clan Arceneau. Not long after, I got a visual on the Roberes at the dock and leaving at a dead run. They got in one of Leo’s SUVs, but they deactivated the GPS on it and I lost them on the traffic cams. I reacquired the humans and Grégoire. They ditched the car on the Lafitte Greenway Trail and left on foot, where I lost them on St. Louis Street. Best guess is they got into one of the cars going past, but not sure which one. I’m backtracking through the footage to see where the Roberes ended up, but it’s taking time to acquire the private surveillance footage.”