I Want You to Chill, Babe Without looking up at me, Soul spoke, and I jumped a little. "Thank you for breaking the wolf's nose. He'll heal, but he will surely remember his lesson."

"You're welcome. I think."

Soul smiled, still without looking up. I didn't want to like her, but she had a really sweet smile, one I didn't think could be faked. "I'm not sleeping with Rick," she said, and shifted papers to uncover a buried pile.

"Yeah." I said shortly. When she didn't say more I added, "That's a good way to go furry."

"We also are not romantically involved."

"Oh." Okay. Stupid, but a happy flush coursed through me. "Are you two-you four-staying in Natchez?"

"Yes. Ms. Esmee has provided us rooms. If that makes you uncomfortable, we can, of course, take rooms elsewhere."

I opened my mouth to ask Why are you staying here? Whose idea was it? Does Rick like me? Check here for yes and here for no. So juvenile. I wanted to ask but didn't have the social skills to peel away the layers without sounding like a lovesick teenager. I was an idiot for even thinking it. I closed my mouth, the questions unasked, but no way was it coincidence that they were staying here. So I blew out a breath and shrugged instead. Which was even more juvenile. "Um. Stay. That's fine by me. And all." I wanted to kick myself.

Soul didn't react except to say, "PsyLED acquired a few police reports from the local sheriff and the chief of police. Interestingly enough, your young man had already discovered the same information quite independently, and quite a bit sooner than law enforcement."

My young man had to be Alex, and if he acquired info on his own it was by illegally drilling into information centers, like police networks. So I said nothing. Nada.

Soul pa.s.sed me a sheet of paper with Alex's info and handwritten notations on it. "Among Natchez's missing are twelve witches, gone in the last four months. I understand that you asked Alex to hunt for this information specifically?"

I sat up straight. Twelve out of 114? "Yeah. Something someone said made me curious. Those percentages seem off." I said. "Witches might make up one percent of the population. Not nearly ten percent."

"Twelve is a perfect number for a ma.s.s working," Soul said. "One more or less would leave a working unbalanced."

Another word for a ma.s.s working was a circle. For which we were searching and had been since Francis-still caged in the garage-had mentioned one. "Holy moly on a broomstick," I breathed. "What kind of ma.s.s working needs twelve witches?"

She handed me a sheaf of papers. "The kind used for moving hurricanes or shifting weather patterns. The New Orleans coven didn't have enough members still in town to move Katrina, which is why they could only bring the storm down from a category five to a cat three. If they'd had enough witches working together, they could have moved it-which is much harder-and decreased the storm's power." I took the pages and started scanning them. Soul kept talking. "A group of twelve can also make armies sick or affect the impact of political advertising on the ma.s.ses. Many historians believe that Hitler had several covens of twelve in the early years of his political and military life, which contributed to his success in warfare. Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan each traveled with a coven of twelve. Alexander, Cyrus the Great, Julius Caesar are believed to have had witches at their command. And, of course, Napoleon Bonaparte had a very loyal coven. Such large covens are dangerous. Do you like history?"

It was obvious, even to me, that she was trying to put me at ease by chatting and not meeting my eyes, something my Beast would have appreciated. And it was working. I huffed a breath and forced my shoulders to drop, making myself relax. "It's okay," I said. "It was interesting in school, but it was also like eating only the icing instead of the whole cake, you know? No depth. Anyway. Okay. Covens of twelve are powerful. How about making vamps move like insects and heal from silver?"

Soul met my eyes. "I have never heard of such a thing until now."

I pulled my phone and showed her the photos. "This vamp is dead, but it took way more weaponry than it should have. A bunch more got away, one after being spine shot with silver."

"Oh, my." Soul leaned forward in her chair, studying the shots. "Did they move like the ones in this video that Alex sent me?" She spun the small laptop so I could see it full-on.

"Yes. Exactly. Creepy insectoid-snakey-octopuslike."

Soul asked, "Did you look at their hands and feet? Did you examine them thoroughly? Had there been any physiological changes, like extra digits or formation of carapace? Scales? Anything that might suggest a genetic-level mutation?"

"No, no, and nothing that I saw." There was a strange look on her face, as if she had seen something recently that prompted the questions, but I didn't ask and she didn't offer the answers. "If witches are involved and magic is letting them heal against silver, then maybe the full circle is involved too?" I asked. And maybe Big H, with his mention of magic, knows about it all and has from the beginning, I thought. Except why bring me here and then only toss out clues about it?

"Whoever is directing the circle would need a focus, something to gather and concentrate the spell and the energy of the coven, like a large amulet-a statue, a live oak, anything big enough to hold the power. Something potent that could be driven by the twelve missing witches. Something that has been working for quite some time. Perhaps since Lucas Vazquez de Allyon arrived in Natchez."

"How about an ugly, corroded metal-and-copper necklace?" I asked, thinking about Big H's jewelry.

A necklace would be too small," she said definitively.

I thought about the blood diamond I had put in the safety-deposit box and the amulets in my boot box. The diamond was well protected; the others didn't feel or smell powerful enough for the changes I'd seen in the vamps. But what did I know? I'd gotten them from de Allyon's Naturaleza followers before I killed him, so I knew where they'd come from, just not what they did. "Wait here." I raced up the stairs and brought back one of the pocket-watch amulets for Soul to inspect. "This is the only amulet I've seen that has something to do with Lucas Vazquez de Allyon."

The nonhuman woman held it in both hands and closed her eyes. At one point she c.o.c.ked her head, a puzzled expression on her face. She opened her eyes and looked at it with surprise. "It smells like old blood and warm, raw meat. But it does not feel like a blood-magic amulet. Perhaps a low-level communication charm? A way for two vampires to speak to each other?"

I huffed. So much for that idea.

She held the pocket watch out to me and, reluctantly, I took it, tossing it to the table, where it slid under a sheaf of papers. I wiped my hand on my jeans and noticed Soul doing the same thing on her skirt. I'd smelled something like the scent recently, but I couldn't place it. "You want some tea?" I asked. When Soul's eyes lit up with interest, I said, "Jameson has some gunpowder green, a nice little oolong, some jasmine that he says is tasty, and a good strong black, a GFOP golden monkey." The initials stood for Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, a top grade of tea, and golden monkey was my favorite tea lately. "It's really good iced, and not bad hot."

"The golden monkey sounds wonderful. Hot, please."

"Antic.i.p.ating your need," Jameson said, pushing open the door to the coffee and tea bar, "I have brewed a pot for you." The smell of hot tea wafted through the room, caught on the currents from the house's air system.

"You are most kind, Jameson," Soul said.

"He's a wizard with anything in the kitchen."

"Miss Jane speaks figuratively," he said. "I have no magic at all."

I grinned and accepted a mug of black tea with cream and sugar. Soul took hers black. And I figured we were bonding. Either that or she was casting some sort of spell over me again.

"So," she said, when Jameson had withdrawn, "someone has possibly forced a coven of twelve, possibly composed of witches who had not previously worked together, so far as we know. An acceptable deduction would be that the resulting magic would be spotty, sketchy, difficult to control."

"And a reporter comes along asking questions," I said, "and someone makes her disappear. Misha's disappearance might be related to our insectoid vamps, or maybe she stumbled on the witch connection, or maybe . . ." I closed my eyes, trying to see clear outlines in the mishmash of information. "Maybe nothing is connected anywhere."

"And we have this." Soul handed me an envelope. "Your young man, Alex, gave it to me on his way out. I believe you call him the Kid?"

I opened the envelope and pulled out three pages of printed material. The page on top was taken from Misha's e-mail account, a series of e-mails and texts to Wynonna about the vamp Charles Scarletti. It was a list of questions she wanted answers to, including one about the history and whereabouts of a vamp named Esther McTavish. Esther was also a vamp in the files given to us by Big H, one on his kill list, one of de Allyon's Naturaleza. Maybe this was Francis' master? The puzzle pieces weren't starting to make sense, but they were forming a vague pattern, one I couldn't quite see but could almost feel.

"Yeah," I said, opening her file on my tablet. "There's not much in her file. So where is Esther McTavish? There's no address on the MOC's list of BBUs." At Soul's raised brow, I said, "Big Bad Uglies. Or BBVs-Big Bad Vamps."

Soul grinned, and she had a dimple. It was . . . cute. And I hated it. As if she had read my mind-and maybe she had. Who knew?-Soul laughed, and then waved the laugh away as if it were unimportant or inappropriate.

Aloud, I summarized as I read, "Esther was turned one-hundred twenty-three years ago, and she once served under Hieronymus. But she left Big H's clan in 1947 and swore to de Allyon in Atlanta." My heart rate sped. This was our first tie between Big H and de Allyon. I grinned at Soul. "Our little vamp was sworn to the Fame Vexatum as outlined in the Vampira Carta, but she went to the dark side and Naturaleza. And that means she knew the political situation in Natchez, at least as far back as the forties, and she knew vamps and people in H's clans. I think we found ourselves a spy. Go, Kid!" Though not one who would have known where Big H's sleeping lair was located.

I scanned through, back to the beginning. "I get the whole Naturaleza thing, hunting, drinking down, and killing any human a predator wants, but the Fame Vexatum. Is that what I think it is? Starvation?"

"Yes," Soul said. "The Holy Roman Church forced it upon the Mithrans living in Rome at the same time the drinkers of blood were forced to write the laws of the Vampira Carta. For the Mithrans of the time, it was be destroyed or adapt to the humans and their world. They adapted to living within human law by developing their intellect instead of the instinct of the hunter. They adapted by acquiring many blood-servants and slaves to feed from, rather than killing to survive. They adapted by developing their compulsion skills to make humans love them and want them. They adapted by never, ever drinking enough to satisfy or satiate. The Fame Vexatum stole much of their raw power from them, but left them with mental gifts no one had expected."

I grunted in agreement. "Which is why they're all so slender. They're starving to death. Or undeath. Whatever. And the Naturaleza don't starve, so they get beefier and a lot harder to kill. But the silver resistance is new. So is the buggy thing." Flipping to the next page, I made a soft snorting sound. "The Kid thinks the abundance of blood did something different to Esther. That it made her more powerful than the other Naturaleza." I flipped to the last page to check the Kid's doc.u.mentation on Esther and said, "He got this stuff by joining a social media site for Natchez blood-slaves? Un-freaking-believable what people put on the Web and think it'll be kept secret." I put down the pages. "So if magic is involved, then maybe a BBV kidnapped the witches and created the coven, and . . ." my mind raced, putting possibilities together to see if any of the puzzle pieces fit.

At my side, Soul inhaled sharply, the breath a faint whistle of surprise, and started tapping away madly on her laptop. She didn't enlighten me about her little gasp.

I said, "Maybe the coven is tied to a focus, an amulet that lets the leader-maybe Esther, maybe someone else-do some new magical thing and not react to silver." I stared up at the copper-coffered ceiling, thinking. "Maybe the whole walks-like-an-insect is a side effect? Or a mistake? Something some vamp is trying to make go away so she can be supervamp?"

"Possibilities. Not evidence," Soul said, sounding distracted. "If your theory is correct, then Esther McTavish is likely also sick with the vampire plague," Soul said, "but isn't succ.u.mbing to the disease."

I folded the pages and creased them back into thirds, thinking, and reached for the amulet I had tossed aside. "Yeah. I see that." Feeling the cheap metal under my thumb, I stroked the amulet, the oily, greasy sensation on my fingertips and the odd stink of blood rising to my nose. "Maybe she's made a full circle and is using an amulet and magic from the kidnapped witches to keep healthy. Maybe the silver resistance was a lucky side effect? Maybe now she's trying something new with the spell, and the vamps are going all buggy?"

"Again, we have too much information and not enough evidence," Soul said, which summed it up nicely. But Misha was still missing and we were no closer to finding her. "You should consider applying to work for PsyLED," she added. My eyebrows would have bounced off the ceiling if they hadn't been stuck to my face. Soul chuckled and waved away her words. "It wasn't a job offer. It's just. . . you have an interesting way of thinking. Of putting things together that don't seem to match at first. Like with your friend Camilla and her interest-"

As if conjured, my cell rang, interrupting Soul. It was the number a.s.signed to Camilla Hopkins. Misha. I answered, "Yellowrock. Misha?"

"Jane." The voice was hoa.r.s.e, the way people sound when they've been screaming for hours or when they haven't had water for two days. Or both. My body flushed, then locked down hard. I stood, gripping the phone. Soul stood, staring at me. "Take care of Charly. Okay? And Bobby." The line went dead.

I immediately called Mish back. I was sent to voice mail. "Misha. Call me back. Misha!" Not that she could pick up midcall. I closed the phone and my eyes, instantly seeing the memory of Misha, standing with her back to a wall, arms holding her middle, eyes wide, watching me being teased, as two older girls tossed my sneakers back and forth. Before I learned to fight and made a place for myself in the home-which Misha never did. I blinked back tears and strode from the room, pulling a throwaway cell and dialing the Kid. If anyone could find Misha's location from a fifteen-second cell phone call, it was him. But to back him up, I also called Reach and put him on the job. I got them to track and triangulate, if possible, any incoming calls to my official line or from the number Misha used to call me. It was a testament to my emotional state that neither guy told me it was impossible.

Needing to do something-anything-I left the house and headed to the garage and the prisoner caged there. The steel side door closed behind me, leaving me in the dim light that pa.s.sed through the windows of the garage doors, windows that someone had covered with black paper secured with packing tape. I clomped across the concrete and flipped on the overhead fluorescents. The lights were blinding, and my well-aimed kick slammed into the silvered cage so hard, it sc.r.a.ped across the floor and b.u.mped into the far wall. "Wake up, Francis!" I shouted. Adrundel rolled over and stared up at me, his eyes totally vamped and his fangs showing. He hissed. And lunged at me, talons reaching through the cage, the stink of burning rotten meat filling the garage.

"Sometimes when the p.o.o.p hits the fan, we should block it and run," I told him. "Sometimes we should haul off and knock it for a loop, back at the spinning blades. Wisdom is knowing two things. One is which time is which. The other is that no matter what you do, you're gonna get c.r.a.p on your hand." I kicked the cage again, harder. The vamp inside lunged at me. And I laughed.

"Who is your blood-master? Is it Esther McTavish?" When Francis laughed at me, I kicked the cage again, and this time Adrundel was flung loose to bounce against the barbs of the cage. His blood stank of metal and rot and sickness, some of the scents almost buried beneath the stronger smell of fresh vamp blood. "Where does Esther lair? Give me a place, or you have no value to me alive."

He growled at me and shivered, sticking his hands into the pockets of his ragged pants-the only article of clothing that was left to him. He looked cold and miserable in the unheated garage. His chest had healed, skin over concave ribcage, and I could see each breath he took and the irregular beating of a heart pulsing in the notch where the ribs came together. There was no carapace and no indication of new limbs. I'd have to remember to tell Soul when I got over my mad. I kicked the cage less violently, more to make my point. And I pulled a vamp-killer from a spine sheath. Francis Adrundel got a totally different look on his face.

"I wasn't joking earlier about your head being worth forty K to me. Alive, you're worthless."

"Esther had a place she kept in town. One of those historical-society houses."

Vivid joy shot through me, hot and vicious. I kicked the cage again and spun the knife so the reflective silver caught the light. "Healing from silver poisoning is a nifty talent, but it doesn't help much when your head is disconnected from your body."

"You are one crazy b.i.t.c.h."

"I've been told that by better people than you," I growled. "Address."

"I don't know. I didn't care at the time." I reared back and he quickly added, "But it was off of Orleans Street. I know that much. It had a tower on the front corner."

I sheathed the knife and pivoted on my heel.

"I need blood. Human blood. I'm starving!"

I paused, thinking. "I'll have more questions. When I ask them, if you answer sufficiently well, I'll see about getting a blood-slave in here to feed you. Fame Vexatum."

"I am a Naturaleza," he said, nearly spitting the words.

"And that makes you a dead fanghead. Forty K, remember? Think about it." I closed the door to the garage after me and went to Bitsa. Someone was sitting in a deck chair, positioned in front of my bike, holding a pocket knife, whittling. Whittling? I couldn't remember seeing anyone whittle, not ever, except on TV reruns of Mayberry and in Western movies.

I c.o.c.ked a hip. "Whadda you want?" I demanded.

Without looking up, Eli smiled, that tiny quirk of expression almost impossible to catch unless I was watching for it, and sliced a long, sharp sliver from the wood. It tumbled off his hands to the ground, joining dozens of others there. "I want you to chill, babe."

"I am not your babe. And I'm plenty chilled."

"You're raging mad, worried about your old school friend, who you feel that you somehow failed way back when. You're even more worried about the child upstairs, who may be dying of cancer. You're upset because your boyfriend-who-isn't is here and acting like an a.s.s. You're upset because a beautiful woman has a relationship with him when you don't. And you haven't been laid in ages."

Laughter bubbled up in me at the final comment, and he glanced at me under lowered brows before returning to his work. Some of the tension eased out of me with my laughter, and when it had run its course, I said, "That is such a guy comment."

"Yeah. It is. But it's true. You've been depressed, impossible to live with for weeks. Now you're here, finally doing something, and nothing is going right. And then Rick shows up. And his Soul. And you get punchy mad. By the way, is our prisoner still alive?" Another curl of wood hit the ground.

"Marginally. If undead is actually considered alive."

He gave me that twitchy smile. "So. You need to hit someone? Spar a bit?"

I blew out the rest of my irritation. "Thanks. Yeah. Maybe later. Right now, I need to check out an address our prisoner gave me. "You want to ride shotgun?"

"Thought you'd never ask." He closed the knife and rose to his feet in a single fluid motion and looked me over. "That all you're wearing?"

I knew he was talking about my lack of firepower, and I grimaced. "No. Guess not."

"p.i.s.sed off is not the same as well armed," he agreed, leading the way into the house.

"I'll remember that."

Minutes later we were pulling into town in the SUV, and shortly after that we were on Orleans Street, looking down cross streets. It took a while, like, maybe half an hour, before we had narrowed the houses down to the most likely. Natchez had several houses with what might have been cla.s.sed as towers on them. We parked on the street and made our way to the door.

I smelled vamp and blood and put a hand on Eli's arm to stop him. I opened my mouth and drew in air over my tongue as Beast might have done, smelling, identifying, and cla.s.sifying the various scents. Eli watched me and the street and the house all at once, a gun in each hand, but hidden out of sight behind his leg and behind my back. "Blood-servants, too many to count, have been in and out of this house. Vamps too. But mostly we have something dead inside. I think several somethings."

"Recently dead? Human dead? How many?"

"Yeah. More than one. We need to call your girlfriend."

I drew a weapon as Eli holstered one of his and hit a single number. He had Sylvia Turpin on speed dial. Wasn't that sweet? I didn't say it, but it must have showed on my face, because Eli said, "Shut up."

I laughed softly as he said, "Syl. We have a house in town with multiple DBs in it. I'd rather not call it in to the city LEOs, but we need to see it. We also have PsyLED in town, and we have not notified them. How do you want to handle it?"

I heard her say over the phone, "It's never too soon to start campaigning. I'll meet you there and call it in myself, if you don't mind. I'll call your PsyLED pals too. Address?" He gave it to her, and the sheriff signed off with the words, "I'm close. I'll be there in twenty. Meanwhile, stay out of my crime scene."

We sat parked in front of the old house until the sheriff's car pulled in to the drive. Sylvia got out of her unit, looking trim and fit and-if Eli's scent signature was anything to go by-incredibly s.e.xy.

I got out, and we three met at the steps to the front door. "Eli. Yellowrock," she said. "So how do you know we have DBs inside?"

"I can smell them," I said.

"Dead dog? Dead cat?"

"Nope."

I could see her thinking about calling the city cops for backup, but she decided not to.

She shrugged at her own conclusion, saying, "If you're wrong, if it is a dead dog, we'll be wasting their time." And looking stupid, which she left unsaid. She went to the front door. It was unlocked, and even Sylvia backed away when the smell gusted out. She cursed under her breath and ended it with a head shake and the word, "Okay." She drew her weapon, off-safety'ed, and chambered a round. She looked at Eli, and the s.e.xual tension between them was like little sparks of static against my skin. "I'm guessing you two will follow me no matter what. Wipe your feet, stay behind me, put your feet where I put mine, avoid stepping in anything. When I say back out, do it." She pushed open the door, and I steadied my nine mil.

Sylvia Turpin might not have had paramilitary training, but she knew her moves and stepped past the door fast, her back to the wall. The foyer was clean, but the living room was a mess. Someone had drained and killed four humans, including a teenager, and someone else had staked a vamp to the floor with a four-foot ash spike and then chopped off her head. It hadn't been an easy task. From the amount of blood, she had been drinking freely, which meant speedy healing.

The vamp was Esther McTavish. The one potential lead we'd just found was already dead. Whoever had killed her hadn't been working alone. From the bruises and talon cuts on her limbs, it had taken several very strong vamps to hold her down and take her head.

The scents on the still, chill air told me that the place had no living inhabitants, so while the gun nuts searched the house as a weird form of courtship, I pulled my phone and snapped shots of the entire room and close-ups of the vamp. I then followed my nose to a hidden door in the kitchen and opened it. The charnel-house effluvia that burst from it was enough to gag a hippo, and I left the kitchen in a hurry. When I met the happy couple in the hallway, I said, "I left the concealed bas.e.m.e.nt door in the kitchen open. I didn't go down the stairs and I don't want to go down them."

I stopped, knowing that one reason I didn't want to go down the steps was because one of the bodies might be Misha. I managed a hoa.r.s.e breath and said, "And I recommend whoever does the brave deed wears a full biohazard suit. It smells like dead vamps-sick from the vamp plague and killed and left unburied. Those kinds of dead vamps. And enough of your missing and now-dead humans to fill a graveyard."