I kept my anger off my face and forced down the spike of fury that followed his statement. Behind me, Eli had no such skills, and his anger swirled into the air. This undead dude was a true-dead man, just as soon as I could arrange it. Too angry to allow him any respite, I reached to take away the steak, but he grabbed the baggie through the silvered bars and yanked it, tearing it and releasing the blood in a wide splatter.

The caged vamp sucked on the tip of the steak and said, "I was going to gather more cattle, but you arrived, and now everything is changed."

Go me, I thought. Nothing made my day like s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up vamps' plans. But I didn't say it.

"But I know other things," he said, his fingers getting a grip on the steak and squeezing it, forcing out the watery blood. He was hungry enough that he didn't even care that the silver was touching his back where he lounged and blistering his skin through his tattered shirt. The metallic stink of poison and scorched meat filled the garage and made me want to sneeze. He bit off an edge of the steak and sucked, which was what I'd expected but was still icky.

"How about your master's cattle? Ones still alive? Are they penned?" I asked.

"My mistress keeps her humans beneath the ground, in bas.e.m.e.nts and darkness." He looked at me slyly. "She owns many properties, and her cattle will be in one of them. She detests them, except those she has for dinner." He sucked the gob of raw meat until it was dry and spat the husk to the floor before biting off another. Which was just ewww.

"Is her name Silandre?"

"No. But I know her. She is growing into a Naturaleza power to be reckoned with. You will give me a human to drink?" he asked.

"For that info? No," I growled. "Starve."

Beast stared out through my eyes, and the caged vamp paused, his mouth on the dried out gob of meat. "I have heard one other thing," he said. "You should search for full circles. The great one is once more complete."

Which made no sense to me, but the vamp smelled of truth, beneath the stink of whatever he was becoming. So maybe it was important and fitted into the picture somewhere, somehow.

Keeping my reaction off my face, I stood and left the garage, turning off the light as I went, Eli on my heels. "Food?" Francis shrieked. I shut the door as my answer.

"If our friend Francis gets free, he'll come looking for you," Eli said casually.

"Yeah. He will. He's on the list, though, so it won't be a loss."

Eli snorted through his nose, a near-silent laugh.

"Have your brother do a search for circles. Crop circles, witch circles, even tribal circles. Maybe some local tribe had one in the past that's been reactivated or something."

"And maybe he can get a handle on this new female master he mentioned," Eli said. "Could there be a new, secondary master of the city here? Maybe two different masters claiming one city? Hieronymus and de Allyon's heir?" I shrugged, and Eli finished with, "I'll get Alex to start a search on her too. We need a name."

"Good. While he's at it, get him to see if there's any record about what happened here in Natchez while de Allyon was in charge. That info would go a long way toward helping us see what's happening now. And see if he's turned up anything on why these vamps are moving like insects. It creeps me out."

"Just makes it easier to stomp 'em to death," Eli said, "emotionally, and morally."

He had a point.

We left the property, hearing only the soft purr of Eli's SUV, and arrived at the Clan home of the Natchez MOC a little after five a.m. The house was an amazing structure, three stories of brick and sandstone. The windows were full of light that spilled out into the night, windows even in the roof, showing that under the eaves was more living s.p.a.ce. Rounded towers were on either side at the front, topped by peaked roofs like parapets with flags flying from them. The house was surrounded by live oak trees with sinuous twisting limbs so heavy that they had lowered toward the ground and now seemed to dance across the gra.s.s like ma.s.sive, frozen snakes. Moss hanging from the higher limbs moved in the night breeze. Cars were everywhere, parked on the gra.s.s and along the drive, a few vehicles I recognized from the first meeting in the converted warehouse.

Pulling on Beast's night vision, I spotted humans in the dark, keeping watch, noting that security was better there than in town. Or perhaps the fact that Eli and I had taken the humans down so quickly had warped up the human servants' awareness.

Eli pulled directly to the front door and stopped, the tires grinding on the white sh.e.l.ls. Not asphalt made with white sh.e.l.ls, which was common in the South, but loose white sh.e.l.ls used like gravel. When we got out and walked to the front steps, the sound of the sh.e.l.ls beneath my boots was like the sound of crunching brittle bones. We walked up the seven steps and stopped in front of the door. To the three well-armed humans standing there, I said in my best vampire fancy talk, "Jane Yellowrock and company, here to provide surcease from illness and pain for the Master of the City of Natchez and his scions." Which I thought sounded spiffy.

One of the humans opened the door and two stepped aside. I walked in, knowing that Eli had come through the doorway on my heels, moving fast, and faced back at the opening until the door closed softly. Then he moved out to my left into the formal foyer, checking it out while I stood in the center of the magnificent circular s.p.a.ce and took it all in. The scents. .h.i.t me first: vamps, candle wax, smoke, leather, roses, and the faint smell of human blood that pervades every vamp dwelling.

I had been in Leo's Clan home, and Gregoire's, and Rosanne's in Sedona, and others', and they were all like something out of a magazine t.i.tled Cribs of the Disgustingly Rich and Fanged, but, frankly, I'd never seen or imagined anything like Big H's house. The foyer was thirty feet wide, round, and three stories tall, with a three-tiered, humongous chandelier hanging down from forty feet overhead. A stairway curved around and around the walls, rising the full three stories, its handrail painted gold and shimmering in the light.

There was gold-veined white marble everywhere, on floors, pillars, walls, and statues, gilt work on the ceiling moldings and floorboards, and gold candles burning in white and gold candle holders, the flames flickering. On the ground floor, there was a large round table to my right-white, of course-centered with a scarlet vase three feet tall and filled with white, gold, and scarlet roses. A sitting area was across from it, the furniture upholstered in white leather and tone-on-tone cloth, set with scarlet pillows and resting on a scarlet rug. White silk draperies cascaded along the windows, tied back with scarlet ta.s.sels. A scarlet and gold family crest-a lion and something geometric-on white silk took up one wall.

There were arched openings in the marble walls, and through one was a dining room with an ebony table and chairs that could easily seat forty. The table was covered with a white linen cloth and set with white-and-gold place settings. Through another was a traditional living room, all the furniture upholstered in white leather. Another room sported a full-sized white concert grand piano. Through a fourth opening came the aroma of old books, and I wondered if they had all been re-covered in white bindings or wrapped in white paper, and a small smile lifted my lips. It was overdone and tasteless, and the blood-splattered-on-drained-flesh image of the color scheme could not have been by accident.

"You like my home?"

I lifted my head, saw Big H standing one floor above me, and said, "It's awesome." But my mind was thinking, Awesomely gaudy. I didn't say it, of course. He was wearing a red silk dressing gown that matched the scarlet of the decor, with white silk jammies beneath. On his feet were white calf-skin slippers that I could see when he leaned over the bal.u.s.trade, hands on the banister, his ugly necklace dangling away from his chest, the chain swinging negligently.

"You brought the antidote to the Sanguine pestis?"

My mind stalled out and then I put it together. "The cure for the vamp plague. Yes." I patted my go-bag. "All I need are the vamp . . . ires." I added the second syllable as an afterthought, out of politeness. I mean, I was in his home. No need to be insulting without cause. "And a table and chair."

From the doorways on the second level, vamps poured out and down the stairs, gathering behind H, all looking eager and smelling sickly, all dressed in casual evening wear and not jammies, thank goodness. Big H walked down the stairs, leading the way into the dining room, and I counted twenty-two vamps. Their sickly sweet stench overpowered the scent of roses and leather. I glanced at Eli, but he was otherwise engaged, keeping an eye on everything else. It was good to know my back was covered.

I entered the dining room and saw that every vamp was sitting at the table, with H at the far end. The chair there was shaped like his peac.o.c.k chair at the warehouse, but made of black wood, probably something that was now extinct, and he had one elbow on the chair arm and the other on the table top, his sleeve rolled up.

None of the others was sitting in that position, so I strode down the table to him and set my medical kit on the surface. When I opened it, I could feel most of the vamps straining to see, so I laid everything out on the pristine white tablecloth. "I have sterile needles and syringes, several bottles of the antibodies, gauze pads, and alcohol pads." When the kit was empty I placed the container on the floor and said, "This is really easy. I just roll up your sleeve, draw up the antibody fluid in the syringe, and give you a shot into your arm muscle. Because your hearts beat so seldom and your blood flows so slowly, it will take a day or two to totally flow through your tissues. But because you don't have human kidneys and digestive functions and processes, you need only one dose. Your bodies don't filter out the drug, so it stays at a high concentration for long enough to kill the disease. The only side effect is a total lack of energy, requiring most vampires to stay in their lairs for a while with their blood-servants, where they feel safe. Oh. And everyone complained of a bitter taste in their mouths."

"All who feel the need to rest may do so," H said, making it a proclamation to his people. "We will not convene here again until all are well." The vamps all nodded once, as if taking an order. "How long for this bitter taste?" Big H asked me. "It has been many years since I tasted bitter."

"According to Leo's people, the shortest time for the energy loss and taste was four days, for the young ones. The longest time for the oldest-lived was sixteen days."

"Proceed," Big H said.

I cleaned the bottle top, opened and inserted a sterile needle, drew up one dose of the drug into a three-millimeter syringe, and changed needles, leaving one needle in the bottle and putting a fresh one on the syringe. I hoped I was doing this right. I'd seen it done in my emergency medical cla.s.s, but I'd never actually given a shot. To refresh my memory, I'd watched a video online to get the basics down, but I had no idea if the videographer knew what she was doing. I cleaned Big H's upper arm and popped the needle into the muscle. Carefully, I pressed the plunger down and let the clear liquid enter Big H's arm. Then I pressed a piece of gauze on it and said, "If it doesn't stop bleeding, have a healthy vampire scion spit on it to close it."

Big H's brow crinkled in surprise, and his eyebrows would have risen had he possessed any.

"Yeah. I know. Gross, right?" I said. Then I smiled brightly down the table. "Next?"

By five fifty a.m., the vamps were all dosed up and had departed or headed to the MOC's guest sleeping quarters, leaving me with Eli and Big H. The MOC still occupied the flared-out chair and lounged back in it, one foot up on his chair seat, one elbow resting on his knee, and a gla.s.s of red wine before him, which he turned around and around on the linen cloth. His other hand swung the ugly necklace in the air, mesmerizing as a hypnotist. He hadn't moved from that position since I started dosing his scions. Something about his posture reminded me of a young Hugh Hefner. It had to be the silk jammies and the decor.

A silence settled on the room as I packed up my waste paper from all the sterile needles and syringes, and if Eli hadn't been there, still watching my back, I'd have been nervous with the vamp's intense gaze. It was almost as if he were trying out his compulsion on me or something, and it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I snapped closed the lid to the medical go-bag, slung the strap over my back, and opened my mouth to say good-bye. The MOC beat me to it.

"You do scent of Leo, but only vaguely, as if you have not drunk from him in a long time. Longer than most Enforcers."

"It's been a while," I hedged. "I'm the part-timer, remember."

"Mmmm. How many of my enemies and my people have you dispatched since your arrival?"

The topic switch took a moment to follow, but Bruiser had called Clark about Silandre, so this must be my comeuppance. "Four. A woman who followed us from your meeting and attacked us in the woods. Silandre had gone over to the dark side and was drinking humans to death. We killed three of her scions. Silandre and the others got away or healed from silver shot and scuttled off like insects. I sent pictures to your scion with a request for payment."

"I did not authorize Silandre or her scions."

"Yeah. About that. Leo approved her beheading, and I expect to be paid as per our revised contract," I said, thanking my lucky stars that the Younger brothers had amended my boilerplate. "Got it?" I let a bit of Beast shine through my eyes, just in case he was thinking about paying me only for vamps listed.

Big H made no alterations in his body posture or movements. The winegla.s.s kept turning, the wine inside moving slightly up and down with each turn. "You will be paid according to our agreement." He looked up at me under his hairless eyebrow ridges. "Lucas de Allyon was evil. He took being a Naturaleza to new and lower depths. He wanted for my kind greater power over humans. He desired a return to the sun. All that he set in place-" Big H stopped as if his words had been cut off. He sat up in his chair and pushed his winegla.s.s away, still holding his copper necklace like a talisman, his fingers shaking. "All that Lucas did was of the dark," he finished, his voice a croak.

I wasn't sure why Hieronymus was acting so weird, but I knew about de Allyon's background. He had been around for longer even than Leo and had enslaved and murdered thousands of tribal Americans, drinking them down with abandon, Cherokee, Mississippians, Natchez, and Choctaw, just for starters. The old vamp had killed so many of my own people, the skinwalkers of the Cherokee, that we never recovered our numbers. He was the first European to import and own slaves from Africa. He was brutal and amoral pure evil, and killing him had been one moment of violence I would never regret. "Any idea how the new Naturaleza manage to heal from mortal wounds and silver?" I finally asked.

Big H didn't answer for a long time, long enough for the room to brighten through the windows as the sun worked its way toward the horizon and dawn. "Perhaps it is magic."

"Yeah." I frowned at his flippancy. "Have your scion deposit my money in the account or I'll leave you to deal with the magic insectoid bloodsuckers all on your lonesome." I slung the kit around my shoulders and left the room, trusting Eli to shoot Big H if the vamp tried to chase me down.

As I opened the front doors, the window shades-which must have been on timers or sensors-started to close with a rattling whir. The door closed behind me and Eli and I drove off at a sedate pace.

"Magic?" he asked.

"Vamps are magic of a sort. He was probably yanking our chains," I said. "But to be on the safe side, see what the Kid has on our circle info. And see how many of our missing humans are witch-born. Something about that conversation has my gut in a twist."

"Good thinking," Eli said.

"Did you get the whole Hugh Hefner vibe?"

"I kept looking around for bunnies in corsets."

"In your dreams."

"True dat. Eeeevery night."

I let another smile take over my face. There was something satisfying about banter with Eli Younger, something I had missed while I was depressed and chained in New Orleans. That family feeling, I was guessing. Maybe now that business partner feeling. I realized how much better I was feeling since I got to Natchez. "Huh," I said. When Eli glanced my way, I waved his curiosity off as unimportant.

"You know there's an IHOP on Highland Boulevard, don't you?" he said.

I sat up in my seat. "Nope. But I can always eat."

"So I noticed. International House of Pancakes coming up."

Bellies so full it hurt to move, we were back at the B and B as the sky grew noticeably gray. We opened the door, and my pocket buzzed, the number unfamiliar. I picked up. "Yellowrock."

"Jane, it's Bobby." He was whispering and I smiled, remembering the young Bobby telling me secrets one day as I walked him from the school bus to his group home. I started to reply when he said, "Misha's gone."

I checked the time. Too late to be a vamp interview/kidnapping. "Gone where?"

"I don't know," he whispered. "She went out last night to see somebody and she didn't come back. Charly's still asleep, but when she wakes up, she's gonna be scared."

I could hear Bobby's own fear, a p.r.i.c.kly tension in his voice. "I'll be right there," I said.

CHAPTER 9.

"You Here to Even the Score, Dog Boy?"

I stroked Bobby's red hair, holding him gently in the hug he needed. "Who did Misha go to meet, Bobby?"

Without letting me go, he pulled me to the table and picked up a manila envelope. "She left you a letter."

Which did not sound good at all. I accepted the envelope. It wasn't sealed. I opened the flap and removed a stack of pages, the back part of it printed tourist-trap stuff about local restaurants and plantation houses and sights to be seen in Natchez Under the Hill. The upper part was what looked like printed legal papers, and the very top sheet was a single handwritten letter, signed by Misha.

Hey, girl.

I should be back by morning, but if you are here and have this letter, then things didn't go like I planned. I have a meeting with a human named Wynonna, a primo blood-servant of a vampire named Charles Scarletti. I am hoping that Wynonna will take me to meet her boss. Wynonna has agreed to be interviewed for the book, and I had to go quickly or risk her changing her mind. If I'm not back by sunrise, and if I don't answer my cell, would you look after Charly for a few days? And if I'm not back in a couple of days, well, that means the s.h.i.t hit the fan. (I know, right? Our housemothers would beat us black and blue for cussing.) So anyway, if I'm not back, will you find Charly's biological father and see that she gets to him? I haven't seen Randy in years, and, frankly, he doesn't even know about Charly, but he's a good guy and my estate and insurance will pay for her continued treatment. Just in case, there are two thousand dollars in this envelope to cover expenses, and the numbers to access my checking account and savings.

Everything you need is in this folder.

And yeah, I know how awful this is of me, but if I don't come back, I want to make sure Charly doesn't end up in the system, and I know you will help her. Strange, isn't it? Of all the people I'd leave my baby with, the one I chose first is the most violent person I know. But also the most honest, ethical, and-in your own way-the most loving. I know we weren't friends. But I always felt safer with you there. Still do, I guess.

I'd end with "Hugs," but I know how you feel about them.

Mish P.S. FYI: Bobby is a sort of a dowsing rod. He gets a salary for it and everything.

"Son of a . . ." The swearwords disappeared into a whisper. I stood holding the letter, my mind full of the white noise of shock. Beast pressed down on my brain with her claws and I took a fast breath, shocked by the pain, but it started me thinking like a security expert again. I opened my phone and checked the time. Misha was way overdue from an appointment with a vamp's dinner. And that vamp was on my kill list.

I'd been trained as a security expert when I was fresh out of high school, before I started staking rogue vamps for cash. I knew about keeping calm and imposing order on unmanageable situations, but the current situation didn't feel like an emergency, not with The Princess and the Frog soundtrack playing.

I walked to the TV, where Bobby and Charly were curled up again, Charly under blankets and cuddled up in pillows. Muting and pausing the film, I said, "Bobby, Charly, I need you to think. Did your mommy say where she was going for her meeting?"

"Noooo," Charly said. "She said you would ask, and she said to tell you that everything you need is in the packet." Bobby shook his head, agreeing that Misha had said nothing to them.

None of this made any sense. Why leave me a letter telling me what to do if she died? Because that was surely what she had left me. No mother in her right mind would go off and leave her sick child with a mentally challenged man and a crazy biker chick/vampire hunter. Which made Misha mentally unbalanced or with a hidden agenda or in deep trouble. I was betting on a combo, starting with Misha looking for vamp blood to heal her daughter.

I texted the names Wynonna and Charles Scarletti to the Kid with orders to research STAT, then I reread the letter and dumped the packet out on the table. The first thing I saw was the legal paper Misha had drafted and signed to allow me the right to see her book before it was finished. The second thing was a last will and testament. "c.r.a.p in a bucket," I said under my breath. "c.r.a.p, c.r.a.p, c.r.a.p, c.r.a.p."

I realized that they had heard me when Charly giggled and Bobby shook his head. "You still say that, even after you got in trouble for it."

"Sorry," I said, feeling embarra.s.sed for no good reason. c.r.a.p was not a bad word. It was the shortened name of the marketing genius of the best known flush toilet, John c.r.a.pper. Really. It was. But not everyone saw it that way, including a short-term housemother when I was growing up. She hadn't been with us long enough to make any major changes in our lives, but she had put the kibosh on any "bad words," including c.r.a.p. Thanks to my mouth and fighting, I'd practically lived in house detention, with toilet duty-c.r.a.pper duty-for the three months she lived with us. She was one housemother I had been glad to see go.

I dialed Misha's cell number and was shunted directly to voice mail. I left a short message and closed my phone. The kids were watching me. Okay, Bobby wasn't a child, but still. What was I supposed to do? How long was I supposed to wait before a.s.suming that Mish was in trouble and track down Randy, Charly's bio dad? I looked at the time again and said, "Charly, does your mom have a laptop?"

"My mama has everything," she said, rolling her eyes. She pointed to a satchel near the neatly aligned running shoes, and I pulled it out and booted it up. While it was working, I called my personal, five-star hacker. He answered, and I asked, "We have a missing mother. Misha had a meeting with Charles Scarletti. He's on our kill list. Is there a way for me to send you every file off a laptop so you can get started working on it?"

"Yeah, sure. What kind of laptop?" I gave him the name and model of the laptop, and he asked, "Can you get online with it? If you can get online, you can e-mail me everything or just anything that looks interesting. It'll take a while either way."

I checked the laptop and said, "Yes. And . . ." I clicked through to discover that no files were pa.s.sword protected, and her e-mail pa.s.swords were remembered by her system. "I see several things in her most recent files. I'll zip them up and send them to you."

"Good. And bring the laptop and anything else electronic when you come. And don't think I'll be doing babysitting duty. Not gonna happen." He disconnected. c.r.a.p. That was exactly what I'd been thinking.

I ordered breakfast on Misha's room service and while we waited for it to arrive, I asked more questions and called Eli to fill him in on the situation. When he asked what I intended to do with Bobby and Charly, I said, "I'm bringing them back to the house."