She didn’t look at him, didn’t speak, while they walked together to the elevator.
When they got in and the doors closed, his sister dropped her green glamour and leaned her forehead against a reflective wall. Her reddish hair was snarled, her face pale as snow.
“Ange?” he asked, using her teenage nickname.
Her breath fogging the metal of the elevator wall, she said, “Yeah.”
“That was…quite the…interactionin the parking lot. You need to talk?”
She huffed a short laugh. “Interaction. Right. Tomorrow, little brother. We can debrief. I’m tapped out.”
“Rest, Ange,” he said.
He held the elevator door open, watching her until she closed the door to her apartment.
Back in his own apartment, a floor above hers, he replayed the Kegs and Boots’s security footage, the unaltered version, on his wall screen. He marked several places, which he sent toWalter for the bodyguard’s perspective, but nothing jumped out at him except the utter stupidity of it all. The drugging, kidnapping, and fight left him with more questions than answers.
He watched Tony walk Corry, drugged and laughing, out of the bar and shove her into his Scorpion Mag. Corry was shorter than Angie, but in the dark, she could pass as his sister.
It had been a long time since anyone tried to collect on Angie’s bounty. The Dark Queen had made certain that few were willing to consider harming her godchild, by making the counterbounty five times richer than the one on Angie. So why had six guys, Tony, and the fanghead lead singer of Kegs and Boots’s house band gone after Angie?
Or was Corry herself really the one in danger? Covering all the bases, EJ initiated a financial and social media search on Angie’s friend. Just in case.
Choosing a different cam from earlier in the evening, one inside of Kegs, he watched Labaka try to pick up Angie, all ingratiating greasy vamp charm, which no longer worked on his sister. EJ clipped a still shot of Labaka at the bar and placed it beside one from the parking area.
A very different expression was on the vamp’s face when Walter confronted him. Confusion. Bewilderment. As if he didn’t recognize Walter, didn’t expect the Mithran vampire to appear. Labaka would have known about Walter had he done the tiniest bit of research on Angie. Was he dumb enough to think that Baby was all she was? Was he even part of the attacking group?
The others in the parking lot had known who Walter was. They had been expecting him. Yet, they used lead rounds, not silver. So, maybe expecting a bodyguard, but not a vamp bodyguard?
Orhell. Maybe they had been expecting EJ.
He watched the entire encounter over and over. They moved like postwar military. Yeah. Maybe they wantedhim, after all. But the number of people who had read his classified military sleeve and might want to talk to him about it, was in the single digits.
Something was off.
With any luck, Walter would uncover it, but EJ wouldn’t hear back before dawn, when their blood-sucking bodyguard would fall asleep. EJ had no idea where the man took his detainees when he had to extract information, so there was no way to go there and…discuss things…with the attackers himself. Instead, he had to wait until dusk.
EJ petted George, his Basset Hound, and absently sponged away a trail of slobber. He adored the dog, but slobber was not allowed on his sofa. Sipping a glass of red wine, he let things filter through his mind. He kept coming back to the same useless conclusion. Something was off.
The Firm had a prospective client interview in the morning. Angie and he needed work because they needed money. He didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad one that a new puzzle would take his mind off the night’s events.
Chapter Two
Angie
The next morning, I placed an assortment of amulets on the office desk, behind the expandable computer screen, and pulled up the email sent by our prospective client. She had asked for help to find a lost friend, an uncommon request these days when the various internets made finding people so easy.
The self-described soccer mom claimed to be a former blood servant, “back in the day,” in New Orleans. Blood servants were the blood-bound and legally contracted humans who served a vampire master, in return for whatever the agreed-upon contract stipulated, and sips of the vamp’s super-blood. The relationship often included sex—because fangheads had enormous sex drives—a place to live, and a monetary stipend, but the lifestyle wasn’t as prevalent these days, not since the vamps got their souls back, some twenty years ago.
Chancy Bigelow was the right age to have been active at the height of the New Orleans’s Master of the City lifestyle, and her pic looked like someone Leo Pellissier or one of his cronies would have seduced. She had been a real beauty twenty years ago. I opened the New Orleans database and didn’t see the name Chancy, but she might have gone by another name back then.
The potential client rang the bell and I buzzed her in, evaluating her as the woman closed the outside door behind her and entered the building. Her heels clicked as she walked to the inner entrance of Everhart Investigations. Her boots were lightly worn Christian Louboutin—not knockoffs, but the real deal. Her oversized handbag was Bottega Veneta. Her dress was Dior, her leather jacket Saint Laurent. She had class and money. My favorite kind of client, but not the impression she had given in her email. She had said she was short of funds. The only reason we had agreed to see her was because of the New Orleans ties, which could mean ties to our own pasts.
I tapped the screen to haveOjos, the AI security system, engage the office cams, record the interview, and interact with minimal screen input. Rising from my desk, I inserted an in-ear monitor and touched a button to activate it to EJ’s comms, smoothed my skirt, crossed the office, and reached out to shake the woman’s hand as she walked in. “I’m Angelina Everhart,” I said. “Welcome to Everhart Investigations.”
Our hands clasped. The moment I touched her, I felt the glamour, saw it sparkle, smelled it.
For a single instant, my battle magic emerged, ascending—dangerous, unpredictable. Almost as fast, I quashed it, recognizing the woman’s working. Theglamourshe wore was one legally sold by the Richardson Clan—topnotch, all the bells and whistles.
