I had heard the story before and I finished it for him.“One day this old soldier told you, ‘Never pass a watercooler without taking a drink, because you never know when your next one will come.’”
“Beating you is a rarity,” he agreed. “So I enjoy every moment.”
I grunted. Eli was talkative after we sparred, which was a pleasant change from the hard, taciturn man Uncle Sam had shaped him into. I slapped a hand into his and accepted the lift. Eli looked me over, as if checking out a prizefighter or a horse he might buy.
I grunted again and looked myself over. Sweaty and sour, as much as Eli, and sore. And bruised. My pretty braided hair was a goner. But I was feeling a lot better following the weight lifting and stretching we had done before the sparring match. Over two hours of hard activity had eased the aches and pains I hadn’t realized I was carrying around in my body.
“The extra weight looks good on you,” Eli said. “Five more pounds and you’ll be able to stand against the next breeze.”
When I came to New Orleans, I had looked like a poster child for the seriously undernourished, at one hundred twenty-five pounds. I had put on twenty pounds over last Christmas, and in the last month, five pounds more, mostly solid muscle. A little of the weight had landed in the boob department, but I’d never be mistaken for a model, more like the before photo in an advertisement for boob jobs.
“Did I pass for human?” I asked, easing my weight against the wall and letting my head rock back to it with a thump.
“As long the vamps don’t get close enough to smell you, you’ll be fine. Or you can drench yourself in some cheap perfume and overpower their olfactory senses.”
“Pass,” I said, toweling dry. I dropped the towel to the floor and used my foot to mop up more sweat. It had splattered when I landed. I took the time to stretch out the pulled muscles as I worked. “When is the help coming to move the workout room gear and set up the bed?”
“Alex and I can handle it. We decided to transfer it all into the hallway, not to a storage unit. Easier to put backwhen they go. What do you think about a Murphy bed in there? It would save time. I can put it together.”
“Fine.” I shrugged as we trooped down the stairs. The hallway was extra wide and could indeed hold the equipment. It had enough square feet to set up bunk beds if needed. My BFF, Molly, was coming, with her husband and my godchildren, to attend the Witch Conclave this coming weekend, so both guest bedrooms had to be available. Molly was spending so much time here that I should just let them move in. Which I’d do in a heartbeat if I thought they might stay, but Molly wasn’t fond of New Orleans’s heat, both the temperature kind and the blood-sucking-danger kind. Not that I could blame her.
My cell rang and I trotted into the kitchen where I had left it. On the screen was the pic I had taken of Bruiser. Brown eyes staring right at me. I loved that pic. I swiped and tapped the screen, answering, “Hey,” My voice was too soft, not sounding like me.
I stiffened my back at my tone just as my honey bunch said, “We may have found Ming.” He took a breath that I could hear over the cell, and it sounded uncertain and confused, two things Bruiser never was. “I’m pretty sure she’s alive.”
“Ming of Clan Glass?” I asked, confused. Because Ming of Clan Glass was Blood Master of Knoxville, and so far as I knew she was just ducky.
“No. Ming Zoya of Mearkanis.”
I pulled the cell phone from my ear and looked again at the screen while my brain made a quick series of analyses on the seemingly simple statement.
Ming Zoya had been Blood Master of Clan Mearkanis, but had been kidnapped and presumed killed before I ever got to New Orleans. Her clan, under the leadership of her heir, had been disbanded recently. Her death had set certain things in motion in the world of NOLA vamp politics—things like her successor, Rafael Torrez, taking over Clan Mearkanis, practicing black magic, blood magic, with witch children to sacrifice. He was dead, but the bad things kept on happening nonetheless. Things that were still reverberating. Dangerous things.
“Okay,” I said after a pause that was only a hair too long. I set the cell on speaker and placed it on the table in the clear spot between the snack plates the Kid was filling with his homemade broccoli casserole and sliced ham from Cochon Butcher. Even leftovers from two nights past, they were the best meat in the city.
Filling in my partners as we all sat for what was passing for lunch on this strange day, I said, “Bruiser says he thinks he might have found Ming of Mearkanis. The brooch led you to her? You’re on speaker, by the way,” I added to Bruiser, so he’d keep any lovey-dovey talk to a minimum. There was a low hum in the background of Bruiser’s end that I identified as a vehicle. Bruiser was on the move.
Eli said, “I assume you meanMing the famous and missingis no longer presumed dead.”
What passed for famous in vamp circles was very different from and much more bloody than what passed for famous among humans. The Ming twins were famous in vamp circles for several reasons: they had both risen to clan BloodMasterstatus from blood-slavestatus, something that seldom happened, and because one of the twins had gone missing, presumed kidnapped, killed, drained, and eaten by Immanuel, a supernatural creature mimicking a vampire.
I had killed Immanuel, saving a lot of lives and stopping a bigger vampire war than the one that had later taken place, but also setting into action a lot of the problems going on now.
“Correct,” Bruiser said, sounding far more formal than I had expected, as if speaking to the Enforcer instead of his girlfriend. “I tracked the brooch to the west, following it to a water-filled pit in the Waddill Wildlife Refuge. I smelled Mithran when I arrived. So far as I can tell,Enforcer, the imprisoned Mithran, possibly the former Blood Master of Clan Mearkanis, is alive, has been starved, has been secured and chained beneath the water with silver shackles, and is most likely insane with hunger.”
Using my title meant that things were grim in theextreme. “That sounds... bad. Dangerous. Do you need me there?” I made a swirling motion to Alex and he went to work. With one hand, he was shoveling in broccoli and cheese with the commitment and momentum only a growing teenaged boy can display. Cheesy broccoli was a new addition to his very short list of favorite foods, so much so that the Kid had even learned to make the dish. With his other hand, Alex pulled one of his electronic tablets close and brought up satellite maps of the Waddill Wildlife Refuge. It was a swampy landmass near the Comite River, near Baton Rouge.
Eli picked up his fork and placed his napkin across his lap, his brown eyes on me. I could tell he didn’t want me to leave.
“No,” Bruiser said firmly. “From what I can deduce, it’sverybad. Leo has dispatched the other Onorios at his disposal to the pit, to retrieve her. They and a dozen human blood-servants are leaving in minutes on a rescue mission.”
That told me even more. Onorios were hard to kill, and they did politically high-level, often dangerous, important stuff. But not usually together. That Leo was sending the two others said a lot about several aspects of this situation. “Oookaaay,” I said, drawing out the word as I continued to put things together. It sounded as if Leo didn’t need me to go on this assignment, which was enough to make me want to happy-dance, despite the sore muscles that were setting up residence in my limbs. Starved vamps were hazardous, blood-sucking, insane killing machines. With my skinwalker metabolism and ability to shift into other creatures to save my life, I was usually very hard to kill—even harder to kill than an Onorio—but that didn’t mean I went looking for a mauling, especially right now. “So this is a call to cancel our date and tell me good-bye so you and your buddies can do hazardous, death-defying Onorio things?” I managed to stifle the plaintive note that wanted to sneak into my voice. We had been busy, and date nights had become few and far between. “Should I take you off speakerphone?”
As if he knew my reaction to Bruiser’s broken plans, Eli chuckled under his breath, a sound that was remarkably wicked.
“Yes and no. Your introduction to the Rock N Bowl will have to be put off for tonight.” His voice warmed slightly, “Though, I would much,muchrather be with you, instructing you in the properbody mechanicsof bowling, than climbing into a water-filled pit with a starving Mithran.”
Me too.Especially with that emphasis onbody mechanics. I fingered my tattered braid. I’d had such plans.
