“Feeding her dogs wasn’t good enough. Tau wanted magic, and for that Ming needed human blood, I’m guessing at least once a month.”
“Why did she leave the first two humans and none of the other bodies?” Eli asked.
I gave him a small shrug, tilting my head to the side, the gesture mostly hidden by the enfolding blanket. “Smell? The first two were bones already and underwater.”
“And the new bodies floated while decomposing,” Bruiser said, “and the smell of decomposition was horrible to her. Good supposition.”
“Four on the surface,” Eli said. “Concur. Likely more bones in the muck at the bottom. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 16
Dang-Er-Sus?
Back inside the helo, Bruiser said to the pilot, “Pass along these coordinates to the sheriff’s department and the detective handling the investigation of the pit.”
“Yes, sir.”
He switched off the pilot’s access to our coms. “Jane? Love.... Clarify for me, please. Were the women here? Was Antoine?”
“Yes. All three. And two human males who were helping Tau bring humans here, but their scents had degraded from rain and the churning of the mud. I think... Ithinkthat I’d recognize them if I came into contact with them. If I was in bloodhound form. But I can’t say for certain about in human form. There was something awful about their scents. Like drugs, maybe.”
And the stink of Ming, starving and insane and raving. How many had she killed while trapped in the pit? How many were her fault? Any of them? I didn’t know.
“So we can add murder to the long list of crimes committed by Tau and Marlene. The Witch Council of NewOrleans could turn over the crimes to the law enforcement authorities,” Eli said.
“Or take them out themselves,” Bruiser said.
“Or call in a hunter,” Eli said.
I knew he meant me. Turning away, I stared out the window at the rapidly approaching New Orleans landscape. “What about the Onorio scent?” I asked.
“I’ll have to ask the priestesses,” Bruiser said. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of this before.”
“The scent wasn’tjustOnorio,” I said. “It leaned toward vampire. Maybe a new kind of vamp.” Vamps had an uncanny desire to play with nature and create new things, things that were not bound by the usual strictures of vamp-dom: daylight, silver, blood, the devoveo. What if the double-gened witch had tapped into that desire in Ming and used it? The witch might have turned herself into anything. Something new. Something so powerful that... that I couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t fighther.
Eli pulled his cell and read aloud. “Alex found a last will and testament for Mildred and Eugene Nicaud, in 1957, who left four peacock pins to Simon Nicaud and his wife, Alva. Antoine Nicaud was their sole heir and he inherited the four brooches from his parents.”
Fourbrooches. And Rick had said Antoine was originally from the Pedro Cays, islands south of Jamaica. Rick didn’t know anything about Antoine’s magic or training except he had maybe apprenticed to an African priestess.
Bethany was an African priestess. Bethany had bitten me, to heal me, once. She had access to every part of vamp central. She could have gone into the women’s locker room and scraped my DNA out of the drain. But Bethany was nutso and I couldn’t quite see her being so linear and driven.
Bruiser asked, “Are the names confirmed? Are there photographs of the brooches? Any proof whether they were sold?”
“Four brooches,” I said. I had thought we were in the clear as to the brooches and the witches’ ability to control vamps. I closed my eyes, imagining all the crazy spells they could throw with the two brooches.
Bruiser nodded. “Do we have any insurance listings to confirm where the missing brooches are now?”
“Alex is searching,” Eli said.
“If she still has them,” I said, “and if she is what I think she is, then we’re in big trouble. Tell Alex to check marriage license for Marlene and birth records for Tau. A will for Antoine. Text Molly and have her get to Lachish, right now, about Marlene and Tau Nicaud. She can’t play games anymore. If we’re right, and Tau is the daughter of Marlene and Antoine’s wife, then she might carry two witch genes.”Like Angie Baby,I thought again. “Meaning that she is beyond scary, crazy powerful. She could be a magical nuclear bomb waiting to go off. And, after drinking blood from a vamp who had been eating rotting human flesh, probably just crazy.”
***
Eli bundled me into the limo and turned on the heat. Both men turned their backs so I could dress in my own clothes, but I pulled the warm sweatshirt back over my street clothes for the extra warmth and comforting scent. As I dressed, Alex texted more info on the brooches. Eli read and told us, “No records on sale or insurance, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s possible that all four were spelled or that only two were spelled. Alex checked probate and found that Marlene Nicaud was left two brooches and the girl was left two. The women received the brooches about six months ago.” He looked up at me. “That gave them six months to learn how to use the brooches. Six months to bleed Ming of Mearkanis, who we found because the brooch we had tracked to the brooch on Ming. Which means that we could use the two brooches we have to track the other two.”
Bruiser chuckled and the two men exchanged a complicated fist bump of victory. I said, “Unless that’s what they want you to do.” The men dropped fists, considering. “In which case you would be walking into a trap and go boom.”
“True,” Bruiser said. “And it also means that this started long before you got to NOLA, Jane. So Antoine’soriginal plan would have been in place before you killed Immanuel. Which means that plan, whatever it was in the beginning, was taken over and subsumed by Tau and Marlene. But it might still be in effect, like a second trap we could walk into unaware, at any time. We need to find Tau and Marlene. Get Alex to do property searches and credit—”
