“Is that bag why someone burned the cemetery?” Wrassler asked. “To get the bag?”
“Partly, yeah. And then someone stole Leo’s body. And no. I have no idea why. But I’m going to find out.”
Wrassler started issuing orders to the men present and pulled his cell to call for strong-backed reinforcements.
“Wrassler?” I interrupted. “Put someone you trust in charge here; I want you with us.”
“You got it, Legs.”
***
On the way home, we stopped at a Popeyes, and I got a bucket of chicken to pay for the underwater shift. As we dripped muddy water all over the leather seats and the floor, and I crunched my way through a ten-piece box of heaven, I told Bruiser what had happened. We studied the lizard amulet and discussed all the paranormal creatures who might want Sabina’s relics and why. And what her buried icons could do.
“I need a safe place to keep them,” I said, “away from the Glob andle breloque. I don’t know what would happen if they all came in contact.”
Quietly, Bruiser said, “Set the world on fire?”
“I doubt it would be good, whatever it is.”
Back at the freebie house, Eli put the new amulets in the gun safe, and Bruiser and I cleaned up, Bruiser showering upstairs and me showering in my en suite. It always took me longer than it did Bruiser to shower in half-form because of the pelt and the long hair. It gave me a lot of time to think and to remember what Sabina had shown and told me.
The vision of God walking away from Sabina didn’t match the God I thought I knew. Her vision was one of a God who punished people that had evil donetothem. Sabina had been turned by one of the first few vampires, without knowing fully what life as a vamp would mean, perhaps even against her will, yet according to her, she had lost her chance for an afterlife, lost her chance to see heaven, beyond that one brief glimpse. Had vamps like Molly’s niece, Shiloh Everhart Stone, lost their souls? If so, it was the punishment of an Old Testament God, not the “sinner can be redeemed” spirit of a loving God. So... maybe they were wrong? Maybe there was a way to give them back an afterlife. Like, maybe their souls were in a pocket universe somewhere, waiting for the power to either reunite with their bodies or move on. I had seen a pocket of time/space once, with a vamp and a witch stuck inside, caught in the moment of death, like a mosquito in amber. Maybe vamps’ souls were like that. In some weird stasis instead of snuffed out.
The vamps could ask God...Right. Sure they could.Did God hear the prayers of a vamp?
I sucked at being a theologian, but even theologians disagreed on this one.
I thought about calling Shiloh or Koun or Tex and asking about the loss of their souls, but that was a weirdly personal question. Would it be considered the height of offensive disrespect? Probably.
When my hair was clean and braided, and my pelted parts were finally dried off, I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. I didn’t normally wear shirts with sayings on them, but Alex had bought me a Mardi Gras T-shirt, silk-screened with a drunk alligator wearing a party mask and beads, carrying a champagne glass and a magnum bottle. A woman’s foot wearing a five-inch red stiletto was sticking out of his mouth. It was not queenly. Or fancy. The cloth was a little scratchy. But it said something about who I really was and how I felt today. And maybe how I’d continue forward.
As I opened the door, I could hear the guys talking in the living room: Eli, Alex, Bruiser, and Wrassler. I glanced out the windows and saw guards walking everywhere. Good. Operation Cowbird was in full force. Barefoot—bare pawed?—I padded into the kitchen and chose a mug for tea. I picked one with an alligator on it. The sleeping gator was upside down, drunk of course, and a naked woman was sleeping beside him, also drunk. Vodka bottles were everywhere. The caption said, “What happens in NOLA stays in NOLA.” It was crass. Kinda like me. And the gator matched my T-shirt.
There was a fresh pot of tea in one of Katie’s ancient teapots from the tea room / butler’s pantry. It smelled like green tea, slightly citrusy and sweet. I filled the mug to the top and added a squirt of lemon. It was delicious.
Eli laughed when I came out of the kitchen. The others turned and looked at me too.
Wrassler nodded at me and gave a grin that was nearly back to his normal grin, the one he had before he lost so much. Bruiser, looking like sex on a stick in jeans and a skintight tee, was on the phone and smiled.
Eli said, “Nice to see you back, babe.”
“Nice to be back. Alex, I got a job for you. Tracktimelines of Ka’s life and the Firestarter’s life. And Adan’s life. See if you can find where they align with Bethany’s and Sabina’s or de Allyon’s timeline. And also see if any of them align with Leo’s son Immanuel’s trip to France, where Immanuel met his bride to be. And see if you can locate Adan?”
“Okay.” Alex popped the top on a healthy version of an energy drink. “Why am I looking for all this?”
“Immanuel wasu’tlun’talong before he went to France. Which means he had been replaced way before that. The thing that ate Immanuel and took his place started out as Cherokee. And it occurs to me that he might have met Ka. And also, he probably knew my gramma at some point.”
Everyone in the room went silent.
Bruiser said, “I’ll call back,” and ended the call. “You think that this—all of this that has happened in the past months and years—is part of an elaborate plan to restructure the Mithran and Naturaleza world. You think this is all tied together based on Immanuel’s plans. But Immanuel was not capable of such layered timeline-based plots. The original Immanuel was indolent. Lazy. The replacement might have been focused and driven, but because Leo’s true son had little interest in politics, his replacement would not have known anything about the political structures he was interacting with. He must have had a teacher.”
“I think someone was pulling Immanuel’s liver-eater’s strings too,” I said. “But Immanuel the second thought he was smarter than he was. He developed his own goals, which changed his master’s ability to carry out the original plans. Then I came along and killed him. I think that the oldest vamps have played the long game for centuries, way before they even knew about the Americas. I think there are multiple layers of multiple plots put in place by multiple players. One or more may have been using Immanuel—and not just the family of his fiancée, as we first thought, but someone more powerful. I think finding a timeline might help us to figure out what’s going on and who we have to bring down to make it all stop. It’s like that game with the blocks that you pull out a block from the bottom and then put it on top, moving blocks and placing them elsewhere until someone finds a linchpin, and it all comes tumblingdown. Leo said I was the wild card, the one who would shake up everything. But maybe I was never theonlywild card. So let’s see what lines up and then let me get started shaking things up again. Seems to be what I’m best at.”
“And the thing you’re worst at is swordplay, which you may need if this thing goes south. You need sword practice,” Eli said. “You and Bruiser go to the sparring room and hit each other with wooden sticks. Wrassler and I’ll go over the security preps for the wedding.”
“Thanks,” Wrassler said. “Jodi’s afraid that with Jane in town, the whole shebang will go into the toilet.”
“Hardy har har,” I said.
