“I didn’t tell him to shoot.Hatewas too strong a word. Disliked immensely. More that.” There was a twinkle in his dark eyes and a slight twist to his full lips. Almost a smile.
“Uh-huh. I haven’t done anything to make you like me. At thegather, when I got here the other day, you stareddaggers at me. People don’t change, not without either a lot of work or some sort of life-changing trauma.”
Derek said, “Trauma. I was run off the road, beaten, drained, and dragged myself back to vamp HQ half alive. I had a lot of time to think while I was trying not to die. I think that qualifies as life-changing trauma.”
I looked away, thinking that through. Derek had nearly died. On my watch. That was terrible. And weird. And made me crazy. “Okay. Fine. But why is your life-changing event resulting in being nice to me?”
Derek snorted. “What it took was for me to stop being a hypocrite. I hated monsters. You were a monster. Now I’m one. That’s what kept me alive that day. Being a monster. A human would have died. And that’s why the anger when you walked in. It was power I expected you to abuse, but you didn’t. And somehow that made me mad too.”
The elevator doors opened on sub-four, and we both stepped out. The doors closed behind us. He didn’t attack me. I said, “I accept your apology. I’ve been a jerk too.”
“Is that an apology?”
“I’m working up to it.”
Derek grunted out a laugh. Neither of us moved away from the elevator as it rose to an upper floor.
I said, “I’m sorry for egging you on and making you feel insecure and uncertain. I’m sorry for being a jerk.” Taunting, guy-style, I added, “And for being a better fighter than you.”
Derek nodded, considering, also guy-style. “I may be a bigger monster than you now. We should spar. And maybe put a little money on how fast I can take you down.”
“We did that once. I beat your butt. Sure you want to lose to a girl again?”
“I’m a lot faster now,girl. So, how’s it feel, being half cougar so much? Does the pelt itch?”
Serenely, I said, “Ahhh.Trash talk.” I liked it, but I didn’t say so. “It severely limits my wardrobe choices. My legs look weird in dresses.”
Derek laughed as I intended. He gave my shoulder a fist bump. I gave him one back.
“How’s your mom?” I asked. She had cancer, and Leo had been feeding her, hoping to help heal her.
“She’s good.” His smile softened even more. “Better than good. No more chemo. She’s still cancer-free. Leo’s blood made all the difference. Another reason to stop hating the monsters. The biggest monster of all saved my mom. Hating him would be pretty hypocritical.”
I thought so too, but agreeing might be rude. I made a soft “Mmmm” sound instead.
“So what are we looking for down here?” Derek asked, leading me into the storage room.
“Books. Specifically journals, diaries, that sort of thing, preferably from the early eighteen hundreds.”
I looked around. Someone had cleaned it up and organized it. There were trunks along one wall, shelves of knickknacks and expensive objets d’art, clothing in vacuum-sealed bags hanging on racks. There was furniture arranged according to type: bedsteads in one area, tables stacked in another, chairs stacked or hanging from pegs on the walls. Stacks of rolled-up rugs. I followed Derek to the shelves of books.
“They’re organized according to name, then by dates,” he said. “Who are you looking for?”
“Adan Bouvier, Ka, his primo, Bethany, Sabina, Leo, and anyone from the last two hundred years you might think noteworthy. Preferably in English.”
“Interesting mix. Okay.” He pulled a ladder from across the room and then toted over a trunk and opened it. It was empty and the bottom was clean. From a shelf at his eye level, he removed a spiral notebook and flipped pages, making little humming noises. Seeming satisfied, he replaced the notebook, climbed the ladder, and handed me down four leather journals. “So far as I know, and so far as this room holds, Ka and Sabina, neither one, kept journals here. Adan kept them. Bethany did too, though she wasn’t sane, so they may not make sense. And I don’t think many of them will be in English.”
I placed the journals into the trunk. He handed me down four others. “Leo’s from the eighteen hundreds. He handed down six more. “Amaury’s from the same century, up to 1912.” That was the year Leo had taken over from his uncle as MOC of NOLA.
I placed them in the trunk too. “Anything else you think I might need?”
He looked over the shelves, climbed up and removed two more journals. On the way down, he reached into a nook I couldn’t see from my angle and handed down a framed daguerreotype of Leo. In the early years, photography was all done with silver, and vamps hadn’t photographed well, if at all, usually looking smudged or faceless. Until one photographer, Ernest J. Bellocq, had managed to photograph some famous vamps of the time, despite the fangheads’ inability to reflect on the silver used in both daguerreotypes and the later wet collodion-process photographs. So far as I knew, no one knew how he had done it. This was one of his works, and Leo stood with Katie and another man, arm in arm. Very still, unsmiling, formal. The year on a plaque on the front of the frame was 1840. I thought that Bruiser might like it and tossed it in the trunk too, with the two last journals.
“That was easy,” I said. “Who organized this room?”
“Vodka Boys. Angel Tit and Chi-Chi were in charge. They also organized the storage room on sub-three.”
“Find any magical stuff?”
