Black Arts

Page 14

Molly went with the vamps. That meant I needed to call Leo. Either he knew what had happened here, or he sanctioned what had happened, or he could find out about it. Unless someone was in revolt against him. It had happened before.
I left the room, and stood outside the door as I punched in Leo’s number, trying to decide what I wanted to say. The call went to voice mail, and I spoke softly into the cell, my words as formal as I knew how to make them. “Leo, Primo. My friend Molly came to New Orleans. Three unknown Mithrans took her from her hotel room about thirty-six hours ago. She went unwillingly. She hasn’t been back. Please contact me and tell me what, if anything, you know about her situation.” I ended the call.
Feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the hotel’s air-conditioning system, I forced myself back to work and studied the security cameras on the way out. There was one stationary camera pointed at the elevators and fire stairs, which I avoided by keeping my head down and walking near the wall. Provided there were no problems with the system, hotel security should have footage of the vamps who came to take Molly, and the four of them as they left.
If I had known all this stuff when I went to see Leo earlier, I might have gotten some info from him. And certainly more help. Now I’d be asking the Kid to commit another crime by hacking into the security system. I was going to hell. Yeah.
• • •
Standing in front of the hotel, I texted a note to the Kid. Can u safely access hotel security cameras on 3 flr frm time Molly checked in to 12 hrs after? I hit SEND and got a text back while I was waiting on the return of Bitsa.
Can do. Erase text.
“Yeah,” I said softly to myself, following orders and erasing the texts. “So your brother doesn’t flay me alive for leading you to the dark side and putting your parole in jeopardy. Which, to him, would be just as bad as blowing up the planet Alderaan with the Death Star. And I’ve been living with the Kid too long if I know that geeky bit of trivia.”
“Sweet bike,” the valet said, pushing Bitsa back to me. “One of a kind?” he asked, his smile wide in a dark-skinned face. Approachable. Nice. Helpful maybe.
I patted the leather seat affectionately and used his intro. “Yeah. You know bikes?”
“I ride with a group, all black guys and sometimes a couple a’ chicks. We volunteer with the community and the local po-po. Dress up like Santas on wheels for Christmas, and take gifts to families in financial trouble. I ride a Hog, the 2013 Street Bob, but I always wanted an older model.”
I nearly gulped. A Street Bob started at thirteen thousand bucks. Being a valet made more money than I would have thought. All those cash tips, maybe. But I didn’t say any of that. “A Harley Zen master put Bitsa together from parts of two old bikes I found.”
“You ever want to sell her, you let me know.” He handed me a card, and I replaced it with a five.
“Not gonna happen,” I said. “Bitsa’s like family.”
“I can see why.”
“Hey,” I said, figuring it was now or never, “were you on night before last when three vamps left with a redheaded human woman?”
Some of the light left his eyes, to be replaced with a cagey uncertainty. “Yeah, I was. I didn’t have the keys, but I saw them leave.”
I handed him another bill, this one a ten. “Was the human upright and acting normal?”
“Standing on her own two feet. Looked pissed. Said ‘Thank you’ when the fanghead opened the door for her, but it sounded like she coulda been saying for him to, uh”—his voice dropped—“get friendly with himself, if you know what I mean.” He glanced to the side where a man in hotel livery stood, watching, listening to whatever he could hear over the distance. “She was sounding all like, you know, like she was lying and not really thanking him.” He fingered the ten. “For another one of these, I could get the plate number for you.”
“For the plate number,” I said, “I’ll give you two more.”
“We keep a log. I’ll be right back. And if my boss walks over, this is between us and off the record.”
I stepped to the side so his body was between us, pulled riding gloves out of my pocket, and gave them to him. “I’ll tell him I left the gloves on top of the saddlebags and you’re looking for them.”
He flashed me a smile, pocketed the gloves as if he did sleight of hand at kids’ parties, and disappeared. I straddled Bitsa and unzipped my jacket, turning my face to the sky. The promised warm weather was arriving with piles of gray clouds and gusty, humid wind, and I was starting to sweat under all the leather. Beast wanted to find a hot rock and lie in the sun for hours, and I felt my face try to relax as she sent me a mental picture of her muscular body stretched out and snoozing. But underneath her lazy image I knew she was pacing, as worried as I was about Molly.
“Here, ma’am.” The valet was holding out my gloves, a bit of white paper sticking out between them. I took them, handed him the promised bills, and got a brisk “Thank you, ma’am! You have a good day” in return. I texted the limo plate number to the Kid and kick-started my bike, making my way home, my heart feeling as if it weighed fifty pounds at the thought of telling Evan what I had found.
• • •
When I walked in the side door, Big Evan looked up and scowled. He must have been reading my body language because he puffed up and turned red and looked pretty much ticked off. I sighed and pointed to the kitchen table. Evan sent his kids to the TV room and I poured myself a cup of hot tea from a pot that someone had left on the electric tea warmer. Eli meandered in and hit START on the fancy-schmancy coffee and espresso maker I had paid for, brewing himself and Evan coffee, black and strong. Alex wandered in too, a tablet in each hand, his head bowed over them, eyes darting back and forth between them. Still silent, we all sat, which was all surreal, since no one had said anything.
Taking a fortifying gulp of slightly scorched bitter tea, I filled the small group in on Molly’s actions and her unknown whereabouts. It didn’t take long because there wasn’t much, and I wasn’t about to tell her husband how bad it might actually be.
Big Evan listened in silence and when I was done, he turned piercing eyes on me and said, “And do you want to tell me why I wasn’t informed?”
“Because you’d have run off and gotten in the way and made a stink and caused trouble and scattered your scent all over the hotel room and brought in the cops, who have little to do with, and no control over, vamps. Molly went off with vamps, Evan. And I have contacts with vamps. The cops don’t. You don’t.” I let that sink in for a while and said, “I have a question for you. If Molly told you she was coming to New Orleans to see me, and then didn’t come see me, can you make a guess why?”
“She was kidnapped,” he growled.
I didn’t let myself react, because it seemed a likely possibility. Even if Molly had left the hotel under her own power, it hadn’t been by free will, and it didn’t mean that she had been making her own decisions, and didn’t mean she was still missing by her own choice. With only a slight hesitation to mark my thoughts, I said, “Molly came here for a reason. She expected you to come to me, just like you did, so that, if she got in trouble, I could keep her family safe until I found her. She also wanted you here for whatever reason—and no, I don’t know what it might be,” I said as he started to interrupt. “Molly had to want my help, Evan. And she had to be in trouble or she would have told us all the truth and called me and told you and none of this would be happening.”
And Molly hadn’t trusted anyone with her reasons for coming to New Orleans. Not her husband. Not me. Molly was in deep trouble. I didn’t say that aloud, but Evan must have realized it because he swore, “Son of a witch on a switch.”
“Pretty much.” With Molly gone from her hotel room, and not checking in with any of us, things had gone bad. Maybe real bad.
• • •
There was little for me to do on any of my cases, and so when our confab was over, I did what all good vamp hunters do when nothing is happening. I lay down. I didn’t expect to sleep, but figured things might come to me if I put my feet up and closed my eyes and let my mind wander, let things percolate and steep and find unconscious connections. Fortunately, it was also nap time for the Trueblood children and I got in three long hours of uninterrupted, blissful rest, some of it probably snoring, despite my worry.
• • •
I woke when Angelina opened my door and stood there, one hand holding the knob, her body dangling from it, her feet pivoting as she swung back and forth and around. She had a doll under her other arm, and I recognized Ka Navista, the Cherokee Indian doll I had given her. Ka had black hair in a braid and yellow eyes like mine, and a wardrobe sewn for her of traditional Cherokee clothes. Ka originally had black eyes, but Molly admitted later that Angie had complained that the doll wasn’t “right,” so Molly had painted them to match mine. “Hey, Angie Baby,” I said.
“Hey, Aunt Jane. Uncle Alex Kid says he has something for you and to wake you up, biscause it’s important. Be-cause it is important,” she corrected herself. Angie was growing up and had been trying to break herself of baby talk the last time I had seen her; still was, it seemed.
“Okay.” I rolled off the mattress and checked the time as I tucked my phone into my jeans pocket. It was two hours before dusk. Plenty of time. “Let’s see what Uncle Kid has to say.”
Angie lifted her arms to me and I picked her up, adjusting her on a hip so that Ka wasn’t squished. I slid my feet into slippers, but the floor wasn’t as chilled as it had been. The promised warm front was fully in, and rain pattered outside. I went to the kitchen, where I could smell tea steeping. I poured a mugful, getting a whiff of a spice-flavored tea left over from the holiday season. I added sugar and a dollop of Cool Whip and carried the mug to the living room. I set Angie on the couch and bent over Alex. “Got something?”