Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(85)

Bruiser pointed to the stairs, the gesture telling me he had Onorio things to do, and disappeared into the bowels of HQ to chat with Leo, who was old enough to be awake and watching the confab on the coms system but was still likely healing from the attack, the stabbing, the silver poisoning, and the loss of fingers. Eli and I took our usual SUV back to the house, my partner silent as he drove through the rain. The storm had let up again as an arm of the slowly swirling weather system passed us and New Orleans’ massive drainage system cleared the city of flood water.

Traffic was at a crawl when Eli casually said, “Nice weather we’re having.”

It wasn’t funny but I started laughing, too long and too unsteadily. “Yeah. We need the rain.”

Eli smiled, the twitch of lips that meant he had relaxed. “Alex texted me that he found some more humans and vamps who came ashore. They came in from Lake Borgne through Bayou Bienvenue Central Wetlands in an air boat. Private surveillance cameras got some pretty clear shots for night cams.” He thumbed on his cell and handed it to me. He turned the wipers on high, trying to keep up with the increasing volume of rain. I checked the time and realized the rain was right on time. The magical storm had a specific and unrelenting pattern.

I studied the vamps sneaking into the country without going through customs. In the best still shot, they looked very unhappy, maybe even a little seasick, which gave me a case of the cheerfuls. One female was wearing a tall wig, which she held in place with both hands. She was dressed in an old-fashioned ball gown with a hoop skirt and lots of ruffles. She was soaked through and looked weighted down by the wet fabric and soaked wig, which had tilted alarmingly to the left. If the airboat sank or she was tossed overboard, she’d sink like a stone. “Do vamps swim?” I asked.

“Never asked. But this batch made it to shore fine,” Eli said

“Sad, that. I’d like to see them tip over and Marie Antoinette sink like a stone. We got a name?”

“Not Marie Antoinette but close. According to Alex it’s one of Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting, Marie Claudine Sylvie de Thiard de Bissy, Duchesse de Fitz-James.” Eli stumbled over the French, but it didn’t matter. I got the gist. “She died in 1812.”

“Right now she looks like it. She never got over the royal fashion styles of her time,” I said. “Who’s the vamp dude?”

“Charles the Second of Spain. He died the first time in 1700, childless. He’d probably been a vamp for years.”

“Hmmm. He likes modern clothes and fancy suits. And the little female?”

“Her name is Alesha Fonteneau. She’s so pale, I’d say she hasn’t been allowed to feed. Prisoner, most likely.”

“Oh,” I murmured, liquid shock flooding through me. I knew that name. “The underfed vamp is Katie’s sister. She’s in trouble, a hostage.”

“Do we need to go back to HQ?” Eli asked.

“I think . . . not.” I quickly gave him a rundown on the paintings and Troll’s broken jaw, and sending him to be healed and read by Leo. It was evident we needed a long and detailed debriefing. Things were happening fast and we were not keeping up. Someone was gonna get hurt if I wasn’t careful. “By now, the MOC knows that Katie hid things from him and might be a spy in his court, willingly or not. That’s all MOC business, not Enforcer business,” I said. “So why did these vamps, in particular, come ashore?”

“Don’t know.” Eli turned into our street. “But whatever it is it won’t make us happy.

“Babe?” he added. “We got company.”

I looked up from the cell and spotted two witches on our front porch. Lachish Dutillet and Bliss. I hadn’t seen either since the Witch Conclave and they looked good—or as well as soaking-wet women could. They were confronting two armed men on the stoop, two of Derek’s six-man security sextet. Unit. Whatever. The former military types had weapons drawn and the witches were retreating slowly, while drawing up power, one from the storm and one from the earth. This day would never freaking end.

Eli pulled to a stop and I jumped out just as he lowered his window and let out a piercing whistle. I’d never heard him do that before, and I flinched. Fortunately he was looking away from me. The four near-combatants started too. Also fortunately, no one fired a weapon. No one died.

“Idiots!” I yelled as I slogged through the rain and the standing water. “Stand down!”

“We thought they had you captive,” Lachish called.

I stomped my wet boots up to the porch. “I wish someone had me locked in my house, nice and dry and sleeping. Let’s take this inside. Boys, report to Derek. And get a list of people he thinks is okay to knock on my door.” I stopped. “Who fixed my door? It was busted in.”

“That would be me, ma’am,” one of the guards said.

I recognized him but didn’t remember his name, and he wasn’t wearing a name tag. “Wayne Mac something?”

He smiled with real pleasure at being recognized. “Wayne McCalla, ma’am. Fixing the door was my pleasure.”

“Nice work,” Eli said as he moved the door back and forth. It didn’t even squeak. The witches stepped in and Eli closed the door behind us.

Inside, the DBs and puddles had been cleaned up, the house smelling like citrus instead of death. I hadn’t even thought about that when I opened the door. I held in a grin at the imagined expressions on the witches’ faces.