Skinwalker (13 page)

“What the hell was that?” he asked.

I shook my head, letting the shorter hairs around my face fall forward. Hiding again. “Nothing. Now get outta here. I need a nap.” Suppressing my trembling, I walked to the door and opened it. Held it wide.

Rick stood by the table for a moment. I was afraid he might demand an answer, maybe a lot of them. I knew what I must have looked like, sniffing him like an animal. I was afraid I'd say something to alert him to what I was or what I discovered. I couldn't look him in the eyes.

He slid his sunglasses on and walked to the door. And outside. I closed the door behind him and rested my weight on it. Whoever the Joe had slept with last night or this morning, sometime recently, she was sleeping with the rogue vamp too. How could she stand the reek of rot? And why wasn't it on her too?

Fly it

I needed Mol's help. I dialed her cell and listened to the rings, leaving a succinct message when I got routed to voice mail. “It's me. Call. And check the wards again.” I pressed the END button and curled up on my bed with the cell on the other pillow, knowing Mol would call me when she finally checked the messages.

Like most witches, Molly was forgetful. She even occasionally forgot to check her house wards, the ones that protected her home from casual observation by the federal government's newly established Psychometry Law Enforcement Division, the so-called PsyLED. It was a branch of Homeland Security, and the PsyOffs—PsyLED officers—were still gathering info on the nation's supernats. So far, Molly's kids were off the grid. Keeping her home and property from leaking magical energy was the key to keeping them safe.

Desperately sleepy, my limbs feeling weighted with lead, I closed my eyes.

I woke at three p.m. to the sound of knocking on the front door. My bedroom was L-shaped, with the short side on the front of the house. I peeked through the window and saw a marked cop car parked in the street, a man in uniform and a woman in a jacket and khakis on the stoop. I looked in the mirror and frowned at myself. I looked ratty, not the way the out-of-town talent, the hired gun the council had contracted to take down the rogue, should look. If this was Katie's liaison with the New Orleans police department, then I was going to make a really bad first impression. If Rick had gone to the cops about my seeing the rogue, then I was going to make a worse impression. And I hadn't washed the blood from my steak meals out of the grass in the backyard.
Stupid
.
Crap
.

One of them knocked again, less politely this time. I walked to the foyer, slapped the locks off, and opened the door, holding on to the door and jamb, arms stretched up high. I yawned widely and studied them through slit eyes and a strand of snarled hair. The guy was looking at my legs and the patch of belly showing between tee and shorts when I yawned. He was mid-forties and smelled of Cajun spices and aftershave. Lots of aftershave. I wrinkled my nose. The woman was younger, a little stout, bobbed hair. A lapel name badge said she was Jodi Richoux. Yep. Katie's liaison. I finished the yawn and said, sounding grumpy, “Yeah?”

She made a face at me. “Jane Yellowrock?”

“That's me. And you're Katie's pal at NOPD. Come on in.” I pushed the door wide and walked to the kitchen, deliberately scratching at my armpit. I didn't like cops but I did enjoy messing with them. Much like the way Beast liked playing with her food before she killed it. There was a certain kind of challenge to the cat and mouse. “I'm making tea,” I said, over my shoulder. “I don't have any coffee or donuts for y'all.”

“I understand that you eat a lot of steak,” Jodi said.

And the game begins. I grinned and shoved my hair back from my face. “I'm a carnivore. Veggies are for sissies.” I filled the kettle while the two surveyed the kitchen. “You been talking to my butcher, I take it.”

“Him. A few other people.”

“Have a seat,” I said.

“Mind if I look around,” the guy said, “stretch my legs?”

Pointedly, I looked at his name badge. “Yes, Officer Herbert, I do mind. Have a seat or take a hike.” I pointed at a chair and back to the door.

“And why do you mind?” Jodi asked. “Do you have something to hide?”

“Not especially. I just don't see any reason to let him paw through my undies without a warrant. Bring me a warrant and you can rattle around all you want. Just know that my landlady had the place wired with cameras. Not much privacy if cameras are rolling twenty-four/seven.” All entirely the truth. Katie had indeed had the place wired. The cameras were simply not rolling anymore. And that part I didn't share. Life was so much easier without actual lies to remember. The cops looked at one another, startled. I could almost see them rearrange their tactics. I pointed again at the kitchen chairs. “Sit.”

“Abear,” he said, sitting next to the chair I had pointed to.

“Say what?” I put the kettle on the stove and turned on the fire.

“My name. It's pronounced Abear. The French pronunciation.”

I thought about saying, “Big whup,” but didn't. No point in stirring the pot just yet. When I didn't respond, except to open a bag of cookies and slide it on the table for them, Jodi asked, “Where were you last night?” She wasn't sitting. Jodi was standing at the corner of the table, back a little, so she could see both of us but not get in the way. Interesting position.

“All over.” I leaned into the corner of the cabinets, the counter at my hips, and crossed my arms, putting one foot on the cabinet behind me, as if propping myself up. The fact that the position gave me leverage to leap was not incidental. “I was up and down the street in front of Katie's Ladies on Dauphine, down St. Louis Street to Royal. I wove around a lot after that.”

“A girl was killed on Barracks Street last night. It's come to our attention that you might know something about it,” Jodi said.

Well, well, well. Rick had been talking. Was he a source? “Something,” I agreed, making it sound like it wasn't much.

“You want to tell us about it?” Implied was the threat that if I didn't want to talk here and now, we could go to the department. Where I could cool my heels for a few days in lockup.

I kept my voice unemotional when I answered. “I was hired to track down the rogue vamp. I followed him there. I was too late to stop him. He had drained and was eating the girl when I arrived. So when he booked, I tailed him.”

“Where did he go?” she asked, her voice tight, her eyes focused tightly on my face.

“Over the rooftops, mostly, and across the river, where I lost him.”

“You should have called us,” she snarled.

“My cell was dead.” Now that was an outright lie, but I wasn't going to admit that I had paws and couldn't dial. Nor was I going to say that I wouldn't have called anyway.

“How did you track him?” she asked. They were both listening with the kind of intensity cops saved for child rapists and serial killers. And cop killers.

“Line of sight and with a little witch amulet. Tracks vamps. One of a kind and expensive as all get-out.” Lie number two. I couldn't afford to go much higher and keep my story straight.

“So, you saw him. Got a description of the guy?” Herbert /Abear said.

“Middle height, slender, long dark hair, hooked nose. It was dark and he was fast. That's all I got. Not enough to work with an artist,” I added, to keep me out of NOPD HQ.

“I want to see this amulet.”

My cell phone rang from the bedroom. “Excuse me.” I grabbed the phone and returned to the kitchen doorway where I could keep an eye on them. The number displayed was Molly's.

“Witchy woman!”

“Hey, Big Cat. What's up?”

“Good timing on the call. I got two cops in my kitchen. They wanna know about the tracking amulet you gave me. The one for whacked-out vamps, not the one for humans.”

“There's no such thing.”

“Fly it.”

Molly laughed. When a spell didn't work, she made paper airplanes out of the scratch pages and flew them across the room to entertain her kids. “Did you have a blood trace to work with?”

“Big-time,” I said.

“Put me on with them.”

I blanked the screen and handed the phone to Jodi. Saved by the bell.

I ate a cookie and listened to the cop chat with Mol. Molly likes cops even less than I do, having had to register as a witch with the local law, but she'd had mostly redneck, hillbilly types as role models. I had met some nifty cops in my time and some were okay. Some, however, were on ego trips, had authority issues, or were chauvinist pigs. Herbert was an ass. I was withholding judgment on Jodi.

The lady cop handed my cell back and I said into it, “Thanks, Mol. I'll call back later.”

“You having problems down there in the steamy South?” she asked.

“It's interesting.”

“So, maybe I'll come visit sooner than we planned. Kill that rogue so it's safe.” She laughed and cut the connection. I hit END and set the phone on the counter.

“So. May I see the amulet that tracked the vampire? And a demonstration?”

“No and no. Goes back to that warrant thing. Bring me a piece of paper and I'll share. Till then, no way.”

“Why don't you like cops, Miss Yellowrock?” Herbert asked.

“I like some cops just fine. But I don't like all cops just like I don't like all dry cleaners or all street sweepers or all nurses. The job is fine, but it doesn't necessarily attract the best people. You want to go have a beer, maybe take in a movie, I might find you're charming as hell and the salt of the earth. So far, right now, I'm not too terribly impressed.”

“She's glib,” he said to Jodi, sounding mean and malicious. His face had twisted as I spoke and now he looked a little on the cruel side too.

“Shut up,” Jodi said to him.

I laughed. “What you really want to know is how I found the rogue when you couldn't and why the vamp council hired me when they had enough money to hire the French Foreign Legion. Then you want me to promise to bring you anything I find out, including any interesting facts or info on my boss and her cronies, the vamp council.”

Jodi opened her mouth, then closed it on whatever she had been about to say. Her eyes had sharpened, however. I grinned at her. Ate another cookie. Let the silence build in the kitchen. After a few minutes, Jodi said, “What are you?”

I hadn't expected that. It was one thing for the supernatural community to know I wasn't human. It was something else entirely for mundane law enforcement to know; cops might tell PsyLED. I held myself still when I wanted to spring across the table, claws slashing. Beast was awake and listening. Beast was of a mind to
gut them and ask questions while they die
. I held her down. After a pause a fraction too long, I put a thoughtful, agreeable tone in my voice and said, “I'm the best rogue-vamp tracker on the East Coast.”

So. Who squealed? The only ones who knew I wasn't human were Katie, Troll, Bruiser, and Leo. I bit into another cookie and talked around the crumbs. Back to being rude, crude, and deliberately disagreeable. Back to giving the cops something to think about other than my more subtle reactions. “I don't have an aversion to sunlight or silver, I like garlic and old Bela Lugosi movies, and I attend church. I can't do spells and my witch pals tell me I'm not one of them. So I guess that makes me human, though that often puts me in bad company.

“I'm licensed to carry in most of the southeast states, and could get a waiver in the rest of the states.” I swallowed and went on. “I have a hundred-percent track record. Most recently, I took down seven of seven in a raving-mad, young-rogue blood-family. I'm proficient, though unrated, in street fighting and swordplay, and I'm a good marksman. All that you can get off my Web site. I'm guessing you want to know something not on the site.”

I raised my brows and let my most insolent grin start. “I'm straight. I wear size seven shoes. I like steak. Oh, wait, you know that already. I like to dance, and this verbal boogie with you two makes me think I'll go dancing tonight.” I shrugged.

“One thing you left out.” Jodi flashed a small black case at me, about the size of a pack of cards. It had a dial on it, like a Geiger counter, and the needle was pointing a little over halfway along the face, at sixty-two. The sight of it chilled me to the bone.
Crap. Crap, crap, crap.
Beast raised her lips and showed her teeth in threat. I smiled and ate another cookie. “Why you set off my psy-meter,” Jodi said.

Sixty-two was halfway between a vamp at midnight and a moon witch on the full moon. Pretty dang powerful. I had wondered what I would read. Psy-meters, or psychometers, had been written up years ago in
policemag.com
. They were expensive, and, according to the magazine, only used by federally funded law enforcement agencies like the FBI, the CIA, and PsyLED. I had figured I would never see one, but here was a psy-meter in little old New Orleans. Lucky me.

“I hang around witches,” I said, my tone nonchalant. “I have some powerful witch amulets. Molly washed my clothes before I left Asheville.” I shrugged, lifting one shoulder, and ate another cookie though the crumbs stuck in my throat. “Pick one. I don't really care.”

“We don't much like witches in New Orleans,” Herbert said.

“Why not? They did their best to steer Katrina and Rita and Ivan back into the gulf,” I said. The cop's face twisted in prejudice and hatred.
Ahhh
. I'd found his hot button and the reason he was brought to visit me. Beast could smell the adrenaline bead into Herbert's sweat. This guy was a serious witch hater. Which ticked me off.