“And the man who owns this house?” I could hear him groaning and moaning from the kitchen.
“He’s a former high school buddy of Debbie’s,” Gordon said. “We asked him if we could borrow his house for the afternoon. And we paid him. He won’t talk after we leave.”
“What about Gladiola?” I asked. I remembered the two burning body sections on my driveway. I remembered Mr. Cataliades’s face, and Diantha’s grief.
They all three stared at me blankly. “Gladiola? The flower?” Barbara said, looking genuinely puzzled. “It’s not even the right season for glads, now.”
That was a dead end.
“Do you agree we’re square on this?” I asked baldly. “I’ve hurt you, you’ve hurt me. Even?”
Sandra shook her head from side to side, but her parents ignored her. Thank God for duct tape. Gordon and Barbara nodded at each other.
Gordon said, “You killed Debbie, but we do believe that you killed her in self-defense. And our living daughter took extreme and unlawful methods to attack you. . . . It goes against my grain to say this, but I think we have to agree to leave you alone, after this day.”
Sandra made a lot of weird noises.
“With these stipulations.” Gordon’s face suddenly looked hard as a rock. The yuppie man took a backseat to the Were. “You won’t come after Sandra. And you stay out of Mississippi.”
“Done,” I said instantly. “Can you control Sandra enough to make her keep to this agreement?” It was a rude but valid question. Sandra had enough balls for an army, and I doubted very much if the Pelts had ever really had control over either of their daughters.
“Sandra,” Gordon said to his daughter. Her eyes blazed at him from her forcibly mute face. “Sandra, this is law. We are giving our word to this woman, and our word is binding on you. If you defy me, I’ll challenge you at the next full moon. I’ll take you down in front of the pack.”
Both mother and daughter looked shocked, Sandra more so than her mother. Sandra’s eyes narrowed, and after a long moment, she nodded.
I hoped Gordon lived a long time and enjoyed good health while he lived. If he grew ill, or if he died, Sandra wouldn’t feel bound by this agreement, I felt pretty darn sure. But as I walked out of the little house in the swamp, I thought I had a reasonable chance of not seeing the Pelts again in my life, and that was absolutely okay with me.
22
A
MELIA WAS RUMMAGING THROUGH HER WALK-IN closet. It was just after dark the next day. Suddenly the hangers quit sliding across the rack at the very back of the closet.
“I think I have one,” she called, sounding surprised. I waited for her to emerge, sitting on the edge of her bed. I’d had at least ten hours’ sleep, I’d had a careful shower, I’d had some first aid, and I felt a hundred times better. Amelia was glowing with pride and happiness. Not only had Bob the Mormony witch been wonderful in bed, they’d been up in time to watch Quinn’s and my abduction, and to have the brilliant idea of calling the vampire queen’s mansion instead of the regular police. I hadn’t told her yet that Quinn and I had made our own call, because I didn’t know which one had been more effective, and I enjoyed seeing Amelia so happy.
I hadn’t wanted to go to the queen’s shindig at all until after my trip to the bank with Mr. Cataliades. After I’d returned to Hadley’s apartment, I’d resumed packing my cousin’s stuff and heard a strange noise when I’d put the coffee into a box. Now if I wanted to avert disaster, I had to go to the queen’s spring party, the supernatural event of the year. I’d tried getting in touch with Andre at the queen’s headquarters, but a voice had told me he was not to be disturbed. I wondered who was answering the phones at Vampire Central that day. Could it be one of Peter Threadgill’s vamps?
“Yes, I do!” Amelia exclaimed. “Ah, it’s kind of daring. I was the bridesmaid at an extreme wedding.” She emerged from the closet with her hair disheveled, her eyes lit with triumph. She rotated the hanger so I could get the full effect. She’d had to pin the dress to the hanger because there was so little to hang.
“Yikes,” I said, uneasily. Made mostly of lime-green chiffon, it was cut in a deep V almost down to the waist. A single narrow strap ran around the neck.
“It was a movie star wedding,” Amelia said, looking as if she had a lot of memories of the service. Since the dress was also backless, I was wondering how those Hollywood women kept their boobs covered. Double-sided tape? Some kind of glue? As I hadn’t seen Claudine since she vanished from the courtyard before the ectoplasmic reconstruction, I had to assume she’d gone back to her job and her life in Monroe. I could have used her special services just about now. There had to be a fairy spell that would make your dress stay still.
“At least you don’t need a special bra to wear under it,” Amelia said helpfully. That was true; it wasn’t possible to wear a bra at all. “And I’ve got the shoes, if you can wear a seven.”
“That’s a big help,” I said, trying to sound pleased and grateful. “I don’t suppose you can do hair?”
“Nah,” Amelia said. She waved a hand at her own short ’do. “I wash it, brush it, and that’s that. But I can call Bob.” Her eyes glowed happily. “He’s a hairdresser.”
I tried not to look too astonished.
At a funeral home?
I thought, but I was smart enough to keep that to myself. Bob just looked no way like any hairdresser I’d ever seen.
After a couple of hours, I was more or less into the dress, and fully made up.
Bob had done a good job with my hair, though he’d reminded me several times to keep very still, in a way that had made me a little nervous.
And Quinn had shown up on time in his car. When Eric and Rasul had dropped me off at about two in the morning, Quinn had just gotten in his car and driven away to wherever he was staying, though he’d put a light kiss on my forehead before I started up the stairs. Amelia had come out of her apartment, all happy I was safely back, and I’d had to return a call from Mr. Cataliades, who wondered if I was quite all right, and who wanted me to go to the bank with him to finalize Hadley’s financial affairs. Since I’d missed my chance to go with Everett, I’d been grateful.
But when I’d returned to Hadley’s apartment after the bank trip, I’d found a message on Hadley’s answering machine telling me that the queen expected to see me at the party at the old monastery tonight. “I don’t want you to leave the city without seeing me again,” the queen’s human secretary had quoted her as saying, before informing me that the dress code was formal. After my discovery, when I realized I’d have to attend the party, I’d gone down the stairs to Amelia’s in a panic.
The dress caused another kind of panic. I was better-endowed than Amelia, though a bit shorter, and I had to stand really straight.
“The suspense is killing me,” said Quinn, eyeing my chest. He looked wonderful in a tux. My wrist bandages stuck out against my tan like strange bracelets; in fact, one of them was acutely uncomfortable, and I was anxious to take it off. But the wrist would have to stay covered a while, though the bite on my left arm could remain uncovered. Maybe the suspense about my boobs would distract partygoers from the fact that my face was swollen and discolored on one side.
Quinn, of course, looked as though nothing had ever happened to him. Not only did he have the quick-healing flesh of most shape-shifters, but a man’s tux covers up a lot of injuries.
“Don’t you make me feel any more self-conscious than I already do,” I said. “For about a dime, I’d go crawl back into bed and sleep for a week.”
“I’m up for that, though I’d reduce the sleep time,” Quinn said sincerely. “But for our peace of mind, I think we better do this first. By the way, my suspense was about the trip to the bank, not your dress. I figure, with your dress, it’s a win-win situation. If you stay in it, good. If you don’t, even better.”
I looked away, trying to control an involuntary smile. “The trip to the bank.” That seemed like a safe topic. “Well, her bank account didn’t have a lot in it, which I figured would be the case. Hadley didn’t have much sense about money. Hadley didn’t have much sense, period. But the safe-deposit box . . .”
The safe-deposit box had held Hadley’s birth certificate, a marriage license, and a divorce decree dated more than three years ago—both naming the same man, I was glad to see—and a laminated copy of my aunt’s obituary. Hadley had known when her mother had died, and she’d cared enough to keep the clipping. There were pictures from our shared childhood, too: my mother and her sister; my mother and Jason, me, and Hadley; my grandmother and her husband. There was a pretty necklace with sapphires and diamonds (which Mr. Cataliades had said the queen had given to Hadley), and a pair of matching earrings. There were a couple more things that I wanted to think about.
But the queen’s bracelet was not there. That was why Mr. Cataliades had wanted to accompany me, I think; he half expected the bracelet would be there, and he seemed quite anxious when I held the lockbox out to him so he could see its contents for himself.
“I finished packing the kitchen stuff this afternoon after Cataliades took me back to Hadley’s apartment,” I said to Quinn, and watched his reaction. I would never again take the disinterestedness of my companions for granted. I found myself fairly convinced Quinn had not been helping me pack the day before in order to search for something, after I saw that his reaction was perfectly calm.
“That’s good,” he said. “Sorry I didn’t make it over to help you today. I was closing out Jake’s dealings with Special Events. I had to call my partners, let them know. I had to call Jake’s girlfriend. He wasn’t steady enough to be around her, if she even wants to see him again. She’s not a vamp lover, to put it mildly.”
At the moment, I wasn’t either. I couldn’t fathom the true reason the queen wanted me at the party, but I had found another reason to see her. Quinn smiled at me, and I smiled back at him, hoping that some good would come out of this evening. I had to admit to myself that I was a bit curious about seeing the queen’s party barn, so to speak—and I was also kind of glad to dress up and be pretty after all the swamp slogging.
As we drove, I almost opened a conversation with Quinn at least three times—but on every occasion, when it got to the point, I kept my mouth shut.
“We’re getting close,” he told me when we’d reached one of the oldest neighborhoods in New Orleans, the Garden District. The houses, set in beautiful grounds, would cost many times what even the Bellefleur mansion would fetch. In the middle of these marvelous homes, we came to a high wall that extended for a whole block. This was the renovated monastery that the queen used for entertaining.
There might be other gates at the back of the property, but tonight all the traffic was moving through the main front entrance. It was heavily protected with the most efficient guards of all: vampires. I wondered if Sophie-Anne Leclerq was paranoid, or wise, or simply did not feel loved (or safe) in her adopted city. I was sure the queen also had the regular security provisions—cameras, infrared motion detectors, razor wire, maybe even guard dogs. There was security out the ying-yang here, where the elite vampires occasionally partied with the elite humans. Tonight the party was supes only, the first large party the newlyweds had given since they’d become a couple.
Three of the queen’s vampires were at the gate, along with three of the Arkansas vampires. Peter Threadgill’s vampires all wore a uniform, though I suspected the king called it livery. The Arkansas bloodsuckers, male and female, were wearing white suits with blue shirts and red vests. I didn’t know if the king was ultrapatriotic or if the colors had been chosen because they were in the Arkansas state flag as well as the U.S. flag. Whichever, the suits were beyond tacky and into some fashion hall of shame, all on their own. And Threadgill had been dressed so conservatively! Was this some tradition I’d never heard of? Gosh, even I knew better than that, tastewise, and I bought most of my clothes at Wal-Mart.
Quinn had the queen’s card to show to the guards at the gate, but still they called up to the main house. Quinn looked uneasy, and I hoped he was as concerned as I was about the extreme security and the fact that Threadgill’s vampires had worked so hard to distinguish themselves from the queen’s adherents. I was thinking hard about the queen’s need to offer the king’s vamps a reason she would go upstairs with me at Hadley’s. I thought of the anxiety she displayed when she asked about the bracelet. I thought of the presence of both camps of vampires at the main gate. Neither monarch trusted the spouse to provide protection.
It seemed like a long time before we were given leave to pass through. Quinn was as quiet as I while we waited.
The grounds seemed to be beautifully landscaped and kept, and they were certainly well lit.
“Quinn, this is just wrong,” I said. “What’s going on here? Do you think they’d let us leave?” Unfortunately, it seemed as though all my suspicions were true.
Quinn didn’t look any happier than I was. “They won’t let us out,” he said. “We have to go on now.” I clutched my little evening bag closer to me, wishing there was something more lethal in it than a few small items like a compact and a lipstick, and a tampon. Quinn drove us carefully up the winding drive to the front of the monastery.
“What did you do today, besides work on your outfit?” Quinn asked.
“I made a lot of phone calls,” I said. “And one of them paid off.”
“Calls? Where to?”
“Gas stations, all along the route from New Orleans to Bon Temps.”
He turned to stare at me, but I pointed just in time for Quinn to apply the brakes.
A lion strolled across the drive.
“Okay, what’s that? Animal? Or shifter?” I was edgier by the minute.
“Animal,” Quinn said.
Scratch the idea of dogs roaming the enclosure. I hoped the wall was high enough to keep the lion in.
We parked in front of the former monastery, which was a very large two-story building. It hadn’t been built for beauty, but for utility, so it was a largely featureless structure. There was one small door in the middle of the façade, and small windows placed regularly. Again, fairly easy to defend.