Mercy Blade

I stood in the bathroom doorway and surveyed the room, looking for anything out of place. A guitar case was propped in the corner, half hidden behind a chair. I knelt and checked its position so I could put it back perfectly, pulled it to the floor and opened the case. Inside was a guitar. Big surprise. But there were two storage areas with small tops, maybe to be used for picks and extra strings. Inside one was a smudged, sealed baggie filled with brass shell casings. “Bingo,” I whispered. In the other compartment was an old but well kept Smith and Wesson 9 mil semiautomatic weapon, which I bet was loaded with .385 ammo. “Got you, you little twerp.” I was relatively certain that this was the evidence the cops were using in their investigation against Bruiser in the cold case murders. The cops could find motive, if they searched hard enough, but I had none, except for Tyler to become prime. Maybe that was enough for an upwardly mobile blood-servant.



I felt a compulsive urge to take the gun and the shells: If Tyler learned I’d searched his room, he would move the evidence. If he wanted to move up the case against Bruiser, he had plenty of evidence right here to do so. And, I just plain ol’ wanted to be in charge of it all. But that would destroy any case that human law enforcement might make against him. The only other recourse was to turn him over to Leo. Who would likely kill him, probably before I could put it all together, sniff out the person behind it all. Vamp justice was swift and merciless. And the vamp behind it all? Tyler drank from Alejandro. Alejandro had been with Leo for over a hundred years, which predated the vamp war of 1915. Could it be that simple?



Without touching anything, I sniffed the gun; it had been cleaned recently. Kneeling on the floor, indecisive, I chickened out about taking anything. I unslung the small bag I’d packed and took pictures of the casings, the gun, the guitar case, the room. Using my cell phone, I e-mailed them to myself and to Jodi with the texted caption, “Tyler Sullivan’s room at Leo’s. Used to frame GD. Fingerprints on baggie.”



After I replaced everything and closed the guitar case, I set it back exactly where I had found it and repacked my bag. I stood and removed my gloves, tucked them into a pocket and looked around the room one last time. Everything looked unchanged, as if I had never been here. I never wore scent, so even the sensitive nose of a blood-servant shouldn’t be able to detect my presence. I hoped.



I stepped from the room into the hallway where Nettie was waiting, pretending to dust, and her eyes flew to my hands as I approached. “I didn’t take anything,” I said. “But I have a few questions. One: Where did Tyler come from?”



“From France, with Immanuel’s fiancée, Amitee. He was head of security for the Rochefort clan.”



That stopped me. Rochefort clan. I had seen that name recently. Amitee Marchand had been a blood-servant to the Rochefort clan in the south of France before catching the eye of Immanuel Pellissier. She was also a vamp who had been passing notes at the big vamp-were soirée, something that looked a lot like high school pranks—except when high jinks involved high-level predators, it stopped being cute. It might have nothing to do with the death of Safia or the disappearance of Rick. But I didn’t like it.



“Two. The cops will want to see Tyler’s musical preferences too.” Her face fell. “You be up front with them about how you found the hidden gun and the casings. If you touched anything, you tell them. Don’t hold anything back, including me being here today. Okay?” She nodded, but I could see that something still bothered her. “Blame it on me if Leo gets his panties in a wad about anything.”



Her laugh was involuntary and musical. She looked down quickly to keep me from seeing her expression, but I got a glimpse. Nettie had a crush on Leo, not surprising in a blood-servant, but I figured she was more amused at the thought of Leo with his panties in a wad.



“Three. If you had to guess, which of Leo’s closest scions would either like to see him dead or take his place?”



“Mr. Leo drinks from his most confidential scions, and has for the last few months. They couldn’t hide anything from him.”



The last few months. She meant since the recent cleansing and reduction of the clans. I remembered Leo saying that Alejandro had his blood. All of which might mean that vamps can read the intentions of the vamps they drink from. Interesting. “Can vamps read the minds of the humans they drink from?”



Nettie blushed a deep red. “Sometimes.”



“Ah. Of course.” They could read when they rolled their marks. Sexual attraction had a scent all its own. “Four. Any idea where Tyler Sullivan hangs out when he’s off duty?”



She rattled off the names of four dance clubs. “The chest you wanted is in the foyer,” she added. “You could take it with you, but with the motorcycle . . .” Her words trailed off.



“Right. No trunk. Any way that someone could deliver it to me?”



“Horace will be heading into town later this afternoon for gardening supplies. Give me directions and I’ll see that he drops it off at the right place.”



I gave her the address, and because it was in the Quarter, no directions were needed. I made my way back to the main house through the long shadows of the early Saturday evening, and back to my bike. When I got home, I dialed Sloan Rosen and asked, “Any word?”



“No,” he said. “But Jodi got your message. Don’t touch anything. She has plans.”



The connection ended. I was left out of the loop. As usual.



It was a summer Saturday night in the French Quarter, hot, steamy, sultry, and packed with tourists. I was dressed in dancing clothes, which meant a flowing aqua print skirt, a tight cami under a matching top, dancing shoes, and my hair up, out of the way. It also meant stakes in the French braid, two knives strapped to my thighs, three crosses under my shirt, and my tiny derringer buried under the hair, loaded for vamp or were with silver rounds. I was going to party, but any party where I spotted Tyler Sullivan might be a dangerous one.



Going dancing in the middle of an investigation, and with Rick missing, felt stupid on the surface. But there was one bar, owned by Leo Pellissier, where Ricky Bo played with his band, and Tyler hung out, and I could kill several birds with the one club. I also needed a release from the tension between Bruiser and me and a diversion from Evangelina, who was acting downright weird—dancing all around the house, singing and drinking a lot more than I thought she usually did. I left Leo’s cell-gift on the table by my bed and carried my throwaway phone when I locked the door behind me and headed out walking to RMBC.I took a deep breath of the night air and my head started to clear the instant I left the house, my worries spilling away as my dancing shoes tapped on the old sidewalks, and my skirts swung against my thighs and knees. It was hot out, and wet, the air feeling like it weighed a hundred pounds. But my breathing still felt freer than it had since Rick took off.



The night was redolent of bug spray, hot grease, cooking seafood, and the water that surrounds and passes through New Orleans. Most people think of the city as being along the Mississippi River, but there’s a lot more water than that, with Lake Pontchartrain spreading wide, and bayous winding through it; salty, silty, stagnant smells are everywhere. And the music. Jazzy, bluesy, Southern rock, pop-country heaven. I worked my shoulders back, rolling them to loosen up.



The crowds thickened with both tourists and locals out for the food and music and shopping, and street artists were everywhere. A four-person band played on one corner, trombone, banjo, percussion, and a guitar, a stack of CDs with the name MamaMamba in front of them. They were playing an old Negro spiritual with all the pathos of slavery and pain, and it was spectacular, the woman guitarist tearing up the vocals. I made a mental note to look them up on the Internet and buy a CD or download something.



Across the street from them was a guy in carpenter clothing, carrying a hammer and screwdriver in one hand, a length of two-by-four balancing, wobbling with the slight breeze, on one shoulder. He was perched on a ladder at an angle. Not a stepladder, not a folding ladder, but a fireman-type ladder, one length of wood. Except for the slowly moving two-by-four, he was immobile as a statue. I had no idea how he could stay so still. I dropped a five in his carpenter’s bucket and moved on.



Royal Mojo Blues Company was a thirty-something-year-old restaurant and dance hall that had an outside dining area, a bar, a grill that served great food, and a dance floor I knew as well as I knew my own house. I had danced here several times, a few for Rick as he played sax. And maybe some small part of me hoped he would be here tonight.



The smell of fried food, beer, and faintly of Leo, and the sound of live music blasted its way into the street, an Alabama-style band rocking the house. When I stepped inside, the scents were momentarily overpowering: old and new beer, fried grease, fish, beef, spices and peppers, cleansers, human and vamp scents, marijuana, sweat, and sex pheromones. The place was packed, shouted conversations merging into a background roar, and overpowered by the band.



An ethnically indeterminate, dark-skinned man crooned, shouted, and sang with a smoky voice, eyes closed, swaying his head, mike, and dreadlocks back and forth, one hand at his thigh shaking a tambourine. He was backed up by four musicians on drums, keyboard, bass, and guitar. I waved to Bascomb, the bartender tonight, ignored three men who looked my way with a sexual, predatory interest, and flowed onto the floor, into the crowd, and up to the band. As I moved, I sight-searched for Tyler or Rick. Saw neither.



Dancing alone was never frowned on at RMBC, and couples and singles were pressed together, a writhing mass of dancers. Into the heat and the beat I raised my arms over my head and started to move. One of the courses I took between children’s home/high school/teenaged misery and the freedom of adult life was a year of belly dance classes. The best thing about belly dancing was the freestyle moves it added to my repertoire. I opened with hip pops and shifted into a series of mayas, remembering Bruiser’s hands on my hips as we danced. I threw back my head and shoulders and moved with the beat. Segued into a series of circular figure eights, dropping my arms slowly in front of me, hands moving in opposing, mirrored, wavelike motions from above my head to below my hips.