“He burped!” Angie said. Little Evan made a fake burping sound, long and gross-sounding. And I laughed through my tears, caught in the good humor of my favorite people in the entire world. And knowing it was up to me to find their mother.

“But the wolf was wily, and he knew that Little Red Riding Hood would never come inside if she saw a wolf. So he looked through Granmama’s chifforobe to find a nightgown and bed jacket that he liked. He added a lace sleeping cap to hide most of his ears and, to hide his wolfish scent, dabbed Granmama’s lavender perfume behind his pointy ears and under his paws.”

“’Cause wolf-ees stinks!” Little Evan shouted.

“Yes, they do,” his father said. “Wolves smell stinky like wet dogs and rotten meat.” Which wasn’t far wrong for the smell of werewolves.

Big Evan went on reading and reached the last line. “Little Red Riding Hood and her granmama opened the basket packed by Philomena’s mother, and shared a lovely lunch with the huntsman. And then they had a long chat.”

Little Evan looked at me said, “He vomicketed her up. Buuurrrpurp.”

“Yes, he did,” I agreed. “Gross, huh?”

“Gross. Night, Aunt Jane.”

“Night, Little Evan.”

“Mommy and Daddy call me EJ.”

“Short for Evan Junior,” his father explained.

“I like EJ,” I said. “It’s a big boy’s name.”

EJ rolled into the curve of his arm and mumbled what sounded like “I’m a big bo.” And closed his eyes. He was asleep. That fast.

I uncurled and kissed Angie Baby’s cheek and left the room to their father. Standing just out of sight, I watched as Evan pulled out his flute and played a soft melody; he was setting wards on his children for protection and health, a form of prayer and power for an air witch. The notes were plaintive and melancholic and held all the need and loss he was feeling for his wife, the mother of the children he loved to distraction. When he was done, he stood for a moment, before leaving the room. In the doorway, he blew a last note, a minor key of longing. And stepped into the hallway.

He turned and saw me, standing there, watching. And stopped as if frozen. Before he could react, could tell me to get lost, could fuss at me for being some kind of desperate, childless Peeping Tom, I stepped into him and laid my head against his chest. My body rested against his huge torso, his heartbeat hard and steady on my ear, his breath arrested in surprise. My head was tilted down. It was a pose of submission, the nape of my neck exposed. I held my position until he exhaled, his breath warm on my neck. And his arm lifted to wrap around me. It was like being hugged by a heated brick wall.

After a long moment he said, his voice a rumble through his chest, “You are going to find her. Right?”

I nodded, his shirt rough on my cheek

“The wards are set to keep them safe and to augment their immune responses. If Angie wants to sleep with you . . . she can. I’ll know when she gets up and where she goes, but I left the ward on the room open.”

I sobbed once. Totally unexpected. And wrapped my arms around Evan. “I missed you too.”

He laughed, the sound like logs tumbling over one another. “Yeah. Well . . . Oh. Once I go to bed, if you want to open the doors, come get me first.”

“You’ll set a big honking alarm?”

“Like the Fourth of July and the Blitz all at once.”

There wasn’t a human-built security system made anywhere by anyone that equaled one of the Truebloods’. They had started out as works of art, and then gotten better with time.

CHAPTER 3

She Calls You Sugar Lips?

It wasn’t quite nine p.m. when I tapped on Eli’s door and heard my partner laugh, his voice a soft caress. “Come,” he said louder.

I opened the door and stuck my head in. His room was spotless, so well organized I wouldn’t know anyone lived there if not for the slender, muscle-bound man stretched out on the bed and the ereader on the bedside table next to the nine-millimeter. I looked at the gun and at him and he shrugged. “I know. We have babies in the house. It’s locked up when it isn’t on me.”

I wanted to fuss but decided not to comment. I said, “We have a paying job—missing persons. I need to check out a restaurant. You wanna come along?”

“Gotta go, Syl. I love you. Yeah, tomorrow.” He laughed, his face changing, going all soft and romantic. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had never seen Eli laugh, not like that. And I love you? When did they go from I’ll show you my gun if you’ll show me yours to I love you?

Eli shut off the cell and grinned at my dropped jaw. “What? Never seen a man fall head over heels before?” I blinked as he holstered his weapon, strapped a small .32 above his boot, strapped a short-bladed knife to his inner arm, and grabbed a jacket. “We looking for vamps?” he asked.

I clicked my jaw shut. “No and no. Rachael and Bliss went missing this morning just after two. Looks like they were at a party, working without Katie’s approval.”

“Let’s go. You can fill me in on the way.”

We informed the other two adults where we were going, with orders to call us the moment any news about Molly came through, and went out the duct-taped front door. “The replacement windows and door glass will be here tomorrow,” Eli said. “And I’ve been thinking about ordering some of the vamp shutters. What do you think?”

“Estimates would be nice,” I grumbled as I strapped in and Eli started the motor. “But don’t forget we’ll have to go through the Vieux Carré Commission. And I promise, it’ll be a pain.” Dealing with bureaucrats always was, and every upgrade we made to our base of operations was a permanent loss, unless covered by Leo or Katie. We didn’t own the building and I was iffy on tax law about real estate upgrades. And I hated that I had to even think about such things. Business. When did I become a businesswoman? Eww.

The SUV was nondescript and slightly battered, its internal lights worked only when you flipped a switch, the engine was powerful enough to drag several hundred horses behind us, and the back was modified to hold an abundance of weapons under lock and key. The blades and firepower were intended to kill rogue-vamps, Naturaleza vamps, and vamps who didn’t abide by the restrictions set up in the Vampira Carta—the legal code that the Mithrans had lived by for centuries. Tonight, the SUV was carrying only us and the weapons we wore, nothing special. Well, that I knew of.

Guilbeau’s, pronounced G’bo’s, was in the French Quarter, a new restaurant in an old three-story brick building, replacing a business that hadn’t survived the dearth of tourists after Hurricane Katrina. There was valet parking, and a red-vested boy who looked as if he were twelve years old raced out into the damp night and took the keys, driving away as we pushed through the revolving door. The restaurant had a venerable air, as if it had existed since Jean Lafitte’s time, with deep burgundy carpeting and a roped-off area for patrons awaiting a table. The place smelled heavenly, if God were a carnivore and liked his meat seared and bloody. I had just finished my supper and my mouth was already watering.

Piano music played in the background; just ahead I could see a black baby grand and the black pianist, also wearing black, his fingers running lightly across the keys. Another man, wearing a tux, stood behind a little desk, like a pulpit poised at the wider entrance to the restaurant proper. I started for the guy, but Eli held me back, a hand on my upper arm. “Let me,” he murmured.

I shot him a glare, but waited. Eli approached the guy, who I guessed was the maître d’, and moved his jacket back as if to display something. They murmured for a bit, the words obscured by the music, something classical and springy that made me think of bunnies hopping through tall grass, before Beast swiped them with her claws and chomped them with her killing-teeth. Eli stepped back and whispered into my ear, “The general manager has been notified that we’re here, and would like to see last night’s and this morning’s security footage. He’s remarkably agreeable.”

“Uh-huh. You wearing a fake badge?” I asked.

“You want to see the footage or not?” There was laughter in his breathy comeback and I shook my head, smothering my retort. I mean, yeah. I wanted to see the footage, but not by impersonating a cop, which was illegal. A lot of cops in this town didn’t like me much. Go figure.

I pasted a smile on my face that attempted to look trustworthy and surely didn’t succeed, but the manager, a small, lithe man wearing black, natch, and an ear wire, walked through the restaurant and, without introducing himself, motioned us to the side and up a narrow stairway. He must have wanted to get the big, bad, dangerous-looking people out of his lobby, pronto.

The stairs were not standard height—not even matching, nonstandard heights, each an inch or two off from the ones above and below, and I stumbled twice as we switch-backed up constricted landings to the second floor. The manager’s office was small but tidy, with an old PC and flat-screen, some closed, leather-bound books, a small adding machine, pencils and pens in a green glass cup, a sturdy, scuffed-up desk that looked as if it had been there since World War Two, and had probably been put in place then, by a crane, through the window, since the stairs were so narrow. For sure they’d never move it any other way.

He sat in the desk chair and motioned us to the guest chairs, all three with low arms and narrow seats that made my knees stick up in the air. The chairs had been made for short, thin people, not tall, long-legged people. “I’m Scott Scaggins, general manager of Guilbeau’s, and I had no idea anyone had gone missing. Give me the times you’re interested in, and about ten minutes, and I can have the digital footage up, copied for you, and a list of employees who were on last night.” He pulled a pair of spectacles out of his breast pocket, perched them on his nose, and punched keys on the keyboard. “We’re in. Time?”

“We appreciate your assistance in this, uh, delicate matter. We’d like to see from two twenty through two thirty a.m.,” Eli said, leaning back in his chair as if he owned the joint. “We’ve been told it was a private party. We only need to talk to employees who served for the party.”