He wouldn’t get a chance to find out. Once I discovered what had happened to my friends, I’d kill Madigan.

“Now what?” I asked, mentally gearing up for the road ahead.

Bones gave me a measured look. “Now we track down your uncle and force him to tell us the secret he’s tried so hard to keep.”

 

 

Three

Just my luck that when I didn’t want to talk to Don, I couldn’t get rid of him. Now that I needed to speak with him, he was nowhere to be found.

After two days of waiting for him to show up, I was out of patience. Somewhere out there, my friends were in danger, and every passing second could be bringing them closer to death. Once, I’d been able to summon ghosts from miles away whether they wanted to come or not, but that power, like all the others I had absorbed when I drank undead blood, had faded. In his formless state, I couldn’t call, text, or e-mail my uncle to demand that he show up, but there was another way to get in touch with him although it required a road trip.

Bones and I pulled up to the Washington, D.C., strip mall right as the sun was setting. Lights were still on inside of Helen of Troy’s Garden, illuminating the various floral arrangements the shop sold. More importantly was the African-American man I glimpsed among the flowers, his vermilion shirt tight enough to look painted on.

“Good, he’s here,” I said.

We hadn’t called because I wasn’t sure if Tyler would agree to help us. The last time, it almost got him killed. People tended to hang on to that sort of thing, but a good medium was hard to find.

As we approached the shop, a dog began to bark. Seconds later, a furry, drool-bedecked face pressed against the lower portion of the glass door, his whole butt shaking from how hard he wagged his tail.

“What’s gotten into you, Dexter?” Tyler muttered. Then he came closer and saw Bones and me on the other side of the glass.

Oh HELL no, bolted across his mind.

“Is that any way to greet old friends?” Bones asked dryly.

Tyler drew his shoulders back, further stretching the strained fabric of his shirt.

“That’s not a greeting, sugar. It’s my answer to whatever you’ve come here to ask me to do.”

“Hi, Tyler, you look great,” I said, biting back a grin as I came inside his shop. “Love the shirt. Is that Dolce?”

He preened for a moment before catching himself. “Robert Graham, and don’t try sweet-talking me. I had to dye my hair to take out the gray you two caused the last time I helped you!”

I ignored that, petting Dexter and cooing to him. The stout English bulldog vibrated with joy as he covered my hands with sloppy kisses.

“Traitor,” Tyler said in exasperation.

Bones clapped Tyler on the back. “No need to fret, mate. We only want you to contact her uncle for us.”

“Don?” Tyler let out a scoff. “Why do you need me for that?”

I glanced up. “Because we can’t waste more time waiting for him to show up on his own. Madigan’s done something to our friends.”

At the mention of his name, a spate of insults raced across Tyler’s mind. Madigan tended to make more enemies than friends.

Still, suspicion narrowed Tyler’s chocolate-colored eyes.

“No trap building or getting wooden objects poltergeisted into my throat by murdering ghosts, right? I contact Don, and we’re done?”

“Promise,” Bones said at once.

Tyler’s gaze raked over him. “You’re too pretty for me to refuse, Bonesy,” he said with a regretful sigh. Then he winked at me. “But not so pretty that I’m doing it for free.”

I snorted, used to Tyler’s flirting as well as his greedy streak.

“Deal.”

That’s how two vampires, a medium, and a dog came to sit around a Ouija board in the back room of a floral shop. It sounded like the plot to a SyFy Channel Saturday night movie, but sometimes “weird” was the key ingredient to getting things done. When in the hands of a skilled medium, Ouija boards opened doors to the other side. The urn containing Don’s cremated remains was to ensure that we didn’t have to weed through other spirits before getting to Don.

Tyler and I rested our fingertips on the wooden planchette after he sprinkled a fine layer of Don’s ashes onto the board. Then he began to recite an invitation for my uncle to appear. After a few minutes, the planchette started to move, and prickling sensations rose on the back of my neck. Dexter whined, the sound both anxious and excited. Animals could sense the presence of ghosts better than anyone, including vampires.

Then a swirl appeared above the Ouija board, like a miniature tornado that didn’t generate any wind. Icy tentacles slid up my spine in a slithering caress. We were no longer the only people in the room.

“Is he here?” Tyler asked, unable to see the energy swirls yet.

I stared at them, watching them grow and lengthen until they formed into an older man in a business suit, the Ouija board jutting out of his midsection like he’d been cut in half with it.

“Hi, Don,” I said with satisfaction. “Glad you could make it.”

My uncle looked around in confusion. “Cat. How—?”

“How did I yank you out of whatever afterlife corner you were hiding in?” I interrupted. “I’m friends with a medium, remember?”

Don looked at the board protruding from his stomach, his mouth curling down. “Who knew these things actually worked?”

“Make friends with others of your kind, you’ll learn lots of things,” Tyler said, squinting in Don’s general direction. Then his forehead smoothed. “Oh, there you are.”

“No time for pleasantries, Don,” Bones stated. “You need to tell us everything you’ve been hiding about Madigan. My people’s lives depend on it.”

Don frowned. “Your people?”

“Tate, Juan, Dave, and Cooper,” I supplied. “They’re considered Bones’s under vampire law. More importantly, they’re our friends. You know they’ve been missing. Well, Madigan claims they were killed on a job, but he’s lying, which means they’re in serious trouble.”

The air didn’t move despite the heavy sigh Don let out.

“I wanted you to investigate their disappearance because I’d hoped they’d deserted their posts and were hiding from Madigan. Or were deep undercover, or even had died on a mission. Anything but this, because if Madigan has them, then by now, they probably are dead.”

Only his lack of a solid form kept me from shaking him. “Or they’re alive, trapped somewhere, and expecting us to do something.”

The look he gave me was so filled with sadness that I almost missed the other emotion flitting across his face. Shame.

“When Madigan took over my old job, I feared he might try this, but I didn’t expect it so soon. I’m sorry, Cat. There’s nothing you can do. Neither can I. Madigan’s no doubt ghostproofed that building, too.”

“What building?”

The two words seethed with threat. So did the stare Bones lasered at Don. Both should’ve scared my uncle into answering with the truth. Instead, he sighed once more.

“If you ever get close to Madigan again, kill him. You can’t save Tate and the others, but you can avenge them and save others like them if things haven’t progressed past that already.”

Then, before I could ask him what the hell he meant by that, he disappeared.

“Wait!” I shouted.

Nothing. Not even a chill in the air remained. Bones swore, but I shoved the planchette at Tyler and tossed another thimbleful of Don’s ashes onto the Ouija board.

“Bring him back. Now.”

“Cat,” Tyler began.

“Do it,” Bones said curtly.

Tyler muttered something about how unreasonable vampires were, yet once again, he invoked Don’s spirit to return. He did, but after a few seconds of stony silence while I railed at him, my uncle disappeared. We repeated the same process again and again with the same result. It was the supernatural equivalent to being repeatedly hung up on.

“Can’t you do something to make him stay?” I fumed.

Tyler gave me a sardonic look.

“I tried to tell you I couldn’t, Mr. and Mrs. Impatient, but you wouldn’t listen. There’s only one way to make a ghost stay if he doesn’t want to, and you remember what a pain in the ass that was. Besides, you really want to lock your uncle inside a trap?”

At the moment, the idea held definite appeal. Knowing Don, however, he’d remain stubbornly silent even if we did lock him in an escape-proof ghost cell. Plus, making one would take too long. From the few bleak hints Don had given us, Tate and the guys were in lethal trouble. We had to act now, but I didn’t know what to do. Tyler was our expert, and he was out of ideas.

“This makes no sense,” I continued to rant. “Don’s the one who warned us that Tate and the others were missing, yet now that we’ve confirmed Madigan’s got them, he’s refusing to help us! I don’t understand it.”

Bones tapped his chin, his expression both furious and determined.

“I do. Means Don would rather see people he cares about die than reveal what he knows about Madigan, but there is one person who can force your uncle to talk.”

“Who?” I wondered. Then comprehension dawned. “Of course! No one knows more about ghosts than Marie Laveau, and with all that grave power in her, there’s nothing she can’t make Don do.”

I should know—I’d once experienced Marie’s abilities after she forced me to drink her blood. The memory made me shudder. Having a direct line to the other side was more power than anyone should have.

Bones shot me a grim look. “What concerns me is what she’ll want in return. Marie does nothing without extracting a price.”

That concerned me, too. The last time I’d seen Marie hadn’t exactly been friendly if you counted the fact that both of us had threatened to slaughter each other.

“Hold on a minute.”

Tyler stood up, a huge grin splitting his face. “Are you two talking about Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen of New Orleans who supposedly died over a hundred years ago?”

“The very same,” I said, weary all of a sudden.

Tyler clapped his hands with the pure joy of a child. “This is going to be so fun!”

Now suspicion replaced my weariness. “What is?”

He ignored me, scooping up Dexter and grunting at the dog’s weight. “Don’t worry, baby, Daddy’s not leaving you behind.”

“Neither one of you are going anywhere,” Bones said flatly.

Tyler looked at him as though he were the one who’d just lost his mind.

“Boyfriend, let me spell it out for you. You owe me huge, and I’m cashing in. You have any idea what a big deal Marie is in the medium world? It’s like finding out Santa Claus is real and getting a first-class ticket to his workshop!”

I tried logic even though I doubted it would work. “You don’t understand, Tyler. She’s dangerous.”

An eyeroll. “I didn’t expect her to have spent the past hundred years knitting.”

Actually, Marie did knit. She also could summon spectres called Remnants that cut through the living and undead with laughable ease, plus work enough black magic to blow up a city. And then there was her power over ghosts.

Yeah, Marie was scary, all right. If I hadn’t fought and bled beside Tate and the others for years, I would reconsider asking Marie for help. If she agreed, she wouldn’t want to be compensated by money. No, she’d want something far more valuable.

I met Bones’s gaze. The look in his dark brown eyes said he expected this to be every bit as dangerous as I did, yet there was no lessening of resolve on his lean, hard features.

“They’re my people, raised by my blood or sworn to it, and no Master leaves his people behind when there’s a chance to save them.”

I wasn’t Master of a line, but I agreed with every word. No real friend would leave their friends behind to die, either.

“Looks like we’re going to New Orleans,” I said softly.

Tyler let out an exasperated noise. “Can we quit talking about it and do it already?”

 

 

Four

The lights of New Orleans glittered like crystals against the dark waters surrounding the long bridge that led us into the city. Finally, we were here. It had been almost a day drive considering that we had to swing by our Blue Ridge home to pick up my cat. We couldn’t fly into New Orleans because of the garlic-and-marijuana satchels we packed in case Marie sicced her spectral spies on us. As for renting an RV instead of taking our car, well, this wasn’t the first time I’d gone on a road trip with Dexter. The dog’s farts could be considered chemical warfare, and the extra space gave me somewhere to run.

We’d just turned into the French Quarter when Tyler let out a blissful sigh.

“There they are.”

I glanced out the window. Ghosts covered the French Quarter more plentifully than plastic beads during Mardi Gras. They floated through throngs of tourists, hung out on rooftops, in bars, and, of course, drifted through the city’s famous cemeteries. The most remarkable thing about them was how many were sentient. Most ghosts tended to be repeats of a moment in time, unable to think, just endlessly acting out the same incident. Not surprisingly, a lot of those incidents related to their deaths. Death was a momentous event for everyone.

But the ethereal residents of the Crescent City were different. Most of them were as lively as the people who were unaware of their presence. A few were pranksters. The young man who tripped and fell face-first into a pretty girl’s cl**vage had no idea he’d been pushed by a ghost who chortled at the slap the chagrined boy received. Farther up the sidewalk, a pair of ghosts amused themselves by tipping revelers’ glasses upward so that expected sips turned into face-soaking splashes.