“You are most kind, Jameson,” Soul said.
“He’s a wizard with anything in the kitchen.”
“Miss Jane speaks figuratively,” he said. “I have no magic at all.”
I grinned and accepted a mug of black tea with cream and sugar. Soul took hers black. And I figured we were bonding. Either that or she was casting some sort of spell over me again.
“So,” she said, when Jameson had withdrawn, “someone has possibly forced a coven of twelve, possibly composed of witches who had not previously worked together, so far as we know. An acceptable deduction would be that the resulting magic would be spotty, sketchy, difficult to control.”
“And a reporter comes along asking questions,” I said, “and someone makes her disappear. Misha’s disappearance might be related to our insectoid vamps, or maybe she stumbled on the witch connection, or maybe . . .” I closed my eyes, trying to see clear outlines in the mishmash of information. “Maybe nothing is connected anywhere.”
“And we have this.” Soul handed me an envelope. “Your young man, Alex, gave it to me on his way out. I believe you call him the Kid?”
I opened the envelope and pulled out three pages of printed material. The page on top was taken from Misha’s e-mail account, a series of e-mails and texts to Wynonna about the vamp Charles Scarletti. It was a list of questions she wanted answers to, including one about the history and whereabouts of a vamp named Esther McTavish. Esther was also a vamp in the files given to us by Big H, one on his kill list, one of de Allyon’s Naturaleza. Maybe this was Francis’ master? The puzzle pieces weren’t starting to make sense, but they were forming a vague pattern, one I couldn’t quite see but could almost feel.
“Yeah,” I said, opening her file on my tablet. “There’s not much in her file. So where is Esther McTavish? There’s no address on the MOC’s list of BBUs.” At Soul’s raised brow, I said, “Big Bad Uglies. Or BBVs—Big Bad Vamps.”
Soul grinned, and she had a dimple. It was . . . cute. And I hated it. As if she had read my mind—and maybe she had. Who knew?—Soul laughed, and then waved the laugh away as if it were unimportant or inappropriate.
Aloud, I summarized as I read, “Esther was turned one-hundred twenty-three years ago, and she once served under Hieronymus. But she left Big H’s clan in 1947 and swore to de Allyon in Atlanta.” My heart rate sped. This was our first tie between Big H and de Allyon. I grinned at Soul. “Our little vamp was sworn to the Fame Vexatum as outlined in the Vampira Carta, but she went to the dark side and Naturaleza. And that means she knew the political situation in Natchez, at least as far back as the forties, and she knew vamps and people in H’s clans. I think we found ourselves a spy. Go, Kid!” Though not one who would have known where Big H’s sleeping lair was located.
I scanned through, back to the beginning. “I get the whole Naturaleza thing, hunting, drinking down, and killing any human a predator wants, but the Fame Vexatum. Is that what I think it is? Starvation?”
“Yes,” Soul said. “The Holy Roman Church forced it upon the Mithrans living in Rome at the same time the drinkers of blood were forced to write the laws of the Vampira Carta. For the Mithrans of the time, it was be destroyed or adapt to the humans and their world. They adapted to living within human law by developing their intellect instead of the instinct of the hunter. They adapted by acquiring many blood-servants and slaves to feed from, rather than killing to survive. They adapted by developing their compulsion skills to make humans love them and want them. They adapted by never, ever drinking enough to satisfy or satiate. The Fame Vexatum stole much of their raw power from them, but left them with mental gifts no one had expected.”
I grunted in agreement. “Which is why they’re all so slender. They’re starving to death. Or undeath. Whatever. And the Naturaleza don’t starve, so they get beefier and a lot harder to kill. But the silver resistance is new. So is the buggy thing.” Flipping to the next page, I made a soft snorting sound. “The Kid thinks the abundance of blood did something different to Esther. That it made her more powerful than the other Naturaleza.” I flipped to the last page to check the Kid’s documentation on Esther and said, “He got this stuff by joining a social media site for Natchez blood-slaves? Un-freaking-believable what people put on the Web and think it’ll be kept secret.” I put down the pages. “So if magic is involved, then maybe a BBV kidnapped the witches and created the coven, and . . .” my mind raced, putting possibilities together to see if any of the puzzle pieces fit.
At my side, Soul inhaled sharply, the breath a faint whistle of surprise, and started tapping away madly on her laptop. She didn’t enlighten me about her little gasp.
I said, “Maybe the coven is tied to a focus, an amulet that lets the leader—maybe Esther, maybe someone else—do some new magical thing and not react to silver.” I stared up at the copper-coffered ceiling, thinking. “Maybe the whole walks-like-an-insect is a side effect? Or a mistake? Something some vamp is trying to make go away so she can be supervamp?”
“Possibilities. Not evidence,” Soul said, sounding distracted. “If your theory is correct, then Esther McTavish is likely also sick with the vampire plague,” Soul said, “but isn’t succumbing to the disease.”
I folded the pages and creased them back into thirds, thinking, and reached for the amulet I had tossed aside. “Yeah. I see that.” Feeling the cheap metal under my thumb, I stroked the amulet, the oily, greasy sensation on my fingertips and the odd stink of blood rising to my nose. “Maybe she’s made a full circle and is using an amulet and magic from the kidnapped witches to keep healthy. Maybe the silver resistance was a lucky side effect? Maybe now she’s trying something new with the spell, and the vamps are going all buggy?”
“Again, we have too much information and not enough evidence,” Soul said, which summed it up nicely. But Misha was still missing and we were no closer to finding her. “You should consider applying to work for PsyLED,” she added. My eyebrows would have bounced off the ceiling if they hadn’t been stuck to my face. Soul chuckled and waved away her words. “It wasn’t a job offer. It’s just. . . you have an interesting way of thinking. Of putting things together that don’t seem to match at first. Like with your friend Camilla and her interest—”
As if conjured, my cell rang, interrupting Soul. It was the number assigned to Camilla Hopkins. Misha. I answered, “Yellowrock. Misha?”
“Jane.” The voice was hoarse, the way people sound when they’ve been screaming for hours or when they haven’t had water for two days. Or both. My body flushed, then locked down hard. I stood, gripping the phone. Soul stood, staring at me. “Take care of Charly. Okay? And Bobby.” The line went dead.
I immediately called Mish back. I was sent to voice mail. “Misha. Call me back. Misha!” Not that she could pick up midcall. I closed the phone and my eyes, instantly seeing the memory of Misha, standing with her back to a wall, arms holding her middle, eyes wide, watching me being teased, as two older girls tossed my sneakers back and forth. Before I learned to fight and made a place for myself in the home—which Misha never did. I blinked back tears and strode from the room, pulling a throwaway cell and dialing the Kid. If anyone could find Misha’s location from a fifteen-second cell phone call, it was him. But to back him up, I also called Reach and put him on the job. I got them to track and triangulate, if possible, any incoming calls to my official line or from the number Misha used to call me. It was a testament to my emotional state that neither guy told me it was impossible.