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Would Little Evan go crunch?

I called a part-ti Rinaldo just before he hit the sack after his third shift at a local plant He showed up pretty quickly; I was only ain my flip-flops, hands in the pockets of the loose pants, and already sweating in the day&039;s heat He pulled his bright yellow Bluebird Cab over and hung halfway out the"You look like soed in"

I was pretty sure the line didn&039;t deserve the aot as I cliirl, always needing a ride hoiggly high I slah a three-point turn and eased his way toward a paved street in the distance With a sly grin, he slanted a look atWhere&039;s the nearest fast food joint? I could eat a buffalo"

"If I ate like you, I&039;d be big as a house There&039;s a Bojangle&039;s near here Chicken okay?"

"Long as it&039;s fried protein, I&039;ll be happy" My storowl I ate as Rinaldo drove, putting away three Cajun filet biscuits, two egg and cheese biscuits, a sausage biscuit, and three servings of Potato Rounds, all washed doith a gallon of sweet iced tea I treated Rinaldo to a biscuit and let hiive hi It paid to keep ency transportation happy The ainst the thin fabric of my T-shirt, I lolled all the way to my front door while Rinaldo listened to zydecoout the African rhyth wheel I handed him thirty bucks, which was my standard payment, and elina knuckling her eyes

"Morning, Aunt Jane" She held her ar to be picked up all the time, I hoisted her to my hip and nuzzled her hair

She smelled of sleep and pillow and safety "Did you and the ladies have a nice swiie&039;s head as we maneuvered the kids into the kitchen, and she took in my dahter&039;s rare and potent gift, a gift she was trying to keep under wraps froovernment, Molly&039;s reply was carefully neutral "Sweetheart, how did you know Aunt Jane went swi?"

"Biscause she did And they were all naked" Angie yawned, her o ho bad ugly that showed up in their circle last night It was purple and red and had big teeth and it wanted to eat theone, that it would eat Little Evan Mao crunch? Like the deer bones Aunt Jane ate this ?"

Molly closed her eyes and uidance and protection for her gifted children Orsilently I couldn&039;t help it

I laughed and squeezed Angie

Molly&039;s sisters, both the witch sisters and the humans ones, owned Seven Sassy Sisters&039;

Herb Shop and Cafe near Asheville Business was boo herbal mixtures and teas by bulk and by the ounce, the shop itself serving gourmet teas, specialty coffees, breakfast, brunch, and lunch daily, and dinner on weekends It was etarian fare, whipped up by Mol&039;s oldest sister, water witch, professor, and three-star chef, Evangelina Everhart Her sister Carmen, an air witch, need and newly delivered of a bouncing baby, ran the register and took care of ordering supplies Two other witch sisters, twins Boadacia and Elizabeth, ran the herb store, while the wholly huan and Amelia, aitstaff in the cafe

Boadacia and Elizabeth, the youngest andnew incantations and spells, and had been known to get into trouble with the results It sounded as if they had a minor demon trapped in a circle and weren&039;t quite sure how to dispel it

Usually, they spent quite a while trying to extricate theuns, their elder sisters I could ielina that they had ain The eldest often had assisted with the cleanup and her tirades were legendary and generally ignored by the twins

"Angie, how did you know that Aunt Jane went swihchair that had appeared at uests

"Did you dreaged as I sat her into her chair, the table nearly to her chin "I want oatmeal like Aunt Jane fixes it"

"It&039;s is like that?"

"I just do I see Aunt Jane a lot But sometimes other people And Aunt Elizabeth sometimes talks to me inside my head Can I have oatmeal?"

Molly&039;s mouth formed a thin line, and I knehat the expressionindications of her daughter&039;s pohich shouldn&039;t have manifested until she was sixteen, and which should have been tightly bound beneath theEvan and Molly when the power ca

"I&039;ll fix it," I said, an o As the water heated for oatht switch and realized that we had power I plugged in the refrigerator and adjusted the AC down to a bone-chilling seventy-four,a circuit around the house to close all the s It was already a sweaty eighty-five degrees inside Thank God for air-conditioning

While ly eat Little Evan?"

Molly touched her ear and gave a warning glance at her kids that said she couldn&039;t say s think witchy X and Y chromosos that made Little Evan a male witch, or what some called a sorcerer I nodded Demons like to eat ie repeated, trying on the words "Like Aunt Jane thinks deer is tasty Would Little Evan go crunch?" Angie wasn&039;t going to be deterred

I grinned and poured hot water over tea leaves, a strong gunpowder green that had a good caffeine kick "Probably But we love Little Evan" When she tried to interrupt, I said, "Even Beast loves Little Evan But we don&039;t talk about Beast or big bad uglies, right?"

"I can&039;t even tell Uncle Ricky-Bo? Biscause he&039;s wanting to know stuff"

"Especially not Ricky-Bo," I said dryly "He&039;s nosy Speaking of Mr Nosy, I need to go to NOPD and do some more research You okay today here, Mol?"

"We have power, and I can wash clothes over at Katie&039;s, including the stinky diapers piling up on the back porch I&039;m fine" Molly was a firerous disposable iteencies She used cloth with old-fashioned pins Before I could ask ould watch the kids, she s at ie wasn&039;t the only Trueblood who could readshower to wash off the bayou stink, I multibraided my hair with lots of beads that clicked pleasantly when I walked, dressed, and es this hour of theI kissed the kids, strapped on Beast&039;s pack in lieu of a pocketbook, made sure my cell and camera had battery power, tied my braids back, powered up Bitsa, and roared into town

My first stop was Audubon Park, at the Audubon Trail Golf Course, one of the sites in the city where there had been young-rogue attacks on humans in the past, and the only one I had never visited The last attack on record had been in 2001, and I quickly discovered why The golf course had been redesigned in that year, and there was no place suitable for a grave site That left me only two locations to worry about, which unned Bitsa and headed for NOPD

I had a lot of questions and notin the history files about the last vamp war And I wanted to see if I could find out what Innara had been talking about last night, the devoveo It sounded as though it had to do with the ues hat the city of New Orleans had on its hands And et a handle on what the Sons of Darkness were

They had coues, I needed to know it And then there were the witches I&039;d seen across the street, likely standing in a pentagram What could their connection be? What had see vaation into vamp history and politics

The wind in my face was damp and heated, like a warm, wet blanket, and Bitsa purred beneathby, I was feeling peaceful, rested, and strangely calm, even without any sleep I was pretty sure the eh I&039;d never felt that before I didn&039;t expect it to last Cynical, but true

I parked at NOPD, signed in once again, and waited for the aruard to look over my credentials and make his phone call This time, Rick came to meet me

Like the last time I was here, he was in street clothes, but not the jeans, T-shirt, and boots from his undercover days Today, Rick wore black slacks, a black jacket, and a white button-down shirt With a tie I started to grin The tie had little orange kittens scaround

"Yeah, I know I&039;ve fallen so far" He propped a hand on his hip, pushing back the jacket to reveal a shoulder-holstered 9 ers "My niece gave it to usted sound "My captain came down on me hard yesterday about NOPD dress code They won&039;t let me wear jeans now that I&039;m not undercover, so I had to buy soe He hates it" He plucked the pants and jacket

"You kno long it&039;s been since I wore clothes like this? Catholic school, grades one through six I had to goshopping " He looked pained "But no one specified what had to be on the tie Yanks their chains, you know?" He flashedthe little crooked tooth at his lower lip He was just too dang pretty "I have another one with pigs on it"

The casual business look suited hiood in anything Or nothing "You gonna yank their chains until you hang yourself? Pardon thethe real world sucks when it cos about it My enerate son isn&039;t a reprobate after all When she&039;s not being pissed that I didn&039;t tell her"

My brows rose "Yourmom didn&039;t know you were a cop?"

He lifted a shoulder in awhat can I say gesture "Moh I had no idea what it would be like to have a onna let me in or keep me out here with the cons and the reprobates you&039;ve left behind?"

"I&039;ain Couns, no blades" I handed off h to contain a gun He didn&039;t bother to search it or h thesoftly, I followed him In the bowels of NOPD in room 666, he tossed the file cabinet keys onto the table, lifted one finger in good-bye, and locked one, and there still wasn&039;t a phone to call fortrapped down here if a fire broke out, or if Rick forgot about ht without food or water The door wasn&039;t steel or barred, and its hinges ithin easy reach If I could find a sturdy piece of wood or metal, I could beat or pry the pins out and use soth to rip the door off that way But the next ti a picnic lunch

Now fa system, I found the keyfor history, specifically for info on the devoveo

Instead I spotted the bio of a certain near-rogue nao on - Bethany hadn&039;t exactly hogged the liht in the City of Jazz

There were no photos of her, but someone had compiled a breakdown of vamp-clan hierarchy back in the seventies, and at the bottouilera, the priestess of the va I&039;d have to ask a couple people what it meant, as I couldn&039;t trust the vocabulary of just one person, not about vamp stuff

I&039;d seen both Sabina and Bethany in action, and they were vastly different Bethany was slightly unhinged, African, and full of that icy shaic I&039;d never encountered before Sabina was Mediterranean, nunnish, and sane The only thing they had in common was power A lot of it

I took photos of the file to download later, and settled a folding chair close to the file cabinet I went through itI hadn&039;t seen before, a red file folder endsIt consisted of unverified reports about vah unna blood-junkies who had gone through rehab and tried to keep straight The folder had been coarette smoker, and handled by Jodi

There was a lot of wacky stuff in it, things I discounted or knew had been disproved at one time or another, but there was a snippet about the Sons of Darkness, the term Bethany had used for the vamps who had turned her The Sons were supposed to be the first vamps in their own recorded history The very first And according to blood-junkie scuttlebutt, they had been feral for a few days, not ten years So process At least one of them was purported to be still alive, sane, and had visited in this country in the last decade, as guest of Clan Pellissier It ht not be true, but Bruiser had blanched at theto do with the vaes for a long ti to him

I pulled ends file, things that ht ht leadfrenzies, which had been on ht, but it was from a source the cop in question doubted

The blood-junkie had told him that "Clan Desmarais went nutso crazy and killed half their servants and all their slaves I barely got out alive" No bodies had ever turned up, and the report had been buried Like so lanced at es before I remembered where I was One of my calls before I left the house had been to Bruiser, who hadn&039;t answered If he called back, I wouldn&039;t know until I got out of here

I returned to the file, deliberately hunting for red folders, and I found a sli a stack of police reports written in the saarette s the vamps and the disappearances of witch children: Detective Elizabeth Caldwell

In the red folders, I found dozens of s of old s terms, names, questions Little made sense until I found a scrap that read:A few sips of witch blood brought the devoveo back to sanity for nearly an hour

On another I found one that saiddevoveo: the Curse of the MithransAndyoung rogue: the cursed