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"Not a lick," Eli said "I’ll be out front of the hotel in fifteen We can load your bike up in back"

"Yeah Okay" I hung up and started gathering clothes and toiletries forlike it was stuffed with steel wool, all snarled and useless Beast was clearheaded and happy She had a kit to mother Sometimes my life made no sense at all

Back at Es at the breakfast-roolet sandwiches "Bobby? Can you take care of Charly while we’re gone?"

"I’m her babysitter I always take care of her," he said

"Ah Good" One probleets her next medicine at five"

Charly looked up at me fros and snugged to her armpits Her hair was dull and lifeless, and Beast peeked out fro the sick child At her feet, Bobby turned on the TV, starting Beauty and the Beast, which seeher, up under her chin "Are you reallyabout Misha And the friends we htest notion of how to make one

"Uhhh Yes Yes, I a her back?"

Beast slah me with an instant headache "Yes," Beast answered, ravelly "Will find her"

"You do kno stupid that promise was," Eli said to me later as I sat at the breakfast-roo at the blue screen Papers and laptops and e-tablets and phones were scattered across the table top, along with coffee cups and s and small plates and scraps of food

Before he left and went back to Jackson, where he lived and worked, Gordon had suggested that weroom, but the breakfast room was closer to the kitchen, the coffeemaker, the teapots, and the food All pluses

I closed the phone with a snap Since we got back with Bobby and Charly (and Es her in the princess roo the blood-servant and vaone to visit--Wynonna and Charles Scarletti The Kid had four co to see I had tried to contact blood-servants in Natchez, to ask about uring that Misha had ticked off a vamp and was stuck in with the food supply Maybe it’s cliché, but baseether, ht, or because of the old saying that va chained in the basement for ten years until they cure But whatever the reason, vamps always seem to have basements Or safe rooms Or both Basements were rare in the Deep South, because of hurricane storh water tables, so I assumed this had to be fairly easy to narron I had been wrong The online site for the property-tax division of the Mississippi Department of Revenue wasn’t particularly helpful or user friendly It was taking ti The sun had risen and the sick vae was asleep Leo and Bruiser weren’t taking my calls, and I was loathe to phonea fa your friends

Misha’s book research had now iation I needed to concentrate on the va theht conceivably endanger Misha Big H had said soic when I talked to him, so maybe I should call a local witch--but witches didn’t advertise their covens Whatever was going on in Natchez sounded like a story that a reporter/book writer would ju Wouldn’t you know it?

"Did you hear me?" Eli asked, irritation in his voice