“Dacy is well aware of local law enforcement’s appreciation for her generosity.”
“That in-unit computer upgrade has made a vast difference to the cop on the street.”
“We have to protect the boys in blue,” she said, twinkling at him, and gently removing her hand from his grip.
“Yada yada,” I said, standing. “It’s nearly dark, I’ve had no sleep to speak of for days, I’ve been invaded, shot at”—
Mooney flashed me a wide smile and gestured to the door. I led the way into the hallway, passing by the lady lawyer. She looked like a million bucks. A Paris Hilton, if Paris had unfeigned self-assurance and molecular- deep class. Her suit was form-fitted, her bag was snakeskin, and her hair was twisted up in a sleek French twist. She smelled great. I disliked her intensely for it. Which made me feel all kinds of guilty, and angry for the guilt. “Miss Yellowrock, it’s an honor to meet you,” she said as I passed.
I swallowed down my retort and the sigh that wanted to follow. In the hallway I turned, tucked my jealousy away into some hidden part of me, and put out my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too.” I managed not to sound grudging, which was unexpected and satisfying.
We shook and she said, “My car is outside. We can speak there.”
I collected and signed for my valuables—except for the gun I’d fired—and meekly followed Mooney outside. Even in the mountains at 2,134 feet elevation, September in the South was sweltering. The muggy heat slapped me like a steamy towel across my exposed flesh. “I know you must be starving,” she said. “Let’s stop for an early dinner so we can talk.” She stepped to a waiting, slightly stretched, black limo, that was, honest to God, a Volkswagen, sparkling in the late afternoon light. I had no idea they even made Volkswagen limos.
Sliding bonelessly into the car, she was as graceful as a swan, and I was all kinds of ungainly clunky as I slid in after her. Brandon closed the door after himself, sat across from us, and the car pulled into traffic, around the loop, and onto College Street.
Mooney said to the driver, “Take us to Mr. Shaddock’s place, please, Erving.” He lifted two fingers in acknowledgment before the privacy window went up. Shaddock’s only restaurant, so far as I knew, was a barbecue joint, and my estimation of the blood-servant went up a notch. Either she was psychic, had deduced by my slouch and my T-shirt that I was a fast-food, meat-and-potatoes gal, or she had researched me. I was betting on the latter. She added, “Two of your security experts will be joining us for the early meal.” She looked at Brandon. “Your brother and the others can handle security for the sleeping Grégoire?”
“They can,” I answered for him, looking the VW over. The limo rode heavy, as if armored, and it had computer screens and cell phones on chargers in discreet little pouches, champagne and beer in a little glass- fronted fridge, and windows so darkly tinted that a vamp could have taken a ride in the daytime and not been charred. It was clear the limo had been hand-built to order. And best of all, there were holstered guns in the side pockets. Immediately I felt better. I always did around guns, as long as they weren’t pointed at me. “May I?” I indicated one particularly interesting weapon that had a grip a linebacker might have used.
“Help yourself.” Her lips curved into a secretive smile, the kind an adult gives a kid when they get a new toy, and I wanted to say something snarky, but figured it might get me banned from the lovely-looking weapon. I eased it out of the case, which was a heavy-duty plastic mounting, not a holster as I had supposed. The weapon wasn’t something I could casually pick up. I had to lift it from its casing. And when I did, I sighed. It was a S&W, X- frame Model 500.
“Holy Moly,” I whispered. The handgun—small cannon—had an overall length of fifteen inches with an eight and three-eighths inch barrel. The cylinder was almost two inches in diameter and nearly two and a quarter inches long. “Holy Moly,” I repeated. Carefully, I thumbed the cylinder open and spun it to reveal five charge holes, each a half inch in diameter.
“You’ll find them loaded with 50-caliber cartridges—sterling silver rounds seated in traditional brass,” she said. “Hand-packed vamp-killers.”
“And yet you lift it with ease.”
I’d given away something I still wasn’t ready to admit and had no idea how to fix it. I shrugged. “Strong wrists.”
Mooney laughed and crossed her legs. Unlike most women she was wearing hose, and they shushed gently with the motion, drawing Brandon’s eyes to her legs, as she’d clearly intended. Her smile widened and she gave me a look that said, “Aren’t men cute?” Instead of giving that thought voice, she said, “We’ve never been properly introduced. I’m Adelaide Mooney, blood-servant and daughter in life to Dacy, Lincoln Shaddock’s heir.”
I didn’t want to like the woman—she was too . . . perfect. Elegant. Ladylike—but I was starting to. Dang it. “Why is it loaded with silvershot?”
She inclined her head, as if I had done something particularly bright, like a dog with a new trick. Or as if I’d passed a test, something set up to prove I deserved to be in charge of security. Her blue eyes tinted toward a delicate shade of lavender, maybe cornflower blue, and were uncomfortably direct. “Your record is exemplary and your eye for weapons is excellent. You come highly recommended by Leonard Pellissier and by my security researcher, who provided a dossier on you in record time.”
I couldn’t help but be pleased that Leo had said something nice about me. Especially as he’d tried to kill me several times in our short acquaintance. “Let me guess. Reach did my dossier?”
“You use Reach for background?” She sounded gently surprised, perhaps too well bred to sound insultingly startled at what that implied about my net worth.
“Mostly when Leo foots the bill,” I admitted. “Reach is a little pricey for my usual budget.”
“He is that,” she said. It wasn’t quite a disgusted mutter, but it came close. “So it’s likely that he had your information on file, collated, well studied, and ready, and yet he waited an hour to send it to me, hoping to make it look as though he was doing rapid new research.”
I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “Sounds like Reach.”
“Yes, it does. So. What are you?”
I went still for a long slow moment. Without taking my eyes from her bluish lavender ones, I slowly eased the Smith and Wesson mini-cannon back into the plastic casing. It kept me from shooting her with the big gun.
“As a blood-servant, I have an excellent sense of smell,” she went on. “Lincoln tells me you smell of sex and war and rushing water in a deep glen. He’s poetic, is our Linc. You don’t smell human. So what are you?”
“None of your business,” I said, sitting back, the words coming slowly.
“But it is. You are providing security services for a high-level parley that directly affects my current and future lifestyle, and my decision whether to attempt to become a Mithran or remain a blood-servant. Everything you do and everything you are is my business.”
“Take it up with Leo,” I said.
“I have. He was not forthcoming.”
“Because he doesn’t know what she is,” Brandon said. I had almost forgotten he was there, he’d been so silent and still.
“Impossible,” Mooney said.
“Fact. None of the Mithrans know what she is,” Brandon said, “though Leo’s Mercy Blade may know and simply isn’t saying. He calls her the ‘little goddess.’”
“I’m not a goddess,” I said, sounding disgruntled, knowing I needed to get the spotlight off of me. “But I am hungry.” I looked at Adelaide, thinking rude might work. “You said you were Dacy’s daughter in life, which, as I understand it, means she had you in the natural human way. Before or after she was turned? How old
Adelaide laughed, a tinkling amusement that made my own laughter sound like a mule braying. “Leo told me you were direct.”
I figured that was a ladylike way of saying I was vulgar, but since I was going that way, I couldn’t gripe. I slouched down in the butter-soft leather and waited, watching her.
“I’m in my early eighties. If I want to keep my youth, it would be wise to risk being turned in the next decade. Which is why I want to know what you are.” She was tenacious. A lawyer would have to be. I sighed but
