On Midnight Wings

has come up that requires your special expertise.”

Teodoro sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. Leave it to the SB to ruin even pretend vacation plans. “Can’t you put whoever it is on ice for a few more days? I’m leaving for Barcelona tomorrow. If I miss the flight, I’ll be out the money.”

“Afraid not. This one comes directly from the Oversight Committee. And”—Webster lowered his voice—“I hear it involves the director.”

Teodoro sat up straight, suddenly more interested in the conversation. It sounded like the file he had left on the table following his meeting with the very-soon-to-be-dead-facedown-in-her-pancakes Underwood had been found. And studied.

Just as he’d intended—but the timing was unfortunate.

Given that the file revealed that SB Director William Britto had sold his soul, not to mention the SB’s integrity, to the powerful Renata Alessa Cortini, high priestess of the vampire Cercle de Druide, in exchange for new dusk- to-dawn life for his terminally ill son, Teodoro imagined it had made for fascinating reading.

And it wouldn’t take much deductive skills for the members of the Oversight Committee to realize that the only thing the Cercle would be interested in would be intel about a True Blood known as S. And where to find him.

“You’re expected at HQ by midnight,” Webster informed Teodoro.

“And my vacation?”

“Reinstated the moment you’ve finished with the interrogation.”

“Well, then. I guess I’ll see you at midnight.”

“Not me, you won’t. I hope to be in bed asleep by then. Too damn old for vampire hours,” Webster grumbled. “I’ll let the OC know you’re on the way.”

Conversation finished, Teodoro stood and slipped the cell phone back into his pocket. When he returned from HQ, he’d tap into the bond between Dante and Heather, follow it back to the FBI agent. Then sever it. He stepped over to the table, his strength and balance restored—no longer a tottering old man—and gently brushed the strands of black hair away from Dante’s face.

“Beautiful,” he whispered.

A dark satisfaction curled through him. Soon. Very soon. With a severed bond and a creawdwr’s deep sea dive into madness, the Second Fall would begin—and then the air would fill with weeping and wailing and gnashing of Elohim teeth.

Turning, Teodoro strode from the room.

13 THE FIRST BREATH OF WINTER NEW ORLEANS THE WINTER ROSE

THE FALLEN ANGEL WAS gone.

Guy Mauvais stood in the doorway of the riverboat’s workroom, his fingers clenched around the crystal goblet of stove-warmed blood he held—never microwaved, since the damned contraption destroyed what little flavor and nutritional value bagged blood possessed—as he stared in disbelief at the wooden table.

Empty—save for bits of white stone scattered across its surface and the melted stubs of candles left by the hoodoo woman, hardened tendrils of wax hanging like pale icicles from the table’s edge.

The smoky aroma of incense and wax mingled with the fading scent of the hoodoo woman’s hex-removal potion—mint and wintergreen, salt, and the lavender-clove-citrus spice of Florida Water.

“Mon Dieu,” Mauvais breathed. “It actually worked.” Excitement tingled electric along his spine. He entered the room, powdered stone gritting beneath the soles of his dress shoes as he hurried over to the table. “It actually worked,” he repeated.

It’d been nearly three nights since Mauvais had chiseled the stone from the fallen angel’s nude body, revealing black leathery wings, waist-length red hair, and taloned fingers and toes. Celtic designs—concentric circles, triskelions, delicate loops—were silver-inked along the motionless figure’s right side from torc-collared throat to hand.

Freed of stone, then, but not the spell that had trapped him within it, the fallen angel’s mouth had remained frozen in a silent scream, the moss-green eyes unseeing, the tight-muscled body locked in a crouch.

So, last night, refusing to give up or admit defeat, but lacking any magic useful to the situation, Mauvais had ordered the riverboat’s return to New Orleans. Once the Winter Rose had docked at the Esplanade Avenue wharf, he’d sent his mortal servants into the Quarter and out into the bayous to find someone —be it hoodoo conjurer, Vodou mambo, or nomad shuvano— possessing the necessary magical skills to shatter the thrice-damned spell.

Mauvais’s servants had returned first with a Vodou houngan who’d taken one look at the Winter Rose, then declared it and its master cursed. Refusing to step on board for any amount of money, the houngan had shouted his sincere condolences up to Mauvais, then turned and walked away without another word.

From where he stood against the wood railing, Mauvais regarded his chagrined servants with thin-lipped displeasure as they scurried away to resume their search.

They returned a few hours later with Clementine, a slender hoodoo dressed in chocolate brown cords and a mustard-yellow sweater. In her mid-thirties with a wild mass of auburn curls and sky-blue eyes, she seemed to have no qualms about working for a man rumored to be a vampire or about breaking a hex on what appeared to be a fallen angel.

She’d studied Mauvais for a long moment, her blue gaze taking in the wheat-blond hair tied back at the nape of his neck with a black satin ribbon, the aristocratic features, his elegant, if old-fashioned suit, the pale skin and lambent eyes.

“Well, madame?” he’d finally inquired. “Do you also believe I am cursed?”

“Oh, without a doubt, M’sieu Mauvais. You got an angry loa on dis here boat, one I want nuthin’ to do wit’, but I’ll take the job.”

Mauvais had arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Even with an angry loa on board?”

“Got a mortgage, me,” Clementine had replied with a philosophical shrug of her shoulder.

Mauvais had chuckled. “I appreciate your forthright and practical nature.”

Clementine’s lips had curled into a smile. She’d extended her hand, palm up. “And I appreciate cash, m’sieu.”

Once she’d been paid, and paid well, she’d immediately gone to work with her potions and powders and gris-gris, her juju bags and holy water and oil-anointed candles, promising Mauvais that his fallen angel would rise once again.

But when the conjurer had finally left shortly before dawn after murmuring one last Psalm over the angel’s utterly unchanged form, Mauvais had been disappointed, and believed himself duped perhaps.

The empty table was proof that he’d been wrong.

Which begged the question—where had the angel gone?

Mauvais drained his cooling breakfast, grimacing at the blood’s flat, lifeless taste, then set the goblet down on the table as he glanced around the room. Faint glimmers of light from the wharf filtered in through the porthole—more than enough to see that he was alone in the room. The taste of blood turned bitter on his tongue.

He picked up the chisel. Particles of pale stone still dusted its end. If, after everything, the damned angel had simply flown away without even a word. . . .

Mauvais hurled the chisel across the room. It struck the wood paneling at the far wall, driving in deep, handle quivering.

From the corner of his eye, Mauvais caught a flicker of blue light and spun to face it. He saw only the stone- littered table, the goblet glinting with ruby light from the porthole, and shadowed shelves filled with boxes and coils