“We also are not romantically involved.”

“Oh.” Okay. Stupid, but a happy flush coursed through me. “Are you two—you four—staying in Natchez?”

“Yes. Ms. Esmee has provided us rooms. If that makes you uncomfortable, we can, of course, take rooms elsewhere.”

I opened my mouth to ask Why are you staying here? Whose idea was it? Does Rick like me? Check here for yes and here for no. So juvenile. I wanted to ask but didn’t have the social skills to peel away the layers without sounding like a lovesick teenager. I was an idiot for even thinking it. I closed my mouth, the questions unasked, but no way was it coincidence that they were staying here. So I blew out a breath and shrugged instead. Which was even more juvenile. “Um. Stay. That’s fine by me. And all.” I wanted to kick myself.

Soul didn’t react except to say, “PsyLED acquired a few police reports from the local sheriff and the chief of police. Interestingly enough, your young man had already discovered the same information quite independently, and quite a bit sooner than law enforcement.”

My young man had to be Alex, and if he acquired info on his own it was by illegally drilling into information centers, like police networks. So I said nothing. Nada.

Soul passed me a sheet of paper with Alex’s info and handwritten notations on it. “Among Natchez’s missing are twelve witches, gone in the last four months. I understand that you asked Alex to hunt for this information specifically?”

I sat up straight. Twelve out of 114? “Yeah. Something someone said made me curious. Those percentages seem off.” I said. “Witches might make up one percent of the population. Not nearly ten percent.”

“Twelve is a perfect number for a mass working,” Soul said. “One more or less would leave a working unbalanced.”

Another word for a mass working was a circle. For which we were searching and had been since Francis—still caged in the garage—had mentioned one. “Holy moly on a broomstick,” I breathed. “What kind of mass working needs twelve witches?”

She handed me a sheaf of papers. “The kind used for moving hurricanes or shifting weather patterns. The New Orleans coven didn’t have enough members still in town to move Katrina, which is why they could only bring the storm down from a category five to a cat three. If they’d had enough witches working together, they could have moved it—which is much harder—and decreased the storm’s power.” I took the pages and started scanning them. Soul kept talking. “A group of twelve can also make armies sick or affect the impact of political advertising on the masses. Many historians believe that Hitler had several covens of twelve in the early years of his political and military life, which contributed to his success in warfare. Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan each traveled with a coven of twelve. Alexander, Cyrus the Great, Julius Caesar are believed to have had witches at their command. And, of course, Napoleon Bonaparte had a very loyal coven. Such large covens are dangerous. Do you like history?”

It was obvious, even to me, that she was trying to put me at ease by chatting and not meeting my eyes, something my Beast would have appreciated. And it was working. I huffed a breath and forced my shoulders to drop, making myself relax. “It’s okay,” I said. “It was interesting in school, but it was also like eating only the icing instead of the whole cake, you know? No depth. Anyway. Okay. Covens of twelve are powerful. How about making vamps move like insects and heal from silver?”

Soul met my eyes. “I have never heard of such a thing until now.”

I pulled my phone and showed her the photos. “This vamp is dead, but it took way more weaponry than it should have. A bunch more got away, one after being spine shot with silver.”

“Oh, my.” Soul leaned forward in her chair, studying the shots. “Did they move like the ones in this video that Alex sent me?” She spun the small laptop so I could see it full-on.

“Yes. Exactly. Creepy insectoid-snakey-octopuslike.”

Soul asked, “Did you look at their hands and feet? Did you examine them thoroughly? Had there been any physiological changes, like extra digits or formation of carapace? Scales? Anything that might suggest a genetic-level mutation?”

“No, no, and nothing that I saw.” There was a strange look on her face, as if she had seen something recently that prompted the questions, but I didn’t ask and she didn’t offer the answers. “If witches are involved and magic is letting them heal against silver, then maybe the full circle is involved too?” I asked. And maybe Big H, with his mention of magic, knows about it all and has from the beginning, I thought. Except why bring me here and then only toss out clues about it?

“Whoever is directing the circle would need a focus, something to gather and concentrate the spell and the energy of the coven, like a large amulet—a statue, a live oak, anything big enough to hold the power. Something potent that could be driven by the twelve missing witches. Something that has been working for quite some time. Perhaps since Lucas Vazquez de Allyon arrived in Natchez.”

“How about an ugly, corroded metal-and-copper necklace?” I asked, thinking about Big H’s jewelry.

A necklace would be too small,” she said definitively.

I thought about the blood diamond I had put in the safety-deposit box and the amulets in my boot box. The diamond was well protected; the others didn’t feel or smell powerful enough for the changes I’d seen in the vamps. But what did I know? I’d gotten them from de Allyon’s Naturaleza followers before I killed him, so I knew where they’d come from, just not what they did. “Wait here.” I raced up the stairs and brought back one of the pocket-watch amulets for Soul to inspect. “This is the only amulet I’ve seen that has something to do with Lucas Vazquez de Allyon.”

The nonhuman woman held it in both hands and closed her eyes. At one point she cocked her head, a puzzled expression on her face. She opened her eyes and looked at it with surprise. “It smells like old blood and warm, raw meat. But it does not feel like a blood-magic amulet. Perhaps a low-level communication charm? A way for two vampires to speak to each other?”

I huffed. So much for that idea.

She held the pocket watch out to me and, reluctantly, I took it, tossing it to the table, where it slid under a sheaf of papers. I wiped my hand on my jeans and noticed Soul doing the same thing on her skirt. I’d smelled something like the scent recently, but I couldn’t place it. “You want some tea?” I asked. When Soul’s eyes lit up with interest, I said, “Jameson has some gunpowder green, a nice little oolong, some jasmine that he says is tasty, and a good strong black, a GFOP golden monkey.” The initials stood for Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, a top grade of tea, and golden monkey was my favorite tea lately. “It’s really good iced, and not bad hot.”

“The golden monkey sounds wonderful. Hot, please.”

“Anticipating your need,” Jameson said, pushing open the door to the coffee and tea bar, “I have brewed a pot for you.” The smell of hot tea wafted through the room, caught on the currents from the house’s air system.

“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.