“Our curse is different from the weres’ ancient curse, and different again from the elvish curse—and curses are what made us all.” Pain shadowed Leo’s face.

Elves? Crap. There are elves? And . . . weres. His words claimed that weres were real.

“No,” he said. He stood, fluid and sinuous, more graceful than a dancer. “You ask too much.” He looked around the room. Squared his shoulders as if they carried a burden. “George, I’m ready to leave.”

Bruiser rose from a chair at the table, the chair legs scraping on the wood floor, and crossed the room. Without glancing my way, he lifted and shook out a suit coat, the silk lining gleaming softly as he held it. Leo Pellissier unrolled his shirtsleeves and shrugged the jacket on. “Have the car brought around,” he said.

George flipped open a cell phone and punched a button. A moment later, he said, “Car,” and flipped the phone closed. Succinct, was our Bruiser.

Leo looked at me from his full height as I lay on the couch, unconcerned by the disparity in our positions, knowing, without understanding why, that I was safe, though my soft underbelly was exposed to his dominant position, his claws and teeth. Leo’s eyes burned into me, unvamped, human looking, yet still forceful, piercing, as if he would cut through the layers of my soul and uncover the secrets at the heart of me.

He said, “I heard drums. Smelled smoke. And there was this . . . mountain lion? Sitting beside you? But it didn’t kill you.” In a seeming non sequitur, he said, “They say you were raised by wolves.”

I let a smile fill my eyes. “No wolves.”

His head tilted slightly to the side as he studied me. As he considered whatever it was that he had picked up from my memory. “The cat. It wasn’t you.”

He was getting close. Beast stirred, uneasy. I let my smile widen, as if I found his statement even funnier than the news accounts that I was raised by wolves. “No,” I said. “It wasn’t me.” It was my father. It was a memory of my own lost past. And this, this vampire, gave it back. “Thank you,” I said again, offering no enlightenment.

“Healing is one responsibility of the elders among us. A . . .” He paused, his gaze turning inward, far away, as if caught still in my memories. Or his own? He seemed to shake himself mentally and looked at me, his black eyes faintly mocking. “A duty to those who serve us.”

“I work for you,” I said, feeling a bit smug, “for a price.” I eased my elbows under me and lifted my body to a half-sitting, half-reclining angle. “I’m not your servant. In fact, because you’re paying me to do something I want to do anyway, it seems like you’re more the servant than I am.”

Leo laughed, real humor crinkling the skin at his eyes. “Pert. Rude.”

I acknowledged the accusations with a nod.

“In that case,” he said, “I am happy to oblige.” He studied me a moment longer. “I wish you to attend a soiree tomorrow night.” He held up a hand at the derision and denial that spurted up from inside me. “Most of the vampires in the city will be there. It will be a rare opportunity for you to see them all in one place. We seldom gather in such large numbers.”

I watched his face, and if he had ulterior motives in issuing the invitation, I couldn’t spot them. “I own exactly one little black dress. One.”

“I’m certain it will be fine,” he said without expression. “Wear your hair down. No one will notice the dress.”

I laughed, sputtering with surprise.

“George will pick you up at midnight.” He glanced at his bodyguard and blood-servant. “We’re late. I hear the car.”

George nodded and stepped to the front door. I heard the lock click and the door opened on well-oiled hinges. And Leo Pellissier and his henchman were gone, leaving behind the scent of pepper and almonds, anise and papyrus, ink made of leaves and berries, and the warm scent of his blood and mine intertwined.

There was still time to shift and let Beast roam the night, but for once, the animal in my soul was silent, quiescent. I lay on the couch in the silent house, half napping, taking a moment I seldom allowed myself, to relax. Near six a.m. I found the energy to pull myself from the couch and move into the bedroom. I stripped and soaked my party clothes in a few capfuls of Woolite while I showered, letting hot water scrub the scents and blood off of me.

I was spending a lot of time in the shower these days, but I had to rewash my hair to get the vamp blood out, combing the long length before braiding it into a single French braid. When I was clean, partially groomed for church in a few hours, still oddly relaxed, I wrapped up in the robe and checked the new outfit. Amazingly, all the vamp blood and my blood had soaked out. Pleased that I hadn’t thrown away good money, I left the clothes hanging, dripping in the shower stall, and crawled into bed. I lay there, hearing the echoing plink of water, studying my healed arm as my body relaxed into the mattress.

Leo Pellissier had healed me with vamp blood and saliva. Pretty icky in some regards. In others . . . ? One of the reasons I accepted this job, other than the fact that council-sanctioned vamp-hunting gigs were few and far between, was the half hope, half fear that one of the older vamps might recognize my scent and tell me that they had met my kind before. Leo, who had to be centuries old—older than Katie, if vamp hierarchy made any kind of age-dominant sense—had no idea what I was. As far as I could tell, he didn’t know that skinwalkers existed. But weres and elves . . . He indicated they both were real, existing somewhere.

I pulled the covers over me as the air conditioner came on with a low hum, blowing chilled air into the house. The sheets were softer than any I owned. Probably high-thread-count Egyptian cotton or something. I usually slept on polyester pulled over a lumpy old mattress, but I could get used to these. I made a fist again, feeling the pull of tendon and muscle. The healed flesh over the injury was pale and pinkish against my coppery skin. The young rogue had left slashes in the periphery of the wound, around my arm, like the tines of a bracelet. It was a wound like any wild animal with fangs might have left. Not unlike Beast might have left on the arm of someone she attacked.

Beast stirred. Not a vampire. She spat the thought, repulsed in the same way she would have been at the taste of rotten meat. Me and you. Us. More than skinwalker, more than u’tlun’ta. We are Beast. She fell silent, brooding. Not quite sure what Beast meant about us being more than a skinwalker—and Beast not being in the mood to enlighten me—I turned off the bedside light and tucked my arm under the covers.

Lying curled in bed, I let my mind wander through what I knew of myself, or guessed of myself, what Aggie had told me, what Leo had revealed, and what I had discovered online, letting my thoughts drift, knowing that, once I relaxed, seemingly unrelated facts often connected. The most important? I smiled in the dark to finally remember, to finally know, that I was definitely Cherokee. I was from a line of skinwalkers, with a father and grandmother who’d had eyes like mine. The memory proved that not all skinwalkers were evil, despite the legends and stories.

In Western American Indian tradition, primarily Hopi and Navajo, the skinwalker practiced the art of the curse, lured into the murky study of dark arts to control and destroy. The skinwalker practitioner may have begun his studies with the intent to do good, but always gave in to the desire to take the skin of a human, perhaps to obtain a younger body. He became a murderer and went mad. That walker was depicted as a black witch.

In Southeastern Indian lore, primarily Cherokee, the skinwalker had originated as a protector of The People. But in more modern stories, maybe after the white man came, the skinwalker myths changed, and the skinwalker became the liver-eater, the evil version of the skinwalker, sort of like Luke Skywalker going over to the dark side. But the thing I had seen in the alley had smelled vampy, a vampire underneath the odor of rot. Not skinwalker.

And as for me . . . I am a skinwalker. I had lived for a long time, decades longer than the normal panther’s or the normal human’s life span. I had shifted into cat shape as a child, at some point in my life, probably a point of great danger, and had not gone back except to find the human shape and regenerate. That’s what skinwalkers did. We regenerated back to our remembered age each time we shifted, giving ourselves a longer life span. Leo had given me back much memory of the forgotten times.

The shadow of a bush outside the window moved on the far wall as a wet wind blew. In the distance, I heard the fall of raindrops growing harder, faster as they approached, pushed by storm winds. Limbs swept window screens with a scritch, scritch sound. Thunder rumbled.

Under the covers, I opened and tightened my fist again. Released it. A drowsy thought came to me on the edge of sleep. Why did Leo refer to the men tonight as “his,” as in “cost me the temporary use of one good man . . .”? With the rain falling in torrents, pelting the street and roof and windows with furious force, I fell asleep.

I woke to a blue sky and rain-wet streets, bells tolling in the distance. Half asleep, I rolled from bed. It occurred to me that I had killed a young rogue vamp and given away the bounty. I was nuts.

While a kettle sizzled on the stove top, I dressed in jeans and my best T-shirt, pulled on my boots, and rolled the unused skirt up in Beast’s travel pack, hoping it didn’t wrinkle too badly. I drank down a pot of tea and ate oatmeal as I read the paper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Weird name for a paper anywhere but here. Here it was perfect.

The headlines proclaimed that a local politician had been caught leaving a hotel with a transvestite. The mayor and his wife posed for pictures with the governor and his wife. The Obamas were being featured at an event in France. New Orleans musicians were raising money for rebuilding more Katrina-ruined houses. The weather for the next few days was going to be hot, hotter, and hottest. And wet. Big surprise there—not. The vamp deaths hadn’t made the news. Sad commentary when nothing that happens in the hood makes the news. Or maybe Leo had quashed the story. Who knew.

At ten thirty I helmeted up, left the house, and kick-started the bike for an early morning ride through the city. I wasn’t Catholic, so I wouldn’t be attending services in the Quarter’s big cathedral. I had never fit in with a big, fancy church. But the little storefront church next to the dress shop had looked promising.