Chapter Two
Angie
The next morning, I placed an assortment of amulets on the office desk, behind the expandable computer screen, and pulled up the email sent by our prospective client. She had asked for help to find a lost friend, an uncommon request these days when the various internets made finding people so easy.
The self-described soccer mom claimed to be a former blood servant, “back in the day,” in New Orleans.
Blood servants were the blood-bound and legally contracted humans who served a vampire master, in return for whatever the agreed-upon contract stipulated, and sips of the vamp’s super-blood.
The relationship often included sex—because fangheads had enormous sex drives—a place to live, and a monetary stipend, but the lifestyle wasn’t as prevalent these days, not since the vamps got their souls back, some twenty years ago.
Chancy Bigelow was the right age to have been active at the height of the New Orleans’s Master of the City lifestyle, and her pic looked like someone Leo Pellissier or one of his cronies would have seduced.
She had been a real beauty twenty years ago.
I opened the New Orleans database and didn’t see the name Chancy, but she might have gone by another name back then.
The potential client rang the bell and I buzzed her in, evaluating her as the woman closed the outside door behind her and entered the building.
Her heels clicked as she walked to the inner entrance of Everhart Investigations.
Her boots were lightly worn Christian Louboutin—not knockoffs, but the real deal.
Her oversized handbag was Bottega Veneta.
Her dress was Dior, her leather jacket Saint Laurent.
She had class and money. My favorite kind of client, but not the impression she had given in her email.
She had said she was short of funds. The only reason we had agreed to see her was because of the New Orleans ties, which could mean ties to our own pasts.
I tapped the screen to have Ojos, the AI security system, engage the office cams, record the interview, and interact with minimal screen input.
Rising from my desk, I inserted an in-ear monitor and touched a button to activate it to EJ’s comms, smoothed my skirt, crossed the office, and reached out to shake the woman’s hand as she walked in.
“I’m Angelina Everhart,” I said. “Welcome to Everhart Investigations.”
Our hands clasped. The moment I touched her, I felt the glamour, saw it sparkle, smelled it.
For a single instant, my battle magic emerged, ascending—dangerous, unpredictable. Almost as fast, I quashed it, recognizing the woman’s working. The glamour she wore was one legally sold by the Richardson Clan—topnotch, all the bells and whistles.
Not an attack working. A beauty working.
Her perfume and the glow of her glamour charms wafted on the air. “I’m Chancy,” she said, releasing our handshake and handing me an ID with pic. My truth sense didn’t rise, remaining calm, quiescent.
I smiled my professional smile, but I couldn’t quite force it to reach my eyes.
Turning slightly, I said the inane socially appropriate things and gestured to the two chairs that would give us an informal setting, and then at the desk, which would place me across from her, letting her choose the location.
She waved to the desk. “I have papers to show you,” she said, “so the desk might be better.”
I pulled out the chair behind my desk and moved the vid screen to the side, as if I was giving Chancy all my attention. Mostly, I didn’t want her to see what I was seeing from the hidden cams around the room.
“Coffee? Tea? Water? Cola?” I asked, while my eyes ran over the screen and its vids.
EJ must have noticed my momentary lack of focus because the feeds from all the cams were on the screen, including the fully illegal up-skirt cam.
It had taken only one blood-witch trying to collect on my bounty, activating an acidic goo amulet bomb hidden in her lap, for me to retreat from my high moral ground and put the cam under the desk.
The assassination attempt had forced me to call my grandfather for help getting rid of the blood-witch’s body, something I had never imagined would be necessary. We also had to pay to renovate all four walls and the ceiling in the reception office.
The result had been: two weeks of lost business, an uncomfortable outlay of money that had taken months to recoup in that first year of operation, and consenting to a nighttime bodyguard.
That incident made my godmother, the queen, offer five million dollars for the body of anyone who so much as tried to kill me. There had been no further attempts—until possibly last night.
“No, thank you,” Chancy said. “I’m fine.
” She sat, put her expensive bag on the floor, where it gapped open, allowing her to withdraw a large manila envelope from it.
She placed it on the surface of the desk and crossed her legs in the way tall, confident women with great legs do. Almost languorously.
I sat and ran her ID over the tabletop screen to copy it. “What can we do for you, Chancy?”
On the screen she couldn’t see, flashed the word Weapon.
A still shot appeared beside it on one corner, her big bag spread open at her feet.
At first glance, the old SIG P365 in her purse appeared to be the perfect weapon for self-protection, but the matte black and fuchsia SIG was tossed on top of a wallet and three other small zippered bags of feminine necessities, not properly secured.
My truth sense twanged uncertainly. I picked up the amulet that opened a hedge of thorns, my witch family’s most prized working. With a touch, I could protect myself or imprison Chancy. Bullets were faster than magic, but she wasn’t holding her weapon. I had a firm grip on mine.
On the screen, beside the gun, was a still from the up-skirt cam beneath the desk.
The eight-inch silvered vamp-killer had been strapped to one thigh, visible only to the under-desk cam when she crossed her bare legs.
I wondered if Chancy knew about the cameras in the ceiling and wanted the SIG to be seen, because her other weapon was well hidden and properly situated for a fast draw, the hilt in a faux pocket.
EJ in his office, chuckled. “Nice legs,” he said, his voice in my ear. “Problem,” he said, his voice growing tense. “The ID shows up as false.”
Faster than light, a hundred questions and observations flitted through my mind.
Why had Chancy come glamoured into a witch’s place of business?
She had to know that, at the very least, Everhart’s would detect the magic.
Any reputable firm would look into her identity, so why the fake name and ID, except that The Firm’s ID tracking and computational speed was faster than any other firm’s and maybe she didn’t know that.
Maybe the case was a fake-left kind of deal, and she expected it to be a short-term risk.
Or she was in a hurry and hadn’t done her homework.
Was this a cry for help? Was Chancy under some kind of duress? Duress could mean my ex-husband had sent her for some dumbass dangerous reason of his own, something he’d dragged up from the deeps of his twisted, tiny little mind. I had to hold that and a dozen other possibilities close too.
I looked Chancy over, trying to see beneath the glamour. There didn’t appear to be any of the usual signs—black ink dots on her palms, no signs of bruises she might have left uncovered beneath the glamour. No note with the word help written on it and passed during the initial handshake.
Yet, here she was. Glamour and a gun, lying like a boss, in the office of the best paranormal investigations firm in the business.
The unsecured gun brought up a totally different issue.
Every Master of the City for the last hundred years would have seen to a blood servant’s proper weapons training.
Did she intend to shoot me? Fat chance of that happening.
However, leaving a weapon loose in her bag to rattle around added weight to the weird feeling I was getting.
Uncle Eli had made sure I knew weapons. Aunt Cia had made sure I knew fashion and what each brand said about a person.
Nothing about this client meshed into the expected.
The client’s eclectic style, obvious deep pockets, and her expensive Ivy League diction, posture, and mannerisms indicated that “Chancy Bigelow” was not the frightened middle-income, low-on-cash soccer mom she purported to be.
Concern and curiosity warred within me. Being nosy won.
She slid the nine-by-eleven-inch envelope across to me and placed a stack of cash on the desk.
“I’m so glad you could see me,” she said. “I don’t have much cash, but I need help. Five thousand up front. Another five when you find Ivy.”
We didn’t work that way, with flat sums, no contract.
It was a $10K retainer, expenses by the week, and final payment upon delivery.
Period. However, the woman spoke the truth while, at the same time, the woman she purported to be, was a lie.
How did my truth sense not scream at the top of its lungs?
According to her clothes and her expensive glamour, Chancy could have afforded LMO in Asheville or Harrington Inc.
in Atlanta. Instead she had come here. With cash.
I tapped a spot on the desktop touch screen to bring up her original email asking for help. I said, “The Firm is always eager to help a former New Orleans blood servant, Chancy. We had so many acquaintances there when we were kids, before the war changed everything.”
Did she tense when I mentioned our familiarity with the vampire world she claimed to come from? Chancy was trouble.
Or Chancy was in trouble.
A soft ping announced two inputs from baby brother. The Firm’s very expensive DGFR programs—deglamour and facial rec software—had been initiated to break through the glamour, though with a Richardson working, success was iffy at best. The other ping was for audio.