Anthony Francis - Frost Moon

Philip opened the door.

"No, I need version 6.1 of the Emacspeak extensions," Jack was muttering into his cell phone, tapping a key on his giant slab of a laptop. "Put it in the 'cygwin/opt' folder. You know, if you had a real computer, girlie, we'd already have this done."

"Don't listen to the bad man, dear," Jinx said, stroking her laptop, then pulling out a USB key and lifting it for Jack to take. "I think this key is yours. Hello, Dakota."

"Oh, hey, chickie," Jack said, taking the key and plugging it into his laptop. They'd set up a scanner and were clearly about to start work on the lid; best get this over with before they got started. "Thanks for that tip on the webcam-"

"If we could interrupt for a minute," I said, standing behind Cinnamon, my hands on her shoulders for support. "I'd like to show our guests what we're dealing with."

Jack's face grew grim, stony, and without a word he moved aside, exposing the evidence tray. Cinnamon whirled, burying her head against my chest, but turned enough just so she could keep one eye fixed on it, as if it might leap up and bite her. Clearly her time at the werehouse hadn't left her as hard boiled as she had pretended, and somehow that made me feel better.

"What's in the tray?" Spleen asked, hiding behind the safety of the mirrored glass. His voice cracked a little. "What's in the fucking tray?"

"If this is too much you don't have to-" I began, squeezing her shoulders.

"No. No, I can do this," Cinnamon said, turning back slowly.

She stepped forward, and I walked behind her, not crowding her, but just letting my arms rest on her shoulders and stepping only when she stepped. Finally we stood over the evidence tray, looking down at the wooden lid. It was even more pathetic, now looking at that piece of a person wrapped round the board like a seatcover.

"That-that's horrible," Cinnamon said. "Why are you showing me this?"

"Someone ripped this off a person while they were alive," I said, and Cinnamon swallowed. "They've done it before. They take tattoos-magical tattoos-and only on the full moon. And we think he's here, now, in Atlanta."

Cinnamon took a deep breath, then shuddered. "That smell-"

"So you, and me, and the Marquis, and all our clients-we're all targets," I said. "That's why I wanted you to see it, and Jinx to inspect it thoroughly. I want you to warn him, and then he can call Jinx to confirm that what we're saying is true."

"But then you'll wants the Marquis to talk to your boooyfriend," Cinnamon mocked, but her heart clearly wasn't in it. "But he won't even talk to you. He doesn't deal well with the outside."

"He doesn't have to," Philip said. "I've worked the Edgeworld for years. All he needs to do is keep his people safe, and feed us any leads he gets through Dakota or Jinx."

"Will you tell him?" I asked. "Will you tell him to watch out, to keep his people safe?"

"But, but what can we do?" Cinnamon stammered. "The wearer of that

… she, she, she was a were, a werecat, I can smell it!" Balducci raised an eyebrow, staring at Philip, then me. "If, if they could take her out-under the moon-"

"We are not going to let that happen," Phil said, stepping forward to touch her shoulder. "I'm tracking this man, but my first priority is stopping him from taking anyone else."

"Don't worry Cinnamon," I said, patting the head of a werecat who could rip my throat out as easily as she could sneeze. "I won't let anyone hurt you."

20. Off the Beaten Track

"Calaphase?" Savannah asked incredulously, smile growing so wide you could see her fangs. "You meant Caiaphas."

"I know, I know," Calaphase said, leaning back in his chair with a similarly toothy grin. "But what am I, a Bible scholar? I thought I'd made it up."

It had taken over an hour for Jinx to walk Jack the Jackass through what he'd need to do to scan the… evidence… into formats she could use, once APD and the DEI got permission to release the files to her. By the time they were done, it was after nine-making options for the handoff of our werecat cargo quite limited. Finally I'd settled on Manuel's Tavern, a grand old liberal pub northwest of Little Five just past the Freedom Parkway, and had coerced Savannah and her crew to show up to provide us protection in case things turned nasty.

But instead of a vampire/werewolf showdown, we were all now gathered round one of the Tavern's huge circular wooden tables, sharing beers and trading stories in the huge raftered tavern, like King Arthur's knights on their day off.

Spleen had left us to go take the Nazi flash back to Wulf, so Calaphase and Revenance were the sole representatives of the werehouse, styling in cool, long-tailed biker jackets that quickly helped them scoop up two would-be paramours for the night from the bar. Savannah and Darkrose sat next to them with easy familiarity, in matching biker jackets and turtlenecks that screamed "lesbian couple." Next to them sat Doug, who was surprisingly cleancut without his puppy mask, with dark wavy hair and piercing eyes that he simply couldn't take off of Jinx, who sat next to him, smiling, staring straight ahead but occasionally leaning towards him to whisper confidentially. Cinnamon sat between Jinx and me… which, not coincidentally, put me and Savannah about as far apart across the table as we could get.

"I don't get it," Cinnamon said. "Who's Caiaphas? And why's a vampire lord in the Bible?" Savannah spit up her Bloody Mary and Cinnamon hissed at her. "Don't you be funning me-" "Went up my nose," Savannah said.

"Caiaphas wasn't a vampire. He was the high priest who tried Jesus," I said. I got some surprised looks and shrugged. "Bible Bowl, eighth grade champion. Why ever did you pick-"

"I have no idea," Calaphase said, smiling at the girl leaning on his shoulder. "Like I said, thought I'd made it up. I only found out months later when a new recruit-"

"Present." Revenance raised his hand. "-asked, 'Aren't you spelling Caiaphas wrong?'" "To which Cal says, 'Don't worry, it's easy to get a screen name for a misspelling!' "

Calaphase shrugged. "Started a tradition-now the whole clan does that with our vampire names-"

"Wait, wait," I said. "Don't tell me the big bad vampire biker gang picks their names based on how easy it is to get a Gmail account?"

"But it is easier if it's a made-up word," Calaphase protested. "Consider it an intelligence test. Who's going to take seriously a vampire named BloodSucker17?"

"Or AtlantaNosferatu2," Savannah said, grinning. "What?" Darkrose said, putting her drink down. "Oi! That's my screen name-"

"Can I get you guys anything else?" the waitress said. Annie was a blackhaired punkish girl who kept checking out my tats-and from the way she also kept checking out Revenance and Doug, it was safe to assume I had a potential customer and not a suitor on my hands.

"I'll have a Guinness," Jinx said. A boy at the table beside us looked over when she said that, raising a Guinness of his own. His eye fell on me, on my tats, and he smiled; I responded with a polite bob of my Sprite, but filed him away in the "suitor" category. He was with a group, and turned back to his conversations.

"I'll have one too," Cinnamon said, grinning wickedly. "And I'll see your ID's," Annie said. Clearly she'd been around the waitress block enough to spot a fake ID, because she tossed

Cinnamon's back without a word-but then she handed Jinx's ID back too. "I don't think so."

"Hey," Cinnamon said.

"Gee, thanks," Jinx said in shock.

"Don't be surprised," I told Jinx. "In that getup you look about twelve. Annie, I met orange-hair yesterday," I said, pointing at the outraged little werecat, "but her I've known since grade school. Jinx is twenty-six."

"I can vouch for that," Savannah said. "I've known her since kindergarten."