Black Arts: A Jane Yellowrock Novel Read Online Free PDF

center was to the right, lit by a brass lamp in the shape of a swan, its neck arched back to ruffle its half-lifted wings.
    Also on the desk tonight, however, and totally unexpected, was a computer monitor. Katie was a Luddite. She didn’t understand the modern world. She hated changes. She more than hated the electronic changes. And yet she was sitting behind the desk, her eyes wide and entranced—in the human manner, not vamped-out—studying the wide screen.
    “Uhhh. Katie?” Great entrance. Almost as if I’d practiced it.
    She looked up and tinkled a laugh. It was delicate and soft and feminine and nothing like my own laugh, which was more of a donkey bray. “This is fascinating,” she said. “I have no idea why I feared it for so long.” One fragile-looking hand waved me closer. “Come. See. This is marvelous!”
    I stuck my hands into my pockets and stepped around the desk. Katie, wearing a dark orange-red sheath dress with her hair coiled up in a chignon, was staring at some sort of financial spreadsheet, one with dollar amounts upward of five figures—not counting the pennies. And the total at the bottom of the page was in the high six figures.
    My eyebrows rose all by themselves. “Yeah. Cool.” I mean, what else could I say?
    “Since I rose again, for the second time, this new world is no longer a fearful place.” She whipped her head to me, and her fangs snicked down. “In fact, I fear nothing and no one.”
    I managed not to take three quick steps back, which was smart because hunting predators chase things that run away. I held my hands up and open in the universal “peace” gesture and tried to control my breathing and heart rate. “Good by me, Katie. No woman should ever have to be afraid.”
    “Yes. Exactly.” Her fangs flipped back into the roof of her mouth with a faint click. She hadn’t vamped out—her eyes had remained fully human. It was a demonstration of control I hadn’t seen in her before, one worthy of a master. Katie had been injured not long after I arrived in NOLA, and to save her undead life, she had been buried with the blood of all the clans of New Orleans, some of which no longer even existed. She had risen crazy strong. And maybe just crazy, until a couple of months ago when she seemed to be settling in. Sorta.
    But I was wasting time. It was nearly seven thirty, the kids’ bedtime, and I needed an update on Molly. I wanted to be at home. “Troll tells me you have some missing girls?”
    “Bliss and Rachael went to a private party last night at Guilbeau’s Restaurant. They called their driver at exactly two twenty-three this morning. When their driver arrived four minutes later, there was no sign of them. Find them. When you discover who took them, kill him. Funds have been placed at your discretion, though I require a detailed expense accounting, of course.”
    My mouth opened. And closed on the words I was about to say. Calling a vamp insane might not be the wisest course of action, especially when it hadn’t been demonstrated that she was fully in control of her predatory instincts. When I opened my mouth again, I said, “I’ll find the girls. But I’m not a hired killer.”
    “Of course you are. Don’t be foolish.” She turned back to the screen. “We all must accept our natures, and you are a predator.” She sniffed the air without looking at me. “You smell of wild places and violence and blood. You will kill. It is your nature and it is what you have been paid to do.”
    The reality of her statement hit me like an icy fist, right in my midsection. Her words were almost like the ones Beast said to me when she called me a killer. Words I denied. Still wanted to deny. Slowly, carefully, I said, “Unless the person or persons who has them is being violent, refuses to let them go, or tries to do them, my team, or me harm, I won’t be killing anyone.”
    Katie’s head inclined, a snakelike movement no human spine could mimic. Her face moved half into