and most of the members were looking at the witches with open hunger.
“Let’s just get this over with,” the lead witch was saying. Her voice was clear and firm, but the woman holding her hand was visibly shaking.
“Of course.” Beau waved at Warton, who stepped forward and unsheathed a knife.
I strode up to Beau, who looked at me with surprise. “Is there somewhere we could speak privately?” I said through my teeth.
Beau raised his eyebrows, but gave me a gallant little bow. “Certainly. My mausoleum is just across the path.”
With a nod at Warton, Beau ushered me away from the bell tower. “This area is the highest ground in the cemetery,” Beau remarked. “During the war it was an observation outpost. General John B. Hood watched the Battle of Atlanta from this spot.”
I wasn’t listening, too busy craning my head to see what was happening with the witches. Warton had led them into the Bell Tower building, and all the surrounding vampires were beginning to close in on it. I swallowed hard, telling myself to focus, and followed Beau as he strode toward one of the mausoleums. It wasn’t the largest one I’d seen, but much bigger and more ornate than Hempstead’s. It reminded me of a miniature church made of weathered white brick, complete with narrow stained-glass windows, miniature pillars, and even a steeple. We’d passed it on the way, but it had been too dark for me to make out the name engraved on the marble doorway: Calhoun.
There was a locked wrought-iron door, and Beau casually pulled out an iron key that looked as old as the building. “Gothic revival,” he explained as he swung open the door, like I’d just been salivating for details about the architecture. “I don’t suppose you brought a flashlight?”
My cell phone light wasn’t going to cut it in here, so I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small, high-powered Maglite I’d brought. I covered the beam with the bottom of my shirt and clicked the light on, creating a warm glow that filled the room.
The chamber was smaller than I’d expected: just a tiny marble room with a wall of flat interment spaces on one side and a bench on the other. Beau’s eyes automatically slid over to the interment wall, dropping low, and I saw the names etched into the marble there. This was why the building appeared smaller on the inside than it did on the outside—there were caskets in the walls.
Where I was from, people were generally buried in the ground. Now here were generations of the same family, squeezed together into a small space for eternity. The oldest carvings were for Abner Beaumont Calhoun and Carlotta Reginald Calhoun. Her date of death was eight years after his own.
The fury I’d felt after seeing the witches flagged a little. “Your wife?” I asked, looking up at him.
He nodded, his face as impassive as I’d ever seen it. “You wanted to speak to me?”
“What the fuck did I just see?”
Beau blanched for a moment, but recovered smoothly. “Ah. Every Promenade, one of the clans sends us ten witches to donate blood.”
“Why?”
“Because this is my city,” Beau snapped. “I protect it, and I am owed a tribute. Some cardinal vampires require money, or labor, or worse.” He shrugged carelessly. “I ask only for a small donation.”
“There aren’t enough witches out there to feed every vampire here, not by a long shot.”
“It’s not about the feeding,” he ground out. “It’s ceremonial. It reminds everyone of their place in the system.”
“The system,” I repeated. “What about Tallulah Finch? Do her witches have to participate in this little ceremony?”
Beau crossed his arms over his chest without answering. “That’s what I thought,” I said angrily. “So the rich white clan gets to take your money, but all the other clans have to go through this humiliating bullshit ritual?”
His eyes flashed. “No one said you had to like the way I do things,” he said in a low, dangerous tone. “But let me make myself clear: you are hired help. You can’t come into my territory and embarrass me.” He took a step back, straightening his gray tie. “Now. Was that all?”
My hands were clenched into fists, but I managed to not reach for a shredder. Beau knew what they were now. If I didn’t kill him on the first strike, he would kill me.
“Your Horsemen can’t remember if they were pressed,” I said, as calmly as I could. “And you can keep your