folder on the vamp you're visiting - the ex-master of Sedona. It's put together from the files you loaned me to collate and organize."
Back when I had a working relationship with the head of NOPD's weird cases (not that the New Orleans Police Department used those words to describe the official department. Local cops called it lots of things, none of them very flattering), I'd had access to NOPD's supernatural crime's hard-copy files. It was kept in the woo-woo room, and I copied copious amounts of info directly into my own electronic files. I was paying Reach an arm and a leg to organize the info.
Reach said, "The ex-MOC's name is Rosanne Romanello. Check your e-mail."
Peeling my fingers off the armrest again, I pulled the Lear's laptop across the table to me and logged on, checking e-mail. The Lear had all the office and party bells and whistles and its electronic gear was easier to use at jet speeds than my own. "Yeah. Got it. Thanks."
"Your business is my pleasure and profit."
"You oughta get that trademarked." I hung up the jet's phone and sat back with the laptop, reading the collated records - which was way easier than finding and reading scraps in individual files. Not that I'd tell Reach that. No way. He'd find a way to make a bigger profit off my now effortless search.
Rosanne Romanello had an exceptionally well-documented history. She had been born in 1787 in a small town in Calabria, the eldest child of grape and olive growers and olive oil exporters. A beautiful woman, she had been turned in a violent confrontation with a young rogue. Rescued by her fiance, Luca, she appeared to die and was placed in the church for the death watch, which ended when she rose on the third night, killed the acolyte who had fallen asleep in the nave, and vanished into the hills. She survived there for four years, a rogue in hiding, until Leo Pellissier, traveling through the countryside one night, saw and chained her so she could grow out of the posttransformation insanity vamps called the devoveo. He had taken her west with him when he returned to the United States, and set her free seven years later, sane and strong.
According to Reach's notations, there were indications that the relationship between Rosanne and Leo had been more than just passing friendly. Well, duh. Leo believed in something he called the Dark Right, an authority that gave him the right to rule, and that permitted him to sleep with and drink from anyone under his power or his scions' power. Leo was charming and charismatic, but he was an old-time sleazeball too. I had a lot of sleazeballs in my life right now, and some important people who were seemingly out of my life for good. Old grief welled up in me, but I shoved it back down, hard. There was nothing I could do about the past. Not a thing. And I could grieve the lost relationship with Rick LaFleur later. Much later. I went back to the dossier.
Rosanne had emancipated herself from Leo and risen slowly in the ranks of the U.S. vamps, moving west until she claimed and settled in Sedona. She had been the blood-master of that city for nearly two hundred years, comfortable in her stronghold - literally. Romanello had started an olive oil business much like her family's, and built an Italian-style fortress-home where she still lived. Over the centuries, she had made friends with several blood-covens of witches and, with their power base, had protected her land and her scions. Until now.
Now things had changed. She had lost in direct Blood Challenge to an unknown master - and she was sick. The digital photos accompanying the file were hard to look at. In one, taken only last month at the full moon ceremonies with her witch allies, she had been stunning, pale-skinned, dark-eyed, almost ethereal in her delicate beauty. The poor-quality photo that arrived in Leo's headquarters e-mail yesterday showed a very different woman. Wasted, wan, with dark circles under her eyes and a dark crust at her nostrils that was presumed to be blood, she looked like death warmed over. Or worse - death still chilled. On the back of her hand was a lump, which looked like a pustule. I didn't know who had sent the file photo, as it came through a circuitous route and an e-mail account that went nowhere, but it was clearly a cry