I went back to the computer and sent Alcide an e-mail. It said only, “The police were just here.” I figured that would be enough. I knew I wouldn’t hear from him until he was ready for me to come to Shreveport.

I was surprised that it took three days to receive a reply from Bill. Those days had been remarkable only for the number of people I hadn’t heard from. I hadn’t heard from Remy, which wasn’t too extraordinary. None of the members of the Long Tooth pack called, so I could only assume they’d retrieved the body of Basim from its new resting place and that they would let me know when the meeting would be held. If someone came into my woods and tried to find out why Basim’s body had vanished, I didn’t know about it. And I didn’t hear from Pam or Bobby Burnham, which was a little worrisome, but still . . . no big.

What did gripe me in a major way was not hearing from Eric. Okay, his (maker, sire, dad) mentor Appius Livius Ocella was in town . . . but geez Louise.

In between sessions of worrying, I looked up Roman names and found that “Appius” was his praenomen, his common name. Livius was his nomen, his family name, handed down from father to son, indicating that he was a member of the Livii family or clan. Ocella was his cognomen, so it was meant to indicate what particular branch of the Livii had borne him; or it could have been given as an honorific for his service in a war. (I had no idea what war that could have been.) As a third possibility, if he’d been adopted into another family, the cognomen would reflect his birth family.

Your name said a lot about you in the Roman world.

I wasted a lot of time finding out all about Appius Livius Ocella’s name. I still had no idea what he wanted or what he intended to do to my boyfriend. And those were the things I needed to know the most. I have to say, I was feeling pretty sulky, pugnacious, and sullen (I looked up a few words while I was online). Not a pretty posy of emotions, but I couldn’t seem to upgrade to dull unhappiness.

Cousin Claude was making himself scarce, too. I glimpsed him only once in those three days, and that was when I heard him go through the kitchen and out the back door and got up in time to see him getting into his car.