“Detective Bentz, New Orleans, Homicide,” a low, serious voice informed. “I heard you were working on the missing girls from All Saints as potential homicides,” he said without preamble.

Portia drew a breath as she stopped under an overhanging eave on the outside of the tired stucco building. Del was saying something to her, but she shooshed him with a wave of her hand.

“That’s right. I am.”

“It looks like you were right,” Bentz said. “In the last hour, four female bodies, one African American, three Caucasian, all in the same state of decomp, all appearing to be in their twenties, have been pulled out of the Mississippi down here. One of the Caucasian girls was missing an arm.”

Portia’s exhale was a sigh of resignation and dying hope.

“Physical characteristics, hair and eye color, tattoos and scars suggest that they are the girls who’ve gone missing from the college.”

“Okay,” she whispered. Though she’d suspected they had come to bad ends, she’d hoped she was wrong and that everyone else in the department was right, that Dionne, Monique, Tara, and Rylee were still somewhere safe and alive. “You said all in the same state of decomp? But they were abducted months apart.”

“We’ll know more once the ME examines them,” he said, his voice tightly controlled.

“Cause of death?”

“Don’t know that yet. Preliminarily it looks like they haven’t been in the water more than a few days, possibly a week. Hard to tell.” He hesitated and she knew something was on his mind.

“What else?”

“There are strange puncture wounds on the bodies. You know that there wasn’t a drop of blood in that arm you guys found in the swamp?”

“Yes.” She suddenly felt cold inside. Steeled herself for what she knew was coming.

“It looks like these bodies might not have any blood as well.”

“Severed arteries?”

“Not exactly,” he said, and she felt his anger radiating through the wireless phone. “But it could be that the corpses were ex-sanguinated.”

“Drained of blood,” she said, thinking of the puncture wounds.

“You might want to see for yourself in the lab.”

“I will, but now we’ve got another missing girl.”

He drew in a quick, swift breath. “Who?”

“Student at All Saints by the name of Ariel O’Toole. Parents can’t locate her and from the looks of her apartment, I’d say she’s been gone for several days.”

“Don’t tell me, she’s an English major.”

“That’s right.”

“And she took that vampirism class?”

“Yeah.”

He swore hard. “I’m on my way up there. The lab can call in their report. My daughter’s a student at All Saints. An English major.”