Frenchman Street_A Novel of The Sentinels of New Orleans

by Suzanne Johnson

  I’d made my point; I could see it on his face. Until his gaze slid toward the unicorn, still doing an awkward dance with Rene. I hated to tell my merman buddy, but if that big, murderous beast wanted to get away, it would have left by now—no matter how much shifter strength Rene had at his disposal. Call me paranoid, but that unicorn had an agenda.

  “Jean, you can’t kill the unicorn. We need it.”

  Curiosity replaced vengeance. “Why, Jolie? It would not make a suitable pet. The licorne are said to be quite ill-tempered, even dangerous.”

  Of course they were ill-tempered; they belonged to batshit-crazy faeries. “The vampires were a decoy,” I said, glancing back at the rising tide and thinking. “They were supposed to distract us from the fact that the fae have managed to set up another transport here on Barataria. The unicorn came from down the beach. It would’ve worked, except Florian didn’t know we’d moved our transport into the water or that the vamps would be paralyzed.”

  Which had probably saved our lives. “We need that unicorn to lead us to the new transport so I can destroy it.” The transport, not the unicorn.

  Something else occurred to me. “You know, this might not be a real unicorn—it could be a faery glamoured to look like a unicorn.” It could even be Florian himself, in which case I’d let Jean slice him up in spirals like a Christmas ham.

  We all turned to look at the gray-and white-dappled animal in question, which looked back at us. No, actually, he looked at me with evil intentions and bared teeth the size of my friend Eugenie’s paperback romance novels. My nose hit him at shoulder level, and his horn was twisted, spiky, sharp, and the length of my forearm.

  That unicorn was not my friend.

  One of the scariest aspects of faeries was their ability to glamour appearances. Christof had spent a week glamoured to look like Justin Bieber; Florian had attended an Interspecies Council member looking like a member of the Rolling Stones.

  I had no idea if they could glamour themselves as animals. For that matter….

  “Is there any way we can find out if that’s Christof and not another faery glamoured to look like him?”

  Jean and Rene blinked at me. “You got your locket, babe?” Rene asked.

  “Its magic has worn off.” Alex had given me a locket where I put tufts of fur clipped from his dog mode, a shifted pony-sized canine I called Gandalf. Dogs could see through faery glamour most of the time. We’d found it not to be foolproof—the glamour had to be recently created. And the power of the hair in the locket wore off in about twenty-four hours. With Alex himself usually close at hand, I had stopped replenishing it.

  “Then how might we solve this puzzle, Drusilla?” Jean stared down at his friend’s head, or its facsimile. “Monsieur Warin is no longer here.”

  No, and he had thought the head belonged to Christof as well, but if it was an older glamour he might not be able to tell the difference. There were no other canines here at Maison Rouge.

  I turned to glare at the unicorn. It was hanging around here for some reason.

  “Can you talk? If not, what are you waiting for?” I asked him, which certainly got Rene and Jean’s attention, but the unicorn snuffled. It sounded sort of like a laugh. I made a shooing motion. “Go home to your master.”

  Because we needed to find out how he got here.

  “I’ll find a rope—maybe we can make a halter,” Rene said, walking toward the house.

  Jean also seemed to have had his fill of unicorn wrangling. “Bah. I shall depart for Old Orleans, Drusilla. There are people with whom I must discuss matters of import, and perhaps I might discover the truth about Christof. I will take the head with me.”

  Fine. Leave me with the merman and the unicorn. “Well, if you see Alex….” I paused. Did I even care who Alex was in such a hot hurry to meet? “If you see Alex, try to eavesdrop and see what he’s up to.”

  That almost earned a smile from the pirate. “Oui, Jolie. You are learning who is worthy of your trust and who is not.”

  Then he turned and walked into the transport, disappearing in seconds. He hadn’t removed his boots, but he had held his pistol out of the water. The pirate had his priorities straight.

  “Here is my message.”

  I whirled to look at the unicorn, who was now doing his best Mr. Ed impression.

  “I knew it.” That freaking unicorn could talk; he’d been waiting to get me alone.

  I held up the elven staff, and the unicorn had the good sense to back up a couple of steps. I slipped my left hand into my jeans pocket, fingering a couple of potions I’d cooked up in this rustic paradise using a generator-powered hot plate and my own blood. My physical magic wouldn’t work outside the human world, but my potions and charms were fine. The staff worked everywhere.

  “Okay, start talking, donkey.”

  The unicorn managed to look offended, or at least I imagined so. “Here is my message,” he repeated. “His Royal Majesty Florian will be crowned King of Faerie and of All Species of Earth and Beyond in two weeks. You are—”

  “Wait.” I shook the staff at him, and sparks flew out its tip. “What do you mean, ‘King of Faerie and of All Species of Earth and Beyond’?” What in the name of Merlin was that madman up to?

  The unicorn tossed his head and looked even grumpier. “Here is my message,” he repeated for the third time. “His Royal Majesty Florian will be crowned King of Faerie and of All Species of Earth and Beyond in two weeks. You are invited to attend and pledge fealty at his coronation in New Orleans at the apex of the celebration the humans call Mardi Gras. Should you die before the appointed time, this invitation should be considered null and void.”

  And with that, the unicorn turned, took a big, steaming dump on the sand near my feet, and started trotting back down the beach from whence he came. Fortunately, he was slowed down by the soft sand, which gave me a chance to flip the lid off one of the charms in my pocket, chase him down the beach, and toss it on him. I only hit his tail, which, considering it was a freezing charm, only made said tail freeze at a ninety-degree angle.

  “Stop, unicorn, or I will toast your flesh like a pot roast!” I yelled, aiming the staff. I sent a warning zap of fire onto his rump. My aim had improved a lot in the months since I’d blown up my own SUV and burned down half of Six Flags New Orleans.

  Unfortunately, it only made the unicorn fly into a gallop. I had no choice but to run after him and hope I could keep him in sight by moonlight.

  “DJ, wait up!” Rene raced to catch up with me, holding his useless rope. “I can follow his scent. He smells like a dirty sock.”

  I propped my hands on my knees and gasped for breath. I’d been running on the beach every day to stay in shape, but not while yelling or throwing charms or chasing unicorns.

  I couldn’t smell a thing except the Gulf of Mexico still churning waves to our right, so I filled Rene in on the unicorn’s message. I had my own suspicions about what it meant, but I wanted to hear Rene’s interpretation.

  He whistled. “Sounds like Florian is going to out us all to the humans at Mardi Gras, babe. He thinks that means he’ll be king of the world, but that ain’t the way it’ll go down.”

  No, it would get violent…and then more violent. The elves and wizards hated each other. They were power crazy and played dirty. But neither side wanted the human world to know of our existence.

  “Someone’s gotta take Florian out,” I said. “And Alex and I need to get back into New Orleans without the wizards’ psycho First Elder Zrakovi killing us both.”

  And to think I had admired Willem Zrakovi not so long ago. His transformation into a paranoid, evil nutcase proved once again the main lesson I’d learned during the time during and after Hurricane Katrina: people who make effective leaders during times of peace are often not the ones who can lead in times of crisis. Power-hungry politicians didn’t know how to behave when a hard dose of reality bit them in the ass.

  Rene and I walked in silence a few moments, me following
when he cut north toward the interior of the long, narrow island.

  “Well, I got a few things to say about you and Alex getting back into town and staying safe.” Rene dropped his voice, and I strained to hear him. Guess he was afraid of what else might be hiding out here besides a wayward messenger unicorn.

  “Okay, let’s have it.” Jean knew all the players in this drama better than any of us, but I trusted no one’s opinion more than that of Rene Delachaise. Sadly, that included Alex Warin.

  “First, Alex ain’t happy here. You know that, DJ. Don’t assume you and him are gonna be on the same side in this war. You might be fightin’ for the same things, but it might not be with the same team. I mean, the elves and wizards ain’t that far apart politically, but they hate each other, and you hate them both. Alex, he should hate the wizards after they tried to have him executed, but I ain’t sure he does. He’s too into that whole black-and-white-world shit.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, then promptly shut it. He was right. Alex and I hadn’t been in lockstep, politically or personally, in quite a while. I loved him, but I no longer trusted him. And I sure as hell didn’t trust Willem Zrakovi, which meant not trusting my own wizards as long as he was First Elder.

  I shoved that aside to think about later. “What else?”

  Rene glanced at me. “You’ve got a way back into the city if you’re willing to take it and ain’t afraid of what Alex will think.”

  “Are you nuts? Everybody wants me dead.” All five-foot-four of big old scary blond wizard me.

  Yet, my inner voice said, I could do elven magic due to a fluke in the genetic lottery, which made both the wizards and elves distrust me. I could theoretically take away their respective magical advantage. Florian hated me because I’d become an unofficial ally of Christof.

  I caught up with the merman. “What way do I have back into New Orleans that doesn’t involve dying? I don’t think I’m famous enough to come back as one of the historical undead.” I knew where he was heading, but I wanted him to say it.

  Rene grinned. “You’re married to the head of the Elven Synod, babe. You might be trying to forget it, but I can guarantee you Quince Randolph remembers, and he don’t want you dead. He’ll get you back to New Orleans and keep you safe if you ask him.”

  Freakin’ elf. I had considered the horror of asking Rand for help, but so far had rejected the notion. I didn’t want to owe him anything.

  Rene broke into a belly laugh. “Of course, I don’t know what he’ll want in return. To consummate the marriage, maybe.” He stopped laughing and frowned at me. “Don’t even consider that.”

  “God, no. I can’t stand the man…elf…whatever.” Quince Randolph was a bigger horse’s ass than the unicorn we were tracking. Oh, he was one gorgeous elf, I’d grant him that much. But our marriage, to which I’d agreed only to avoid turning loup-garou after being exposed to the virus, was a political arrangement. Rand wanted it to be more, but that wasn’t happening. Ever.

  Still, I sighed. I had nothing to lose, because I couldn’t sit out a preternatural war lounging in a hammock on the porch of an 1814-era beach villa belonging to an undead pirate. “Yeah, I’ll ask him.”

  Rene stopped and looked around. “The unicorn trail goes cold here. You sense a transport?”

  I knelt and closed my eyes, filtering through the sensations around me. The cool air blew off the Gulf about a quarter-mile from us now. I picked up the smell of mud and reeds and, faintly, old dirty socks. But not magic.

  “No.” I stood and looked around. “I don’t get any kind of aura off the fae anyway, much less their animals, if the unicorn was a real animal.”

  The transport had to be fae in origin, then, which meant either the unicorn was a glamoured faery or else a faery had slipped into our watery transport, made his way inland without being detected, and set up his own exit. Vampires and elves could only set up a transport by hiring a wizard, although they could power it themselves afterward. I would be able to detect a wizard’s magic, so this was definitely faery in origin.

  I still held the elven staff in my right hand. It was an ancient ceremonial staff of the fire clan, and the only one of the four original staffs whose whereabouts was known. The elves were furious that Mahout, as they called it, had claimed me as its master. It would work for no one else…unless I died, of course. I called it Charlie.

  Creepy though it might be, sometimes the staff responded to verbal requests, so I made one. “Charlie, can you illuminate a faery transport in this area?”

  The staff vibrated, and I held it out before me. A silver light shot out the tip of the two-foot-long, unassuming stick of wood and outlined an oval shape on a flat stretch of muddy land a few yards to our right.

  “Can you destroy the transport?” I asked the staff, but it lay inert in my hand. I’d take that as a no. I could do it with a proper charm, but I didn’t have the ingredients; it would take a couple of days to get them smuggled into Old Orleans by my cousin Audrey, assuming I could even get to her. She’d been sent into hiding by her father after killing another wizard in last month’s fiasco that had almost gotten us all killed. It had ended with the death of Alex’s cousin Jake and a serious injury to Zrakovi. I didn’t have a clue where Uncle Lennox, a member of the Elders, had hidden his daughter.

  “Got any other ideas?” Rene had been walking around the transport area with one of the mini flashlights we all carried with us. His was camo green; mine was pink. Long story.

  “Charlie, can you divert the transport away from Barataria, to a different part of the Beyond?”

  The staff vibrated in my hand so hard I almost dropped it. A definitive yes.

  “Rene, get away from the transport area unless you want to freeze your fins off.” As soon as he’d cleared the area, I walked to the transport, holding Charlie near the ground until he again illuminated the oval. “Charlie, please redirect anyone trying to come into this transport to land on an ice floe near Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland.”

  A thick silver rope of light burst from the tip of the staff and illuminated the edges of the oval. I saw it expand, cover, and then tighten around the thinner rim of the original transport. Then it faded.

  Ittoqqortoormiit was said to be the coldest, most isolated place on earth, a miniscule fishing community on the southwestern shore of Greenland. It was also the place where wizards with mental issues were sent to vegetate. And where Elder Willem Zrakovi had sentenced me to wait for him to decide whether or not I should live or be executed for treason. Never mind that my elven genes left me unable to tolerate cold weather without going into hibernation. It was a death sentence…and that was before I tried to kill him.

  Another long story.

  Speaking of which. “C’mon, Rene. Let’s get back to the house and see if Alex or Jean are back. And I need you to help me make a deal with an elf that won’t cost me my soul.”

  Chapter 3

  Neither Alex nor Jean had returned from Old Orleans, so I changed into a regrettably pink sweater with sparkly bits and the only jeans I had clean, a deep, rich shade of…pink. This plan to get me back to New Orleans had to work before I was forced to send Rene shopping again. The merman had a warped sense of vengeance.

  Rene and I worked for the next couple of hours in Jean’s study, hammering out ideas to offer Rand in exchange for getting me back into New Orleans without dying. We talked about what I’d concede (helping him as much as I could without making more enemies) and what I wouldn’t (sex in any way, shape, or elven imagination).

  Heavy tapestries wrapped the room like a warm, comfortable cocoon filled with rich, oiled woods, the scents of spices, and a hint of Jean’s sweet pipe tobacco. Ancient maps hung on the walls in gilded frames—all probably from his real life since the pirate’s world we currently inhabited was fueled by the magic of his own memories and the people in the modern world who remembered him.

  Which, in New Orleans, was just about everyone. Whether they considered him a ruthless pirate, a
smuggler, or a nautical Robin Hood who stole goods from Spanish ships and sold them to the French citizens of Nouvelle Orléans, everyone knew Jean Lafitte.

  “Okay, so far we’ve decided I should take a businesslike tone so Rand isn’t under any delusions that I’m offering to exchange my wifely duties for my return.”

  “Got that right.” Rene looked serious. Too serious.

  “Rene, I’m joking—lighten up. Quince Randolph knows there’s no way I’ll be hopping into his elf-bed.”

  “Does he?” He arched an eyebrow at me in a very Jean Lafitte-like manner. They spent entirely too much time together. “I don’t think so, babe. Be sure what you’re willing to do because you’re gonna have to negotiate.”

  “I’ll have to play that by ear. I have no idea what he’ll demand other than the two of us living happily never after in Elfheim raising Eugenie’s child.” Rand still hadn’t abandoned that fantasy despite what either I or my friend Eugenie said. Before learning the prete world existed, my human friend had fallen under the pretty elf’s spell and gotten herself knocked up—with Rand’s help, of course. Currently, she was living in his home in Elfheim only because it kept her safe from being a pawn of the wizards, fae, or vampires. I was allowed supervised visits every couple of weeks, the elven midwife hovering over us like a big spider spinning webs of madness and misery.

  “Read me what you’ve got.” Rene heaved himself from the heavy leather recliner he’d brought in from New Orleans and walked to the makeshift bar we’d set up in Jean’s study. I was curled up on one end of the matching sofa. The furniture didn’t go with the decor, but it was a lot more comfortable than the original horsehair antiques.

  The merman brought back a couple of snifters of brandy. Our stockpile of beer and sodas had dwindled, and Rene no longer considered it safe to go back into modern New Orleans for anything non-essential. I considered diet soda essential, but I’d been voted down.