"It's so light," he said. "I thought it would be made of china."
"It's leather. Masks in Europe are still made that way. A few makers do them here."
"I love it. Thank you."
Fox Lisa beamed. "You're more than welcome. You can wear it to masked balls, if you want."
Val had bought him a history of the earliest motion pictures from the turn of the twentieth century. Griffen glanced through the frames of those crudely made but groundbreaking, hand-cranked films. He had a couple of them in his collection. He felt the urge to curl up with the book and read it immediately. It took an act of will to close it and shove it under the front of the couch, where he couldn't see it.
"That is perfect," Griffen said. "Thanks, Val."
"I knew it was you as soon as I saw it. I was afraid you had bought one for yourself."
He shook his head. "You got in ahead of me. I can't wait to read it. Now, let's see what you have."
Griffen sat back with a glass of whisky as the girls tore into their presents. They thanked one another with hugs and kisses. Fox Lisa reheated the gumbo in Griffen's microwave and brought out more beers and soda for Val. Griffen felt mellow and happy.
"Do you know this is the first Christmas I have had since Val and I were kids that I have really enjoyed? Uncle Malcolm had us flown up to his mansion in upstate New York for the holidays. It was like getting sent to a museum for a week for punishment."
"Who took care of you?" Fox Lisa asked.
"We had a housekeeper. I think she used to work in a prison. I took every chance to rebel."
"So did I," Val said.
Griffen gave her as scornful look. "Yeah, you were great at rebelling. Coming in ten minutes after your curfew was rebelling."
"I was still late," she said, stung. "It made Mrs. Feuer mad."
"Everything made her mad. She was a real . . . dragon." Griffen stopped for a moment and drank whisky. "I never thought of it before, but she must have been. What if we had started manifesting as teenagers? Uncle Malcolm was pretty clever."
"I didn't appreciate his cleverness. I was glad to get away to college."
"You and me both. Uncle Malcolm wouldn't let us go to the same college," Griffen explained to the others. "We wanted to stick together, but he insisted on separating us."
"Control freak," Val agreed. "And he insisted on having us visit him, but he never seemed happy to have us there. It was out of family obligation. He's not a warm person. I think it was torture for all of us."
"I think holidays are a deliberate practice to put people together and make them miserable," Mai said. "Forced happiness only works in Disneyland."
"Hey!" Fox Lisa said, clapping her hands over her ears. "Stop it right now. Let's not get bogged down in happy memories!"
Griffen deliberately turned the conversation to enjoyable subjects.
When A Christmas Carol ended, he put on Miracle on 34th Street, then White Christmas. They played board games. No one could decide on which one, so they cobbled together a combination of Risk, Monopoly, and The Game of Life that Griffen had picked up for a song, still in cellophane, at a used bookstore. They made up rules that Griffen knew he would not remember an hour or two from then but seemed to make sense at the time.
He shook the dice and threw them onto the Monopoly board. He jumped the top hat six spaces, missing the armies bivouacked on Park Place and Boardwalk.
"Wait, you landed on Go," Mai exclaimed, pointing. "You have to move those five armies into Irkutsk!" Griffen winced. That meant that his forces had to face Val's shoe marker and Fox Lisa's red pawn.
"Can I pay a fine instead?" he asked. The girls conferred.
"Spin," Val commanded. "If you get over six, you can retreat." Griffen reached for the Life board.
"Oh, I love this part of Christmas," Fox Lisa said. "My family always had this kind of togetherness. This and presents. I love getting presents."
"We opened all the presents," Griffen reminded her. He leered. "Too bad there's nothing left to unwrap."
"I've got something you can unwrap," Fox Lisa said, rising to her knees a little unsteadily and putting her fingers on the top button of her blouse. "And I've got a present for you," she told Mai.
Mai tilted her head, interest dawning on her face. "Well, I have one for you, too!"
"Oh, no, I'm out of here," Val said. She was getting tired anyhow, and all the diet soda was pushing hard on her bladder. It was also tough being the only one in the room who was sober. She snatched up her presents and hurried toward the door. "Night, Griffen," she called.
"Merry Christmas, Val," he shouted, as the door opened with a creak.
Just before the door shut, she heard Fox Lisa let out a yelp, followed by a loud giggle. She retreated hastily to her own apartment.
Val had to pull her pillow over her head to shut out the voices and thumping noises as the furniture in her brother's apartment was rearranged by moving bodies.
"Not a creature was stirring, my petite little ass."
Still, it had been the best Christmas she could remember.
Twenty-two
Melinda beckoned gently to her daughter, who stood on the balustrade of the roof of their hotel. Thank God it's night, she thought. Only a few drunks down on Bourbon Street had noticed her and were shouting for her to jump. No one paid attention to them in the huge festive crowds on the street.
"Lizzy, bring that man down here. I mean, now! You might drop him. That would be bad."
"He's mine!" Lizzy shrieked. Though she was barely five feet tall and perhaps ninety pounds in weight, she shook the six-foot-two dark-skinned man like a paper doll. Melinda couldn't tell if he was still conscious or not. "I found him. I get to keep him!"
"He is not yours," Melinda said, willing herself to be calm. "He is mine. I am paying for our hotel room. What I pay for belongs to me. I have had to pick up hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses in the last two months because you had your little accident."
"Not my fault!" Lizzy cried, her eyes filling with tears. The irises looked like disks of fused, multicolored glass. They seemed to whirl when she was upset. They were virtually spinning then. "It was that bitch! That Valerie. She did it! She hurt Lizzy! She was mean!"
"I know, my darling," Melinda said soothingly. "But she was not being mean to you. You hit her first, didn't you? Didn't I teach you that was wrong?"
"Ye-e-es . . ."
"So don't you think you should take responsibility for some of the problem?"
"I . . . guess . . . maybe."
"That's not the answer I'm looking for," Melinda said in a light, singsong voice that meant trouble. Lizzy took the hint.
"Yes."
"Good. Now, please give me that man. I want to see if he is all right."
"I don't care if he is all right!"
Melinda put her hands on her round hips. "Lizzy, I am going to count to three, and if you do not give me that hotel porter, you will be very sorry. Do you understand? One . . ."
"All right!" Lizzy screamed. She swung around and heaved the body at her mother. Melinda put up her arms to catch him. Though she was short and on the plump side, she was more than strong enough to hoist a grown human, but the momentum of the weight cannoning into her sent her flying backward. Melinda threw her arms around the porter and braked to a halt on the pebbled tar paper. She felt her Ferragamo stiletto heel snap off under her foot.
Damn!
Then another blow took her from behind, like a gigantic rubber band smacking her in the back. With the man in her arms, Melinda spun around to see what had happened. No one was there. She turned back to Lizzy.
"That's better, Lizzy."
That's better, Lizzy.
"Don't mock me, my darling. It's not nice."
Don't mock me, my darling. It's not nice.
"I'm not," Lizzy said, putting out her lower lip. "You don't let me have any fun. I don't have any friends. Even Valerie, who is gonna make me an auntie, hates me."
"Now, you know that isn't true," Melinda began. Now, you know that isn't true. "I've heard you say that many times." I've heard you say that many times. "Valerie McCandles doesn't really know you." Valerie McCandles . . .
The voice continued, but Lizzy's mouth was not moving. Melinda tried speaking again, and immediately heard her own words repeat in her head. In her mind's eye, she saw herself standing on the roof holding a large man and looking up at Lizzy. Melinda knew at once what had happened. The spell she had set on the present she had left for Valerie in that tatty little bar was meant to let Melinda hear and see what went on around the girl. Once she put on the blouse, the spell would have attached to her, so no matter what she wore, or where she went, Melinda would know. The girl was vulnerable. She had no idea what enemies were beginning to gather around a gravid dragon. Melinda wanted to make certain her grandchild was not in danger.
Val must have detected the spell. The energy of it had come hurtling back and smacked into Melinda like a gigantic rubber band. Now she heard and saw an echo of everything she did or said, delayed by a few seconds, as if her own words had to travel all the way around the world before reaching her again.
The man in her arms started to stir. His face contorted with pain. Melinda could tell that his arm was broken, and who knew what else? She set him down on the roof. Humans were too fragile.
His eyes opened, then widened to black dots in white circles. "She tried to kill me! She snapped my arm like a twig! Lemme up! I gonna quit!" He tried to sit up.
She knelt beside him and pushed down on his chest with her palm. He fell backward. "You're all right," she said. You're all right. "It was an accident." It was an accident, the echo in her brain said. "You slipped . . ." You slipped . . . ". . . and fell . . ." and fell . . . Melinda found herself trying to slow down and let the echo catch up with her, but it didn't work. Curse it! She would have to create a counterspell, but not until she solved the double crisis in front of her. "Never mind!" Never mind.
She flattened her palm on the man's forehead. He struggled to get away from her, but he wasn't strong enough. Melinda closed her eyes and concentrated. She reached into his mind.
Forget what Lizzy just did, she thought, and waited. No echo. At least it didn't work in her conscious mind. You were walking on a slippery floor, and you fell. Your arm is broken. It will heal soon. You like and trust me, but you are shy around my daughter and don't like to be alone with her. You want to sleep now.
That ought to do it. The porter stopped struggling. He reached over to cradle his bad arm with his good hand. His eyes drifted closed. She sat back on her broken heel.
At that moment, two dragons rushed out through the fire door and gawked at Lizzy.
"Where in hell have you two idiots been?" Melinda asked. "You are supposed to be the finest doctors in the Southeast. How could you let her get out of the suite?" She tried to ignore the echo.
The psychiatrist, Dr. Wivberg, was a genial-looking male with thick chest hair that peeked up through the neck of his polo shirt. "It's impossible," he said. "I gave her enough sedative to make her sleep for a week."
"I told you she was building an immunity to it," said the surgeon and general practitioner, Dr. Kierin. "We should have gone with the cocktail."
"Never mind!" Melinda bellowed. Never mind. "Shut up!" Shut up! "We need to get her down from there immediately before someone sees us and calls the police. And see to this man. Set his arm." We need to . . . Melinda put her fingers in her ears, but she couldn't escape from the sound of her own voice.
Dr. Kierin squatted down beside the hotel porter. "No problem." He took the man's elbow in one hand and his wrist in the other and tugged. The porter woke up with a bellow that echoed off the buildings around them. Shouts down on the street told them that he'd been heard, but no one could see them. Dr. Kierin reached into his breast pocket for the kit both physicians always kept on hand to deal with Lizzy. He knocked the barrel of the dermal infuser with his fingernail, then injected a small dose into the porter's vein. "That'll keep him out for a while. What about memory?"
"Already taken care of." Already taken care of. "Dammit!" Dammit!
Dr. Kierin regarded her respectfully but curiously. Melinda waved a hand.
"Take care of her. I have another crisis to deal with." Take care of her . . . Melinda fled from the roof, but her voice dogged her as she limped down to the top-floor suites. Behind her, she heard the doctors moving in on Lizzy.
"Why, look at you up there, Lizzy," Dr. Wivberg said in a calm, friendly voice. "Do you have a good view of Bourbon Street? Are those men down there shouting at you?"
Melinda stopped on the landing to kick off the useless shoes. She abandoned them where they fell and kept going. She had five more pairs in her closet. How naive of her to have underestimated the McCandles siblings! Melinda did not realize that Valerie had had such advanced training in magical defense. It had only been a few months since she had been made aware of her background. Unless Malcolm McCandles had been lying about what the children knew. She wouldn't put it past him. He ought to have been a politician. He only lied when his mouth was moving.
Melinda let herself into the suite and retreated to her bedroom. If only Valerie were more reasonable, Melinda could have made arrangements with her and been out of the city with Lizzy months before. As it was, she had had to take her daughter out of the private nursing home where she had first been taken to recover. The medical staff there, even though they were also dragons, found her erratic and uncooperative. Once Lizzy was healthy enough to move, Melinda had taken her here, where they occupied two attached luxury suites on the top floor. The doctors were supposed to keep her under watch day and night, but they had become sloppy as Lizzy recovered.
Her daughter was gaining strength daily. With her health, she regained memory of the events of two months before. She wanted to go back and relive them, or live them differently. Melinda never really understood the gift in Lizzy's twisted mind. Melinda had promised Valerie that Lizzy would not cross her path again, but she couldn't send her daughter home. No one there would have been able to control her for five minutes. So she had to use a compulsion on Lizzy to keep her from breaking out and wandering away into the city. Melinda feared constantly that Lizzy would get loose and wreak havoc. Griffen McCandles would have known about it almost immediately. The next time, Lizzy might not be as lucky as to survive an encounter with Griffen or Valerie. Melinda could hardly blame them. As much as she loved her daughter, she had little tolerance for her behavior. Yes, Lizzy was clinically insane, seeing things that had yet to happen or would never happen. It would be a marvelous gift if only it could be exploited in some useful fashion. The talent ran in the family. Melinda had a limited version of it.
Unfortunately, Lizzy's brain was making up for the lack of activity of her body by spreading hallucinations out to a radius of about thirty feet. None of the staff liked to come to Lizzy's suite. After one night, guests in nearby rooms demanded to be moved, bellowing about ghosts, poltergeists, or other supernatural intrusions. As this was New Orleans, the proprietors were torn between having a genuine tourist attraction and mortified that it was cutting into their income. In the end, the wing fell empty except for their rooms. Melinda could not leave until she had settled the situation with the McCandleses, so she put up with the daily visits from the manager and occasional ones from the police.
Melinda sat down on a chair in front of the closet and tried on another pair of shoes, ones fresh out of the box. They never fit exactly right. Ferragamo served a clientele with incredibly narrow feet. Melinda put her thumbs into the ball of the right shoe and pressed outward. The smooth leather spread out about a centimeter. Melinda tried it on and smiled. She turned her ankle from side to side to admire the designer's handiwork. Beautiful. Worth every penny.
She wished she could channel Lizzy's gift. She had a vision of holding a blue-eyed baby in her arms, could feel and smell it. She must make that come true! Valerie and Griffen were hemmed
in by protections, both magical and social. Melinda was doing her best to be low-key, but time was fleeting, and so was her influence.
She had had to abandon her own clan to woo Valerie. Running the family from such a distance was beginning to loosen her hold on authority. Her rivals were openly questioning her ability and devotion to the family. She railed at them over the phone, but nothing had the same impact as face-to-face confrontations. If something did not happen very soon, she was going to have to go home and reestablish herself. By that time, who knew what might happen to Valerie and the grandchild?
Not that she was sentimental, at all, she chided herself. She had her reasons for wanting control of that baby. She had failed miserably with her own children. It was Christmas, and she had spent half the night on the roof trying to talk her daughter down. No one had sent her a present or cards. Only her younger son had called to wish her a Merry Christmas.
"Children," she said, sitting down in front of the mirror to prepare a countercurse for her own spell. "They interfere with everything you do."
Children. They interfere with everything you do.
Melinda looked at her own reflection wryly. "You said it, baby. Bah humbug."
Twenty-three
"Hey, thanks for the music player, Grifter," Jerome said, as Griffen slid into a chair next to him in O'Brien's side bar. A couple of legendary blues musicians had scheduled a concert on the "dueling" grand pianos in the lounge. Word had spread among the locals long before the public heard about it, and they had gotten there early to occupy the best seats. "Can't believe it is so small, but it has got some sound on it."
"Glad you like it, Jer," Griffen said, pleased.
The week between Christmas and New Year's was a great time for Griffen's business. Tourists flocked into New Orleans to enjoy the night life and indulge in what it had to offer. The strip clubs did booming business. The bartenders invented holiday cocktails, but they sold just as many Hurricanes, Sazeracs, and Ramos gin fizzes. Every jazz and blues club in the city filled to overflowing with happy people with a week off and money to spend. Griffen and Jerome had had no trouble running two to four games a night at various locations around the city. Harrison, with an unsolved murder on his books and other, more serious infractions against the vice laws turning up in the crowded city, had no time to roust illegal poker.
Dragons Deal Page 18
