The creak of his knees as he squatted echoed in the dark, and the crackle and whisper of something crawling nearby made the little hairs on my arms prickle. We needed to get this done and get out of here.
I felt around in my backpack and pulled out my portable hydromancy kit. Unzipping the leather pouch, I removed a small black-glass bowl, a flask of holy water, and two cones of patchouli incense. If I did the ritual at home, I used mimosa leaves, but the incense was more portable.
I looked up. “You got a match?”
“Did you not even inherit enough of your father’s Red Congress magic to light incense? What a pity. He was a powerful wizard.”
I hoped he didn’t see my teeth gritting in the gloom. I could light incense; I just saw no need to waste my energy reserves.
“How well did you know Gerry?” I touched a finger to the incense cones and sent enough physical magic into each one to ignite the ends. My father, whom I’d known only as a mentor until he went missing after Katrina, had been a strong Red Congress wizard, warrior class. I’d inherited very little of his physical magic and Adrian was right—that was a pity.
“I knew him too well.” I imagined the wizard assuming his most condescending expression, which would match the tone of his voice. “He squandered more talent than most wizards ever have. He was arrogant and unwilling to follow the rules or respect the traditions of wizardry.”
Adrian would hear no argument from me. Gerry had raised me since I was six. I loved him and I missed him. But I wasn’t blind to his faults. Willem Zrakovi had expressed much the same opinion.
I poured the holy water into the bowl and sat back on my heels. One final element. “You have a pen? Or anything small that I can use for a focus?”
Fabric rustled as Adrian dug through his suit coat and handed me a fountain pen. A really nice one, judging by its sleek casing. Exactly what I’d need to help me stage a little magic show he’d appreciate.
“Okay, keep your focus on the water,” I said, and closed my eyes. In my left hand I clutched his pen while my right index finger touched the surface of the water. I used a little more of my native magic to shoot a small burst of energy into the bowl, keeping Adrian’s face fixed in my mind.
I heard a sharp intake of breath and opened my eyes. He squatted next to me, and peered into the water at the image of himself as viewed from above. I shifted my finger to different sections of the water’s surface, and the view of his image shifted in correlating angles. I twirled my finger more deeply into the bowl and the image zoomed in on his horrified face.
“Enough.” He reached out and pulled my hand from the water. The image vanished, the chain between me and the magic broken. “Give me my pen.”
I handed it to him without comment, and he stood up. He was shaken, broadcasting fear like a human or a young wizard who hadn’t learned to put up mental shields. After a few seconds I felt them slam into place, but too late. My little demonstration had surprised him. In theory, Adrian knew I could do hydromancy, but he hadn’t realized I could use it on him.
“You realize that is regulated magic.” His smooth exterior slipped back into place.
“Of course.” Anything the Elders couldn’t do themselves tended to go on the “black” list of illegal or regulated magic. I poured the water onto the incense cones to douse them, then returned the bowl and bottle of water to my pack. “Okay, your first show-and-tell is over.” I stood up and motioned toward the door. “After you.”
We walked back into the sunlight, blinding after the darkness of the store. Squinting, I took a lungful of clean air. “Want to return to the bench?”
He shouldered past me and returned to our former perch, where he’d left his briefcase. I slung my pack over my shoulder and followed.
Once we were seated, he crossed his arms and met my eyes for the first time today. “What else can you do?”
Guess we’d finished hydromancy class. “Well, Gerry and I were able to communicate through dreams.” A truly awful thing I didn’t want to try again. “Never happened with anyone else.”
Adrian nodded, looking thoughtful. “My understanding is dreamsharing only works between people who have a blood bond. The skill’s probably dormant now that Gerry’s dead.”
Anger leapt up, hot and sharp, followed by a blur of tears. I glanced away so he wouldn’t see them. I’d accepted Gerry’s death, mostly. But grief has a way of slapping you silly when you least expect it. Sitting here, surrounded by so many reminders of what had happened during Katrina as if three years hadn’t passed, and listening to this jackass talk about Gerry’s death so callously . . . it hurt.
“What else?” asked Mr. Oblivious.
I choked on a lump of grief. “The empathy and energy recognition.”
He laughed, a sly, silky flex of vocal cords and throat muscles. “Ah yes, the famous ability to read auras and emotions.”
Yeah, the famous empathy and energy recognition he’d ignored, which cost some lives and got him publicly chastised by Zrakovi. “Despite your disregard for them, my empathic skills are valuable,” I said, my tone flat.
“They could be,” he said. “But they’re a tool, and like any tool they have to be taken in context.”
I swiveled on the bench to face him. “Well, it told me how my hydromancy display—a minor example of that skill, by the way—made you uncomfortable.”
He nodded. “But how do you know I wasn’t thinking of something else that made me uncomfortable?”
He was right. I didn’t know. “Okay, I’ll give you that one. But knowing what emotions are driving an adversary’s actions can be a powerful weapon, regardless of their source.”
His brown eyes narrowed. “And am I your adversary, Drusilla Jaco?”
I gave his question serious consideration. I was angry at Adrian Hoffman and we’d never be friends—maybe not even friendly acquaintances—but we were fellow wizards. “No, you’re not my adversary. We differ in our methods, we certainly have different temperaments, but in the end we’re on the same side and that’s what matters.”
His face relaxed, and the man actually smiled. “So, shall we agree we’ll never be chums, get through this exercise as pleasantly as we can, and then go on our way?”
“Great idea.” I had enough to deal with between the Axeman and the loup-garou crisis without adding political warfare. “So, that leaves the staff.”
I pulled the ancient weapon out of my backpack, its carved sigils glowing under my touch, and enjoyed Adrian’s naked admiration. He’d never seen the staff, and if he’d spent his academic years studying elven magic, he’d probably be itching for a closer examination.
I held it out to him. “This is the staff known by the elves as Mahout.” I’d leave off the Charlie nickname.
His face was reverent, eyes shining like a sugar addict in a praline factory. He better be careful, or I might decide to like him.
“This is amazing.” His voice held reverence but his heart held jealousy—which I was able to tell with my useless empathic ability. “How did the claiming happen? You found it among Gerald’s belongings, yes?” He ran a finger over the sigils, which had stopped glowing as soon as he touched them.
“I found the staff in Gerry’s attic after Katrina. I knew from his journals he’d never gotten it to work for him, but it began glowing the instant I picked it up. It began following me from room to room, although it’s never come right to my hand except once when I summoned it using wizard’s magic. It really amplifies my physical magic.”
The staff did other things too. It ramped up my hydromancy and just about any other kind of spell or ritual I’d tried, but I didn’t volunteer that. I didn’t like the way Adrian caressed it, almost possessively. He might as well be Smeagol cooing over the One Ring and muttering “preciousssss.”
I held out my hand. “I’ll give you an example.”
He laid the staff across my palm but didn’t let go until I finally pulled it away. My aim was notorious, in a bad way, so I sear
ched for a broad target. The side of the Jean Lafitte Pirate Ship ride looked un-missable. I took a deep breath, pointed the staff at the skull and crossbones painted on the ship’s hull (which Jean would never have permitted lest he be seen as a real pirate instead of a “privateer”), and channeled a bit of magic through it.
“Holy Mother of God!” Adrian jumped to his feet as a stream of red fire flew from the tip of the staff and burned a hole in the side of the ship about six feet to the left of where I’d been aiming. He’d never know the difference.
An acrid, smoky odor wafted our way as flames began to lick along the hull of the rotted vessel.
“I suggest you put that conflagration out.” Adrian crossed his arms. I’d really shaken him this time.
“Um, well, I haven’t gotten to the ‘undo’ lesson yet.” I’d been working on a flame-retardant charm but hadn’t perfected it enough for it to work on something as large as the pirate ship. The vial was in my pocket, but the ship would burn down to water and then the fire would be automatically doused. No point in wasting good magic.
Adrian snorted and ran toward the edge of the small boat landing, chanting and twisting his fingers in front of him like he was speaking to the fire in sign language. The flames flickered, then died, leaving a charred, gaping hole.
Adrian fisted his hands on his hips and stared at the ship a few moments before turning back to me with an assessing look.
I gave him one right back. “You’re Blue Congress?” I’d never seen magic like his. It differed from Gerry’s brute-force Red Congress magic and my own methodical rituals. Blues were artistic, creative—a congress I’d never have pegged for Adrian. His magic was poetic, almost delicate. “That was beautiful.”
He looked back at the ship. “Normally, that spell would restore a magicked situation to its previous state, but it apparently doesn’t quite work with elven sorcery. Let’s try something else. Just don’t burn anything down.”
I followed him down the midway, dodging the patches of weeds that had sprung through cracks in the concrete. He came to a stop near a giant clown’s head lying on its ear, red mouth gaping in a curve like a parenthesis, blue eyes goggling at us. Mr. Happy was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle and made me shudder. I freakin’ hated clowns. They weren’t as bad as zombies or elves, but close.
“Shoot the clown, aim for his right eye, and put as much of your own power into the shot as you can,” Adrian said, moving to stand behind me and, theoretically, out of harm’s way.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because I want to know your maximum power with the staff and how inaccurate your aim is.” Okay, so maybe he had realized I’d been going for the skull and crossbones and not the middle of the pirate ship hull.
I held the staff up and aligned it with the clown’s big, blue right eye. The eyeball was easily three feet wide, but the staff seemed to kick left so I adjusted my aim a few feet to the east.
Gathering as much physical energy as I could summon without a concentrated buildup, I fed it all into the staff, and the ropes of flame came out wider, brighter, and faster- moving than anything I’d produced so far—so much that I jerked my arm a little to the right.
The flames went wide, hitting a wooden equipment shed behind the clown head. It whooshed into a massive bonfire, the likes of which only a pile of dried wood could produce.
“You. Are. A. Menace.” Adrian elbowed me aside and starting his hand motions again, muttering and weaving a spell I hoped would dampen the fire, which had spread to an adjacent building with fast-growing flames. It seemed to tamp briefly, then flared again.
Damn. His magic wasn’t working. I scrambled in my right jeans pocket and pulled out my flame-retardant charm. Thumbing off the top, I ran toward the burning buildings.
Adrian grabbed the back of my sweater as I passed him, pulling me to a halt. “What in bloody hell are you doing?”
“Trust me.” I wrenched free of him, got as close to the fire as I dared, and tossed the charm. Adrian came to stand beside me, and we both watched in awe as a plume of bright purple smoke shot into the air so high it briefly dwarfed the roller coaster. Too much Chinese beautyberry in the mixture, maybe.
On the positive side, the buildings were no longer burning. They simply crackled and turned black, sending occasional plumes of purple smoke skyward.
“You might wish to adjust that recipe a bit.” Adrian and I stood and watched the purple geysers erupt. They were kind of pretty, sparkling magenta and violet as the sunlight hit them.
Adrian spun in alarm as the distinctive whoop of a siren sounded in the distance. “It’s the constabulary. You’re going to get us arrested for arson.”
“Holy crap.” I raced back to the bench for my backpack and hooked fingers through the handle of Adrian’s briefcase. “Let’s go.”
“The transport,” he shouted, running for the patch of weeds. I set my backpack and his briefcase inside the transport next to him, rummaged in the backpack a split-second, and pulled out one of my premixed camouflage potions. I couldn’t leave my SUV here for the cops to tow away.
“You’re going to get us arrested, you stupid woman! Leave the vehicle!” His voice had risen about three octaves and I’m sure at some point I’d think his falsetto was funny.
Not that he’d be able to hear me laughing. As I turned to answer him, he disappeared. The SOB had taken the transport and left me—and he took my backpack.
Cursing, I sprinkled the camouflage potion in a circle around my Pathfinder so I wouldn’t have to steal it out of impound later. Damned hysterical Blue Congress wizard. Like waiting another thirty seconds for us to transport together would have killed him. Now I’d have to track him down to get my stuff back.
I ran into the transport just as blue flashing lights turned in at the entrance to Six Flags. In the distance, I heard fire engines on their way. Behind me, purple flares continued to shoot almost as high as the Jocco’s Mardi Gras Madness roller coaster. I had no idea what the fire department would make of it.
Just before time and space compressed around me, taking me to the transport nearest Adrian’s apartment, I spotted a pair of NOPD officers running breakneck toward the enormous, grinning clown with purple smoke drifting from behind its head.
CHAPTER 13
I sat on a bench near the French Market on Decatur Street with my cell phone, squeaky clean tourists giving me wide berth on their way to drink hurricanes and soak up the New Orleans ambience. Probably thought I was a gutter punk, between the jeans I’d ripped the knee out of scrambling away from the clown fire and hair that was more pony than tail.
My backpack, retrieved from Adrian’s apartment after I’d tracked him down, leaned against my leg, the elven staff sticking out the top. It completed the picture of what the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce would not want to show off about our fair city: eccentric and possibly dangerous locals of questionable mental health.
Alex answered on the first ring. “Toxic purple smoke being reported at Six Flags. What did you do?”
If it weren’t true, I’d resent his assumption that I’d caused the incident. “A spell went a bit south. And it wasn’t toxic.”
He chuckled. “Where are you?”
“Outside Aunt Sally’s on Decatur. My SUV is still at Six Flags.”
“On my way.” He hung up without a good-bye. A half hour later, I spotted Alex’s Range Rover inching toward me down Decatur and hefted the pack over one shoulder. There was no place to pull over, so as soon as he stopped, I quickly opened the door and scaled the half- mile incline into the passenger seat.
Alex had bought the Range Rover when he got the job as DDT director, since his Mercedes convertible wasn’t suitable for transporting massive amounts of concealed specialized weaponry. Whether it used prete ammo or premium unleaded, the man liked his toys, and damned the price of gas. A pickup truck like Jake’s wasn’t cool enough and, besides, Jake had one so it wasn’t suitable.
I slammed the truck do
or behind me. “What a horrible day.”
“I thought every day you got to commit arson was a good day.” Alex stared straight ahead, eyes focused on traffic, but his mouth twitched.
“Go ahead and laugh. You can’t help yourself.”
The twitch turned into that crease at the corner of his mouth, just on the left side, that was about the sexiest thing going. Plus it felt good to share a joke, even if it was at my expense.
“Other than the fire, how’d the lesson with Adrian go?”
Better than I’d expected, overall. “He’s still a pain in the ass, but I think we’ll get through it okay. Too early to tell whether it will actually help me manage my elven skills. Today, I mostly showed him what I could do.”
“Like start fires?” Alex laid on his horn, scaring the crap out of a small flock of tourists wandering across Decatur.
I groaned. “Adrian got a firsthand view of my little aiming problem. It undid all the brownie points I’d earned showing him my other skills. I think the hydromancy freaked him out.” “He underestimated you,” Alex said, turning down Esplanade and heading away from the river. “We’ve all underestimated you at one time or another.”
This was the closest he’d ever come to admitting he’d been wrong not to take me or my magic abilities seriously when we first met after Katrina, which left me pathetically warm and fuzzy. “How’d things go with Ken today?”
“We should have done this a long time ago—set up the DDT unit and brought him in. He’s the perfect liaison with the NOPD. He doesn’t care if the department gives him shit. He just ignores them.”
Good for Ken. “He’s not freaked out by”—I fluttered my hand between Alex and me—“us?”
We finally escaped the Quarter and began winding along a back route to New Orleans East to avoid the interstate glut. “He’s good.”
“Mmm-hmm.” I might or might not have said more. Truth was, I passed out and didn’t awaken until Alex bounced his truck over the rutted entrance to Six Flags. I’d done enough physical magic to wear me out.
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