Royal Street

by Suzanne Johnson

  “Now, Jolie, what were we discussing when you tried to wound me so terribly?” He leaned over and squinted at me through the table legs. So much for hiding. Why did he sound so hurt that I’d tried to injure him when it seemed perfectly acceptable for him to kill me? Undead double standard.

  He smiled. “Why don’t you see if you can convince me to at least kill you quickly, Drusilla?”

  Well, there was an offer I hated to pass up. I stood up and walked toward him slowly. I only knew one way to get him turned around so I’d be between him and the door.

  He watched me approach and raised an eyebrow as I reached out to stroke his arm.

  “How can I convince you not to kill me at all, Captain?”

  His mouth twitched slightly, and I shivered as I absorbed a little of his feelings, one part lust, three parts anger. Lust was gaining, though, and it sure wasn’t mine.

  The pirate slid an arm around my waist, strong fingers hot on my overexposed skin, and pulled me against him.

  “Much better, Jolie,” he whispered, locking his mouth on mine in a hard, rough kiss. He smelled of sweet tobacco and tasted of cinnamon. And I kissed him back, wrapping my arms around his waist and maneuvering him around slowly till my back was to the library door. Maybe I was getting better at this seduction stuff. It wasn’t because I enjoyed kissing him, even though it seemed I’d been doing a lot of it lately. Absolutely not.

  I even let his hands do a bit of wandering as I slowly reached to grasp the aluminum pan on the worktable beside us and began to release little bursts of magical energy into it. I couldn’t produce enough juice to start a fire, but I could heat the pan enough to—

  Ouch. Okay, wandering hands were one thing. A pinch on the ass called for action.

  I backed away and flung the pan at his feet. He was still looking at it when a plume of thick white smoke burst from it and blocked him from my view.

  Just a slightly enhanced smoke bomb. It wouldn’t burn anything and wouldn’t hurt him but I figured if I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me either. Time to run.

  CHAPTER 9

  I bolted out of the library, crossed the sitting room, and caught a toe on the banister as I rounded the top of the stairs. I half-ran, half-fell down them, picking up a couple of splinters along the way. I should have carpeted those stairs a long time ago. I should have kept my shoes on. And a shirt.

  Lafitte wasn’t far behind me, his heavy boots pounding down the stairs as I crossed the office and raced into the parlor. I got halfway through the room before a knife went flying past my ear (again) and shattered the beautiful old stained glass panes set into my front door.

  I should have kept running. A smart Green Congress wizard would have zipped outside and barreled down the street till she found a nice soldier to help her. But damn it, that stained glass was half as old as Lafitte himself, and he’d already trashed my library door. I whirled to face him, furious. Did he have any idea how much I had to pay for this house? I would be ready for the old wizards’ home by the time it was paid for.

  Gerry always said my temper would probably do me in. Part of my brain acknowledged that I was acting on emotion, doing the very thing he always said kept me from being ready to take big, dangerous jobs like fighting pirates. But I loved that old stained glass and my cypress library door and my plaster walls. They were among the reasons I’d bought the blasted house in the first place.

  “Do you know how old that glass was, you son of a—”

  Lafitte pulled a modern semiautomatic on me. Guess he’d found his gun in my kitchen drawer after all.

  I dove behind one of the overstuffed armchairs, pulling it in front of me like a shield while I backed toward the door on my knees. The chair back blocked my view, so I popped my head over it, ready to duck fast if the pirate was still aiming at me. Instead, dark-blue eyes met mine over the back of the chair. We were practically nose to nose. I might as well be sitting in his freaking lap. He didn’t need the gun and he knew it.

  He was smiling again, but not in amusement. More like the gloat of a terrier after it has finally trapped a troublesome rat.

  He pushed the chair aside, grabbing my arm as I tried to spin away. When he drew me closer, I bent my head and sank my teeth as deeply into his forearm as they’d go. It was his right arm, his shooting arm, and I hoped it hurt.

  He hissed and pulled away, giving me time to lunge toward the door. I spit out a mouthful of blood along the way, the taste salty and metallic. At least it was his blood and not mine. Score one for the home team. I hoped he carried the mark of my teeth on his forearm the rest of his miserable life. Considering he was virtually immortal, that would be a really long time.

  I would have made it to the door if I’d been quicker, or he’d been slower, and if he hadn’t managed to grab me around the ankle and send me sprawling facedown a few feet short of freedom. My cheek bounced off the floor and I had a quick, close-up view of the wood grain before Lafitte flipped me on my back and began pulling me toward him.

  I gritted my teeth and scrabbled around with my hands, trying to find something to hold onto. The broken stained glass sliced into my palms and thighs as I slid. I might never wear shorts or go barefoot again, assuming I lived long enough to ever worry about wardrobe choice. But the pain helped me focus as I reached in my pocket for the wolfsbane.

  I managed to thumb off the top of the vial one-handed and fling the contents at Lafitte. It wasn’t the deadly form of wolfsbane—just a mild variety that would numb his skin and blur his vision. He shifted his head at the last second but still got an eyeful.

  Any remaining trace of good humor disappeared. He snarled and released me, swiping at both eyes to try and clear his vision. I pushed away from him and had crawled half the distance to the front door when the room seemed to explode.

  I instinctively rolled into a fetal position and wrapped my arms around my head. I hadn’t seen the pirate pull his gun. Both his hands had been busy rubbing his eyes. Maybe his gun had gone off accidentally. Maybe it killed him. If his own gun killed him, it wouldn’t be my fault. Of course, he wouldn’t really be dead, either, but he’d fade back to the Beyond for a while.

  It was quiet, too quiet. I conducted a quick mental self-inventory to see if any body parts were missing or maimed. My shorts and stomach were spattered with blood and my kicking foot was coated in red, but it didn’t seem to be my blood. My legs and feet hurt from the glass cuts, I had a wooden splinter in my knee, my cheek was throbbing where it had hit the floor, and my head pounded from the magic I’d used. I couldn’t sense any other injuries, and I didn’t seem to be dead. If I was dead and this was the afterlife, I was going to be ticked.

  A rasping noise near my feet broke the silence, and I sat up. Lafitte lay on the floor wearing the same startled, angry look he’d had after I immobilized him in the swamp. His hands covered a spot in the center of his chest, where dark blood seeped through his fingers. Our eyes met a moment before he quit breathing. What the hell had happened?

  I gave a girly squeal of surprise as someone grabbed me under the arms from behind and pulled me to my feet. I should’ve known not to let my guard down, but how many times in one day should a woman expect to be assaulted in her own home?

  I grabbed a shard of glass and spun around, brandishing it in front of me. It was a pretty, stippled blue piece, nice and sharp.

  “Hold on, tiger. I give up.”

  A bear of a man stood in front of me, hands raised in mock surrender—well, except for the shotgun in his right hand. He towered well over six feet and was shaped like a linebacker, one who’d gone a little too long between haircuts. Dark curls hugged the collar of a basic black T-shirt that almost camouflaged a black shoulder holster holding some type of nasty-looking black handgun. It all matched his black jeans and boots. He looked like the poster child for an upscale GQ mercenary. The only shred of color on him was his eyes, and they were dark brown. Mr. Monochromatic.

  He laid the shotgun on the table near th
e door and stepped back, hands up, watching me from beneath hooded lids.

  A lesser woman would have noticed the thick muscles moving under his tanned skin when he raised his arms, or the T-shirt that fit just snugly enough to send a girl’s thoughts to the Promised Land. Good thing I don’t notice stuff like that.

  “If you want to search me for more weapons, I’m game.”

  My eyes shot back to his, and I felt my cheeks flush, hot and bothered on the way to angry.

  Leave it to a guy to open his mouth and ruin a perfectly good moment.

  I’m not sure my fight with Lafitte would have ended well, but I’d finally gained an upper hand with the wolfsbane, and it infuriated me for some ripped Romeo with a gun to come in and blast him. For one thing, it broke magical treaties. These days, even the undead have legal rights in the preternatural community.

  For another, regular bullets don’t faze the undead, which meant this guy was packing special ammunition. You can’t really kill the historical undead anyway—you simply send them back to the Beyond so they’ll be truly and righteously irate next time they come across. There is always a next time for someone as resourceful as Jean Lafitte.

  Finally, deep down, I didn’t think Lafitte planned to kill me. He might have an eighteenth-century view of women and a nasty temper but, by all accounts, he was a shrewd and practical man. He’d eventually have realized hurting me wouldn’t be worth the trouble it would cause with the Elders. If he’d really wanted me dead, I would be. His aim wasn’t that bad.

  I tried to convey all this in my glare. “Who are you, anyway?” I had an annoying urge to straighten my hair and wipe the plaster dust off my cheeks. And find more substantial clothes.

  “Don’t bowl me over with gratitude,” he said in a baritone drawl, relaxing his posture.

  He was awfully sure I wouldn’t snatch up the shotgun and blast his arrogant, black-clad self all the way to St. Bernard Parish. If he laughed at me, I might try. At close range, I’d at least clip an arm or leg. It would be a pity to mar such beauty but sometimes sacrifices are called for.

  Instead, I chose the moral high road. “Thank you. Now, who are you? How did you know what kind of ammunition to use?”

  He stepped around me to examine Lafitte’s body, which had turned translucent on its way to disappearing. With a few more seconds and a soft whisper of energy, the pirate disappeared back into the Beyond along with his original weapons, leaving only an evaporating puddle of ectoplasm and the gun.

  I’d have to find a better hiding place for the gun next time, and there would be a next time. Jean Lafitte knew where I lived now, and eventually he’d return for round three. I sighed, wondering if he’d left me any cheap rum.

  The Man in Black didn’t seem disconcerted by the body’s disappearance, another clue that he knew his way around the magical block. He picked up Lafitte’s gun, popped the clip out, and laid it on the table next to the shotgun.

  I was tired, bloody, my legs hurt, and my magic-hangover was pounding the back of my eyeballs like a woodpecker. “Last time, Terminator. Talk to me. Otherwise, you can leave—with my undying gratitude, of course.”

  One corner of his mouth curved up as he reached in his pocket and tossed a small leather case in my direction. Black, of course. I felt it hit the floor by my feet, but I didn’t break my stare. We weren’t playing charades.

  Give the man two points for reading body language. He finally broke the stalemate, walking around the parlor and peering out windows and inside bookshelves and cabinets while he talked. Snooping, in other words. “I’m Alexander Warin, and I came here to find Drusilla Jaco, also known as DJ. I assume that’s you.”

  He looked back at me, raising one dark eyebrow. “Of course, no one told me what to expect from my new partner. I read your file, but without photos I was expecting the robe, the wand. You know: more Merlin, less Glinda the Good Witch.”

  I gritted my teeth, trying to decide what needed addressing first: partner or file or witch. Best to stay on the moral high road—he was trying to push my buttons with the witch wisecrack.

  “What’s this partner business? What file? Who sent you?”

  “I hear you’re an empath. Can’t you tell?”

  Body of an Adonis, brain of an anchovy. “I’m an empath, not a psychic or telepath. I can tell what an arrogant letch you are but I can’t read your flipping mind.”

  For some reason, I also couldn’t read his emotions very well, a little detail he didn’t need to know. Either he was a soulless freak or my mojo bag had kicked into overdrive.

  He jerked his head at the leather case on the floor, turned his back, and unclipped what looked like a small cell phone from his belt. As he strolled around the parlor and stuck his head in the kitchen and office, he held it out in front of him.

  Whatever else he might be, Alexander Warin was insufferable.

  I snatched the case off the floor and flipped it open. It had two sections. The first held a badge, much like mine from the Green Congress, only this one said CONGRESS OF ELDERS. I stared at the interloper’s broad back, frowning.

  I sent out my empathic senses, trying to feel any buzz of magic coming from him. There was still a tingle in the air that wasn’t wizard’s magic, but it was probably left over from Jean Lafitte. So he wasn’t a wizard, and he didn’t look old enough to be an Elder. I studied the badge, flipping it over. The back of mine identified me as a licensed sentinel. His read, simply, ENFORCER.

  Good Lord, he was a terminator.

  The second compartment of the case held a badge identifying Alexander Warin as a field agent with the FBI office in Jackson, Mississippi. The woodpecker in my head began a frantic cadence.

  I threw the badge on the coffee table and scrambled to remember anything I’d heard about enforcers, because I’d certainly never met one. They did the Elders’ dirty work, took out the preternatural trash, made problems disappear. If an enforcer showed up at your door, you might disappear, too. Enforcers didn’t have partners.

  By the time I looked back at him, he had finished his inspection of my downstairs and stood with his arms crossed, watching me. I think he’d grown a couple of inches while I wasn’t looking.

  “Why are you here? What’s an enforcer doing in New Orleans?”

  He gave me a predatory smile, even more carnivorous than the one I’d seen on the face of Jean Lafitte. “Congratulations, DJ. You’re the new sentinel of the New Orleans region, and I’m your partner—at least through the probationary period. You can call me Alex.”

  CHAPTER 10

  I really wanted to hit something.

  “Why would the Elders send you? We don’t need an enforcer in this region. Do you have any magical skills, or do you just shoot people? How are you going to be a sentinel if you can’t do magic?”

  He cocked his head. “If you don’t understand why you need an enforcer, you should replay that little scene with your pirate buddy. You might have gotten the upper hand temporarily, but he was going to win that fight. You were about thirty seconds away from getting to know Jean Lafitte really well.”

  His jaw clenched. “In fact, you owe me some serious gratitude—unless you wanted him.”

  God help me. I fought the urge to pick up a heavy vase and chunk it at his head. It had worked on Lafitte, but something told me this guy would probably catch it and bean me with it. “The fight wasn’t over,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’d have won it.” Probably.

  “Right,” he said. “And something just flew past your window. It was oinking.”

  Words failed me, so he kept talking. “Look, the Elders want an enforcer here because of the breaches caused by the hurricane. They don’t know what to expect from the Beyond, and I have ties to both local law enforcement and the were community.”

  Alex slipped out of his shoulder holster. “Did Jean Lafitte get summoned, or did he just show up?”

  If the Elders thought New Orleans needed an enforcer with police and werewolf ties more than a Red C
ongress sentinel, the breaches must be serious. Blunt force might be trumping preternatural diplomacy. Gerry said the Elders always talked first and fought as a last resort. Well, the last resort had just unsnapped a knife sheath from his belt and laid it on my sofa table next to his guns.

  I tried to remember the exact words the pirate had used when I found him in my La-Z-Boy. “Lafitte came on his own, but he also hinted about having new business partners. He’d tried to work smuggling deals with Gerry and me in the past.”

  I squinted at Alex. “Of course we can’t ask him any specifics because you shot him. It will take a while for him to be strong enough to come back.”

  “The Elders don’t know who or what is going to come across,” he said, ignoring the Lafitte situation. “You’re the first line of defense with your”—he waved a hand in the air—“magic tricks. If that doesn’t work, I finish the job.”

  I had a few magic tricks I’d like to show him. “So you’re the backup plan.”

  He retrieved his badge from the table and stuck it in his back pocket, then picked up Lafitte’s gun again. “Let’s just say the Elders don’t want the borders to break down either because we’re outnumbered or some of us are too inexperienced.”

  Ouch. That hurt. I might not be the world’s most experienced wizard but at least I was a wizard and not just a bundle of testosterone with legs and opposable thumbs.

  One part of his argument made sense, though. If too many pretes flocked across the border at a faster rate than we could send them back, the system would collapse. Some of the more organized and ambitious groups, such as the vampires and the fae, resented the wizards’ control of the borders.

  “You said you have ties to the were community,” I said. “Does that mean they’re already out of the Beyond?”

  He didn’t look up from his examination of Lafitte’s pistol. “Most are mainstreamed, except a few like the loup-garou—rogue werewolves who live in the Beyond. A lot of enforcers are lycanthropes.”