Belle Chasse

by Suzanne Johnson

  “Holy crap! Down!” I turned and pushed Jean, who was standing behind me, hard enough that he toppled over and pulled me to the floor with him. A couple of wooden barstools fell on top of us. It was hard to hear the pirate’s French epithets for all the raucous laughter from the tavern patrons.

  I raised my head and looked around to see what was burning, but no signs of fire or even smoke marred the rustic tavern. The placed looked straight out of Victorian London.

  “As much as I would enjoy lying alongside you, Jolie, this is neither the time nor the proper setting,” Jean said, shoving me off him and knocking the barstools aside.

  The bear had lumbered around the bar and now reached down with his hand-shaped paw, hauling me to my feet. He turned to help Jean, but my escort had pulled out his pistol and held it steady, aiming at the bear’s midsection as he stood up unaided.

  I wasn’t sure how much damage the gun would do, however. Yogi was humongous in both height and girth. I wondered if he hibernated.

  “No shooting inside the building. It’s neutral ground. You only get to keep the gun if you don’t try to use it.” The bear had a deep, growly voice that came out like a garbled phone message, and placid green humanoid eyes. I wasn’t sure what he was, species-wise. He didn’t have the aura of a shifter or were, but read a total blank like the fae and elves. His lower paws, or maybe they were feet, wore heavy boots that clattered on the wooden floor when he returned to his spot behind the bar.

  “If this is neutral ground, why did he get to throw a fireball at me?” I pointed at Florian, who had taken a seat at a corner table and was grinning at the chaos he’d created. “Technically, that was shooting a weapon.”

  The bear gave me a bemused look, which I wouldn’t have thought possible given that he was, like, a bear. After a few seconds, the silence that had fallen over the place when Jean pulled out his pistol gave way to soft conversation. We were no longer the center of attention. All was right in crazytown.

  “It wasn’t real fire, Ms. Jaco,” Florian said, making his way toward us, flanked by a pair of oversize—and heavily armed—guys in green tunics and black pants. Perhaps the Summer Prince rated a royal guard; there were vaguely Celtic-looking insignias on their sleeves. “The fire was aimed to evaporate just before it reached you. As he told you, Mick doesn’t allow the use of real weapons in the tavern and we respect him as leader of the Hybrids. If you’d like to step outside the neutral zone, however, I’d be happy to send a real firebomb your way.”

  Guess Mick was the bear, and while I understood the Hybrid concept—faery plus bear equals Mick?—I had no idea how such a thing might happen and didn’t want to think about it too deeply.

  Besides, Florian obviously hadn’t forgotten or forgiven our encounter at last month’s Interspecies Council meeting, when I’d been forced to zap him with Charlie to stop him from burning down the historic New Orleans Criminal District Court Building.

  I frowned as he drew closer, trying to figure out what was different about him. His jaw was more angular than when I’d seen him in the past, his long nose a bit sharper, his green eyes almond-shaped and tipped up slightly at the outer edges. His blond hair was fine as corn silk. In fact, he looked a lot like one of Christof’s personae, only with harsher angles and lighter hair.

  When he got within slapping distance, he drew back with flared nostrils, his eyebrows arching toward his hairline. “You reek of canine. I’d heard you consorted with the new representative of the shapeshifters, but do you never bathe?”

  My brain struggled to process consorted and reek and representative, not to mention I’d noticed that Florian’s reflection in the big mirror behind the bar looked nothing like the faery standing in front of me. It had dark spiked hair and a rounded face.

  “I do not reek.” Lame comeback, but it was the best I could do. I didn’t know what to make of the strange mirror image, I was apparently good consort material today, and I didn’t believe for a minute that Alex Warin represented the shapeshifters and were-creatures on the Interspecies Council.

  “Yeah, you kind of do reek,” Mick the Bear rumbled. “Nothing personal. You really a wizard?”

  “She was the sentinel of New Orleans until she took up with elves and her Elders had the good sense to fire her.” Florian had been paying a lot more attention at those council meetings than I thought. “And then, of course, we have the illustrious leader of the historical undead, Captain Jean Lafitte the pirate, who is in league with my bastard of a brother.”

  “Monsieur Florian, it is a pleasure to renew your acquaintance.” Jean sounded about as sincere as a politician the day before an election. He hadn’t even bothered to protest being called a pirate. “I have often heard of the Faery capital and thought it a fine day to visit. My friend Drusilla insisted on accompanying me.”

  He didn’t mention Christof, so I took his lead and kept my mouth shut. Jean knew a lot more about the rift between the rival princes than I. Plus, Florian had clearly not joined my fan club.

  Jean’s story didn’t work. “You’re here to see my brother, and you might as well admit it.” Florian ran a hand through his blond hair. In the mirror, he ran a hand through his brown hair. The discrepancy creeped me out. I wondered what Jean saw.

  “I assure you that is not true. Drusilla and I simply wished to visit this beautiful city of which we have heard much.” Was it my imagination or had Jean taken a step backward, toward the transport? I followed suit.

  Florian laughed. “Is that the best story you can come up with? Tales of your intelligence were highly exaggerated, I think, pirate.” The faery crossed his arms and squinted at us. “Here’s what I think is the true story. You and Ms. Jaco came to see Christof, no doubt transporting to the Winter Palace. You’re probably seeking help in getting Ms. Jaco back into the council’s good graces—something quite unlikely. Since my people inform me that my brother is still holed up inside The Arch, too cowardly to come outside, I suspect you were greeted by our traitorous sister Tamara at the palace, and that she directed you toward this transport.”

  Mick nodded as he polished glass mugs and set them on the shelf. His reflection in the mirror was that of a bear. “Not many folks know there’s a transport here. It’s only for palace emergencies.”

  Tamara had either set us up or we had the misfortune of arriving when Florian happened to stop by for a brewski. Either way, we were busted.

  Jean seemed to agree. “Perhaps we shall see your city another time, then.” He caught my eye and jerked his head toward the transport behind us. “We should be returning to New Orleans, Jolie.”

  Clever pirate, not mentioning Barataria. Florian might not know where in the Beyond Jean lived, so no point in advertising it.

  “By all means.” Florian took a seat on the nearest upright wooden barstool, crossed his arms, and gave us a dazzling smile. “Enjoy your trip. See you again soon.”

  An uneasy prickling spread across the back of my neck. A sense of impending trouble had nagged at me since the fireball, but now it grew more fierce. Florian was being too agreeable to people he knew were allies of his brother.

  “Send us back, Drusilla.” Jean’s voice was soft, barely audible. “We should not tarry.”

  I knelt and touched my finger to the edge of the transport, wondering what wizard had set it up for them. Nothing happened, which shouldn’t have surprised me. My native physical magic, which was pathetic to begin with, didn’t work in Old Orleans, Elfheim, or Old Barataria. It was only logical that it wouldn’t work in Faery, either.

  Grasping Charlie from my backpack, where I’d stuck the staff when we left Christof’s palace, I touched its wooden tip to the transport’s edge and softly spoke our destination, using the name of an open transport in Old Orleans rather than in Old Barataria.

  At my words, a flicker of flame the size of a dying Bic lighter shot out briefly, then died. The next time I tried, nothing happened.

  “Back already?” Florian laughed, and his duo of flunkies
chuckled with him. Mick rolled his green eyes and lumbered to the far end of the bar. “Wizards’ magic doesn’t work in the Kingdom of Faery, Ms. Jaco, nor does elven magic work on this transport. It can only be powered by one of us. Proving the superiority of faery magic, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, smiling. Arrogant twit. “Then, Prince Florian, would you power the transport for us, please? As you pointed out, I need a bath.” And a good, stiff drink. We’d just have to tie Eugenie to a chair or porch rail to keep her from going back to Shreveport. Or I could shut down Jean’s transport and refuse to power it up for her.

  “Unfortunately, that transport is, as Mick said, reserved for royal emergencies. Which you are not.”

  I turned to Mick and noticed that the bar had cleared out except for Florian, his guards, and us. Funny; the other patrons must have anticipated trouble. “Can you power the transport to send us out, Mick?” He seemed like a reasonable bear.

  He shook his massive snout from side to side. “My tavern is neutral. I don’t interfere in matters between the princes.”

  Not that I blamed him, but his noninterference policy was less than helpful.

  “What is it you wish us to do, then, Monsieur Florian?” Jean’s voice was low and lethal. The pirate was angry, but I knew he wouldn’t take action unless it had a high probability of success. That he hadn’t done anything so far told me he didn’t know how to navigate this particular political bayou, either.

  “Ah, well. There are powered, open transports in front of both The Arch and The Academy, at the foot of the steps, so you’re certainly welcome to use those,” Florian said. “Of course, you have to get there alive, but perhaps you’ll get lucky.”

  Judging by the way things had gone so far, Lady Luck had taken a vacation.

  CHAPTER 8

  Florian delivered his lucky speech without ever losing his smile, which made its implied threat more chilling, as was the fact that Jean—normally as testosterone-filled as any alpha male alive or undead—remained silent and watchful.

  I had no clue what an arch or an academy were, but if Florian said Christof was “holed up” at an arch, he was there. Faeries couldn’t lie. Obfuscate, yes. Lie by omission, certainly. Answer questions with other questions, absolutely. But not outright lie.

  Christof was at The Arch, so that’s where we needed to go. Somehow.

  “Where is this arch?” I asked Florian.

  He grinned. “In the capital.”

  Faery gnat spawn. I grinned back. “To get to The Arch by the closest route, do we turn right or left when we walk out the front door of the Tower Tavern?” If he thought he could obfuscate his way past me, he had the wrong unemployed sentinel.

  His grin drooped. “Left.”

  “Thank you. How many turns must we make between the front door of Tower Tavern and this arch, counting our left turn at the door?”

  He cursed. “One.”

  It was a straight shot north then. “Let’s go, Jean.”

  I headed toward the door, reaching into my messenger bag for the spare potions and charms I carried, slipping a couple of vials into the right pocket of my shorts. Just in case. They might work in Faery; they might not. Florian said elven magic didn’t work on that transport, not that it didn’t work in Faery at all, so I grasped Charlie in my right hand. I slung the long strap of my bag over my head and placed a shaky hand on the door handle. What would we find outside?

  I felt Jean close behind me. “Step slowly, Jolie,” he whispered. “Touch nothing. The Arch should be quite large, from what Christof has told me.”

  I opened the door to a stabbing pain, virtually blinded by something I hadn’t encountered in three days—bright sunlight. Since Old Orleans, Vampyre, and Barataria were always dark, I assumed all of the Beyond lay in perpetual nightfall. Wrong. Blinking, I waited a few seconds for my vision to adjust before stepping outside the tavern. Jean stepped out beside me and closed the door behind us.

  We stood on one of a pair of wooden sidewalks that rose a couple of inches on either side of a broad paved street in what looked like a fairy-tale village. On either side of us stretched small storefronts I could only describe as “cute” and even “alpine.” Heidi and Grandfather might live in one of them, down the block from Peter the goat herder and his blind grandmother. Shutters and window boxes adorned façades of creamy plaster or intricately patterned wood. Flowers bloomed in profusion.

  There wasn’t a soul in sight, only a small herd of miniature blue deer about the size of terriers, trotting in erratic patterns past us and disappearing toward the south. I opened my mouth to comment, decided I didn’t know what to say, and closed it again. Perhaps they also were Hybrids.

  Now, the streets were deserted. Shouldn’t the capital city of Faery be bustling?

  “Where is everybody? What’s this arch place and do you know what it looks like?” I looked up and down the street for something that resembled the only arch I’d seen big enough to hide inside, as Christof was supposedly doing: the big Gateway Arch in St. Louis. The only big anything I saw from outside the tavern was a monolithic, modern building with red reflective glass on the sides. It stood tall and narrow, at least ten or twelve stories high, in the middle of the street to our left. The lanes of the street divided to circle around it. I could only assume they met on the other side and continued.

  “Let us walk, Jolie. I believe The Arch is on the other end of this street, past the Royal Tower.” Jean took my hand and we turned to the left, toward the tower. It looked ridiculous and out of place in these quaint surroundings, like a modern New York high-rise had been plopped halfway between Heidi’s house and Peter’s.

  As we walked, Jean explained what he knew of Faery’s structure, learned both from Christof in Old Orleans and also from many years earlier. In those days, he’d traveled the ley lines that shifted and pulsed beneath the Beyond, learning the ins and outs of the various kingdoms. “Faery has the most beings living within its borders,” he said. “Although Elfheim has more forest and valley.”

  Probably because the elves were so contentious, even they didn’t want to live near each other. I had Rand for a neighbor in New Orleans and it sucked.

  “Where are all the people? I haven’t seen anyone.” We’d reached the long, dark shadow cast by the tower, and the temperature seemed to drop twenty or thirty degrees.

  “I do not know, and this is cause for … Mon Dieu.” Jean stopped abruptly and I looked around to see what caused his reaction. Beyond the far side of the glittering Royal Tower, a shop front lay in ruins. Chunks of plaster appeared to have been blown across the street and, indeed, as we walked closer, I saw that a section of the tower itself had been cracked, probably by flying debris. A spiderweb of cracks inched up its north face, adding extra glitter to the reflective glass for two or three stories.

  That was in itself disturbing, but even more so was the heavy snow cloud centered over the ruined building. The shop must have specialized in toys, because intricately carved and painted wooden train engines and golden-spotted giraffes and pink-cheeked baby dolls peeked from fire-blackened piles of debris and the heavy flakes of snow that were beginning to blanket them.

  A boom of thunder sounded from above us, loud enough for the windows in the nearest shop front to rattle, and sent my heart thumping against my rib cage. Jean slammed me against the wall of the shop a few feet to our left, my cheek scraping a splintery red-painted shutter just as a blinding bolt of lightning shot from the sky and created a burning crater in the pavement where we’d been standing.

  “Holy crap. Where did that come from?” A few seconds ago, we’d been in bright sunlight. Now we had snow and a thunderstorm—simultaneously.

  “I suspect Christof and Florian are fighting,” Jean said. “When I last spoke to Christof, they had not yet come to violence. Something must be further amiss and the people are hiding. If Florian has taken control of a neutral space, this does not appear as if Christof is prevailing.”

  No
kidding.

  The people were smart to have gone into hiding. A dollop of rain thumped the top of my head hard enough to sting, the precursor to a downpour that followed within seconds, plastering my hair to my scalp and soaking my clothes. The heat—except where the snow was beginning to grow deep on the ruined toy shop—had grown so oppressive that breathing grew difficult. It felt like New Orleans in August with a tropical storm building offshore.

  “What’s going on?” I shouted to Jean, who looked as dazed as I felt, his eyes darting rapidly over the landscape, his jaw tight.

  “We must run! Dépêchez!” Jean kept a firm grasp on my hand and pulled me as hard and fast as we could go toward the north. We skidded to a sudden stop when the rain turned to sleet, the ice pellets sharp and bruising, the temperature plummeting. Footing grew treacherous. I never realized sleet could hurt, but it did. Christof needed to dial it down a notch.

  I stopped long enough to pull the potions vials from my pocket and squinted through the rain at them. One was a melting charm that had been coming in handy during New Orleans’ inclement winter, so I pulled out the stopper and arced the contents across the sidewalk in front of us. Nothing happened. Damn it, guess my potions didn’t work in Faery, either.

  “Come, Drusilla,” Jean said. “Travel as close to the buildings as you can. We must reach The Arch.” Jean led the way, and I followed, the rough walls of the shop fronts—all of which had CLOSED signs hanging in the doors—scraping against my sleeve. In less than a block, I had pulled enough loose threads from the arm of my red sweater that the whole thing looked on the verge of unraveling. My black bra would look great with the camo shorts. Urban guerrilla swamp girl.

  I squinted through the gray sleet and kept my feet sliding forward, thankful I’d been wearing the rubber-soled boots when I fled New Orleans. Jean and I both careened a few times before suddenly reaching the end of the block, which was again bathed in hot sunlight.