“Catching up on your Eudora Welty?” I poured a finger of Four Roses into a glass, pondered the bottle of soda, and decided I should drink it straight. It might help me forget the baby-pink sweater I’d decided to keep on.
“Non, I fear Madame Welty’s stories are not to my liking.” He held up a copy of Moby Dick that was almost as dog-eared as Gerry’s black grimoire. “Rene suggested this book, although I find it quite disturbing. Monsieur Ahab was quite full of himself.”
Uh-huh. Jean should identify with Monsieur Ahab, and Rene had been a busy thief on his last trip to the city. The book had a New Orleans Public Library stamp on it.
“How’s Rene doing?” I needed to get a move on. If the elves were using special ammunition, Alex needed to know about it and tell me what we could do to help Rene recover. I might not be sure whether Christof was a reliable ally, but I had no doubts whatsoever about my merman. I wouldn’t lose him.
“Rene is much the same. Do you believe Monsieur Warin will know how to assist him?”
Now that Jean needed something from Alex, he was Monsieur Warin and not Monsieur Chien. “I hope so. I’m leaving in a few minutes, as soon as I use the scrying bowl again and find out where he is.”
Jean followed me to where my scrying gear remained set up on the upper banquette of Maison Rouge. In a few moments, I’d cleared away the items that allowed me to scry Eugenie and replaced them with the locket Alex had given me, the note and envelope he’d sent with the locket, and a photo of him I kept tucked in the zippered compartment of my messenger bag. So sue me; I’m sentimental, plus in the photo he wore a rare smile that showed off that almost-but-not-quite-a-dimple crease to the left of his mouth. Sexy, that one.
Pouring out the first batch of holy water, I took more of the supply Rene had stolen and refilled the bowl. I had enough left over for one more scrying session. Maybe I could rob St. Louis Cathedral while I skulked around New Orleans tonight.
I took a few deep breaths to clear my mind and focused on my significant something-or-other. Boyfriend seemed too adolescent; lover too shallow; friend too coy. Part of the time we were all of the above. Other times, we only accomplished one of the three. The lover part was rarely a problem. I thought Alex was sex on a stick and while I didn’t quite know what he thought of me, he’d never kicked me out of bed.
My head full of lust and longing, I stuck Charlie into the water and waited for an image to appear. I hoped it would tell me where Alex was.
Jean’s arm brushed my shoulder as he moved in for a look. “Monsieur Warin looks quite happy, does he not, Jolie?” He barely kept the chuckle out of his own voice.
“Doesn’t he, though.” Alex was somewhere public—a restaurant, from the looks of it—and he was smiling. No, not smiling. The dog was laughing. How dare he have dinner at a restaurant, with real electricity and a modern kitchen, and laugh? I’d endured lightning strikes, crazed faeries, boot-wearing bears, arrogant elves (redundant), and a drink of skunk-tainted road tar mixed with holy water. How dare Alex enjoy himself?
“Might you be able to discern his whereabouts?”
Jean seemed way too fascinated with scrying and I had a feeling that sooner rather than later, he’d concoct some way to exploit it.
“Let me move the perspective around a bit.” I wanted to know who was so damn funny, since he was laughing again. I changed Charlie’s position in the water and the view shifted. “Wait, I recognize that swamp mural with Christmas lights running through it—he’s at Jacques-Imo’s.”
Not only was he laughing, he was doing it at my favorite restaurant.
I shifted Charlie again, anxious to see who was making him laugh. So help me, if it was Elder Willem Zrakovi, Alex was going to be one sorry dog.
Not Zrakovi. Not by a long shot.
“What a lovely young woman Monsieur Warin dines with, Jolie.” Jean’s pleasure at the sight of Alex with another woman seeped out of his aura and battled with my own displeasure. My annoyance won.
“She’s scrawny and pale.” And young, tall, brunette, and pretty.
“I am certain Monsieur Warin is only feigning amusement to make her feel worthy or to use her in some manner,” Jean said, slipping an arm around my shoulder.
The pirate was skating on thin skin. “Of course he is.”
“After all, a man grows lonely when he must work at his relationship with a woman and then she is absent.”
I regretted ever teaching him the word relationship and admitting that Alex and I had to work at ours. If we still had one.
“I’m out of here.” I pulled Charlie out of the scrying bowl, ending Jean’s peep show, and headed up the banquette toward the front door. “I’ll use the small transport at Audubon Park; it’s closer to where he is than the one in the French Quarter.” He’d be at the restaurant awhile; it looked like they were still on appetizers, thanks to my in-depth knowledge of the Jacques-Imo’s menu.
Jean caught up with me when I stopped to grab my bag and tuck Charlie back into the thigh holster, just in case I needed to shoot a stray Elder. Or Alex.
I pulled my hair into a ponytail, picked up Rene’s LSU baseball cap, and wedged as much hair as I could into it, pulling the bill low over my forehead. It wouldn’t win me any awards at a Mardi Gras costume ball and its purple and gold colors clashed horribly with my outfit from baby-pastel hell, but it would have to do.
“Do you still have the pistol?” Jean asked as we climbed the stairs.
I tripped on the step, too embarrassed to admit that I’d run all over Faery and Shreveport with a gun in my pants and had totally forgotten about it. Some badass I was. I’d found it when I changed clothes and tucked it in my waistband. “Got it.”
It’s just as well I’d forgotten about it. Shooting a werewolf security guard, or Rand, or Christof, or even Christof’s batshit-crazy brother would only have reinforced my status as a fugitive from justice.
“Use it only if you must in order to return safely to Barataria, Drusilla.” Jean followed me back through the entry hall, out the front door, and down the banquette toward the transport. “The fewer wizards you encounter, the more easily things will go for you.”
“You think?” We reached the transport, and Jean motioned for Collette to leave us alone. Oh, goody. We were going to have another Moment.
“Be safe.” He leaned down and brushed a kiss across my cheek, knocking Rene’s cap askew. “I would accompany you but I do not wish to raise the ire of Monsieur Chien by my presence.”
He knew it always made me laugh when he called Alex Mr. Dog, and it worked. “You aren’t going to try and stop me from going?”
“Ah, Jolie.” Jean smiled. “There are many who underestimate your abilities, but not Jean Lafitte. Much woe to the man who ever truly forces you to abandon your caution.”
“Thank you. Being underestimated gets old.” Speaking of Alex, it was time for me to leave. I had a sick merman to diagnose and a laughing six-foot three-inch hound who had some explaining to do.
CHAPTER 16
I spotted the werewolf guard as soon as I landed in the Audubon Park transport, which had been carved into the soil beneath a mammoth live oak tree. During Jean’s human days and even a century before then, men had fought duels here to settle their disputes. Too bad Zrakovi, Rand, and Christof couldn’t just count off twenty paces and fire. It would save us all a lot of angst and create orgasmic excitement among the world’s meteorologists.
Six months ago, I’d been convinced the wizards were the proper ones to head the Interspecies Council and control the borders. Now, not so much, although I wasn’t sure the alternatives were any better.
The guard was short, bearded, and burly; he also held one of the old-fashioned trackers that could identify when any type of nonhuman was in the vicinity. If I were lucky, he had the tracker calibrated to buzz only when it sensed my unique magical signature.
If I were lucky, the black potion would work, and my aura would be camouflaged.
Of course i
f I were all that lucky, I wouldn’t need to sneak into my own hometown to discuss illegal weapons and strange women with my own significant shifter.
The guard had his attention focused on his phone when I arrived, so I stepped quickly outside the transport. By the time he looked up, frowned, and studied his tracker, I was walking away from him, toward St. Charles Avenue and the streetcar named Desire-to-Get-DJ-the-Hell-Away-from-Here. It took every bit of nerve I could muster to walk at a leisurely pace with my back to him. I figured running while looking over my shoulder might arouse suspicions.
My right fingers twitched near Charlie, ready to go on the defensive if he approached from behind. I’d left my mojo bag at home, all the better to detect prete energy with my own built-in tracker. His werewolf buzz had already begun to fade, however, so I knew he wasn’t following me. Thank God all the security people I’d encountered in the last twenty-four hours had been idiots.
I crossed St. Charles, waited a few moments at the streetcar stop, and then realized I didn’t have the dollar-fifty for the fare. Pathetic. By the time I made it a block toward the big bend in the Mississippi River, my muscles had relaxed their death grip on my vital organs. Walking would be therapeutic. Another block and I cut through the Uptown neighborhoods toward Oak Street and Jacques-Imo’s, feeling free for the first time in a couple of weeks and enjoying even the waning daylight. I hadn’t realized how tense and claustrophobic I’d felt stuck in the dark of Old Barataria, thankful though I was to have a refuge.
With the Winter Prince of Faery’s focus off New Orleans, the nightmarish winter we’d suffered through most of December had eased into typical NOLA Christmas weather. The cold, heavy wind blew Rene’s hat off twice, and I had to chase it down the sidewalks, which were broken and uneven from the spreading roots of the live oaks.
Twenty minutes later, I reached the restaurant with a fine sheen of chilly sweat covering most of my body. Anyone who thought hot weather was a necessary ingredient for sweaty conditions had never spent a winter in New Orleans.
In front of the door to Jacques-Imo’s sat the signature wreck of a pickup truck with the logo on both doors and a long green alligator stretching along the sides. In the bed of the pickup, a couple sat at a table for two, shivering in the cold wind while slurping down oysters.
I wasn’t sure what the building had been in its previous lives, but like the rest of the structures on this stretch of Oak Street, it was a two-story Victorian-era New Orleans cottage. The front was narrow, but I knew from previous visits that it stretched back a deep city block, making the restaurant much larger than it looked from the sidewalk.
It might be a Tuesday night at only six p.m., but bodies packed the long tunnel of the bar. Along the left side, a scuffed wooden pew sagged under the weight of chattering patrons crammed shoulder to shoulder, waiting for their tables. Along the right side, bartenders hustled, slinging drinks and banter despite the deafening cacophony of voices.
This was not a place for quiet conversation unless, of course, one could communicate telepathically. I could have a nice dinner and conversation here with Rand without the outside noise interfering. Well, except that it was Rand.
To talk to Alex, I’d have to get him outside.
A line of people stood in the middle of the room, waiting to be added to the list by the hostess, who stood guardian over the door in the back that led to the rest of the restaurant.
I finally made it to the head of the line, hoping I didn’t look as penniless as I felt and wondering if Alex would offer to feed me. “I’m joining some friends,” I shouted to the red-haired young woman at the desk. With her short hair and big green eyes, she looked so much like a happy, normal Eugenie that it sent a wave of sadness through me—and a renewed determination that my friend was coming out the other side of this current hot mess not only with her baby, but with her spirit intact.
The hostess leaned toward me. “What’s the name?”
Good question. I had no idea who Alex was with. “Warin?”
She scanned her sheet and nodded. “They’re in the swamp room, all the way back.”
I gave her an OK sign and climbed the stairs into the kitchen, where cooks shouted and sweated and concocted some of the best dishes in a town full of great dishes. They joked and waved at the patrons, all of whom had to pass through the kitchen to reach the dining rooms. My stomach rumbled at the savory aromas of crab and steak and gator sausage, but hunger had to wait.
The dining rooms were almost as crowded as the bar, the wait staff performing acrobatic pirouettes between closely placed tables and diners while balancing heavy trays aloft.
Combine my lack of mojo bag with the noise, the crowds, and the kaleidoscope of color on the walls—covered in courtyard and swamp murals, brightly colored lights, and jumbles of primitive artwork—and my senses hummed with an almost physical burn.
I couldn’t stay in here long. Most of the vibes I pulled off the diners were happy and alcohol-enhanced, but my head had already begun to pound.
I walked all the way through the restaurant and out the back door into the courtyard—a generous term for a patch of grass and square of concrete barely big enough for two small tables, currently empty because the temperature was dropping a little too much for al fresco dining. The couple in the pickup truck had chosen novelty over comfort.
Where had Alex gone?
I turned back to study the dining room from the outer doorway, and spotted him in the corner, at an angle I’d missed from the other direction. He sat facing me, ever the trained killer, with his back to the wall so no one could sneak up on him. My heart sped up at the sight of him. A delayed reaction to my long walk, no doubt. I was much too sensible to have my heart jackrabbit at the mere sight of the most gorgeous man to ever come out of Picayune, Mississippi.
His dinner companion—I refused to call her a date—sat with her back to me, but she was a waver. Her long arms flew in dramatic arcs. I hated people who couldn’t talk without gestures; it was like advertising a diminished vocabulary. Then again, I shouldn’t judge. Of all the misjudged people in the world, I above all shouldn’t judge. I vowed to do better.
Before I could duck back into the courtyard, Alex spotted me. He’d been smiling at his companion, and then the smile melted off his face as if it had been wax on a burning candle. Those dark chocolate-brown eyes that I dreamed of at night widened, then narrowed, then were drawn askew by one raised eyebrow. A two-day stubble and dark hair with just enough curl to make it look tousled, plus his usual man-in-black wardrobe, completed the picture of the perfectly beautiful enforcer. Who could be ill-tempered and snarky, or surprisingly sweet. Which Alexander Warin would I talk to tonight?
He leaned forward and said something to his friend but it couldn’t have been much because he was out that back door and hustling me toward the corner of the courtyard faster than a speeding vampire.
“DJ, what the…” Emotions rolled off him in confused waves, and I gave him a crooked smile. There was more love and happiness in his tangle of feeling than anger and worry and fear. I didn’t care who was making him laugh over dinner; I was the one he loved.
“I just had to mmph—”
My words were cut short by his mouth landing on mine with enough force to push me against the rough wood siding of the building, our dark corner not visible from the dining room. We might have been apart only four days, but it had felt like four years, with no promise of when things might get better. If they ever did.
I missed him. I wanted him. I was tired and scared and totally at sea, and I poured all that into the heat and promise of a long, drawn-out kiss.
Then we just held each other. My fingers traced the contours of his back, firm and warm beneath his black sweater, trying to memorize every muscle and curve. He smelled like his favorite shower gel, masculine but sweet. He felt like home.
“You shouldn’t have come; it’s so dangerous.” His words were soft, and had no anger behind them. “Is there an emergency?”
I pulled away and looked up at him, jolted back to reality. I dug in my pocket and pulled out the spent bullet that had shot Rene. “This look familiar?”
He sat at one of the empty tables and I took the chair next to his, watching as he held the lump of metal up to the dim light, sniffed it, then touched his tongue to it. He spat on the ground next to his chair. “It’s coated in something…” He tasted again, and spat it out again. “Bitter orange, I think. Nasty stuff when it’s this concentrated, especially for shifters. It can be fatal. Where’d you get it?”
“Rene was shot with it, in Faery.”
Alex set the bullet on the table, and I could tell he was measuring his words by the way he stared at the table instead of at me. “Why was Rene in Faery? Were you with him? Do you—”
“Alex, before we get into that, tell me what we can do for Rene.” There would always be time for him to ruin whatever time we had left by scolding me like a mother hen.
“My guess is he hasn’t been able to shift?”
I shook my head. “He made it back to Barataria but has been unconscious since then.”
Alex frowned and thrummed his fingers on the tabletop. “It’s because he’s aquatic, I bet. He can only shift in the water. So get him in the water, let him shift, and he should be able to shake it off. He has to shift; otherwise, it’ll eventually kill him.”
Holy crap. Deep in my soul, I’d prayed Rene’s problem would be minor, that I could spend the night with Alex, reconnect with him not just physically but emotionally. But I couldn’t. Rene had to come first. “I have to get back to him, then. I hope it isn’t too late.”
“Wait.” Alex took my hands in his and leaned toward me, so close I could feel the heat from his shifter warmth radiating against my skin. “I want you to meet someone.”
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