Belle Chasse

by Suzanne Johnson

  I had been left alone with my thoughts, and they weren’t good ones. The more I pondered over Rand and his promises, the more I wanted to choke the elven life out of him and screw my moral absolutes.

  I would promise to keep Eugenie safe, although if I thought Barataria was getting dangerous for her, I’d take her somewhere other than Elfheim. That would be my counteroffer on Eugenie. My first idea was that I would stash her with Louis Armstrong again, but he had known ties to all of us and it might not be possible for him to protect her. Maybe Faery, but it was no safe place these days, either. I’d have to give it some thought.

  As for the secret plot business Rand said he’d share for my own protection, he could keep his lousy information. I had plenty of holy water and unlimited time for scrying. I’d find a way to watch Zrakovi and, whatever the scheme was, I’d find it out for myself and tell whoever I chose.

  What those promise demands revealed to me was that Rand was preparing to make a big move, one which would throw everyone into danger. He wanted to cover his ass by making sure his bond-mate and the mother of his child were safe. It would be a great pity if I got killed and he lost his will to live just as he was getting all the power he wanted.

  Freakin’ elf.

  “Hey, DJ—special delivery.” Collette knocked on the study door and came in holding a letter that sent my heart skittering. Had Lennox answered already? Had he turned me down?

  I looked at the envelope, which featured a fleur-de-lis on the flap and was the same size as the earlier note from Audrey.

  “How’d it keep from getting wet?” The transport was way underwater by now.

  “It came in that same cheap plastic bin with the top on it.” Collette laughed. “It’s perfect for our transport because it floats.”

  I opened the letter while she grabbed a couple of sodas and headed back out to Jake.

  Happy Christmas, cousin! Please come to 147 Dauphine Street in Old Orleans right away. Your Christmas present is wrapped and waiting in room 104!

  xoxox—Audrey

  Uh-huh, because I was falling right into that trap. I had a new Eugenie hand-me-down romance novel waiting on my bed and my least-frilly pink negligee was clean. That was my Christmas present.

  Halfway to my bedroom, I looked at the note again. It would be stupid to go, no doubt about it. I’d be taking a risk based on nothing but curiosity and boredom, a combination that had killed more than one cat.

  Oh, what the hell. If this hellcat died, her elven tomcat would be close behind. It might be worth it.

  Inside my head, Alex’s voice chastised me the entire time I spent getting dressed in my best pink sweater and jeans, strapping on my pink wristwatch, and pulling on my (thankfully brown leather) boots. You’re being impulsive, he said. You’re taking too many chances. You invite chaos.

  Yeah, well, it was nine o’clock on Christmas Eve and I was going out. Maybe I’d run into Jean and Christof, maybe with their friend the undead Truman Capote. We’d all go to hear Louis Armstrong play. Talk about chaos.

  I ran upstairs and poked my head in Eugenie’s room, but she was asleep, so I went back down, grabbed my messenger bag, tucked Charlie inside, and headed out the front door toward the beach.

  “Where you going, sunshine?” Jake stood up, his stance wide and ready to stop me. “If you think you’re going to New Orleans, you need to think again. I heard what happened at the council meeting today. Jean left instructions that Jolie wasn’t to go anywhere.”

  Yeah, I bet he did, bossy pirate. “I’m going to Old Orleans to meet my cousin and that’s nonnegotiable.” Or I could be meeting Zrakovi with a goon squad, which would be truly ironic since I was going to so much trouble to try to arrange a meeting with him.

  Jake relaxed a little. Just a little. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, DJ. You want me to get Adrian to go with you?”

  “No way. If I drag him away from his romantic Christmas Eve tryst, he’ll bitch my ears off all the way to Old Orleans and back.”

  “You could go with DJ while I watch the transport, and make sure it’s really her cousin and not a setup,” Collette said. “Just don’t stay gone too long.” Her smile held all kinds of promises, and not the kind Quince Randolph was asking for.

  “Good grief, guys. I don’t need a chaperone.” I did, however, need a rubber wet suit. “I’m going to move this transport above the tide line.”

  “Nope, don’t move it.” Jake checked the clip in his pistol and stuck it back in his shoulder holster. “Jean decided he likes it where it is. The water will throw off anyone who comes in not expecting it, so it’s safer for us to keep it open. In fact, he’s talking about having you move it farther out.”

  If I moved it much farther, I’d be completely underwater, and this little wizard wasn’t going there.

  “Come on, a little water won’t hurt you,” Jake said. “And don’t argue—I’m going with you.” He rolled up his pants legs, like that was going to help anyone shorter than Andre the Giant. “Let’s see the address.”

  I handed him the note. “Is there a transport near that spot so I don’t have to use the big one at St. Louis Cathedral?” If I ran into anyone I knew, it would happen at the cathedral transport.

  “Yeah, there’s one on Dauphine that’s gotta be closer. Let’s do it.”

  He gave Collette a lingering kiss, so lingering that I was up to my hips in water by the time he sloshed out to join me. “Does that magic stick work in water?”

  “This magic stick works everywhere.” I loved Charlie, who gave and gave and never asked anything in return except an occasional polish. If only I could find a man as dependable.

  I didn’t need the staff in this transport since it was open, however, so I simply spoke the transport name Jake gave me: Dauphine Express. Cute.

  Turns out it was the name of a hotel and bar a few doors from the transport, which lay in the middle of Dauphine Street. Jake looked at the note again. “This is it, the Dauphine Inn Express.”

  It lay on a quiet block—at least it was quiet for Old Orleans, a mind-boggling mirror version of the modern city, with working artifacts from different eras. A few places had electricity, and they were always crowded with a variety of species. Goblins took up space at most of the bars serving modern alcohol smuggled in by Rene and Jean, from which they earned an enviable income. At least on this block, there weren’t hookers of every species offering their services from open doorways and windows.

  One would never know it was Christmas Eve, either. Not a bit of mistletoe in sight.

  Jake started toward the hotel but stopped when he realized I wasn’t following. I’d need to send him back to Barataria, unless … “Is this an open transport?”

  I knelt and touched a finger to the interlocking circle and triangle etched into the brick of the street. It had an odd vibe to it. It was open, but what the hell had it been powered with?

  “It’s an old wizard transport that Christof adapted to work with faery magic, so it’s a secretly open transport we can use. If you tried to use wizard’s magic on it, it wouldn’t work,” Jake said. “Of course, now that I’ve told you it’s here, I’ll have to kill you—unless you promise not to tell.”

  I’d heard a lot of that today. Since he didn’t need me to get him back to his fiancée in Barataria, I’d let Jake be chivalrous and escort me to the mystery room. I couldn’t imagine what Audrey had done, and half expected to see Lennox or Zrakovi, backed by a cadre of muscle, when I knocked on the door.

  What I didn’t expect to see was Alex, wearing nothing but a tight pair of black boxer briefs and a red velvet bow around his neck. I swear I almost swooned. I definitely drooled.

  “Oh my God. I’m scarred for life. I’ll never be able to unsee that.” Jake slapped his hands over his eyes and headed back down the hallway, so he missed Alex’s grin. “I’m outta here. Use that transport to get back, DJ.”

  I didn’t manage to thank Jake. I wasn’t sure I could even talk. Every moment of awkward,
geeky shyness I’d ever experienced came back to visit. At least until Alex gave me that devilish smile I hadn’t seen in forever, slightly lopsided and settling a crease to the left of his mouth that wasn’t quite a dimple but was sexy as hell. “I missed you.”

  So I did what any love-struck woman would do when faced with the half-naked man of her dreams wrapped up in a red bow, saying he missed her: I burst into tears. Which pissed me off, and that in turn made me cry more. Leave it to good old romantic DJ. I finally got to hold the man I love, to touch him, to kiss him, and instead I wept like an idiot.

  He drew me into the room and held me. “Let it out.” His voice cracked. Maybe I wasn’t the only emotional wreck in the Dauphine Express. “God, I’ve missed you.”

  I finally pulled away and kissed him, long and hard and thoroughly.

  “Hold that thought.” Alex crossed the room, painted hot pink and filled with black furniture, and propped a straight-backed chair under the doorknob. Then he set an electronic gadget in front of the chair. When he twisted a few knobs and switches, the device chirped twice and its LED light turned green.

  It looked like an updated tracker to let us know if a prete were approaching. Although this was Old Orleans, so I didn’t know how effective it would be. Anyone passing by the door would be a prete of some kind since few humans knew this world existed.

  What the tracker did accomplish was to give me a sobering reminder of how big a chance Alex had taken in coming here, which dried up the rest of my tears.

  Before I could chastise him for coming, or he could chastise me for responding to such a vague note, we were in each other’s arms again. We lay on the bed, just touching, remembering the feel of each other. With our world on the brink of war, we might never get this chance again, and as much as I wanted to feel him inside me, what I wanted more was closeness. Awareness. Touch.

  This.

  We held each other, and I rested my head on his shoulder, taking in his scent of citrusy soap and minty aftershave. I also detected a hint of leather, from the leather jacket that lay draped over the back of a chair next to the bed, a pistol in a holster peeking from underneath. The jacket had a blob of something white near the back of one shoulder. Mr. Neat had actually missed a spot; he needed me.

  His heart beat a steady cadence against my cheek, so I sped it up by letting my fingers take a leisurely stroll down his chest and southward.

  “You’re asking for trouble, woman.” At the gruff tone of his voice, I raised my head and met his dark, chocolate-brown eyes, rimmed by long lashes that didn’t take an ounce away from his masculinity. I wanted to drown in those eyes.

  “I like trouble, remember? Almost as much as I like opening presents.” I tugged on his red bow, slid it from around his neck, and tossed it aside.

  In another time, another situation, that comment about liking trouble could’ve opened the door to an argument. Not tonight. “You’d be in even more trouble if you got rid of those clothes,” he said.

  “Promise?” I slowly pulled off the white T-shirt covered with pink rhinestones, exposing my least-offensive pink lacy bra and, a few moments later, the matching bikinis.

  Alex propped himself up on his elbows, those sexy lips widened in a wicked smile. “You even have a pink watch. Am I missing a new phase in your life?”

  I laughed and jumped on the bed so he could finish the undressing. “Yeah, the phase where Rene had to buy me underwear four days before Christmas and chose a passive-aggressive way of showing me what he thought of the experience.”

  He slowly lowered the straps of the bra, narrow nothings of fabric attached to lots of dainty lace. “Hm. I don’t know how I feel about another man handling your underwear.”

  Then I wouldn’t share with him the fact that these particular panties had been zoomed slingshot-style between Rene and Jean Lafitte. They had been washed.

  They proved their airworthiness again as Alex stripped them away and tossed them halfway across the room. My ability to talk disappeared, and we lost ourselves in each other with a desperation born of need, longing, and fear.

  Later, although I wasn’t sure how much later because the pink watch had gone flying at some point, we simply lay together again. The heat of his body, the steady thrum of his heart against mine, gave me a sense of peace I hadn’t felt in weeks. We’d wasted so much time arguing before I’d been forced to leave.

  “I guess we have to talk.” Alex turned onto his side and pulled me against him more tightly. “I used your emergency tonic to cross the border. That was some nasty stuff.”

  No argument from me. “It’s worn off by now.”

  “I thought if I crossed back in the middle of the night, I might slip back into New Orleans unnoticed.”

  At least I could send him back via the secret faery transport, which would help to shield him. As a shifter, his energy signature wasn’t as unique and trackable as my wizard’s energy. He should be okay.

  He reached over and lifted the paw-shaped locket. “Did this work like it was supposed to?”

  I propped on my elbow. “It lets me see through faery glamour. Did you know it would do that? It’s brilliant.”

  He smiled. “I hoped it would work. Once I found out the fae didn’t like dogs, I got Audrey to clip off some fur while I shifted. I figured if you were going to be around Christof very much, you’d need it.”

  “You still trust Audrey, then?”

  He hesitated a fraction too long. “Within limits. She really doesn’t know a lot about the magical world except from her lessons. Since she hasn’t been able to pass her exams for Red Congress, her father has kept her isolated from his work.”

  “Speaking of Lennox, I sent a letter to him this afternoon when Rand came to visit Eugenie.” I’d debated whether to tell Alex about it, but of all the people I knew, he had the best handle on Zrakovi’s state of mind. Plus, my days of keeping secrets from Alex were over. I hoped. “I asked him to come to Barataria tomorrow and talk to me.”

  Alex traced his fingers up and down my arm. “I don’t think he’ll double-cross you on Lafitte’s turf, but what do you hope to gain from it? Audrey says he doesn’t like Zrakovi, but he plays the game really well.”

  I wondered how much Lennox confided in his daughter. I had no idea, thus my own lingering caution. “I want him to set up a meeting between Zrakovi and me, or at least talk to him about the possibility. I’m hoping that, as my uncle, he’ll be able to tell me what might calm Zrakovi down and make him understand that I’m more of an asset to the wizards than I am a liability to him.”

  Alex was quiet for a few moments while he digested that idea. “I don’t know, DJ. Zrakovi’s determined to make an example of you. He’s beyond Rand and the baby issue and political alliances at this point. You outsmarted him and everyone knows it, so he’s embarrassed. Then Rand made it worse by using your information to threaten him. He thinks he can solidify his power by taking you down.”

  My laugh was bitter. “First, I’m not that important in the grand scheme of things. Plus, he’s already fired me and stripped my Green Congress license. All that’s left to take me down is sending me to Ittoqqortoormiit, which he has to realize would kill me because of that elven survival thing.”

  I thought of a new wrinkle. “Killing me would kill Quince Randolph, too, eventually. It might take a year or two but he’d die. I don’t want Zrakovi to know that, though. He’d come after me even harder.”

  Alex sat up and looked at me in alarm. “You mean if I off that elven jackass it will kill you?”

  I nodded and sighed. The mention of the elven jackass officially ended the romantic part of the evening. “I finally got an answer out of him, and that’s what he told me. The elves don’t advertise it, of course, or else their enemies would only need to target their bond-mates.”

  I shrugged. “He might be blowing smoke up my ass but I don’t have any choice but to believe him.”

  I decided not to share the part about elves not factoring love into thei
r marriages. That had been a major revelation to me because it told me Rand really considered our union a marriage. I’d been sure he’d eventually snap out of his delusion and realize what we had was a business arrangement.

  To an elf, apparently, they were the same thing.

  As long as I was running my mouth, I might as well keep going. “Speaking of the elven jackass, I also got an interesting ultimatum from him today.”

  I told Alex about the promises Rand wanted from me, all of the details, including the threat on his life. He responded pretty much as I expected, with barely restrained fury.

  “That son of a bitch.” He got up and pulled on his pants. Yep, talking about Quince Randolph had definitely ended our romantic interlude. “And now I can’t even kill him, which royally sucks.”

  I finished dressing. “I plan to make a counteroffer.” I shared my idea about Louis Armstrong, hesitating when I got to the part about planning to scry Zrakovi. I had to trust Alex, however. It wasn’t right that I professed to love him and yet put Rene and Jean higher on my trust-o-meter.

  “Here’s what I think about Rand and his secret-keeping. Did you hear what he said to Zrakovi at the end of the Interspecies Council meeting earlier today?” I thought Alex had been talking to Toussaint Delachaise and probably hadn’t heard. Thanks to Charlie’s super-amplification, I’d caught it all.

  Alex looked surprised. “You were watching?”

  “And listening—I can hear pretty well scrying from the Beyond.”

  He frowned and I waited a moment for him to express his disapproval at my unorthodox technique of spying on his boss. “Good. I’m glad you have a way of keeping up with what’s going on without me or Audrey interpreting it. What did Randolph say?”

  I told him about the elf’s so-called proposal. “My guess is that he’s demanding something pretty radical, something Zrakovi’s not going to like. And since Rand is all hot to make sure Eugenie’s protected and I’m forewarned, he must be expecting an ugly fight.”