Pirate's Alley

by Suzanne Johnson

  I’d been even more fashion-challenged than usual since my entire wardrobe had gone up in flames just before Thanksgiving, and when I needed basics like underwear and shoes, it seemed frivolous to spend real money on a heavy coat that might get trotted out of the closet once a year.

  Not that I had a closet. And no one except a pumpkin and some breeds of cat looked good in orange—and never when it was tarted out with purple, unless one were headed for a Clemson football game.

  “Need anything else?” I paused at the front door and looked back at Eugenie. “Pizza? Soda?”

  A good, stiff shot of bourbon?

  She shook her head, sadness and fear etched into her face in equal measure. I’d be freaking out in her position, and I had a lot of resources she didn’t: other wizards, a passing knowledge of the prete world, Alex.

  All Eugenie had was me. Maybe I hadn’t always been the best friend to her, but I swore to myself: This time, I wouldn’t fail her.

  CHAPTER 2

  One of the few good things about being blackballed by the car-rental places: I didn’t have to worry about fighting for a decent parking spot at the shopping center and schlepping my way across a quarter mile of frozen concrete tundra.

  A blast of frigid air sent shock waves of cold through me when I opened the cab door and eyed the fifteen or so feet I’d need to run in order to get inside the store. The big entrance sign on Tchoupitoulas Street might say RIVERSIDE MARKET, but the drugstore’s location wasn’t nearly that chic. The long strip mall backed up to one of the Mississippi River wharves, and I knew it well. My official office was near the other end, a sparsely furnished rectangle called Crescent City Risk Management.

  It wasn’t a deception, exactly, since I did manage risk. Just not the type of risk for which one bought an insurance policy.

  “Man, that be some cold. I’ll be waitin’ on you, Miss DJ. I’ll even turn off the meter seein’ as how you’re a regular. Ain’t you glad you got dat coat?” Arnie gave me a gap-toothed grin. He was old-school New Orleans, of the generation that still called shopping for food “making groceries” and referred to the near-west suburb as “Metry.”

  “Thanks, Arnie. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Sure I did. I’d be riding the bus or forced to ask Alex if I could borrow the pristine Mercedes convertible he’d stored at his parents’ house in Mississippi last month. Things located near me, he pointed out, had a bad habit of turning into fireballs.

  He hadn’t even offered me the use of his uncle Eddie’s beater of a pickup that got passed around the family in times of need. He could drive me wherever I needed to go, he’d said. My interpretation: He could control where I went if I had to depend on him for transportation. Thus my newfound relationship with Arnie.

  Hurrying into the store, I relaxed at the cocoon of warmth that surrounded me, not to mention the piped-in Christmas Muzak and the reassurance of knowing an unlimited supply of junk food lay at my disposal.

  I picked up a blue plastic shopping basket and made my way through aisles crowded with wrapping paper and Santa hats, tree lights and tinsel, weaving toward the back corner of the store where the actual pharmacy had been tucked. My footfalls fell in rhythm with Johnny Mathis crooning about roasting chestnuts on an open fire, which sounded dangerous.

  Halfway down the “As Seen on TV” aisle, I lurched to a stop and backed up. For Alex’s Christmas present, I’d bought him a membership renewal at the city’s most high-tech gym, but the Perfect Bacon Bowl (“Everything Tastes Better in a Bowl of Bacon!”) looked like the ideal thing in which to hide the membership card. He’d be totally grossed out, toss it aside, and I could use it without admitting I’d bought it for myself. Alex considered bacon an express pass to heart disease. I considered it one of nature’s perfect foods.

  Grinning, I grabbed the Perfect Bacon Bowl and wedged it in my basket. My amusement faded as the store’s holiday excess gave way to the health-care aisles, and the enormity of Eugenie’s situation finally hit me in all of its awfulness.

  If she was pregnant, Rand would want the child, and Rand had a way of getting what he wanted even if it meant playing dirty. Oh, he thought he played fair, but the elves had an arrogantly warped worldview in which “fair” equaled “whatever the elf wants.”

  Or would he prefer that she get rid of the child so his precious pure elven DNA wouldn’t be mixed with that of a human? I pondered that down half an aisle, but rejected it. Rand would want an heir. God knows he would never get one from his so-called mate, namely me, and if he had half a brain, he’d realize that.

  Where would one find home pregnancy tests? I scanned row after row of vitamins, eye drops, elevated toilet seats, antacids, and finally found them—colorful stacks of boxes in frightening babylike colors of pink and blue and what had apparently replaced green as the new neutral pastel, lavender.

  I stared at the half-dozen different brands, overwhelmed not only by the choice of tests but the ramifications of a baby fathered by Quince Randolph. What would a half-elven child be able to do? Look how many elven skills I won in the genetic lottery and I was far, far more removed from elfhood than this kid would be. Could the baby do bizarre mental games in utero? Were elves automatically devious and underhanded, or was that a learned behavior?

  What was the gestation period for a half-elven child? Nine months like a human or an elephantine two years?

  If Eugenie were pregnant, considering she’d lost a child before and the Catholic upbringing she staunchly upheld in the face of the weirdness around her, would she consider ending this pregnancy? Would it be fair to even ask her to consider it?

  Okay, I was getting ahead of myself. There would be time later to panic and wrestle with moral dilemmas.

  First step: Try the pregnancy test. The boxes all claimed to be ninety-nine percent accurate. Those results applied to humans, I assumed. Not surprisingly, the accuracy rating for half-human pregnancies had been omitted from the package labels. I picked one using the highly scientific method of prettiest logo.

  I lingered in the candy aisle on the way to the register, thinking about Rand and piling in enough peanut butter cups and candy bars to replace my blood supply with cocoa and sugar. To balance it out, I grabbed a twelve-pack of diet soda along with Eugenie’s ginger ale.

  While I stood in the checkout line, I had time to consider Quince Randolph, aka Rand. That would be Rand, my non-husband, newly minted member of the Elven Synod and clan leader of the Tân, the fire elves. Blond, blue-eyed, with broad shoulders and good cheekbones, Rand was the prettiest elf in this world or any other, with an ego matched only by his ambition. And tied to me by a blood bond for the rest of our miserable lives.

  A tingle of fear zipped up my spine and across my scalp. I had to be careful. Since the bonding, Rand could no longer read my thoughts or influence my moods, but he would know if I got freaked out or frightened. He could also communicate with me mentally, although I’d gotten adept at ignoring him. I didn’t want him picking up any stray fear or tension and feeling the need to sniff around to see what had me upset.

  I began slamming up mental barriers as fast as I could visualize them in my head. Ramparts, moats, and thick stone towers, all ringed around my thoughts. I set my brain inside the virtual stronghold of Mount Doom, surrounded by mental orcs dripping green saliva off their fangs and poison off their bow-strung arrows. If Quince Randolph turned his sneaky mental radar in my direction and picked up even a hint of freak-out, we’d have a problem before I could get back to Eugenie’s with the pregnancy test to find out the status of the potential elf spawn.

  Mental note to self: Do not refer to the child as elf spawn in front of Eugenie.

  Rand also could both read Eugenie’s thoughts and influence them if he was touching her or got close enough. Thank God he’d been cocooned in his house since the cold weather struck, or so Eugenie claimed. Even his mental pings to me—sort of a text message without the text or the device on which to read it—had become less frequent sinc
e the temperature dropped.

  But the cold wouldn’t last forever. Eugenie might have to move. The wizards maintained a facility for criminal and mentally challenged magic-makers in a remote corner of Greenland. Rand would never brave the frigid weather in Ittoqqortoormiit.

  Breathe. Nothing’s certain yet.

  I’d finished paying and was lugging my bags out the door when my pocket vibrated with Pink’s “So What.” The song reflected my pissed-off mood most days now. I’d ditched my mellow Zachary Richard ringtone the day after both Alex and I had been shot, thanks to a power-mad elf and a necromantic wizard who’d sold his skills for a big payday. The day after the undead pirate, scoundrel, thief, and blackguard Jean Lafitte had proven himself both loyal and incredibly brave.

  The day after I learned wizards could be every bit as treacherous as elves, vampires, and other species my kind thought of as monsters.

  My cell phone screen popped up Alex Warin’s name and photo. I set the bags down on the sidewalk. “Hey.” I wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder and waved furiously across the parking lot, where Arnie appeared to be napping in his cab. “Are you home?” He’d been on some secret mission for the Elders.

  “Yeah, want to go to Celebration in the Oaks tonight? Maybe grab dinner at one of the restaurants doing Reveillon?” Alex sounded pumped, his deep baritone more buoyant than its usual tones of sexy silk or grumpy caveman, depending on his mood. Whatever he’d been doing for the Elders, it had been successful. I’d find out over dinner.

  “Definitely. Why don’t I come to your place about seven?” I needed to spend some quality time with Eugenie and a petri dish, or whatever one used to take a pregnancy test.

  Arnie had apparently awakened, because the black-and-white United Cab lurched to a stop in front of me a few seconds later. “Hang on,” I told Alex, and piled my bags in the back seat of the cab. I nodded in response to Arnie’s stage-whispered question of whether I wanted to head back to Eugenie’s house on Magazine Street. “Okay, I’m back,” I told Alex. “Seven sound okay?”

  His voice dove closer to caveman territory. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Since my relationship with Alex had gone from professional to personal, I’d been trying to be mature and tamp down the instinct to dish the crap back to him when he got territorial and bossy, which was way too often. So I refrained from making a snippy comment about my vehicular drought and his lack of help.

  “I just picked up some soda and am taking a cab back to Eugenie’s.” I paused. “Because, you know, she has heat.”

  Okay, so I hadn’t perfected the whole mature thing yet.

  “Ah … yeah, sorry. I’ll get you some heat this weekend.” Caveman slid into sexy. “I can keep you warm till then.”

  I smiled. “You certainly can … after dinner and the Oaks.”

  His low, sexy chuckle made my toes curl involuntarily. “Okay, see you soon.”

  “That’s a man-smile, that’s what it is.” Arnie watched me in the rearview mirror, and I bit down on my lip to wipe the man-smile off my face. I did not want to be the kind of woman who had a special man-smile. “So, Miss DJ, you think we gonna get snow tonight? I sure don’t like to be drivin’ in da snow.”

  I was the last person to ask for weather advice. When Hurricane Katrina made landfall, I was still insisting it would take a last-second turn and hit Florida. “I hope not. I’m ready for spring.”

  “Yeah, you right.”

  A few minutes later, Arnie prepared to turn onto Nashville Avenue from Magazine, and I saw three things in quick succession, none of which made me happy.

  First, on the right-hand corner, a few stray antique bricks littered a patch of bare dirt, all that was left of the foundation of the 1870s Victorian camelback house where I’d made my home until last month. The last two weeks had been filled with a flurry of phone calls and insurance forms as I made arrangements to have the few unburned parts of it demolished and removed. The last little bits of my home had been hauled away to a landfill two days ago, leaving only a few bricks to remind me of all I had lost.

  My sorrow morphed into a scowl when I glanced at the opposite corner, where Quince Randolph had emerged from the doorway of his Plantasy Island nursery and was walking toward Eugenie’s house with a purposeful stride. He was bundled in a thick white sweater, a white leather coat, and blue jeans. As usual, he looked like a beautiful, exotic Russian snow prince, all tall and lean, with his long, wavy blond hair and graceful motion. And, today, boots, scarf, gloves, and a fedora-style hat of a shade of deep teal blue that probably matched his eyes to perfection.

  He could not get inside Eugenie’s house, even if I had to tackle and hog-tie him with his own pretty scarf.

  Giving Arnie a generous tip not only to help him out but to ensure he remained my best cab-driving buddy, I lugged my bags out, trying to protect my right arm. I nodded at Rand with a big, fake smile and turned to the third source of my displeasure—Alex Warin, sitting on Eugenie’s front steps. What part of I’ll come to your place about seven hadn’t been clear?

  Not that I would mind seeing him under normal circumstances, but Eugenie’s bombshell had blown us way past normal. I didn’t want to tell him yet, either. Not until Eugenie took this pregnancy test and we knew for sure.

  Unlike me and, apparently, Rand, the cold weather agreed with Alex. Like most shifters, he was hot-natured, so he not only wore no coat but had the sleeves of his black sweater pushed up. The cold wind blushed his cheeks and nose a ruddy shade of pink that looked good on him.

  “How come you’re sitting on the porch?” I asked, keeping Rand’s rapid approach in my peripheral vision. “But since you’re here, help me run interference. Eugenie’s not feeling well and Rand can’t come in. Shoot him if you have to.”

  “If I could shoot him without starting a preternatural war, I’d be all over that.” Alex stood up and tugged the heavy soda cartons out of my hands, leaving me with my bag full of chocolate and a discreet little box neither he nor Rand needed to see. I wedged the whole thing into the top of the cross-body messenger bag I’d started wearing to accommodate my shoulder wound.

  Rand strode up at a fast clip. “I’ve been trying to talk to you, Dru.” He ignored Alex, who set down the soda and crossed his arms, barricading the front door. Bless his enforcer heart. He did intimidation really well, only I wasn’t sure Rand could be intimidated.

  “I’ve been busy,” I told him. Yeah, busy ignoring his mental pings. The more I responded to his nonverbal comments or questions, the more it would encourage him to use that infuriating skill. I’d gotten good at blocking him out. “What’s so urgent?”

  He pulled his coat around him more tightly and danced from foot to foot like a show pony. “We need to talk about the council meeting tomorrow. Can we go inside? I can’t stand this weather.”

  “No, Eugenie’s not feeling well and you’d upset her.” True enough. “I’ll call you later tonight.”

  “Can’t we just go in for a minute?” Rand’s teeth chattered. What a wimp. It was cold, but it wasn’t that cold.

  Rand sidled around me and walked toward Eugenie’s front door, stopping a foot from Alex, who didn’t budge, even when Rand’s teal fedora butted his forehead.

  “She said she’d call you, Randolph. Go home.”

  Rand didn’t answer, nor did he back off. Within seconds, sweat popped out on Alex’s face and the muscles in his jaw tensed. Rand was doing some kind of mental crap on him.

  Stop that, you jerk! I yelled at Rand in my head. I yelled really, really loud.

  Rand winced and clapped his hands to his temples, and Alex relaxed. Then he pulled a knife out of his jeans pocket and flicked it open an inch from Rand’s chin. It was a wicked little combat blade with a jagged edge.

  Good grief; we didn’t need a preternatural incident on Eugenie’s porch. I stepped between them, facing the elf. “Please go home, Rand. I’ll call you tonight. I promise.”

  He dropped his gazed from
Alex to me. “You are my mate, not his. Don’t forget that, Dru.”

  Turning quickly, he trotted down the front steps and stalked back toward Plantasy Island.

  “Yeah, like I could forget,” I muttered.

  “Is it legal for him to do shit like that? I have a splitting headache. And why didn’t you remind him that mate thing is just a formality?” Alex had turned into a petulant five-year-old, so I knew he was fine.

  “Believe me, he could do a lot worse, and he knows we’re not true mates without me telling him.” I hadn’t been aware until now that freaky elven mental magic would work on shapeshifters. “What did he do to you?”

  “Set my brain on fire, I think. Felt like it anyway.”

  That was pretty mild, as elven mind games went. If Rand had wanted to really hurt him, Alex wouldn’t be standing upright and whining. Unfortunately, I knew that from firsthand experience. “Why were you sitting outside, anyway?”

  “Thought I’d wait for you and enjoy the fresh air,” he said, following me through the entry hall into Eugenie’s kitchen, waving at her along the way. She was still sitting on the sofa, staring at the fire, and I wasn’t sure she’d heard us. Which was good; it meant she probably didn’t realize how close Rand had gotten.

  “This is perfect running weather,” Alex said. “Want to go before dinner?”

  No, I had a little science experiment to take care of. “Thanks, but I promised Eugenie I’d help her with some, uh, cleaning.”

  Alex had beautiful eyes, a dark chocolate brown with long lashes that every woman I knew would kill to have, including me. When he squinted in suspicion, like he was doing now, it ruined the whole sexy vibe.

  “You’re an organization freak, but you only clean as a last resort when you want to avoid doing something else. You’re a procrasti-cleaner. What are you really up to?” He snaked out a hand and pulled on the Walgreens package, whose top protruded from its hiding place in my bag. I snatched at it, but he jerked it out, upended it on the kitchen counter, and grinned at the mountain of chocolate candy that tumbled out—until a peanut butter cup rolled to the floor and exposed the lavender box.