She looked at me with such a serious intensity that I knew she deserved the truth, without sugarcoating. “No, he wasn’t exaggerating. It’s why I wanted to get you out of there today before Zrakovi could barge in and start barking orders or asking questions you weren’t ready to answer.”
She nodded and we walked along silently for a few moments. “Thanks for being honest. Don’t try to protect me from the truth. You’re the only one I can really trust to be on my side. Promise me.”
That stung a little, but if I’d been straight with Eugenie from the beginning that Rand wasn’t who or what she thought, she might not be in this situation. I wasn’t letting her down again. “I promise. I’ll be straight with you, and I’ll always have your back, no matter what.”
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and pulled me into a hug. I closed my eyes and hugged her hard, thinking how close we’d come to losing a friendship that meant a lot to both of us. I didn’t know where all this would end up, but she’d be okay. I would make sure of it.
“What do you think will happen next?” She glanced in the shop windows as we resumed our walk through the Quarter.
I thought about all the possible scenarios. “Damned if I know.” That was the God’s honest truth. “It depends on what happened with Zrakovi, so I’ve got to talk to Alex and see how he reacted.”
We turned the corner and, as expected, Alex’s SUV was nowhere to be found. “Let’s walk back toward the Monteleone and find a cab.”
The sidewalk was still slushy in the shadows where the sun hadn’t reached, and if it got as cold as predicted tonight, we’d have treacherous layers of ice to walk on.
“What did you think of Collette?” Quince Randolph notwithstanding, Eugenie had pretty good instincts about people, and she’d spent a couple of hours in Collette’s company. “Did you like her?”
Eugenie laughed. “Yeah, I did. She’s crazy about Jake, too. She said something that made me stop and think about my situation a little differently.”
Pregnancy advice from a loup-garou? “And that was?”
“She told me about being turned into a super-wolf and how her life had changed. She used to be a model and had all these plans to go to California and try to make it big-time. Now she has some of the same problems as Jake. You know, keeping everything under control.” Eugenie pointed at a cabbie parked in front of another hotel, and we sped up to make sure we got it before a sneaky tourist slipped in ahead of us.
Score one for the locals. “So, what did she say that made you think?” We settled back in the cab and gave the driver Eugenie’s address. If Alex wasn’t home, I’d get my stuff and have the cabbie drive me right back to the Quarter.
“She said meeting Jake had made her happier about her life, but sad that she couldn’t have kids. That she might even be willing to have a wolf kid if it were possible but it isn’t. Meeting someone made her feel that loss more.” Eugenie looked out the window, although somehow I didn’t think she was looking at the rundown buildings of Central City whizzing past. “I don’t care who this baby’s daddy is, DJ. I don’t care that it will probably be able to do stuff that scares me or I don’t understand. It’s still part of me. It’s still a gift.” She looked at me, and the tension wafted off her. “Is that, I don’t know, irresponsible? Crazy?”
“No.” I wasn’t surprised, and I might have reached the same conclusion if I’d been in her shoes, even knowing more about the ramifications than she did. “It won’t be easy, Eugenie. As much as you don’t like it, and neither do I, Rand’s going to have to be involved. He’s the only one who can tell us if there are special things you need to be doing.”
Or maybe not. I realized with a jolt that there might be one other person who could fill us in on elven pregnancies, and it was a wizard. Only problem was, I didn’t know where Adrian Hoffman had escaped to when the whole courthouse melee went down. Maybe he was still in custody and I could talk to him; Alex would know. Adrian knew a lot about elves. He might have learned it from books and secondhand sources, but he knew it.
I shifted my gaze to the rearview mirror and caught the cab driver watching us. He thought he was hearing juicy gossip, and would probably go home and laugh with his wife or girlfriend or buddies about the Uptown women trying to figure out what to do after getting knocked up. If he only knew the daddy was an elven chief.
“I know you’re right about Rand being involved, but he’s so unpredictable,” Eugenie said in the understatement of the century. “How do you think he’ll react?”
“Maybe he’ll be reasonable.” I didn’t believe it for a nanosecond. At best, my non-husband would react like an entitled jerk. “I think I should be there when you tell him. Maybe Alex needs to be there, too.” Maybe with a gun.
The cab pulled to a stop in front of Eugenie’s house, and I was relieved to see no signs of Rand either banging down her door or visible inside Plantasy Island across the street. Unfortunately, Alex’s SUV wasn’t in his driveway, either.
“Can you wait here while I run in and get a bag?” I asked the cabbie.
“Sure, sure. But run meter.” English was not his first language; I think that was a requirement for cab drivers around the country. Old-timers like Arnie were a vanishing species.
It wasn’t until I’d retrieved my overnight bag, checked again to see that Alex wasn’t home, and settled back in the taxi for the return trip to the Quarter that I had a moment to reflect again on the trip to Barataria. It had been good to see Jake and meet Collette. Eugenie wasn’t the only one who’d found it relaxing to get away for a few hours. Another dose of healing potion on my shoulder, a hot shower, and a nap would do wonders.
I wondered what crazy business deal Rene and Jean were up to, which reminded me of Rene’s friend Christof. Where had I seen that guy? His face had looked familiar, but not the hair. Not the clothes or the …
Crap on a freaking stick.
Now I remembered where I’d seen him. His hair had been brushed back and styled. He’d been wearing all white, with a fur-trimmed coat. He’d been at the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Building, yelling at the blond firebug.
Christof was one of the princes of Faery.
Which led to the burning question: Why the hell was a faery prince visiting Jean Lafitte?
CHAPTER 10
By the time I checked into my room at the Monteleone, knocked on the door to the Eudora Welty Suite to confirm that Jean hadn’t returned from the Beyond, and took a quick shower, I’d decided Christof must have been slumming, getting a few hours away from Faery. God knows I’d want to escape that wackadoodle Florian and their floating queen.
Christof might know Jean from Interspecies Council business, or at least know of him. Rene’s father, Toussaint, also was a council member, so he could’ve met the merman before. Maybe he liked the music and beer at Tipitina’s and Rene took him to Barataria to warm up.
Because any other reason for his appearance at Jean’s house—a conspiracy between the pirate and the fae and maybe the water species, for example—gave me a big, nasty headache.
I eyed the king-size bed, which was fluffy-pillowed and ready for napping, but decided I shouldn’t put off the things I needed to do.
The first one was a long shot, so I tried it first, pulling a vial of iron filings from my portable magic kit and forming a small summoning circle on the floor of the bathroom—the only windowless space to which I had ready access. I couldn’t summon Adrian Hoffman unless he was in the Beyond, but by all logic he should be there, unless he wanted to be arrested again or unless he’d been arrested again. I hoped he was in Vampyre, giving dear old dad a hard time.
I couldn’t summon him to my room. Vampires didn’t die at dawn like in the movies, but they didn’t trot around in sunlight, either. If I were going to summon him to this side of the border, I’d have to give him a light-tight space.
To be safe, I rolled up a towel and wedged it at the bottom of the bathroom door. If I fried Adrian, I couldn’t
ask him questions about elves.
Then I realized I didn’t have four items closely related to Adrian in order to power the circle. I had a business card, which I placed at due north, and a pen belonging to him that I’d accidentally stuck in my pack after our last elf lesson. I set that down at due South.
I sat on the edge of the tub, thinking of what else I might use. Adrian was a Blue Congress wizard, not Green Congress like me, but otherwise our badges should be similar, so I set my badge at due east. Lacking anything else, I scribbled his name on a sheet of hotel stationery, folded it, and laid it atop the circle at the western side of the arc.
Using a penknife from my pack, I pricked my left index finger and dropped blood on the circle as I touched Charlie to it, shooting out a bit of energy and speaking Adrian’s name.
I’d really expected this experiment to fail, because if I’d been hiding from the Elders and wanted to avoid being summoned, I’d set up wards to protect myself from the summoning magic. But he materialized within seconds, looking panicked as he felt the containment circle and glanced wildly around to see if there was a deadly light source nearby. He stared at the closed bathroom door a moment, then turned to me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, you stupid woman?”
Adrian and I had had a slew of contentious conversations for three years before finally meeting in person, and we hadn’t liked each other any better at close range. I’d thought being a fugitive vampire might make him less haughty, but not so.
It occurred to me that if I were a good sentinel, I’d call Alex and have Adrian arrested. But I was wearing my friend-of-Eugenie hat, and getting him arrested meant it would be a while before I could pump him for information, if ever.
I reached out my foot and broke the circle. “I want to talk about elves.”
He was silent so long that I was sure he was trying to figure out a way to escape, but he finally sat on the toilet lid. “I have nothing to say about that. I can’t believe you summoned me to a hotel bathroom to talk politics.”
Oh, good grief. “Let me rephrase my question. I don’t want to talk about politics or conspiracy plots or even how you almost got me killed last month. I want to talk about elf reproduction; specifically, pregnancy. You know. Length of gestation. What the baby can do in utero. What skills a baby elf has at birth and what he’d develop later. That kind of thing.”
His eyes widened, and he gave me a head-to-toe appraisal. “Oh my God. You’ve let Quince Randolph knock you up. I didn’t think even you were that stupid.”
Now I remembered why I disliked Adrian so much. “I’m not…”
Wait. I needed to think about this. What would be more dangerous: Adrian running back to Vampyre with the news that I had an elf in the oven, or that it was Eugenie? I was better able to defend myself. She probably didn’t taste nearly as vile as I.
“I’m not ready for this pregnancy to be common knowledge,” I told Adrian. “But I do need information and I didn’t know where else to go.”
He sniffed. “Why on earth should I help you?”
God save me from self-serving, smartass wizards-turned-vampire. “Oh, because you owe me, for one thing. Plus, you’re outside the Beyond and trapped in my bathroom until nightfall. One phone call, and the Elders would have you back in their little underground vampire jail cell before you knew what hit you.”
He bared his fangs at me, a disconcerting sight. I was used to Adrian the wizard, not Adrian the vampire. “Fine.” He glared at my midsection. “How far along are you?”
I closed my eyes and cursed the day I’d met Quince Randolph—or the day Eugenie had met him. It galled me for Adrian to think I’d had sex with the elf, or that he might tell anyone else, but this was for Eugenie. “About a month.”
“You probably don’t have many symptoms yet, then. Let me think … it’s been a while since I studied this. Does Randolph know? I really had thought you were lying when you said you had a real marriage.”
Ugh. “It surprised all of us.” So far I hadn’t lied, technically.
“He could tell you more than I can, but since you’re asking me I assume he doesn’t know yet and you don’t want to ask him.”
I perched on the edge of the tub again. “Good assumption.”
Adrian sighed. “I don’t know a lot—you’re eventually going to have to see an elven midwife. Gestation is seven months, so you should be showing within another two or three weeks.”
Great. An elven baby bump.
“Average birth weight is relatively large and you’re, well, not. So you might need … surgery.”
“The elven version of a C-section?” Better and better.
“Right.”
“What can the kid do before it’s born?” I prayed his answer was not much.
“Quite a lot, actually. It’s fascinating.”
Oh, I just bet it was. “Fascinating like a work of art, or fascinating like a freak-show zombie?”
He laughed. ’Cause I’m just that funny.
“The baby will be able to communicate with both of you, but especially with the father since Randolph is a pure-blooded elf. Your magic is a wild card. If you were human, you’d probably sense the baby’s feelings but not as strongly. But the kid’s half wizard, don’t forget. Your pregnancy might be more like that of a wizard.”
Which was exactly like a human pregnancy, since magical skills weren’t evident until a year or two after birth.
For the next half hour, I talked with Adrian about everything I could think to ask, and by the time I formed a transport and let him go on his way, I was exhausted. Eugenie could expect to be in labor at least seventy-two hours, and the labor would be both mental and physical. I didn’t envy my friend any of this.
The baby might or might not be able to influence her moods or actions closer to term. I prayed that wouldn’t happen. Things would be difficult enough with his or her manipulative ass of a father trying to control everyone in sight.
I filed Adrian’s musings about the elven-wizard genetic mix in my brain’s hope-I-never-need-to-know category.
Some of the information was positive. Other than weird smoked-meat cravings, which Adrian thought was specific to the fire elves, there were no bizarre physical symptoms to expect. And the elves revered their young. Their species had dwindled in number through the eons, and the Tân were the smallest of the four clans. This child would be celebrated.
I just had to make sure Eugenie didn’t get trampled in the process.
Speaking of trampled, I needed to talk to Alex. I wanted to find out what Zrakovi had said about the pregnancy, but even more, I didn’t like the way we’d left things this morning. The longer we let things ride, the more apt they were to blow into major problems. We had enough real issues without developing new ones.
He answered on the fourth ring, just as I was sure the phone was going to voice mail. From the noise in the background, I deduced that he was either at a restaurant or bar—lots of overlapping voices and clanking dishes or silverware.
“You’re back from Lafitte’s?” Never one to waste time on niceties like saying hello, my Alex.
“I’m at the hotel. Are you at a place where you can talk? I want to hear how things went with Zrakovi.”
He paused, and I heard a voice in the background yelling, “Two gumbos up!” Restaurant then. “You mean you’re speaking to me?”
No, he was imagining this phone call. “Sounds like it. How’d the conversation go?”
“Let me finish up here first. The enforcer team’s at the Napoleon House, dividing up assignments. I’ll come by your room. I have other news you need to hear.”
Joy. News I needed to hear rarely turned out to be news I wanted to hear. He wouldn’t say more, though, so I left him to his business and lay down with the room service menu. It was never too early to plan tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast.
I dozed off somewhere between French toast and bagels with lox and cream cheese.
�
��Tell Eugenie to answer her goddamned phone.”
I had to be having a nightmare, because Rand was yelling at me. I tried to ignore him.
“We need to discuss my baby and it’s too damned cold to walk over there. But if she doesn’t answer her phone, I will be on her doorstep and she will let me in.”
Definitely a nightmare.
With a disgusted groan, I opened my eyes. I still wore the Hotel Monteleone robe with nothing on underneath, and my hair was damp and curling uncontrollably. Rand wore at least two sweaters and cords, and had a blanket draped over his head. We sat on white-painted wooden benches inside an ornate gazebo.
I recognized it; the structure sat in the corner of the greenhouse area of Plantasy Island. The last time we’d sat in it, it had been no dream. Rand had kidnapped me, taken me to Elfheim, and I’d been mind-raped by Mace Banyan and his merry band of elves.
I knew this was a dream; dreamwalking was an elven skill, and I’d been dragged into enough unpleasant dreamwalks by my late father to recognize the difference.
Rand had hijacked my nap. I tightened the white bathrobe around me so he also didn’t get a free dreamwalking peep show.
“Go away, I’m sleeping.” I couldn’t throw him out of my dream, but I didn’t have to talk to him. Except … wait. What he’d said finally sank in.
“What baby?” I could play dumb. How the hell did he know about the baby?
“Zrakovi told me. You’re my mate; you should have been the one to tell me.” His voice took on a wounded edge. “After all, we’ll be the ones to raise the child. You’ll be a beautiful mother.”
“Mother?” I sputtered. The cold air clearly had frozen his brain. “Eugenie is the child’s mother. I’ll help the two of you work out something that’s good for both of you and for the baby.” Just add prete-human parental custody counselor to my list of sentinel duties, alongside undead pirate-sitting.
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