Pirate's Alley

by Suzanne Johnson

  “Unacceptable.” His voice dropped lower. “The child is elf.”

  God, I hated that imperious elf thing Rand trotted out when he encountered a roadblock and didn’t get his way. It wasn’t even grammatically correct.

  “Look, give Eugenie a little time to come to terms with this, and then she’ll talk to you. She knows you have to be a part of this child’s life.”

  “A part. A part.” His voice turned to ice. “We’ll talk, Dru.”

  I started awake with my face pressed against a photo of a large plate of shrimp rémoulade, which I took as a sign that I should order it. I’d brought all my candy from Eugenie’s, so I had dessert covered. I wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon.

  While I waited for the order, I called Eugenie, who sounded edgy. “He keeps calling me, DJ. I’m not taking his calls. He can’t possibly know, can he?”

  Damn it. “He knows. You need to go on the offensive.”

  “What? How could he know?” It clicked home. “The wizard Elder told him, didn’t he? Alex Warin has a big mouth. Don’t sleep with him again until he apologizes. Loose lips get no sex.”

  I thought that sounded like a reasonable tactic to take with the loose-lipped enforcer. Damn him and his overdeveloped sense of duty. “Here’s my suggestion. Call Rand and tell him you’re glad he knows. Then—”

  “But I’m not glad he knows.” Eugenie was heating up fast; the last thing we needed was for her to piss Rand off even more. “I want Rand to leave me the hell alone until … until … until the kid hits adulthood.”

  I closed my eyes and prayed for patience. Negotiating was not my strong suit; I wanted to beat people over the head, bend them to my will, and move on. Funny how that never worked. “I know you aren’t glad, but tell him you are. Lie through your teeth. You’ve gotta play this smart, Eugie, so he’ll be reasonable and cooperative. You know how pigheaded he can be.”

  She gave a piglike snort into the phone. “You’re not telling me anything new.”

  “So play him like a fiddle.” We could outsmart him. Maybe. “Call him, and be all charming and sweet. Tell him you’re tired today but ask if he could drop by tomorrow afternoon. Even better, since it’s so cold out, tell him you’ll come to see him. I’ll go with you.”

  That would give us a little time to prepare, not to mention a chance for me to share the info I’d gotten from Adrian. The extra time also would give me a chance to talk to Alex, find out what direction Zrakovi’s thoughts were taking, and plan a strategy. Because me taking Eugenie’s baby and raising it with Rand like some preternatural version of The Brady Bunch wasn’t going to happen.

  When Eugenie sighed so loud the noise distorted through the phone, I knew she was going to agree. “Fine. About two tomorrow?”

  “Yes, and call to let me know what he says.” I had been pacing around the room as I talked, but stopped short when I glanced through the five or six inches of daylight showing through the curtains. “Holy cow, is it snowing in Uptown?”

  “I dunno. I was trying to sleep when Rand started calling every thirty seconds.” I heard her walking to the window. “Man, it’s like freaking Alaska out there. How much are we supposed to get?”

  “Hopefully, enough to keep Rand inside until tomorrow.” The weather could play in our favor.

  Room service arrived shortly after we ended the call, and I ate shrimp rémoulade and drank a diet soda in the desk chair, which I’d pulled up to the window so I could watch it snow. The last two days of cold weather had chilled the ground enough for it to stick, or at least I thought so, judging by the rooftops visible from my eighth-floor vantage point. The heavy flakes fell so fast and thick I couldn’t see the ground. Later, I’d worry about how much we were supposed to get, and what streets were closed, and how I’d get to Eugenie’s, and what form Jean Lafitte’s vengeance would take.

  The streets would be like a bumper-car rally. Since New Orleans flooded on a regular basis from ordinary thunderstorms, we thought we could drive through anything. I hoped Alex would walk from the Napoleon House instead of moving the SUV. I’d hate for him to have a wreck before I got to bitch at him for being an Elder-loving suck-up.

  Eugenie called to report that Rand had been frosty but agreed to the afternoon meeting. “He didn’t like it.” She paused. “And he said something else. That the two of you are going to raise my baby. Tell me he’s lying.”

  My skin heated from the pent-up anger. “He is a lying horse’s ass, not to mention delusional, and you know that. Seriously, Eugenie. I wouldn’t raise a houseplant with Quince Randolph.”

  She sniffled. Oh good grief, she was crying. I gritted my teeth and counted to five. “Look, Eugie. Rand’s freaked out and he’s mad that he had to find out about the baby from one of the wizards. By the time he processes it and tomorrow rolls around, he will have calmed down.” And so will you, I hope.

  “Okay. You’re right. He just gets on my last nerve.”

  “It’s his greatest talent.” That earned a chuckle at least, and Eugenie hung up with a promise to call me if Rand made contact again. Unfortunately, it was harder for me. I might never be able to sleep again.

  One thing was for sure. I had to come up with a Rand-friendly compromise by two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, but first I needed to talk to one loose-lipped, might-never-have-sex-again enforcer.

  CHAPTER 11

  After an hour during which the snowscape had rendered me semi-comatose, I forced myself to get up and roll the food cart outside the door for housekeeping to retrieve. I felt my big-mouthed shapeshifter long before I saw him rounding the corner. His shifter aura, fueled by adrenaline, radiated more strongly than I’d ever sensed it. Then again, he usually kept his brain buttoned up when he was around me lest my empathy pick up on something he didn’t want me to know.

  Plus, I’d never encountered him after he’d been with a whole bunch of testosterone-laden enforcers, most of whom were either werewolves or alpha shifters. Even the women, or so Alex had said.

  Enforcers, he told me, were drafted based on badassitude, not gender.

  His badass self turned the corner from the elevator, and I stifled a smile. Black boots, black combat pants, black sweater with the sleeves pushed up, and no coat. His dark hair was its usual tousle of almost-too-long dark waves, and his cheeks had a rosy glow from the brisk wind. He was gorgeous.

  I had to remind myself how annoyed I was with him, especially when he treated me to the sexy grin that caused a sexy crease on the left side of his sexy mouth. Damn his eyes, which also were sexy.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he said, wrapping me in a bear hug and lifting me off my feet. He put all that pent-up energy into one hell of a kiss. Man, I hated to ruin this by bringing up problems, but all I had to do to get in the proper mood was envision Rand’s petulant face as he talked about being elf.

  I wrenched my mouth from his with some effort. “Put me down.”

  “Uh-uh. Don’t wanna talk.” He kissed me again, full of promise of what we might do if I’d just let it go and enjoy the ride. He nibbled his way down my neck, edging close to my souvenir from Garrett Melnick.

  I threaded my finger through his thick hair, still damp from melted snow, singled out a few strands, and jerked them out.

  “Ouch.” He let me go and rubbed his head. “You play dirty.”

  I turned and went back into the room, holding the door open for him. “You can’t kiss this conversation away.”

  “It almost worked. Maybe more tongue next time?” He gave me a grin that made him look about sixteen. Well, a really hot sixteen. It was hard for me to stay mad at him, and he took shameless advantage of it.

  “Look, let’s talk about Zrakovi and Eugenie and then we can kiss the rest of the night.” If the talk went well, anyway. I figured if Jean Lafitte had half a brain, he’d stay in nice, warm Barataria until morning. I should have a few pirateless hours to spare.

  “Fine.” Alex stretched out on the bed, and I pointedly pulled the straight-backed c
hair away from the window, planted it several feet from him, and sat in it with my arms crossed. If I got anywhere near that bed we wouldn’t be talking. He knew that, too, which was why he stretched like a cat, causing all the muscles under that sweater to flex.

  Cheater.

  He huffed out a sigh. “Yeah, okay. I told Zrakovi about Eugenie, as I’m sure you know. I understand why you wanted me to wait, but I didn’t want him blindsided if Rand found out another way and stirred up a conspiracy theory.”

  All of those things were true, even the part about Zrakovi needing to know. He just hadn’t needed to know this morning. That brigantine had set sail, though, so I let it go.

  “What did he say? And what did you expect him to do once you’d told him?”

  Alex sat up and swung his legs off the bed, probably either deciding I wasn’t going to join him or figuring he needed his feet on the floor in case the situation called for a quick escape. “His exact words were, ‘Oh my.’ Which, with him, is like dropping an f-bomb.” Alex scraped his hands through his hair. I think he was going for sexy bedhead but kind of crossed into crazed territory. Or maybe I was just annoyed.

  “I figure he’ll go back to Edinburgh and think about it for a day or two,” Alex said. “As far as I know, that’s what he’s done.”

  I crossed my legs and examined my un-pampered cuticles. I thought the Monteleone had a day spa I needed to visit, at Zrakovi’s expense, and I planned to tip big. “Well, you are dead wrong. He made a detour before he went back to Edinburgh, or either came back once the Elders finished their meeting.”

  He leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. “What do you mean?”

  “Zrakovi went straight to Quince Randolph.” I told him about the dream visit from my non-husband, and my follow-up call to Eugenie.

  “Maybe it wasn’t Zrakovi,” Alex said. “Maybe Randolph pulled the information from you since you share your secret elven mating bond.” He managed to put an extra dose of snark into those last four words. He’d better watch his step; I was the queen of snark and he couldn’t out-snipe me even on his best day. I could skewer him and smoke him on a spit.

  “Alex.” I took my most patient tone. “Rand told me he learned about it from Zrakovi.” I paused. “That was right before he chastised me for not telling him myself since he and I were going to be raising this child as our own.”

  Heh. That got his attention, and his brows lowered in an appropriately outraged expression. “Is he fucking nuts?”

  We both pondered that a few seconds, but the answer was an obvious yes. “Look,” I finally said. “He’s going to be an ass, and that’s no surprise.” What I wanted from Alex was an apology, damn it. “Just admit that you misjudged how Zrakovi would react, apologize for putting Eugenie in an awkward position where Rand heard about the pregnancy from someone besides her, and we can move on to damage control.”

  I thought I was being mature about the whole thing. An apology wasn’t too much to ask for, although he really should apologize to Eugenie.

  His chocolate-brown eyes hardened. “I’m sorry that Eugenie got put in a tough situation by Rand, but I won’t apologize for doing the right thing. That awkward conversation with Randolph would’ve happened eventually anyway because he’s an entitled jerk. How Willem reacted was out of my control.”

  Willem? Well, wasn’t that chummy.

  I examined the subtle pattern in the carpet and took a deep breath. To let this disagreement escalate into a full-blown fight would be taking the easy path. We’d both say things we couldn’t take back, things we’d have to work to overcome, maybe even things we couldn’t overcome. “Weigh your battles and then use everything you’ve got to win the ones worth fighting,” Gerry used to tell me when I’d be impatient or fly off the handle at something insignificant.

  This wasn’t a battle I wanted to fight. We didn’t disagree in principle, only in the timing and execution.

  “Okay.” I got up and pulled my interrogation chair back to the desk, stopping to look at the dense curtain of snowflakes illuminated by the light from my window. Darkness had fallen, but I could barely see the streetlights below.

  Suspicion infused Alex’s voice. “Okay? That’s it?”

  I looked back at him and smiled. “That’s it. We disagree. It’s done. We’ll deal with whatever comes next.”

  He stood up, brows lowered over squinty eyes. “Did Lafitte ply you with brandy, or have the body snatchers been here?”

  I laughed. “No brandy and no body snatchers.” I pondered whether or not to tell him about Christof being at Jean’s house and about my summoning the fugitive Adrian, but decided against it. I didn’t know what the Christof thing meant, I’d promised Adrian that I wouldn’t turn him in, and despite my new and improved maturity, Alex had lost a bit of ground with me in the trust department.

  It wasn’t fair for me to tell him something with potential impact on prete politics and ask him to keep it to himself. In matters of keeping my secrets versus supporting the Elders, especially Zrakovi, I’d always lose. It’s what made Alex good at his job, and that sense of responsibility was one of the things I loved about him most of the time. The rest of the time, I’d just have to live with it. Or keep my own secrets, as long as they didn’t hurt anyone.

  When he saw that I really didn’t plan to start a fight, his tension level went down, which in turn helped me relax. I hadn’t refreshed my mojo bag in a while, which meant a trip to the unheated house in Lakeview, assuming I could get there in the snow. I needed to set up a transport from the Monteleone to my house.

  “Where is your oversize French babysitting charge?” Alex pulled a bottle of water out of the minibar. “I half expected him to be here in your room.”

  Alex sat on the cream-colored upholstered chair wedged into the corner, which left me the bed or the interrogation chair. I sat on the bed; too bad the Elders hadn’t gotten me a suite like Jean’s, complete with wet bar, entertainment area, and two windows big enough to drive a bus through.

  “He’s still in Old Barataria, where it’s warm. If he’s smart, he’ll stay there until the snow melts. Forget Jean. You said you had something else to tell me.”

  Alex became engrossed in the upholstered arm of the chair, a tactic that looked a lot like my cuticle examination. Whatever he had to say, he wasn’t sure how I’d react. “I talked to Willem after the Elders’ meeting, and he’s been named interim First Elder. He sounded pretty jazzed about it.”

  “I guess so. Not a big surprise, though.” Despite his recent lapse of discretion, Zrakovi was a distinct improvement over his predecessor, and I hoped he got the job permanently. “That was your news?”

  “No.” Alex thrummed the fingers of his right hand on his knee. It was his one nervous tell; my anxiety level ratcheted higher again. “They’re issuing a warrant for Elder Hoffman’s arrest, by the way, along with Adrian, Etienne, and Melnick—there’ll be a new Elder to represent the UK and European Union.”

  Which impacted me how? Not at all. “So?”

  Alex squared his shoulders as if he were heading into a battle and expected to encounter heavy fire. “So, did you know Gerry had a brother?”

  I stared at him, parsing out his sentence to make sure I’d heard correctly.

  “Are you serious?” I should know that. True, I hadn’t discovered that Gerry was my biological father until just before he died, and the way I found out—in a journal entry and a couple of dreamwalks—still stung. There had been no time to find out vital details like siblings, and DJ the idiot child hadn’t thought to ask. Apparently, no one had thought to tell me. “Well, that’s a surprise.”

  “I knew you’d never mentioned a family except on your mom’s side.” Alex leaned back in the chair, more relaxed now that the conversation had been started. What, he’d expected me to get hysterical over newfound relatives?

  My mind stuttered and jumped from thought to thought. My mom had died when I was six, and Gerry had been the wizard who’d taken me
a year later when my exasperated family wanted to get rid of me. Gerry had taught me how to be a wizard, how to question authority, and, like himself, how to be a bit entrepreneurial in my problem-solving skills. Or so people kept telling me.

  Gerry had talked about growing up in Aylesbury, just northwest of London, and about the death of his parents in an accident when he was thirty. About school adventures. About wizardry and history and what stuffed shirts the Elders tended to be. He was teacher, mentor, boss, friend. Father, to me, was still Peter Jaco, the human man my mom had married, whose surname I still used, the one so freaked out by my magic he sent me to live with a stranger.

  But what Gerry hadn’t told me could fill books. He never mentioned that he’d met my mom, much less gotten her pregnant. He made it sound like New Orleans was the place he’d chosen to be sentinel, but I later learned that he’d been exiled here by the Elders for being a rabble-rouser. He had never mentioned a brother.

  “What do you know about this brother?” I paused. “Is he the only one?” I might have a huge family of strangers in England.

  Alex raked a hand across his evening stubble. Like me, he’d been up more than thirty-six hours and looked tired now that his enforcer adrenaline rush had drained. “I asked that. He’s Gerry’s only sibling and is six years younger. His name is Lennox, and he’s probably going to be the new Elder, representing the UK and Europe.”

  Lennox St. Simon. How terribly British. “Why am I just now hearing about him? He and Gerry obviously weren’t close.”

  Other than myself and Tish Newman, Gerry’s longtime significant other, he hadn’t been close to anyone, which was kind of sad. Tish had been dead only a few months, and the weight of losing her slammed into me all at once. With the prete craziness, I hadn’t dealt with her murder or Gerry’s either, not really, and their loss tended to wallop me upside the head when I wasn’t expecting it. Like now.

  As I’d done every time before, I swallowed down the lump of pain that had risen in my throat. One of these days, it wouldn’t work and I’d fall apart. But not tonight. This time, once again, I held it together. “Is he Red Congress like Gerry?”