Pirate's Alley

by Suzanne Johnson

  To my left shone the lights of the Carousel Bar, and I could think of nothing that might warm me up faster than an Irish coffee, or maybe just the Irish without the coffee. As always, the bar pulled me in two directions. It was funky and fun and clever. It also was bizarre and disconcerting. The polished wooden bar in the center was round, with brightly colored stools ringing it on the outside, and a circular, mirrored display of liquor bottles on the inside. The whole thing revolved slowly so that you’d make a full rotation every half hour or so.

  Business was brisk; the tourists still in the city had wisely decided to stay inside instead of roaming the French Quarter. But I spotted a couple leaving and somehow propelled my frozen, numb feet to hurry and claim a stool.

  “What’s the warmest thing you have?” I asked the dark-suited bartender.

  He laughed. “Martini or cocktail?”

  Martinis were too small. “Cocktail. Big one.”

  “Well, you’re lookin’ kinda pale. We got one called the Corpse Reviver—gin, Cointreau, absinthe, Lillet Blanc.”

  Ironic. Too ironic. “Maybe something sweet.” Okay, I’m a wimp.

  He studied me, as if my bedraggled appearance might give him the perfect cocktail suggestion. “The French Double-O-Seven: Grey Goose, pomegranate liqueur, and champagne.”

  “Now you’re talking.” Because when I saw the Frenchman, I was going all James Bond on his ass.

  By the time my drink arrived, the bar had made a quarter turn. I paid the twelve bucks plus tip with my own credit card, since it seemed wrong to make Zrakovi pay for the drink I was consuming to help me forget how much I’d lied to him. Sweet heat filled my mouth and burned its way down my happy throat, settling into my stomach, and I found myself wishing for a bag of smoked beef jerky.

  Freakin’ elves.

  As the bar turned, I studied the changing view of patrons sitting at the tables that were scattered around the edges. There seemed to be an even mix of tourists and business people. Maybe a few locals who’d come to the Quarter to see the snow and decided to warm up at the bar.

  I glanced up at the glittering mirrored display of alcohol in the center of the bar and did a double take. Had that been Truman Capote?

  I swiveled and scanned the tables looking for him and, instead, found myself capturing the gaze of a long-haired man with a vaguely familiar pair of green eyes. I couldn’t see who was with him because of a couple of businessmen who’d sat at a table between my perch and his, and I couldn’t quite place him. His eyes looked sort of like those of Christof, the dark-haired faery who’d been at Jean’s house in Barataria, but this guy had shoulder-length brown hair with a lot of red highlights.

  He smiled at me and leaned over to say something to a companion. Finally, the businessmen moved to seats at the bar and left me with an unimpeded view. The green-eyed man might not have been Christof the faery, but his companions I recognized.

  Truman Capote, a card-carrying member of the historical undead, and his equally undead companion.

  I’d found Jean Lafitte.

  CHAPTER 16

  Call me suspicious, but I had no doubt Truman Capote’s only purpose in being at the Carousel Bar with Jean Lafitte was to serve as his alibi. Probably the other guy, too.

  “Well, if it isn’t Cat Woman,” Capote drawled.

  “You remember me, then.” Good. Not having to explain who I was made things simpler.

  Capote had been part of the William Faulkner dustup after Katrina. A bunch of historically undead New Orleans authors had come across the border and broken into Faulkner House Books near Jackson Square, where the man himself had lived in his human life for a while. They proceeded to get drunk until I’d done a nifty bit of magic, turned them all into cats, rounded them up, and sent them back to the Beyond in boxes. As I recalled, Capote had turned into an oversize Maine coon.

  “I’m not likely to forget such an experience.” He took off his dark glasses and signaled the waiter for another drink. The historically undead Capote was middle-aged and cocky, his neck draped in a pastel-striped scarf whose purples and pinks looked unsettling next to his somber black suit and fedora.

  I was ignoring Jean Lafitte and his knowing little smile, so I held out a hand to the auburn-haired guy. “DJ Jaco. You look awfully familiar. Have we met?”

  “We have.” He took my hand and pressed it to his lips in an old-world, courtly way that reminded me of the pirate I was ignoring. “I am Christof, the Faery Prince of Winter and, I hope, next in line to the monarchy. We’ve met twice, I believe.”

  “But…” The eyes were the same, green and slightly almond-shaped. But he’d had dark hair slicked back at the council meeting and tousled at Jean’s—and not nearly this long. His title finally sank in. “You’re the Winter Prince? And why do you look different?”

  “Perhaps you should give Drusilla a demonstration, Christof.” Jean stared at me a moment and suppressed a broad smile. What was that about?

  “Of course. Excuse me for a moment.” The Prince of Winter got up and made his way out of the bar, disappearing into the lobby. I swear, I needed a vacation. Life had grown too bizarre.

  The waiter brought a fizzy drink and set it in front of Capote, who took his little plastic spear, stabbed a cherry, and held it out to me. “Suck it. Let’s see those tongue skills,” he said.

  I choked on my French Double-O-Seven. “I beg your pardon?”

  Jean’s smile widened into a full-out grin. “One should not wear such clothing if one does not wish to receive such invitations, my pet.”

  Huh? I looked down at my sweatshirt for the first time. I’d grabbed the first thing I saw in the gift shop and hadn’t even pulled the price tags off. A line of gold crawfish claws danced across the front, with lines of enormous purple type above and below that said “SUCK DAT HEAD” and “PINCH DAT TAIL.”

  Gah. “It’s talking about crawfish, not sex. If either of you had been alive in the last twenty years, you’d know that.” Damn it. This was almost as humiliating as hibernating in public. I jerked the sweatshirt over my head and tossed it on the floor. The one beneath it was identical, so I pulled it off as well. I was inside now; my black sweater would be fine.

  “If someone hadn’t thrown my coat away and then set a fire I had to run outside to investigate, I wouldn’t have been forced to wear suggestive sweatshirts,” I hissed at Jean.

  “Ah, yes, this awakens my memory.” He leaned over and reached beneath the table, bringing out a large plastic bag. “Your eyes will look like jewels wearing this, Jolie.”

  Bribes would get him nowhere, but I opened the bag anyway. Holy crap. I pulled out a coat of buttery soft lambskin dyed to a rich teal. I surreptitiously held it up so I could see the size was a six and should fit. It was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t possibly take it. If he thought giving me a … I glanced at the sales receipt that had fallen out on the table, and almost choked. If he thought giving me a $4,000 coat would get him off the hook for today’s behavior he was not only dead but dead wrong.

  “This is beautiful, but I can’t take it, Jean.”

  “Bah. I chose it for you, so you must have it.” He looked over my shoulder. “And here is Christof.”

  I turned and stared. The green eyes still twinkled with good humor; the stylish dark trousers and white shirt were the same. But nothing else. His face had lengthened, cheekbones grown more pronounced, and his hair was not only stylishly short but a sun-streaked blond. “You’re like a shapeshifter, only you change human appearance?”

  Christof sat down and sipped from the glass of wine he’d left behind. “Not a bad analogy, Sentinel Jaco. May I call you DJ?”

  That would be a welcome relief, since Jean refused to use my “alphabet letters” and Rand insisted on calling me Dru. “Of course. Is this an ability unique to the Winter Prince or to all of the fae? Can you change gender as well?”

  “Every one of us who is of pure faery blood can change our appearance at will,” he sai
d. “Of mixed-species fae, it varies. But no, we do not possess the ability to change genders, although that would be … illuminating. Perhaps then I would understand women.”

  Somehow, I doubted it. I really had to find time between fires and babies and political crises to do my faery research. “You and Jean and Mr. Capote are friends?”

  “Why, yes, indeed.” Christof looked at both of his companions with a bemused expression, and something that had been niggling at the back of my mind finally came to the fore. Gerry had once told me that faeries couldn’t lie, but were masters of obfuscation.

  I needed to be very specific and very literal. “How long have you been friends?”

  Christof cocked his head and fixed his bright gaze on me. It was probably my lack of sweatshirts, but the temperature around us seemed to drop. “How does one measure friendship in such mundane things as hours or days or years?”

  Exactly what I thought. “Have you known Mr. Capote more than six hours?”

  It wasn’t my imagination; the room grew colder. People at the next table looked around for the waiter and tugged on their coats. “No,” Christof said.

  “Did you know I was born here at the Monteleone?” Capote asked, pulling his suit coat more snugly around him. “Well, that’s what I always claimed back in the day.”

  I’d be polite, but my radar wasn’t getting deflected that easily. “I’d heard that, actually. So it wasn’t true?”

  “No,” Capote said, laughing. “I was born down the street at Charity Hospital, or where Charity was before Hurricane Katrina destroyed it. Fine old hospital.” He sipped his cocktail and stared into the ether of time. “My mother lived here while she was pregnant with me, though, and a member of the hotel staff drove her to the hospital when labor started.”

  “Did she live in the rooms of Eudora Welty?” Jean asked, sending the whole insane conversation into Wonderland territory.

  As they discussed the literary history of the Hotel Monteleone, I pondered the drop in temperature and the sudden buddy status of Jean Lafitte and the Faery Prince of Winter. Silent across the table, Christof kept his gaze on me like a jagged iceberg.

  I leaned back and focused instead on the large-screen TV playing in one corner, hoping to bore him into warming things up. Its sound was turned down too low to hear, but the picture switched from a report on the Saints’ NFL playoff hopes to—what else—the weather.

  Snowy vista after snowy vista filled the screen, replaced by a red-nosed, heavily bundled reporter whose breath plumed in white clouds as he talked into his microphone. Heavy snow swirled behind him. A map appeared on the screen, showing the Southeastern U.S., where everything was green and clear except for a big white circle sitting over that part of Louisiana just south of Lake Pontchartrain.

  The Faery Prince of Winter arrives in town at the same time we have the unexplainable winter of a lifetime. We have the winter of a lifetime at the same time Jean Lafitte, said prince’s new BFF, wants to punish the elves for their part in last month’s fiasco.

  This weather had crippled them. Rand was the only one still staying in New Orleans and couldn’t leave his house without risking hibernation. Mace Banyan had fled back to Elfheim. The elves, Jean wouldn’t want to kill—Lily had already been decapitated. But he would enjoy tormenting them.

  Crap on a freaking stick.

  I shifted my gaze back to Christof, and in his cold stare and another dip in temperature, I saw the truth in my suspicions.

  “Christof,” Jean said, touching the prince’s arm. “Perhaps you should go back to Faery this evening and appease your queen. As you yourself said, she is displeased with your continued absence from her court.”

  “Very well, my friend.” Christof leaned back, and I sighed in relief as the temperature rose again. “You will take care of this problem?”

  I didn’t look up at him, but I was pretty sure “this problem” meant me.

  “Oui, give my regards to your queen and your brother.”

  Christof laughed. “Well, my queen perhaps. Florian and I do not talk more than is necessary, as you know.”

  He bade good-bye to Truman Capote, who’d fallen silent during the exchange, and turned last to me. “I’m sure we’ll meet again soon, DJ.”

  I kept my eyes on Jean. “Undoubtedly. Safe travels.”

  He shrugged into a long wool coat and swept from the room. The temperature continued to rise.

  Capote began chatting again, telling stories and engaging Jean in conversation, which was fine with me. I needed to think.

  I owed Jean Lafitte my life, as Willem Zrakovi had pointed out. More than that, I considered him a friend. Maybe not the most straightforward friend, but I had no doubts that if push came to shove, he would protect me. I also felt certain he would never betray me, even at cost to himself.

  If I turned him in for burning the vampire club and using the Winter Prince to make the elves miserable, he’d lose his spot on the Interspecies Council at the very least. He might face prosecution for consorting with the fae while the Elders were still paying him to provide them with updated navigational maps of the Beyond.

  I also was likely not the only one turning a blind eye toward his business dealings with Rene, and those could be shut down, which would hurt both of them. Jean could even be confined to the Beyond, which would hurt him far worse than a temporary physical death. He was adventurous and independent. Chaining him down would kill his spirit even if his body survived forever.

  So far, he hadn’t actually hurt anyone. He was playing mental games, like a big old French cat toying with a vampire mouse and a few elven cockroaches.

  There was another issue that factored into how I dealt with Jean. I considered him a friend, and I owed him. Beyond that? I had avoided thinking too hard about my feelings for him, and had no idea what his were toward me. We’d been flirting for years. He’d made it clear that he found me desirable, and I’d unfortunately not hidden my attraction from him nearly well enough or Alex wouldn’t continue to see him as a threat.

  I couldn’t make a reasonable decision about his dealings with the fae or his potential arson case until I knew where Jean and I stood. For Alex, it would be black and white. Jean broke the law, so Jean should be punished, whatever that meant. I couldn’t think that way. I didn’t want to think that way. Right or wrong, my heart had a say in whatever decision my mind reached.

  Jean had told me a time would come when I’d have to choose sides. I hadn’t thought it would be now, or in this way. Then again, maybe it wasn’t as complicated as I was trying to make it. There was only one way to find out.

  “Jean.” I interrupted Capote in the middle of a rousing story about his adventures growing up in the city. “We need to talk.”

  Something on my face seemed to tell him this was not a light request. “Truman, mon ami. Our time here draws to a close.”

  Capote looked from Jean to me and back. “Good, I was tired of talking. I can expect that portable computer tomorrow?”

  Jean gave a single nod. “Bien sûr.”

  “And you’ll set up lessons for me on how to use it?”

  Jean looked at me, eyebrows raised.

  Oh, hell no.

  My go-to-the-devil look must have been enough; Jean turned back to Capote. “My friend Rene will arrange these lessons.”

  Guess laptops were the cost of an alibi in the financial realms of the historical undead, and Rene would be making a visit to an electronics store. The Geek Squad probably didn’t make house calls to Old Orleans.

  Capote wandered out of the lobby and turned toward the central Quarter. I wasn’t concerned about him being recognized, and he was smart enough to keep his identity hidden. He was just one more eccentric guy in a city full of them.

  What concerned me was the man who sat next to me at the table, watching me with cobalt-blue eyes that had seen much and were often far too perceptive.

  He held out his hand, and after a pause, I took it. “Shall we, Drusilla?”

>   God help us, we shall.

  CHAPTER 17

  Throughout the walk across the hotel lobby and into the elevator, I tried to talk myself out of having this conversation. It wasn’t too late. We could go upstairs, Jean would ask if I really wanted the truth about his involvement in the fire, and I would tell him no. Then he could spin a few lies about his lack of involvement, both of us knowing they were lies. I could then pretend to believe him and pass the lies on to Zrakovi.

  Here was the problem: I’d also have to pass the lies on to Alex, because if I told Alex the truth, he’d tell Zrakovi. Never mind that it hurt Rene as well as Jean. Never mind that it hurt me. He’d do the right thing as he saw it; he might feel badly about it, especially if it hurt me, but he’d believe he had no choice.

  I admired that about Alex, his sense of moral absolutes. I also hated that about Alex, his inability to acknowledge the gray areas and shadowy corners of life.

  Maybe one of the reasons I didn’t want to have this talk with Jean was that it would make me confront my feelings about Alex. Did I love him or did I just desperately want to love him? Did he love me? Even if the love was there and was real, was it enough?

  One crisis at a time.

  Before following Jean into the elevator, I slipped my mojo bag from around my neck and stuck it in my messenger bag. Normally, my empathic abilities were more crippling than illuminating. The more of other people’s emotions I could filter out, the better, and my daily meditation and my locket of magicked herbs and chips of gemstones helped strengthen those filters.

  Tonight, I wanted a read on Jean’s emotions and I was glad that, unlike a lot of pretes whose readings were hard to interpret, I could read the auras of the historical undead just like any other human. I wasn’t sure Jean knew I could filter and absorb emotions. I had never told him and, if he knew, he’d never mentioned it. Advantage: DJ.

  So as we walked side by side on our silent way down the hall to Jean’s suite, I knew he was worried. I didn’t know if he was worried about his deal with Christof being exposed, concerned about our pending conversation, or fretting about the value of gold bullion in Europe.