Jerome threw back his head and laughed.
“Cats?” he said. “Man, Grifter, you can grow old and die before you can get a cat to do what you want it to. Even with a dragon’s life span. Those are some of the most independent beasts God dumped on the earth.”
“It’s better to start with dogs or maybe birds,” Mose said. “Tell you what. Come on by tomorrow night and I’ll show you a couple exercises.”
“Um, actually I have a date with Lisa tomorrow night,” Griffen said.
“Cancel it,” Mose said. “Either that or meet up with her later. Right now we have to keep our priorities straight, and our highest priority is to keep you alive.”
Thirty-four
Griffen was suddenly awake, but he didn’t know why.
Turning his head slightly, he cracked an eye and focused on the large numbers on the digital clock on his bedside table. 1:30. Okay. Now the question was morning or afternoon. There were no windows in his bedroom, and the door was closed, so daylight or the lack thereof was no clue.
Then, he heard the music. “Singing in the Rain,” played on a calliope. That made it one thirty in the afternoon. The calliope was on the steamboat Natchez, serenading the tourists boarding for the two o’clock cruise up the Mississippi. “Singing in the Rain” meant that it was raining out, or soon would be, and there would be very few tourists for the cruise.
That was one of the things Griffen loved about the Quarter. Where else could you not only tell what time it was, but also the weather conditions without even looking out a window.
Of course, that still didn’t let him know what had woken him up.
Tap, ta tap tap.
He started to sit up, only to find his arm was pinned under Fox Lisa. He tried to ease it free, but she only snuggled closer to him, pressing her velvety nakedness against him. Okay. There were other reasons than calliope music that he loved the Quarter.
Fox Lisa had turned out to be a delight as a bed partner. She was as playful as an otter, and as inventive as a monkey on fifty feet of greased grapevine. Without thinking, he started to respond to her pressure.
Tap, ta tap tap.
“Hey, lover,” he said softly, pulling his arm free. “There’s someone at the door.”
“Mmmmrphl,” she said, rolling over and burrowing into their mound of pillows.
Griffen hesitated, then leaned over and kissed the back of her neck, biting it gently.
“Mmmmhmm,” she breathed, raising her rump slightly and wiggling it.
Tap, ta tap tap.
Griffen disengaged himself with a sigh and got out of bed. He fumbled in the dark for a moment to find his pants, then eased out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
Even though, as anticipated, the sky was overcast, there was still enough light pouring through the windows to make him squint. Swaying slightly, he managed to pull on his pants as he made his way to the door.
Tap, ta tap tap.
“Who is it?” he called, trying to keep from snarling.
“It’s Jerome, Grifter,” came the response.
He should have known. With the security gates on the complex, the only ones who could have reached his door without getting buzzed in from the street were his sister and Jerome.
Opening the door, he stepped back to admit his visitor.
Jerome swept in brandishing a paper bag, an ovenlike blast of hot, humid air entering with him.
“Brought us some breakfast, Grifter,” he said. “Fresh from la Madeleine. French roast coffee and a couple of napoleons.”
“Terrific,” Griffen said, hastily closing the door against the day’s heat. “Just got up. Be with you in a second.”
Rubbing his eyes, he made his way into the bathroom to take care of his morning business.
“You’re getting to be a real Quarter rat.” Jerome’s voice came to him through the door. “It’s the middle of the afternoon and you’re just getting up.”
“Nothing new there,” Griffen said, zipping up his trousers as he emerged from the bathroom. “I’ve always been a bit of a night owl. That’s why I paid other people to sit in on my morning classes and take my tests back in school. Remember? And keep your voice down. I have company.”
Jerome glanced at the closed bedroom door.
“Fox Lisa?”
Griffen nodded.
“Glad to see the two of you are hitting it off,” Jerome said. “Watch yourself, though, if you start stepping out on her. You can’t keep nothing secret in the Quarter. Wherever you go with another woman, you’re going to run into a bartender or a waiter or a busboy who knows you. Even just walking down the street you’ll be spotted by a cab driver or a rose vendor or a Lucky Dog seller. You might as well just assume that the Fox there will know about it the next time you see her.”
“No big deal,” Griffen said, opening his coffee and taking a cautious sip. “There’s nothing permanent or exclusive going on with Fox Lisa and me. We’re just hanging out buddies and occasional lovers.”
“Uh-huh.” Jerome smiled. “The question is, does she know that? I don’t recall seeing her with anyone else since she’s taken up with you.”
“Whatever,” Griffen said, suddenly uncomfortable. “So what brings you here so early? I have a feeling it wasn’t just to share breakfast or to talk about my love life.”
“Got some good news for you.” Jerome dug in his pocket and produced a set of keys which he tossed to Griffen. “You’ve got your car back. Fixed up good as new. Even had it tuned and its tires rotated.”
“The Goblin?” Griffen said, his mind still fuzzy from sleep. “Where is she?”
“Got her stashed away in a garage,” Jerome said. “I’ll take you around and show you where when you can spare the time.”
Griffen was startled to realize that he hadn’t even thought about his car for nearly a month. He had been so busy learning the ins and outs of the gambling operation and the Quarter, not to mention hanging with Fox Lisa, that he had had little leisure time to think about much of anything else. The Goblin seemed like something from another time in his life…pre-Quarter.
“I dunno, Jer,” he said. “I mean, I appreciate your taking care of getting her fixed up and all, but maybe I should just sell her.”
“Sell the Goblin?” Jerome said. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Well, she doesn’t really fit into my current lifestyle,” Griffen said. “I hear it’s expensive to keep a car here in the Quarter, and you were right, I haven’t really needed one. I can walk or cab it anywhere I need to go. Besides, weren’t you the one who told me that a distinctive car like the Goblin would make it too easy to find or track me?”
“As I recall,” Jerome said, “Stoner has already found you. And as for the expense, you can afford it now. Besides, she might come in handy if you want to duck out to the burbs for a movie or a bit of shopping. Why don’t you keep her for a while before you make up your mind. Once you sell her, there’s no way you can get her back. Don’t worry about it right now. You’ve got enough on your plate. I’ll see she’s taken care of.”
Griffen took a long sip of his coffee as he studied his friend.
“I know I’ve asked this before, Jerome, but why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“All this,” Griffen said. “Getting my car fixed, taking me clothes shopping, defending me when the high rollers question whether or not I’m up to taking over things, all that. In general, playing second banana to me, even though you’d be the natural choice to take over for Mose. Why?”
Jerome rolled his eyes and sighed.
“I thought we had gone over this already.”
“Well, let’s go through it again. For my benefit,” Griffen said. “I’ve got to admit, Jer, I still don’t get it. It’s like I’ve been given the starring role in a play, but no one has bothered to give me a copy of the script. What am I supposed to be doing, anyway?”
“All you got to do is just be you,” Jerome said ear
nestly. “That’s the beauty of it. You’re a high-blood dragon, and it’s in your nature to gravitate toward building power. I can’t tell you how you’re going to do it. I don’t know. The other night at the big game, I wasn’t lying. Since you’ve signed on, more and more of the independent games are wanting to join our organization. Our network hasn’t changed. The only difference is you. Do you know how you did it?”
“Not really,” Griffen admitted.
“Neither do I,” Jerome said. “But it’s happening. And you haven’t even been around for two months. I don’t know where it’s all going or how it’ll get there, but I’m in for the ride.”
“Okay, Jer,” Griffen said. “I guess I’m in, too. I don’t pretend to understand, but I’m in. You’re the one who knows dragons. Hell, two months ago I thought dragons were as make believe as vampires and werewolves. Now, I not only am dealing with them, I’m…what?”
He was suddenly aware that Jerome was staring at him with a bemused expression on his face.
“Sorry, Grifter,” Jerome said, shaking his head. “I keep forgetting how new you are to all this.”
“Okay. What am I missing now?”
“It was what you just said, about dragons being as make believe as vampires and werewolves.” Jerome smiled.
“Yeah. So?”
Jerome kept smiling.
“Wait a minute,” Griffen said. “Are you trying to tell me that there really are vampires and werewolves?”
“If you mean the movie-type vampires that bite people’s necks and drink blood, the answer is no,” Jerome said. “What we do have, though, is people who feed off other people’s energies.”
“Feed off them like how?” Griffen said.
“There are actually at least two different kinds,” Jerome explained. “One kind is your classic depressive that can suck the energy right out of another person or even an entire party and leave them feeling down, nihilistic. Those people lack a certain kind of energy, the kind that lets you enjoy life, but they need it so they drain it out of the people around them. The problem is they’re kind of a living black hole that just keep absorbing energy without ever being filled themselves.”
“And the other kind?”
“Those are the entertainers, glad-handers, and politicians,” Jerome said. “They can infuse the people around them with energy, effectively multiplying the energy they give off, then feed off that accelerated energy. You can particularly see it with actors or singers when they’re working an audience. When they’ve got a good crowd, they work it into a controlled frenzy. That energy buoys them and inspires them to even greater heights to a point where they lose track of time or even how tired they really are. If you’re ever backstage to see them when they finally come off, it’s like someone cut the strings on a puppet. Once they’re away from that massive outpouring of energy from the audience, they’re left with their own store of energy which is depleted because they’ve been feeding it to the crowd to get it going.”
He paused and grinned.
“That kind of an energy rush is as addictive as any drug. The only way they can get that high again is to go back onstage and perform again. You hear about people who have been bitten by ‘the stage bug,’ well, that’s what’s happened. They’ve been ‘infected’ and ‘live’ for that heady feeling they get from a curtain call or a crowd of autograph hunters.”
Griffen shook his head.
“I never thought of it that way,” he said. “I mean, I know the high-energy feeling you get at a rock concert or a football game, but I never connected it with vampirism.”
“‘You say po-ta-to and I say po-tah-to.’” Jerome shrugged. “The werewolf thing is the same way. We all know people who go through wide swings of mood and temperament…almost Jekyll and Hyde transformations. That’s not even going into the ‘chameleons’ that change their wardrobe and speech patterns to fit various social situations. Most of us had to do that to one degree or other just to survive our teen years.”
“But there aren’t really people who can literally change their shape,” Griffen pressed.
Jerome cocked his head at him.
“Not to belabor the obvious, Grifter,” he said, “but you’re a shape-shifter. Remember?”
“But…”
“Both you and your sister…Or don’t you remember what happened the first time you met Gris-gris?”
Griffen frowned.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, Jerome,” he said. “I mean, we both saw scales on my arm for a minute there at the end. From what my uncle Malcolm told me, I thought the big lizard thing was just a disguise the old dragons used unsuccessfully to spook the humans.”
“That’s what I heard, too,” Jerome verified. “The thing is, because of the movies and television, you’ve got the big lizard image locked in your mind when you think of dragons. The way I see it, when you’re stressed or get excited, that’s what your subconscious defaults to when it goes to shape-shift. With Valerie, what with her being so athletic and all, she seems content to just get larger.”
“But you’re saying there are others who have this power?” Griffen said.
“If you look around the world, almost every culture has some sort of shape-shifter mythos or legend,” Jerome said. “There are stories about werewolves, weretigers, and were-bears. There’s even an old story about a chimera, which is supposed to be able to take on one of several different animal forms. I’ve never run into one, though.”
Griffen pursed his lips.
“You know, it occurs to me, Jer, that a shape-shifter, especially one of those chimeras, would make a pretty effective George.”
Jerome frowned and cocked his head.
“You know, I never thought of that,” he said. “Of course, it’s only since you hit town that I’ve had to think of the George at all.”
“Go ahead. Rub it in,” Griffen said with a grimace. “It just seems to me…”
The bedroom door opened and Fox Lisa emerged, bleary-eyed and yawning. She was wearing one of Griffen’s shirts with a couple buttons buttoned, giving an alluring view of her cleavage and legs.
“Hey, Jer. How’s it going?” she said in a slurred voice.
“Hey, yourself, foxy lady.” Jerome smiled back. “Sorry. Did we wake you?”
“Not to worry,” Lisa said with a vague wave of her hand. “I can sleep through an air raid. Nothing like a full bladder to get you moving, though. I’ll just wander into the sandbox and go back to bed.”
She headed into the bathroom with short, unsteady steps, shutting the door behind her.
“Sandbox?” Griffen said.
“Yeah,” Jerome said with a grin. “I don’t know who started it or where it came from, but it’s doing the rounds. I think it’s kinda classy.”
The toilet flushed, and Lisa reappeared.
“I’ll go back to bed now and get out of your hair,” she announced, groggily. “I’ll even shut the door so you and Young Dragon can talk in private.”
The two men looked at each other.
“Wait a minute,” Jerome said. “What did you call him?”
“Hmm? Oh. Young Dragon. Some of the crew have taken to calling him that, and I guess I sort of picked it up.”
“Who’s calling him that?” Jerome pressed. “How did that name get picked?”
Fox Lisa paused in the door of the bedroom and squinched her features into a grimace.
“Oh, com’on, Jerome,” she said. “I know I’m not in the inner circle of things, but it doesn’t take much to figure out there’s something going on down here. To quote what’s his name…Morgan Freeman…in Batman Begins, ‘I know there are things you can’t tell me, and I won’t ask. But don’t treat me like I’m stupid.’”
With that she disappeared into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her as promised.
Griffen looked a question at Jerome.
“Uh-huh,” Jerome confirmed. “Definitely dragon blood there. Probably not as much as me, but it’s there
. Somehow, though, no one’s gotten around to mentioning it to her. Remember what I said about female dragons?”
Thirty-five
There are certain moments in a person’s existence when they realize they have made a mistake and could very well die in the next few seconds.
Griffen had experienced one such moment back in Michigan when he had accepted a challenge to road race with an acquaintance of his in the dead of winter. As they piled into a curve, his car had suddenly lost traction and began to slide sideways toward a thin line of trees with an iced-over river just beyond. Rather than feeling petrified with terror or shouting like people do in the comedy movies, a sudden calm descended over him. He knew he had lost control of the situation, but there was nothing for him to do but watch as the events transpired. In that particular instance, his wheels had suddenly found traction on a patch of gravel and with a surge of power the event was past.
Stepping into the bar’s dimly lit interior and seeing the scene awaiting him, he felt that same calm as he realized that again he had lost control of a situation and could very well die for his mistake.
It had started innocently enough. He had been shooting pool with Maestro at the Irish pub when a small black kid came through the door and looked around. Griffen assumed that it was one of the tap-dancing panhandlers that worked the Quarter and figured the bartender would handle it.
Before the bartender could move, however, the kid made a beeline for Griffen.
“You Mr. Griffen?”
“On my better days,” Griffen said with a smile.
“Huh?” the kid blinked.
“Never mind.” Griffen sighed. “Yes, I’m Grif…Mr. Griffen.”
“Little Joe sent me to find you,” the kid said. “He needs to see you and said to tell you it’s important.”
“When and where?” Griffen said.
“He said the same place you two talked last time…right now.”
Griffen started to reply, but the kid spun on his heel and pushed his way back out into the sunlight without another word, his mission accomplished.
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