The Dragon of New Orleans

by Genevieve Jack

  “Gabriel, it wasn’t his fault,” she said.

  He looked down at her, again surprised by how she tamed his anger with a touch of her hand.

  Avery peered at them. “Well, okay then. Are you coming back with me or going with Gabriel?”

  Raven’s gaze darted between Avery and Gabriel as if she couldn’t make up her mind. Gabriel sighed. This was awkward. He hadn’t meant to ruin her time with her sister.

  “I’m going with Gabriel,” she said.

  His heart swelled.

  With a little wave, Avery took off toward the truck, leaving him and Raven alone on the dock. Raven whirled on him as soon as her sister was out of earshot.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.

  Gabriel straightened. “I felt your fear. I thought you were in trouble, so I came.”

  “I can take care of myself, Gabriel.”

  He scoffed. “Can you?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? You didn’t actually save me from anything, did you?” She placed her hands on her hips. Her face changed and she lowered her chin. “Um, actually… Did you?”

  “No. You got lucky.” Okay, now he was raising his voice. “What sort of lunatic goes kayaking in a swamp full of alligators?”

  “Oh, that’s rich. You take me to see three zombie-vampire women who want me dead, but you think the alligators are dangerous? Ha!”

  “I didn’t know the Casket Girls would attack you. I wouldn’t have taken you if I’d thought they were dangerous.”

  She popped a hip out. “And people take this tour every day. This is the first time this has happened. It’s January. The alligators barely move this time of year.”

  “Why do you need to engage in such behavior?” His fingers were tapping now, and he started to pace the length of the dock, growing more agitated with every step.

  “I told you I need to do things. I have to feel like I’m alive. I can’t sit in your damned cage all day.”

  “It’s not a cage!” he boomed. He heard the truck pull away. The wind was picking up. A storm was brewing. Strange. There was nothing in the forecast.

  “I’m alive, Gabriel, and I plan to make the most of every moment I’m here. What do you care anyway? This is the most you’ve spoken to me in a week.”

  He looked away. “I was giving you space.”

  “Bullshit. You have been avoiding me ever since I asked you about Kristina!”

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about Kristina.”

  “I heard you the first time. The problem is, I’m doing her job and I’m the one having the side effects. Who knows what will happen to me? You won’t tell me anything about Kristina. What if whatever happened to her happens to me?”

  Rain started to spit from the heavens, although above it all the sun was still shining. The devil’s beating his wife is what the locals would say. Gabriel had always found it a strange expression, but the weather pattern seemed fitting as the tension between them grew.

  “I can’t tell you about Kristina, okay? I can’t. But you are safe.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “Because I told you I’m going to keep you safe!”

  “But you didn’t keep her safe. Did you have something to do with Kristina’s disappearance?” Raven shouted. She had to. The wind was howling now.

  How could he respond? She wouldn’t want to hear what he had to say. But then they each had other things to worry about. The storm was threatening to sweep them both off the dock.

  “Why won’t you let this go?” he asked.

  “Why won’t you talk about her? What are you hiding?”

  Gabriel’s gaze caught on something in the water. “Raven, behind you.”

  “Behind me? What are you…” She turned and saw what he had seen. Alligators. A dozen of them. They were lined up in the water, staring at her.

  “Why are they doing that?” she asked, the fire in her belly fading to a skin-prickling chill.

  “I don’t know.” He held out his hands to her.

  She stood her ground, balancing on the edge of the dock in the howling wind, an army of alligators behind her. “Tell me you didn’t kill her.”

  Gabriel shook his head vehemently. “Why would I kill her?”

  “Tell me!” Lightning cracked across the sky.

  “Raven, I did not kill her.” He held her gaze, willing her to believe him. “I never hurt her.”

  Her shoulders softened. He opened his arms and she ran to him.

  The wind stopped, then the rain. Gabriel studied the alligators as they turned and swam deeper into the swamp. He looked down at Raven, the symbols glowing again, all the way up the back of her neck. There were more. They were spreading. He had no idea how to stop them. Worse, he was sure that what the Casket Girls had said was true. Raven was a witch. He had broken an ancient law when he cured her and invested her with his power.

  As sure as he was breathing, it was she who had caused the storm and she who had called the swamp creatures to her aid. Raven was already using magic she didn’t even know she had in her. He had to find a way to get her to acknowledge what she was. If he didn’t, she’d never understand the nature of her power or how to control it. She could end up hurting herself or someone else.

  A horn blared from the parking lot. “Duncan is here,” he said. “Let me take you out for something to eat.”

  “No,” she said. “Take me home.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Raven was relieved when Gabriel dropped her off at the Three Sisters without argument. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend time with him. On the contrary, she was sure she was doomed to think about him all night long. No, it was more the principle of the thing. She’d said she needed weekends off to live her life. He’d agreed to that, then showed up to chastise her as if she were a child for doing something people did every day. Yes, she’d had an unusual and frightening experience, but that wasn’t her fault, and he wasn’t her father. She’d come too far to put up with that controlling crap. He didn’t own her, and refusing dinner was a way for her to prove that.

  After realizing her mom and Avery were working downstairs, Raven showered and changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. There was something she wanted to do, and they wouldn’t approve. Neither would Gabriel. It wasn’t good enough to hear Gabriel say he hadn’t hurt Kristina. She needed to know what had happened to the girl.

  She knocked on the door of a little yellow bungalow and crossed her fingers that someone would be home. It wasn’t hard to figure out where Kristina had once lived. Her father had taken to the internet, looking for any information leading to her whereabouts. He’d commented on every story concerning her disappearance and had been easy to find.

  The Kane house was walking distance from Raven’s, although she never came down this way. She wondered if Kristina or her dad had ever visited the bar. A few long moments passed and she knocked again. This time she heard footsteps. The door opened to reveal a potbellied man with thinning gray hair. He scratched the section of his belly that poked out from the bottom of his T-shirt.

  “Help you with somethin’?” he said. His words slurred a little, and Raven thought she smelled a whiff of alcohol on the air.

  “Are you Mr. Kane?”

  “Mr. Kane was my father, sweetheart. I’m Joe. Joe Kane. You sellin’ something?” His eyes raked over her, and for a split second she thought the tone of his question was the faintest bit inappropriate, as if he were asking if she were for sale.

  “No,” Raven said firmly. “I’m a friend of Kristina’s. I’d like to ask you a few questions. I’m worried about her.”

  He stared like she was growing a second head.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  He coughed. “Oh, uh, it’s just I wasn’t aware my daughter had any friends. She was sort of a loner. Never brought nobody home.”

  “Oh, she had friends. Good friends. I don’t know why she wouldn’t have mentioned me.” Raven caught herself
babbling. She shut up and waited.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jenny Ryan.” She felt a gut instinct not to tell him her real name. She didn’t want this conversation to get back to Gabriel, and changing her name seemed essential to ensuring as much.

  “Come on in.” He held the door open wider. She followed him into a family room that smelled like cat urine and looked like it hadn’t seen a vacuum in months. Raven couldn’t tell if the sofa was gray or just dirty. The shades at the front of the house were closed, and what little light remained outdoors was pinched from the room, leaving only the glow of a table lamp between them.

  This was definitely Kristina’s house though. She recognized her likeness from the missing-person article she’d found on the internet. The entire fireplace mantel was covered with pictures of her, as were the walls and the little side table. Baby pictures of her in the bathtub, as a child running through the sprinkler, a teen in her cheerleading uniform, a young woman going to prom, and the portrait her father had used in the article she’d read on the internet. She had long, sleek dark hair. Her oversized amber eyes and straight white smile were undeniably pretty in a subtle, unassuming way. She was taller than Raven, curvier. Had Gabriel found her attractive? Raven noted absently that Kristina had gone to the same high school but graduated a year before Raven started. She gave the father an appreciative nod as she took in the pictures and then perched on the stained edge of the filthy sofa.

  “Can I offer you a beer?” he asked, scooping his half-empty Miller High Life from the side table. “I’d offer sweet tea, but a conversation like this calls for something stronger. Maybe even stronger than beer.”

  “No, thank you.” Raven rubbed her palms on the thighs of her jeans. “I was wondering if you could tell me what you remember from the day Kristina went missing?”

  His face fell, and he gave her a scrutinizing look. “I thought you said you were Kristina’s friend.”

  “I was. I mean, I am.”

  He snorted. “Couldn’t have been very close or you would know she wasn’t living here at the time she went missing.”

  “Oh? I guess she didn’t tell me she’d moved out.” Raven shifted nervously. She’d assumed, based on the article she read, that Kristina was still living with her father.

  “Hmm. That’s surprising. She was so proud of herself the day she left. Said she was moving in with that Blakemore fella. Couldn’t get enough of him.” He looked down into his beer.

  Raven froze. “Did you say she moved in with Gabriel Blakemore? Like to live?”

  He screwed up his face. “How well did you know her? Yeah, she moved in with him. Told me she was better off without me. Wanted out of this dump. Not my fault I can’t work ’cause of my back. Didn’t talk to me again after that. Next thing I knew, she was missing. He stole her away from me, and then she disappeared.” He mumbled incoherently and took a swig of his beer. “I told the cops I think he done something to her, but they don’t listen. I’ve got my eye on that place though. Blakemore’s rich, but I’m watching. One of these days he’s gonna slip up, and then I’m gonna prove he’s keeping her from me.”

  Raven frowned. He made it sound like Gabriel had Kristina locked up in a dungeon somewhere. Something didn’t add up though. “I thought you were the one who filed the missing-person report? If she wasn’t living here or talking to you, how did you know she was missing?”

  He curled his lip. “I used to stop in there regular to make sure she was safe. One day I went by and she was gone. That asshole said she’d moved out and didn’t leave a forwarding address. Bullshit. He knows. He knows something he’s not telling the cops.”

  Raven’s head was spinning. Had Kristina moved out or go missing? Or both? And why hadn’t Gabriel mentioned she’d lived with him? Unless he had something to hide. She sighed, and her shoulders sagged with the release of her breath.

  “Well, thank you,” Raven said. “It was good to see her pictures and talk about her. I’m worried about her.”

  “How did you say you knew Kristina again?”

  Had she said? She couldn’t remember. She glanced at the pictures on the mantel, focusing on the one in the BFHS Falcons cheerleading uniform. “We went to school together,” Raven blurted. “High school. I hadn’t seen her in a while, which is why I hadn’t heard about her moving out. We spoke occasionally though when she would come in to the… hair salon. That’s what I do for a living. Cut hair. I’m a hairdresser. Kristina had some beautiful hair.” Raven trailed off, a big stupid smile on her face.

  Kristina’s father stood up and snagged the picture from the fireplace, running his thumb along the glass cover. “Were you a cheerleader, Jenny?” He stroked his daughter’s picture with the tips of his fingers.

  “Yep. We were on the team together.” Why had she said that? She could kick herself. He’d probably seen his daughter cheer. Would he remember Raven wasn’t on the team?

  “I used to love that little skirt. You could almost see her ass when she bent over.”

  Okay, that was a weird thing for a father to say about his daughter. Raven planted her hands on her thighs and stood. “I need to go now. Thank you for your time.”

  “I still have it, you know.”

  She took a step toward the door. “Have what?”

  “The uniform. Why don’t you put it on for me, Jenny? Relive the glory days?”

  “Mmm. I don’t think so, no.” Her stomach twisted. The way he was looking at his daughter’s picture was wrong, and when he looked up at her, that wrongness came right along with the eye contact. Raven turned around, reached for the doorknob, and pulled it open.

  His hand collided with the door, slamming it shut.

  “Let me go, Mr. Kane,” she said evenly. He was right behind her, but she did not remove her hand from the doorknob.

  “Stay. Have a drink.”

  “No, thank you.”

  He yanked her hair back and slammed her head and chest against the door, his body crushing her from behind. “You girls are all alike. Don’t know your place.”

  She whirled and pushed him hard in the chest. Her knee landed in his crotch for good measure. She wasn’t as strong as him, but it was enough to make him recoil.

  “Bitch,” he spat and his fist crashed into her face.

  As pain bloomed along her jaw, Raven thrust both hands in his direction. It was a reflex, nothing more. A response to the pain. His body flew across the room as if she’d shot him from a cannon. He smashed into the opposite wall, denting the drywall, and crumpled to the floor. Raven never actually touched him. It was almost like she was pushing one side of a red rubber dodgeball. He was on the other side, and when she crushed it between them, the pressure shoved him back. But there was nothing there. Nothing to see but a fat man flying across the room.

  She did not waste the opportunity to escape. Without checking to see if he was okay, she slipped out the door and ran. She didn’t stop running until she was upstairs in the apartment above the Three Sisters with the door locked and bolted behind her.

  Gabriel waited in his office on Monday morning, his fingers tapping on his desk until his knuckles were sore. Raven’s fear had cut through him like a knife the day before last, but he’d forced himself to stay away from her. That day on the dock, she’d made it very clear she didn’t want him to save her. Out of respect, he’d kept his distance and was relieved when her fear abated quickly.

  But after a long Sunday of not feeling anything down their bond, he was desperate to see her. Anxious to know she was okay.

  “You should have something to eat,” Agnes said from the door. The old bird was a force to be reckoned with in a red silk blouse and wide-leg black pants.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Have you tried telling her how you feel?”

  He slapped the desktop with his tapping hand. “How I feel? There’s nothing to tell. I’m bound to her; that is all.”

  “Bullshit, Gabriel. You’d have to be blind to think your
bond with her is the same as the one you share with Richard or me. You light up whenever you see her.”

  “That’s anger, Agnes.”

  She made a sound like air going out of a tire. “You know, barring a miracle, you might not be around forever.”

  “Thank you for the reminder,” he said sarcastically. “You are short for this world as well, granny.”

  She scowled. “Make fun, but at least I loved before I died. You have a chance, and you’re running from it like you’re allergic.”

  “I am allergic. Terrible love allergy.” He gripped the arms of his chair to keep from tapping. “I haven’t known her long enough to love her.”

  “How long does it take?” Agnes rested her chin on the fingers of her left hand.

  He cleared his throat. “It’s been over five hundred years for me and it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Five hundred years, and now it’s right in front of you and you’re willing to let it pass you by. You’ve been alone too long. You don’t realize how good it can be to have someone in your life.”

  “It can’t be love. It takes years to fall in love. Months at least.”

  “I knew I loved Harry fifteen minutes after I met him.”

  “Fifteen—”

  “He bought me a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Brought it into the office where I was working as a secretary, all wrapped up in paper and string. He said it was his favorite. It was my favorite too. All the other girls got flowers. He brought me books.” She looked wistfully over his head.

  “Hmm. I gave her a roomful of books. Will she fall into my arms?” Raven wouldn’t want a book, he thought. She’d want an adventure.

  “Gabriel.” Agnes’s voice was serious now. “Tell her how you feel. Take a chance. While you still can. Tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” Raven appeared in the doorway, very much alive and well. He met her eyes, and goddamn it if his mind’s tail didn’t start to wag like a dog’s.