"She's right," Mai said. "And who is really important to you." She sashayed off in the opposite direction. Griffen and Val found themselves standing alone in front of the Irish pub's door.
"Can I walk you home?" Griffen asked Val.
"No, thanks," Val said tersely. Her eyes were still shining. "Gris-gris said he and his cousins would be hanging out in the bar at the restaurant. I think I'll join them. No offense, but I don't want to be with you at the moment."
Griffen slunk toward home by himself, wishing his dragon skills ran toward letting him turn invisible. His big opportunity didn't seem so wonderful anymore, and he hadn't even agreed to it yet. He'd been all set to spend the evening barhopping with one or more of the ladies. Now the best prospect seemed to be microwave popcorn and a couple of DVDs. He had just rented the classic Frankenstein and the original The Mummy. Taking himself out of the here and now felt like a good idea. At least the people in the movies knew they were creating monsters.
As he turned into Royal Street, a couple of shadows detached themselves from a group near the door of a bar and followed him at a distance of approximately thirty feet. Griffen didn't even notice them.
Five
Late Saturday night, two o'clock Sunday morning, really, was an excellent time for a young man to be out and about in the French Quarter. He had a pocketful of money. The hours he had just spent at the poker table in the Marriott on Canal Street had been more than profitable. The bars were still open, and playing live music good enough to shake one's soul and loud enough to be heard all the way over on Royal. And his girlfriend had left a message on his cell phone to tell him she forgave him being a jerk, and to come over as soon as he was free--whenever that was. She didn't care how late. He grinned at the vagaries of good fortune. What a great word that was, he thought, taking a deep breath of the warm, moist air. Louis Armstrong was right. What a wonderful world it was, too.
He heard a faint click of footsteps on the brick street, maybe ten or twelve yards behind him. He could hardly believe it. There were a couple of guys following him, probably hoping to get ahold of the money he was carrying. Obviously they didn't know who he was. He glanced back, and they sidestepped into a doorway. He shook his head and grinned. Amateurs. They were going to get a surprise, one they did not and could not possibly expect. He flexed his fingers, letting the tips of claws emerge just a tiny bit. He kept walking, heading for a corner he knew was dark at this hour. He undid his black bow tie and stuffed it into the pocket of his black, light wool pants. No sense in letting it get messed up. His white shirt was probably going to suffer, though.
Jesse Lee had been downright trepidatious at first to work for Griffen McCandles, though all his instincts told him that he was taking advantage of a great opportunity. He had started dealing poker and blackjack at the big casino when he was eighteen but was approached by the elders of the Eastern dragons to shoot cards at private card games around New Orleans almost three years ago. He prided himself on being the fastest and most nimble card handler in the city, probably the whole state of Louisiana. He had tried to get them to start calling him "Jet" Lee, in tribute to the movie star, but it just had not caught on.
He did tricks before and after games to amuse the paying players, which earned him sizable tips, like the wad that made his wallet bulge, but during the game he was irreproachably precise and neat. The elders as well as his clientele had told him that his skills were appreciated. Still, when Griffen McCandles came to the city a few months before, he had felt irresistibly drawn to the younger man. In spite of warnings from his then-current employers, he had quit working for them and gone to deal for McCandles. He'd shown respect to the elders but had been firm that that was his choice. The Eastern dragons had let him go, but with a warning. Griffen and Jerome knew his situation and never put him into a venue where one of the Eastern dragons' games was going on at the same time as his. Griffen cared about what happened to his people. That pleased Jesse. It was so uncharacteristic of a senior dragon of his rank. Jesse wanted to enjoy the novelty before Griffen came into his full powers and started acting just like the rest of them.
He cut through Pirate's Alley and went into Jackson Square. The high building around him felt protective, though the wide public area was deserted except for a man in ragged blue jeans and a woven poncho singing to himself on the grass square bordered by the flagstone sidewalks that ran along the four sides. Jesse angled around the central garden, past the iron fence where in daytime artists hung their paintings and drawings for sale. He flattened himself against the far side and glanced back around the bushes at the thugs. Their faces were in shadow. Their bodies were both thick--not fat, but strong. Their legs looked short, but only until he realized that bulk made them look broad in proportion to their length. They looked like hired musclemen, not muggers. Jesse's heart pounded. Who had he pissed off? He didn't owe anyone money. He hadn't insulted anyone that he could remember. It couldn't possibly be one of the players wanting to recoup on the evening's losses; the other players would be the ones to go after, not him!
Jesse stopped briefly, pretending to look into a window of the one of the closed shops. The two behind him moved toward him purposefully, not minding now that he was watching them. He grinned to himself. Weren't they going to get a surprise?
He had taken martial-arts training since he was young. The discipline had no name; humans had fragmented the original into several traditions. They weren't capable of understanding the whole. He had other advantages owing to his heritage, including impenetrable skin. It might hurt to get stabbed, but knives and bullets could not kill him. Discovering that would disorient his would-be attackers long enough for him to use disabling moves on them. He hoped he would not have to kill.
He eased in the direction of Chartres, the northwest exit of the square, keeping close to the wrought-iron fence. The others sped up their pursuit. They were coming for him openly now. Jesse was alarmed by how confident they seemed. One of them wound something around his right hand. That meant they were there to teach him some kind of lesson. But who sent them? As far as he could remember, he had been open and aboveboard with everyone. He had informed the elders to their faces that he was changing jobs. His girlfriend had not been attached to anyone else when he started seeing her. Even his taxes were up-to-date, though the details of his profession were a little in the gray scale as far as the government went. His conscience was clear. His breathing sped up. The moist air was an impediment to getting enough oxygen. Why should he be afraid of two human muggers?
That was it: He sensed an otherness about them. They weren't a hundred percent human. The way the bigger one moved was too sinuous to be ape-descended. And they just didn't seem in enough of a hurry to hunt him down and deliver their message. Almost as if they were waiting for something.
Or someone.
As Jesse reached the corner of Chartres and St. Ann, a figure turned out of the shadows and grabbed for his neck. Jesse gasped. His reactions, which he always prided himself were as fast as lightning, kicked in. He jumped back and dropped into the primary defense stance. Knees bent, he arched his fingers and let his claws grow.
His assailant slashed at him with an open hand. His fingers were claws, too. Jesse grabbed the passing wrist, stepped backward into the man's path, and dragged the arm all the way down. The man's body fell across Jesse's back. His feet went up, and he landed heavily on his back in the street. Jesse ran.
Footsteps rang out behind him. The other two men were coming for him. Jesse had been making for his girlfriend's apartment, but he didn't dare lead these thugs to her. He ducked left along St. Ann, making for Bourbon Street. They couldn't follow him into a bar full of people. Maybe they'd back off and go away. He'd deal with the future later.
His pulse thundered in his ears. The street was dim at this hour. He ran in between the reproduction gaslight lampposts, fearing the shadows. Ahead was a bar with its doors wide open. They wouldn't close until at least four. Zydeco music poured out into the night. Jesse h
ad one pool of darkness to cross to reach it. It was twice as wide as the other voids. A small alley opened to the right between a closed drink stand and a gated apartment complex.
A dark form whooshed over his head. The third man landed in the shadow, his eyes gleaming green. Jesse turned ninety degrees and zipped across the street. A lone taxi missed him by inches. It honked at him. A gate stood ajar. Jesse ducked inside it and found himself in a passage leading to a courtyard. A dozen men and women sat around a fountain in the center. Two of them played guitars. The others were singing along with the music.
"Hey!" he cried. None of them looked up. "He--"
His second cry was cut off. Something had dropped around his throat and squeezed. Jesse gasped for air. He hooked his claws under the narrow ligature and tried to snap it. The person holding on to the ends was strong. He felt himself being dragged backward. He kicked behind him. His heel connected with a shin. Its owner flinched, but the movement only served to tighten the cincture around his neck. Jesse let go of the wire and flailed with all claws out. He connected with an arm, a leg, a rib cage, but his blows had less and less force. A red ring flared around his vision. It grew smaller and smaller. He was running out of oxygen. He felt his body sagging even as he fought for life. The sound of the music thudded against his eardrums. He reached out a hand to the singers in the courtyard. Why didn't they see him?
A knee in the back shoved his neck harder against the ligature. Jesse dropped to his knees. All three figures were around him then. He tried to tilt his head back to see them. One bent over and grinned at him. He thought he knew the face, an oval topped by a cockscomb of shining black hair. The man gave a vicious tug to the garotte. Jesse's vision darkened. He felt himself drowning in a sea of red pain. It swallowed him up and closed over his head.
The guitars finished with a flourish, to the applause of the singers. None of them looked up as the three men slipped out of the darkened passageway and out onto St. Ann Street.
Six
Griffen arrived at the New Orleans Forensic Center, a grim concrete structure between a wig warehouse and an old gray house on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. The street was a boulevard in the classic sense, in that it was wide and gracious enough to promenade down, with what must once have been handsome gardens dotted with trees running up the center, but the paint on the houses on the opposite side had peeled into a mosaic impression, and the row of garbage cans on the curb in front of the corner restaurant had not been emptied yet.
Jerome was waiting at the door. Griffen, barely awake, blinked up at him. It looked as if the other man hadn't had much sleep, either. His usually well-styled clothes were rumpled, and his hair was flattened on one side.
"We got troubles," Jerome murmured, as soon as Griffen was close enough to hear.
"Who is it?"
"Jesse Lee."
Griffen winced. "He was a good guy."
"One of our best. I had a lot of hopes for him."
"What happened?"
Jerome tilted his head toward the door. "You'd better come and see."
Griffen had never been inside a morgue. All the television shows had one thing right, though: The smell hit him before anything else. It wasn't decay that made his eyes water, it was antiseptic cleaning fluid. They must have used it by the gallon, undiluted. The industrial beige of the walls went well with the stink. He never believed in restless spirits before he had come to New Orleans and met a deceased voodoo priestess, but no self-respecting ghost would hang out here. All kinds of people, well dressed in suits and dresses or jeans and hoodies, huddling together for support, wept loudly into tissues. The staff behind the desk paid little attention to them. They had to deal with the details of death every day. Griffen didn't think he could ever get used to it. He didn't want to sit down. He had a feeling of deja vu from watching movies all night about animated corpses. If Jesse was really dead, Griffen hoped he wouldn't manifest on him unless he had information on what caused his death.
A familiar face leaned out the door next to the counter. Detective Harrison glared at Griffen.
"What took you so long?" he demanded. "Come on back."
The heavyset detective strode ahead of them on slightly bowed legs that always reminded Griffen of the gait of a longtime biker. His dark hair was thin on the crown of his head, and sweat beaded the thick flesh between his hair and the collar of his shirt. The usual leather jacket must be hanging up somewhere. It was much cooler in this office building than in most of New Orleans, but Griffen put that down to necessity. Harrison indicated a door on the left side and ushered them in.
The gray-painted room was not the kind of viewing chamber set aside for sensitive relatives to identify a loved one under genteel circumstances, with a curtain and a window. This laboratory had steel tables with hanging sprayers and scales, plus plenty of other devices and machines that Griffen did not want to know about.
Harrison brought them to a wall full of square steel doors. He nodded to a young black male technician wearing green scrubs and cloth baggies over his shoes and hair. The technician, whose name was Shore, according to the name badge attached to his tunic, nodded and pulled open a door. From inside the cubicle, he slid out a gurney. A narrow form covered by a white sheet lay upon it. He threw back the white sheet and withdrew to the side of the room out of earshot, but Griffen saw his keen gaze still on them. He looked down. The corpse's face was dark purple, and the eyes seemed to bulge unnaturally under the lids, which were closed, Griffen was grateful to observe. It was almost redundant to note the deep red line on the neck that indicated that Jesse had been strangled.
"Name?" Harrison asked. Griffen took a deep breath, as if to reassure himself that he could still take one.
"Jesse Lee. He was one of my poker dealers. Nice guy. Single. Decent and honest."
"I knew this guy was one of yours," Harrison said. "You are sure some lucky that I was on duty this morning when the call came in from a house on St. Ann's."
"You met him before?" Griffen asked.
"No," Harrison said. "But I could guess." He lifted the corpse's left hand. It looked completely normal except for the forefinger. It was covered in pale gold scales that almost blended with the rest of the skin, but the nail curved up in an arc and came to a fearsome point. "I could try and convince the medical examiner that he had some kind of exotic skin condition, but the claw's past my ability to lie with a straight face. Also, the corpse is resisting being autopsied. They can't get a knife into him. That's what made me figure he was one of yours. The ME is trying to call it scleroderma or some other natural thing, but I don't have to have it written on the wall by a fiery hand to figure out the real reason."
Jerome tilted his head. "That why Mr. Shore over there is so interested?"
"Well, you don't have to be a genius to figure it out," Harrison said, with a scowl. "You could say it attracted attention. But the claw is the real standout. Anyone can see it."
Griffen stared at the hand. What made it possible for ordinary humans to exist side by side with his people was the fact that, as Tommy Lee Jones said in Men in Black, they do not know it. Part of his mind raced, trying to find a good reason for an ordinary card dealer to have a finger like a reptile's. The other part was yelling inside his head that someone had managed to kill a dragon, and if he was unsafe, what could happen to the rest of them?
"What can I do to keep mention of this from getting out?" Griffen said.
Harrison snorted. "You can't stop the rumors. The ME's photographers took about a hundred snapshots. Not to mention someone will undoubtedly have taken a cell phone picture of that finger and put it on the Internet already. But we can keep it low-key if you don't make a fuss about the guy's wallet."
"What?"
"When we put this guy on the stretcher, he had about eight hundred dollars among his personal effects, plus some fancy jewelry: a big gold ankh, a jade ring, solid gold cuff links. So, robbery wasn't the motive. The cash is missing. Not a big surprise, conside
ring the wages we public servants get paid, but it would cause embarrassment if it came out, and the powers that be would be more than happy to return the embarrassment to you. If you threaten to kick up a fuss, everything will slow to a molasses crawl, more chance for the facts to come out. Just act normal."
"We can say it's a fad, plastic surgery or something," Jerome suggested. "This isn't the first time someone . . . has died in New Orleans."
Harrison raised an eyebrow. "You, too?"
Jerome's dark skin glowed with a red undertone. "Yes, Detective. Griffen here trusts you, so I'm trusting you."
Griffen held himself steady as Harrison studied him up and down. "You folks talk to ordinary people like me?"
Griffen was abashed. "I've been remiss in not finding the time to sit down with you. That place in Jackson Square on St. Ann. I owe you a dinner. Wednesday night, okay? I've got to be somewhere Tuesday."
Harrison's expression didn't change, but his stance softened a degree. "I don't mind. That won't alter the facts, however. This is still a murder investigation, and it happened in the Quarter, so I am the primary on it. I will solve this crime. I want to know why this man died. If it's because he worked for you, I want to know that."
"We'll cooperate in every way," Griffen promised. Jerome nodded.
"No holding back facts. You think I like keeping your crazy-ass secrets? But murder is my territory. You'll help me this time."
"Yes, Detective." Griffen sighed. "No more evasions. If you can take it, I'll tell you anything you need to know.
Harrison stuck a finger in his chest and thumped. "No. You tell me anything I ask you. I'll decide if it's something I need to know or not."
Dragon skin or not, the poke hurt. Griffen rubbed the spot. "I understand."
Harrison glared at him, then raised his chin. "Plastic surgery, huh?" he asked loudly. "People will do any stupid damned thing to themselves these days." Shore, the technician, looked crestfallen. "Do you know who's next of kin?"
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