"All right!" Lizzy screamed. She swung around and heaved the body at her mother. Melinda put up her arms to catch him. Though she was short and on the plump side, she was more than strong enough to hoist a grown human, but the momentum of the weight cannoning into her sent her flying backward. Melinda threw her arms around the porter and braked to a halt on the pebbled tar paper. She felt her Ferragamo stiletto heel snap off under her foot.
Damn!
Then another blow took her from behind, like a gigantic rubber band smacking her in the back. With the man in her arms, Melinda spun around to see what had happened. No one was there. She turned back to Lizzy.
"That's better, Lizzy."
That's better, Lizzy.
"Don't mock me, my darling. It's not nice."
Don't mock me, my darling. It's not nice.
"I'm not," Lizzy said, putting out her lower lip. "You don't let me have any fun. I don't have any friends. Even Valerie, who is gonna make me an auntie, hates me."
"Now, you know that isn't true," Melinda began. Now, you know that isn't true. "I've heard you say that many times." I've heard you say that many times. "Valerie McCandles doesn't really know you." Valerie McCandles . . .
The voice continued, but Lizzy's mouth was not moving. Melinda tried speaking again, and immediately heard her own words repeat in her head. In her mind's eye, she saw herself standing on the roof holding a large man and looking up at Lizzy. Melinda knew at once what had happened. The spell she had set on the present she had left for Valerie in that tatty little bar was meant to let Melinda hear and see what went on around the girl. Once she put on the blouse, the spell would have attached to her, so no matter what she wore, or where she went, Melinda would know. The girl was vulnerable. She had no idea what enemies were beginning to gather around a gravid dragon. Melinda wanted to make certain her grandchild was not in danger.
Val must have detected the spell. The energy of it had come hurtling back and smacked into Melinda like a gigantic rubber band. Now she heard and saw an echo of everything she did or said, delayed by a few seconds, as if her own words had to travel all the way around the world before reaching her again.
The man in her arms started to stir. His face contorted with pain. Melinda could tell that his arm was broken, and who knew what else? She set him down on the roof. Humans were too fragile.
His eyes opened, then widened to black dots in white circles. "She tried to kill me! She snapped my arm like a twig! Lemme up! I gonna quit!" He tried to sit up.
She knelt beside him and pushed down on his chest with her palm. He fell backward. "You're all right," she said. You're all right. "It was an accident." It was an accident, the echo in her brain said. "You slipped . . ." You slipped . . . ". . . and fell . . ." and fell . . . Melinda found herself trying to slow down and let the echo catch up with her, but it didn't work. Curse it! She would have to create a counterspell, but not until she solved the double crisis in front of her. "Never mind!" Never mind.
She flattened her palm on the man's forehead. He struggled to get away from her, but he wasn't strong enough. Melinda closed her eyes and concentrated. She reached into his mind.
Forget what Lizzy just did, she thought, and waited. No echo. At least it didn't work in her conscious mind. You were walking on a slippery floor, and you fell. Your arm is broken. It will heal soon. You like and trust me, but you are shy around my daughter and don't like to be alone with her. You want to sleep now.
That ought to do it. The porter stopped struggling. He reached over to cradle his bad arm with his good hand. His eyes drifted closed. She sat back on her broken heel.
At that moment, two dragons rushed out through the fire door and gawked at Lizzy.
"Where in hell have you two idiots been?" Melinda asked. "You are supposed to be the finest doctors in the Southeast. How could you let her get out of the suite?" She tried to ignore the echo.
The psychiatrist, Dr. Wivberg, was a genial-looking male with thick chest hair that peeked up through the neck of his polo shirt. "It's impossible," he said. "I gave her enough sedative to make her sleep for a week."
"I told you she was building an immunity to it," said the surgeon and general practitioner, Dr. Kierin. "We should have gone with the cocktail."
"Never mind!" Melinda bellowed. Never mind. "Shut up!" Shut up! "We need to get her down from there immediately before someone sees us and calls the police. And see to this man. Set his arm." We need to . . . Melinda put her fingers in her ears, but she couldn't escape from the sound of her own voice.
Dr. Kierin squatted down beside the hotel porter. "No problem." He took the man's elbow in one hand and his wrist in the other and tugged. The porter woke up with a bellow that echoed off the buildings around them. Shouts down on the street told them that he'd been heard, but no one could see them. Dr. Kierin reached into his breast pocket for the kit both physicians always kept on hand to deal with Lizzy. He knocked the barrel of the dermal infuser with his fingernail, then injected a small dose into the porter's vein. "That'll keep him out for a while. What about memory?"
"Already taken care of." Already taken care of. "Dammit!" Dammit!
Dr. Kierin regarded her respectfully but curiously. Melinda waved a hand.
"Take care of her. I have another crisis to deal with." Take care of her . . . Melinda fled from the roof, but her voice dogged her as she limped down to the top-floor suites. Behind her, she heard the doctors moving in on Lizzy.
"Why, look at you up there, Lizzy," Dr. Wivberg said in a calm, friendly voice. "Do you have a good view of Bourbon Street? Are those men down there shouting at you?"
Melinda stopped on the landing to kick off the useless shoes. She abandoned them where they fell and kept going. She had five more pairs in her closet. How naive of her to have underestimated the McCandles siblings! Melinda did not realize that Valerie had had such advanced training in magical defense. It had only been a few months since she had been made aware of her background. Unless Malcolm McCandles had been lying about what the children knew. She wouldn't put it past him. He ought to have been a politician. He only lied when his mouth was moving.
Melinda let herself into the suite and retreated to her bedroom. If only Valerie were more reasonable, Melinda could have made arrangements with her and been out of the city with Lizzy months before. As it was, she had had to take her daughter out of the private nursing home where she had first been taken to recover. The medical staff there, even though they were also dragons, found her erratic and uncooperative. Once Lizzy was healthy enough to move, Melinda had taken her here, where they occupied two attached luxury suites on the top floor. The doctors were supposed to keep her under watch day and night, but they had become sloppy as Lizzy recovered.
Her daughter was gaining strength daily. With her health, she regained memory of the events of two months before. She wanted to go back and relive them, or live them differently. Melinda never really understood the gift in Lizzy's twisted mind. Melinda had promised Valerie that Lizzy would not cross her path again, but she couldn't send her daughter home. No one there would have been able to control her for five minutes. So she had to use a compulsion on Lizzy to keep her from breaking out and wandering away into the city. Melinda feared constantly that Lizzy would get loose and wreak havoc. Griffen McCandles would have known about it almost immediately. The next time, Lizzy might not be as lucky as to survive an encounter with Griffen or Valerie. Melinda could hardly blame them. As much as she loved her daughter, she had little tolerance for her behavior. Yes, Lizzy was clinically insane, seeing things that had yet to happen or would never happen. It would be a marvelous gift if only it could be exploited in some useful fashion. The talent ran in the family. Melinda had a limited version of it.
Unfortunately, Lizzy's brain was making up for the lack of activity of her body by spreading hallucinations out to a radius of about thirty feet. None of the staff liked to come to Lizzy's suite. After one night, guests in nearby rooms demanded to be moved, bellowing
about ghosts, poltergeists, or other supernatural intrusions. As this was New Orleans, the proprietors were torn between having a genuine tourist attraction and mortified that it was cutting into their income. In the end, the wing fell empty except for their rooms. Melinda could not leave until she had settled the situation with the McCandleses, so she put up with the daily visits from the manager and occasional ones from the police.
Melinda sat down on a chair in front of the closet and tried on another pair of shoes, ones fresh out of the box. They never fit exactly right. Ferragamo served a clientele with incredibly narrow feet. Melinda put her thumbs into the ball of the right shoe and pressed outward. The smooth leather spread out about a centimeter. Melinda tried it on and smiled. She turned her ankle from side to side to admire the designer's handiwork. Beautiful. Worth every penny.
She wished she could channel Lizzy's gift. She had a vision of holding a blue-eyed baby in her arms, could feel and smell it. She must make that come true! Valerie and Griffen were hemmed in by protections, both magical and social. Melinda was doing her best to be low-key, but time was fleeting, and so was her influence.
She had had to abandon her own clan to woo Valerie. Running the family from such a distance was beginning to loosen her hold on authority. Her rivals were openly questioning her ability and devotion to the family. She railed at them over the phone, but nothing had the same impact as face-to-face confrontations. If something did not happen very soon, she was going to have to go home and reestablish herself. By that time, who knew what might happen to Valerie and the grandchild?
Not that she was sentimental, at all, she chided herself. She had her reasons for wanting control of that baby. She had failed miserably with her own children. It was Christmas, and she had spent half the night on the roof trying to talk her daughter down. No one had sent her a present or cards. Only her younger son had called to wish her a Merry Christmas.
"Children," she said, sitting down in front of the mirror to prepare a countercurse for her own spell. "They interfere with everything you do."
Children. They interfere with everything you do.
Melinda looked at her own reflection wryly. "You said it, baby. Bah humbug."
Twenty-three
" Hey, thanks for the music player, Grifter," Jerome said, as Griffen slid into a chair next to him in O'Brien's side bar. A couple of legendary blues musicians had scheduled a concert on the "dueling" grand pianos in the lounge. Word had spread among the locals long before the public heard about it, and they had gotten there early to occupy the best seats. "Can't believe it is so small, but it has got some sound on it."
"Glad you like it, Jer," Griffen said, pleased.
The week between Christmas and New Year's was a great time for Griffen's business. Tourists flocked into New Orleans to enjoy the night life and indulge in what it had to offer. The strip clubs did booming business. The bartenders invented holiday cocktails, but they sold just as many Hurricanes, Sazeracs, and Ramos gin fizzes. Every jazz and blues club in the city filled to overflowing with happy people with a week off and money to spend. Griffen and Jerome had had no trouble running two to four games a night at various locations around the city. Harrison, with an unsolved murder on his books and other, more serious infractions against the vice laws turning up in the crowded city, had no time to roust illegal poker.
If the truth were told, Griffen could have used his help. The game on Saturday on the eighth floor of the Omni Hotel had turned ugly. A female professional poker player from Las Vegas insisted that one of the other players had been stealing chips from her stacks. Jerome had gone in to settle the problem, and found himself in a six-way shouting match that culminated in the arrival of hotel security. He had managed to prevent the game being shut down, but the woman cashed in her chips and stormed off, vowing to spread the word to her high-roller friends.
Word seemed to be spreading to the other gambling rings that the McCandles game was vulnerable. Unhappy customers were going to other groups. The hotel concierges, usually the source of their best leads, were steering players away from the spotters. It took personal visits from Griffen and Jerome with assurances that he was on top of the issue, and that it was just the occasional disgruntled player causing trouble, to get them to start recommending his games again. Jerome had put in hours of legwork. Griffen felt he owed him a big favor.
Jerome sat back with a drink, enjoying the show. The two men, both elderly African-Americans, sent musical phrases up and back to one another as challenges. The man on the left, with large, protuberant eyes like Count Basie's, grinned wickedly and played the first lines from "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better." His counterpart picked it up, jazzed it up, then added syncopation. The first pianist laughed, repeated what his friend had produced, and drew it out into a trill of music that rolled and ricocheted around the original song. Everyone cheered them on, stuffing money into the jars on the table between the pianos.
"Got three tables tonight," he said. "Everyone's an old-timer. They rather spend New Year's Eve with a handful of cards than their families."
"Four," Griffen said. "Forgot to tell you. I got a call from Peter Sing. He found a few people in his hotel who want a game. We'll play in his room. I called Marcel to deal."
Jerome's eyebrows lowered over his nose. "I told you I don't like that man, Grifter. He's trouble."
"I know! But I'm sitting in. As long as I'm there, what can he do?"
"I dunno, but I don't want to find out! Why do you keep lettin' him in?"
Griffen frowned. At Mai's insistence, they had banned Jordan Ma and the woman from joining any more tables, but he wasn't willing to let Jerome push him around. "I like the guy. He's good company. We get along. I know you don't. I don't see what you think is a problem."
"I told you I didn't like his attitude," Jerome said.
"What's his attitude got to do with it?" Griffen asked. "It's kind of cool that a pro wants to play in our games. It's good for our reputation. We could use a boost about now."
"But not with a dude like him." Jerome looked disappointed. "Grifter, you said you trusted my judgment. Then act like it!"
"You act like you don't trust mine! Who's the--"
The pianist on the left glanced up from his keyboard. "Hey, fellahs, chill. Let's all go with the flow, 'kay?"
Griffen gave him a guilty glance but dropped his voice. "Who's the head dragon around here?"
Jerome raised his eyebrows.
"That mean you know more than the rest of us? You still a baby, Grifter."
"Really? So all the times you come to me for advice have been window dressing?"
"I am showing respect to the office, man! The guy occupyin' it obviously don't deserve it!"
A man in a shiny tuxedo jacket and a satin bow tie dipped his head down between them. "Gentlemen," the manager murmured, "sorry to interrupt your argument, but you're ruining the vibes for the other people here. We'd love to have you stay, but only if you have finished your discussion. Otherwise, we'll be happy to see you another time."
Griffen worked his jaw. He felt his cheeks burn. "Thanks," he said. He dug money out of his wallet and set it down on the cocktail table. Jerome shook his head and raised his drink.
"Happy New Year, man."
"Yeah," Griffen said.
He stalked out. Couples and groups raised cheerful go-cups to one another as they passed.
"Happy New Year!"
Griffen responded, though his heart wasn't in it. He felt guilty about Jerome. Griffen depended on him absolutely when it came to the business, but it seemed as if he had a bug about Peter Sing. Sure, he knew Peter was a dragon. He was a demon poker player, and that raised concerns that he had been sent by the Eastern dragons, but he hadn't done anything wrong! At every game he had played at one of Griffen's tables Griffen himself had been present. Was Jerome jealous that he was befriending another strong-blooded dragon? Did this have anything to do with Griffen's Mardi Gras krewe? If Jerome wanted to be involved in that,
all he had to do was ask! There was no need for him to sulk.
He found his feet turning automatically toward the Irish bar. The poker game Peter had asked to set up wasn't due to begin until after midnight. He had at least an hour to kill before then.
He passed by a few clubs and bars. Their French doors were wide open to the air, letting the sweet music and loud conversation pour out. Crowds with plastic cups in their hands hung out around the doors, laughing and talking. They were ready to ring in the new year. Griffen felt sorry for himself. There would probably be no one he knew in the Irish pub. Just a few losers who found their way there, who had no one else to celebrate with.
To his amazement, every seat in the house was filled, and the bar was hemmed in three deep with people lost in conversation. The pool tables were both occupied. Practically every regular was there. Half of them were wearing plastic top hats with the numerals of the new year blazoned on them. Blares of toy horns punctuated the usual hum.
"Hey, Griffen!" shouted Maestro, brandishing his pool cue. "Come on and help me rob these poor fools of what's left of their paychecks!"
Griffen was grateful for the invitation, but he waved a hand to decline.
"Griffen!"
He glanced past the bartender to the family side. Val beckoned to him. He went around and squeezed in next to her.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. "I thought you were out with Gris-gris."
"He had to go help one of his aunts," Val said, making a face. "His uncle fell off a ladder and broke his leg. He didn't want me to come and help. Said I might strain myself. What about you? I thought you and Jerome were at the piano concert."
Griffen felt ashamed. "I left," he said. "We had a disagreement over business." He didn't want to rehash it with Val. She wasn't involved in the business, and it stung to relive the accusations they had thrown at one another. She was wise enough not to push it.
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