Dale grimaced. "You guessed my dirty secret. Yeah. I paid my way through college doing catalogs. I'm in town for the convention. I bet you get a lot of people coming in here." He lifted the Hurricane to her and drank. "God, that's sweet."
"They're very popular with tourists."
"Touche," he said. "Normally, my drink is a dirty martini."
"All the martinis are pretty popular these days," Val agreed.
He grinned. "Oops. Didn't mean to be trendy." He was trying hard to make up for being a jerk when he came in.
He was cute. Val admired the line of his jaw. His hands were long and fine, with oval nails. "It's quiet in here. Don't you get much business?"
"Not during the day," she said. "This place is a little out of the way for conventioneers and sports fans. We have a lot of local clients starting about now."
"Oh, so you're not getting off for a while." He looked disappointed.
"Not until midnight," she said. She did find him attractive. It might be nice if he came back at the end of her shift. A little attention from a handsome stranger went a long way toward brightening the day.
She's not really showing yet, the thought popped into Val's head. I bet she'd look sexy in her underwear.
She frowned. Was she projecting what he might think of her without her clothes? He lifted the glass to her again, drank, then set it far away from him. "That's really god-awful. How about a martini? Would you like to join me?"
"I'll have a Diet Coke, thanks," she said, pouring fresh drinks for both of them. He paid and added a tip. She liked that he was even generous in offering a gratuity for the drink he had bought her. Of course, it might just be because he was trying to pick her up.
I don't want to have to wait for midnight, the thought came urgently.
Val licked her lips. Her subconscious rarely seemed so loud. Maybe she really did want to be with him that badly. She liked the way he moved, the way he smiled, the warm baritone of his voice.
"So, you thinking of hanging around for a while?" she asked, casually. "I mean, it's a long time."
"If that's what it takes to get a chance to be alone with you, it'll seem like minutes," Dale said, winking at her.
She's going to be impatient if it takes until midnight to get out of here, the thought came.
She? Val didn't think of herself in the third person. Those insistent thoughts weren't hers. She had never had that happen before. Was this a new facet of dragon power that was just starting to manifest itself?
Movement near the door made her look up. Just outside the bar, two people stood on the sidewalk, looking at her intently. They looked like locals. One wore a T-shirt and an old waistcoat over baggy pants and untied athletic shoes. The other had on a flat, shiny leather cap and jeans jacket. Dale glanced over her shoulder.
Who the hell are they?
Val stared at him. Those strange intrusions were his thoughts.
"Who the hell are you?" she asked.
"Just a visitor," he said, trying to keep an expression of innocence, but it no longer rang true. The two local men came in, still staring at Dale.
She's going to be angry.
Val suddenly figured out who "she" was. She glared at Dale.
"Drink up and get out of here," she said.
"Oh, come on, babe," he said, leaning forward persuasively. He lowered his eyelashes again. It was evidently the move that worked on women the most. "I apologize if I was pushing too hard. We could still have a little date later on," he added. He looked hopeful.
"No fucking way. Tell Melinda that she can shove it up her wide ass, sending a pretty boy to seduce me. Go."
Shit! They didn't tell me she was telepathic!
Val seized the blackjack. "There's a lot of things they didn't tell you about me," she said. "I was captain of my gymnastics team." Setting one hand on the bar, she vaulted over it. Dale jumped backward in surprise. "Now, get out before you're sorry you came in."
"Hey, I don't know anyone named Me--"
His thoughts said otherwise. Val swung a wide arc with the blackjack and slapped him in the temple. He staggered sideways, clutching his head. Val followed up with a kick in the stomach that sent him backward over a chair. He fell on the floor. Val stood over him, brandishing the sack of lead shot.
"You go and tell her to leave me alone! The next person that bothers me won't get a warning. All they will find is pieces of the body! Everywhere! Get out of here!"
She raised the blackjack over her head. Dale scuttled backward on his hands and feet like a crab. When he was safely in between the tables, he got to his feet. Keeping his eyes on her, he edged out the door.
Gotta warn her, was the last thought Val picked up. Can't tell her about . . .
No, he wouldn't admit to Melinda that Val had figured he was a fraud or that she had hit him. Twice.
She turned a sour face to the two men near the door. "I suppose my brother sent you?" They nodded. "Weren't you going to help me?"
"Mr. Griffen said that you'd get mad if we helped before you asked," the shorter one said. "Besides, we could tell you could handle him."
"We listened to his thoughts all the way here," said the taller one, in a fluty alto. "He was countin' on you fallin' for his looks. He couldn't take you nowhere. We heard everythin' he thought he would do."
"Then why didn't you send him somewhere else?"
"It's not the way our talents work, ma'am. We just listen."
"Oh," Val said. "It doesn't work both ways?"
"Thank God, no! It ain't a curse, just a talent!"
"Don't want to have no one hear our thoughts. It's none of anyone's damned business what we think."
"Nope," agreed the taller one.
"Nope," confirmed the shorter one.
Val studied them. "I think I saw you the other night."
"Yes, ma'am, near the diner. Manuel near the door thinks you're gorgeous and wishes you'd go out with him instead of Gris-gris, but he afraid."
"Of me?"
"More of Gris-gris," said the alto. "You should hear what he thinks!"
Val blushed. "It's probably better if I don't. But you stop reading my thoughts, or you're next for some of this!" She hefted the cosh.
"Yes, ma'am," the alto said, grinning. "We know you mean it. Y'all have yourself a nice day, now, Ms. Val."
They slipped out the door. Val wondered where they went, then decided as long as they gave her a heads-up on trouble, she didn't need them hanging around.
She walked around the bar and got her cell phone out of her purse. Griffen needed to know about Melinda's latest attempt to trick her.
While the phone rang, she put the blackjack away in its hiding place. When she straightened up, she saw gouges on the inside lip of the bar. Five round holes had been drilled through the wood. She must have transformed, at least a little, when she jumped over it. Her claws had punched them, and she had not even noticed.
"Now, how am I going to explain those to Todd?" she asked.
Twenty-eight
" All in favor, den?" Etienne said, looking around at the membership jammed into the increasingly crowded workshop. Dragon's heads, in every stage of completion, loomed over their heads. The captain counted the raised hands. "Ain't no point in countin' dose against."
"Do it anyhow," Callum Fenway said, with an exasperated shake of his head.
Etienne smiled at him placidly. "Whatevah. Dose against? Easy. King Griffen's proposal passes. All jobs open equally to all adult members from here on out. 'Cept mine." He smiled, showing his sharp canines.
Griffen heaved a sigh of pleasure. Several of the members came up to slap him on the back.
"Glad you did that," Louis, one of the department heads said, coming up with a clipboard. Nearly as tall as Griffen, he had an aquiline profile and sharp cheekbones. "My wife's been doing all the work all along anyhow. I'm not as organized as she is. This is my last day on the job. After today, I am just one of her Indians, and she is my chief." The petite woman at
his side took the clipboard from his hand.
"Thank you, Griffen," Carmen said.
Griffen smiled. "My pleasure."
The switch to a gender-neutral committee was just the first change he hoped to make. Since the Ritual of the Four Elements, the krewe deferred to him even more than they had after the first meeting at the Fenways'. He figured there was no better time to try to push through his suggestions. Val had been pleased when he had told her what he wanted to do. They discussed joining the krewe on a permanent basis after the season was over, but only if there were no barriers in Val's way.
"Well, we've got loads of work to do," Carmen said. "You forgot to order that small-gauge chicken wire. Excuse us, Griffen." They headed for one of the tables against the wall. Griffen himself went to join Lucinda's papier-mache squad. They were plastering a figure of an embattled St. George that day, an irony that Griffen enjoyed, having faced off against the ancient hero's modern equivalent twice already.
Once Twelfth Night had passed, New Orleans shifted into Mardi Gras mode and hit the gas. The stores selling throws in Jackson Square and in the stalls at the French Market filled to overflowing with glittering, glowing, flashing stock. Stores put out racks of ready-made costumes and formal wear. Announcements for parties and tableaux that the public could attend were listed in the newspapers and on posters stuck on walls and displayed in windows everywhere in the French Quarter. Everyone pored over the annual guide to decide which parades they were going to watch and discuss the best places from which to watch them. Griffen added a new envelope almost every day to his stack of invitations to masquerade balls and parties. He would have to ask Etienne or one of the other lieutenants which ones he could honorably decline with thanks. The ones he had to accept cut severely into the remaining balance in his bank account. He was finding it hard to keep up on his salary and his poker winnings.
And the crowds started to pour into town. Some visitors would come in waves to enjoy a few days of the run-up or the festival itself; others intended to stay through until Ash Wednesday.
But the party was not and had never been aimed at visitors. It was for New Orleans itself. The tradition of celebrating the period before Lent dated back to 1768. The colors of Mardi Gras were always there in the background, but stores and houses began to dress themselves up with the theme. Harlequins in purple, gold, and green popped up as mannequins clinging to lampposts, toys for children, or wall decorations of all kinds. Griffen noticed the white-faced carnival masks peering blank-eyed at him from window displays and advertisements. People were already wearing masks. He bought groceries from a girl in a fan-shaped yellow-feathered mask, and had coffee served to him by a man in a red-sequined domino and matching derby hat.
The costumers had a steady stream of locals coming and going with at least one and sometimes up to a dozen outfits for the season. Getting into conversations with friends in the Irish pub and elsewhere, Griffen discovered quite a few who had been descended from original krewe members. Nautilus and Aeolus invited him home to see home movies, including new DVD copies of ancient, hand-cranked films that reminded him of early Hollywood newsreels. Though the first parades were primitive compared with what he saw in modern videos, they had mystique and grandeur. If he had not already become part of the upcoming festival, he would have longed for a place in it.
The Krewe of Fafnir wasn't a perfect organization. They had supported Griffen's efforts to change, but mostly because he was at the top of a pecking order that became more evident each time he was with them. Etienne was behind Griffen a hundred percent, not that that seemed to cut much ice with the existing lieutenants. Though they treated him with the respect due the founder, or refounder, and captain of the krewe, on a personal level they were dismissive of someone with so little dragon blood.
He refilled one of the buckets at the utility sink next to the lavatory and came up in the middle of an argument between Mitchell Grade and Etienne.
"Who are you tellin' me what to do? Couldn't light a birthday candle," Mitchell snarled.
"Still tellin' ya what to do," Etienne said.
"The hound dog telling the alligator? That's rich. You got no authority over me, son. Coming from the back of beyond with no more in common with me than a tree. Back off! You don't get it. You couldn't."
"Hey!" Griffen protested. "You act like he works for you. It's the other way around, isn't it?"
"Sorry, Griffen," Mitchell said. "He is just out of his grade here, that's all. I'm making decisions that are fitting to a real dragon, something he can't understand."
Griffen frowned. "This is probably none of my business, but . . ."
"Well, you are right! This discussion is none of your business, okay?"
Griffen drew himself up. He felt scales breaking out on his hands and neck. He pushed up to the big man and looked him square in the eye. "Really? And what if I told you I thought none of you were worth my time?" The time Griffen had been expecting had come, where they would challenge him. If it turned into a fight, he was spoiling for it. What would Mitchell do first? Go dragon, or try to overpower him with influence?
Instead, Mitchell backed off a pace. "Well, we'd have to take your word for it, Griffen. But you don't, do you? Otherwise, why are you here?"
Griffen aimed a thumb at Etienne. "Because he asked me! The one you're insulting! A dragon's a dragon!" A roar rose up near them.
"Fire!" a voice near them bellowed in alarm. Griffen turned around. Wild flames were licking up from the float that he and the others had just been working on. They leaped for the ceiling. The fire alarm began to wail.
"Water!" Lucinda's clear voice came over the shouting. "Griffen!"
Griffen looked down. He realized he was still holding a full bucket. He ran to hand the water up to Jacob, who was standing on a ladder beside the sculpture. Mitchell grabbed another bucket and stuck it under the tap. The krewe formed a bucket brigade, pouring pail after pail of water on the blaze. Smoke blanketed the room. The orange tongues of fire flickered, then disappeared.
"Hold it!" bellowed Jacob. "I think that's it!"
Griffen and the others halted. They were covered with water and flakes of soot. His eyes stung from the smoke.
"Damm it all," Callum said. "Did we get it?"
One of the others reached inside the now-blackened, skeletal framework and felt around. "It's out."
"We're gonna have to let the fire marshal in to confirm," Terence said. "He'd better not blab about what we've got going on in here. What the hell started it?"
"I don't know what happened!" Jacob protested. "It was still wet. How could it catch fire like that?"
"No idea," Callum said. "Never mind, it's over."
"What a shame," Lucinda said, bringing hand towels to the firefighters. "That's the part you just finished, Griffen. We'll have to do it all over again."
A hand grabbed Griffen's arm. Griffen turned to blink at Etienne. The captain leaned in and spoke softly.
"Mr. Griffen, you gotta calm youself down. You gonna cause a lot of damage if you don'."
"I was only defending you," Griffen said.
"I can take care of myself, but t'anks, huh?"
"Yeah." Griffen turned to Mitchell, who was wiping smudges off his own face. "I'm sorry, Mitchell. I don't mean to pull rank. But you see what it feels like to be on the receiving end?"
"Yeah, I know. Not like it hasn't happened to me other places in my life," Mitchell said. "Ignorant humans--what do they know? I know I wouldn't like it if you decided to walk away from us, but what could we say? You got to make your own decisions about that. Hoping you won't, of course."
Griffen studied him. "It was pretty arrogant of me to push my views on you, but I really do feel strongly about it. If you know anything about me by now, I choose the people I hang out with by their merits, not their bloodlines. I'd be an idiot to think I could do better than all of you on this stuff. It's right out of my league. If I'd been in charge, this would be a ten-year project, not two."
"Yeah, but you're learning," Mitchell said, grinning. "I don't mind learning a little, too. You're gonna be a force to be reckoned with one day, son. I just hope you remember the little dragons who helped you along the way."
"Where?" Griffen said, pretending to look around with an innocent expression on his face. "I don't see any little dragons here."
"Man, Etienne, you are good," Mitchell said, slapping both of them on the back. "This boy is a whole lot more than just a hand to wield the scepter."
"That is what I tol' you, Mitchell," Etienne said, no more perturbed than he had been before. "You gots to learn to listen to me better."
Mitchell took in a deep breath. "Yeah, I do."
Griffen breathed a sigh of relief, too.
Twenty-nine
Griffen slid into a booth in Yo Mama's Bar and Grill. He ordered a Peanut Butter Burger, a combination he would never have tried anywhere but the French Quarter. It was not only unexpectedly good, but addictive. Griffen often ordered other things off the menu, but always came back to his favorite. He licked the rich combination of oil and meat juice off his fingers as he made notes in a pocket notebook from a sheaf of paperwork on one side of the table.
He had just come from the last of the four restaurants holding rooms for him. The hospitality directors had all been friendly but harried. They gave him price lists, catering menus, and sample contracts. They were all excellent, top-rated restaurants. It was a hard choice to decide on one of them, but in the end there was one standout, a beautiful white-tablecloth establishment over seventy years old on the edge of the park at the north end of the Quarter. He and Val ate there once in a while and always enjoyed it. It wasn't as fancy as Commander's Palace, for example, but it had an elegance and an easygoing charm. He flipped open his cell phone and dialed.
The hospitality director was glad that he had finally made up his mind. "I'd do anything for Etienne de la Fee," he said, "but people have been hounding me because they know that room is still open. I will be some glad to be able to tell them it's booked. Come in in the next couple of days and we'll sit down and make arrangements. You need the floor plan?"
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