Royal Street

by Suzanne Johnson

  Bills, letters, receipts. Correspondence, newspaper clippings, photocopies of photocopies. I’d have to take it all home to sort later. Nothing screamed suspicious.

  Alex thumped down the attic stairs. “Nothing looks out of place up there, but lots of stuff will need taking out eventually. I did find some empty boxes we can use.” He walked in the study with an armload of flattened boxes and a rectangular leather case. “This was the only thing I wasn’t sure about.”

  I set the case on Gerry’s desk and opened it to find a wooden staff about two feet long, heavily carved with odd, unfamiliar symbols. I’d never seen it before, so Gerry must have had it stashed in the attic awhile.

  “Did you run the tracker on it?” I asked.

  “Yeah, and it’s reading a little juice, so I didn’t want to touch it.”

  I ran my hands along the wood. Red sparks spurted from its tip as I pulled it out of the case. It grew warm in my hand, and I traced my fingers along the unusual carvings—runes, maybe?

  “You really think you should be doing that?” Alex leaned over the desk, propped on his elbows.

  “Touch it and see if it does anything for you,” I said. “It feels pretty harmless.”

  He looked at me suspiciously, then reached out and touched one finger to the wood. When he was sure he wasn’t going to burst into flames or sprout horns, he added a few more fingers and ran his hand over the marks. “You never saw Gerry using it? Don’t Red Congress wizards use wands or staffs?”

  I shook my head. “Some do, but Gerry never liked them. He has a ring he wears for channeling occasionally but he can focus his magic without it.” I returned the staff to the case and closed the latch. “We definitely take this thing with us today, though. As for the rest, let me pick the most sensitive to take now, and anything that might give us a clue to where Gerry is. We’ll have to come back for the rest once the water’s down enough to bring in the Pathfinder—if we haven’t found him by then.”

  I stuffed all the papers into a box while Alex began sorting books into take now and take later stacks. I did my best to separate the task from the fact that we were dismantling Gerry’s house as if he were never coming back.

  The oddest things stirred memories. A pipe in a desk drawer conjured the image of Gerry sitting in the living room chair downstairs, puffing away on it as he tried to get the hang of smoking. Tish teased him about it till he finally admitted he liked the idea of being a pipe-smoker better than actually smoking one. The first year I drew a salary from the Elders, just after getting my Green Congress license, I’d bought him a Meister-stück pen for his birthday. It lay on the desktop, and I picked it up, rubbing the resin and gold surface with its etched nib. He’d fussed at me for spending so much on it, then I’d caught him admiring it when he thought I wasn’t looking.

  The memories knifed through the numbness and made my eyes burn. I stuck the pen in my pocket, moving to open the window and let in some air. Crying was for people who had time to be self-indulgent and I didn’t, not right now.

  I watched a helicopter hover eight or ten blocks north at the levee breach, long pieces of metal hanging suspended beneath it. The Army Corps of Engineers was scrambling to shore up the collapsed floodwall, and already people were wondering how much of this mess had been caused by the hurricane and how much by bad engineering. The Mississippi and Southeast Louisiana coasts had been devastated by the hurricane. New Orleans had drowned.

  I turned at a noise behind me. Alex had taken my place at Gerry’s desk and was trying to pick the lock on the bottom file-cabinet drawer, the only one I hadn’t gotten to.

  “Wait.” I nudged him aside and pulled out the top drawer of the desk, reaching underneath and retrieving the key Gerry kept taped to the bottom.

  He rolled the chair back so I could open the drawer. Inside were small leather books—dozens of them. I picked one up, nose wrinkling at the slightly musty smell, and flipped through page after page of Gerry’s small, looping script. Journals. Each entry was dated, and several were illustrated with sketches of antiques and artifacts he’d bought. Maybe the weird staff was in here somewhere. I’d take these home and save them for him.

  “Is there an entry for the day Gerry disappeared?” Alex leaned sideways in the chair and looked over my shoulder.

  I examined the dates on the spines. “No, the most recent one ends last December. There are some gaps, though. The others must be stashed somewhere else.” Maybe if we found his last diary entry, it could prove Gerry hadn’t gone rogue. I should be able to look for him without also having to defend him, damn it.

  Alex leaned back in the chair, scanning the desktop. His voice was casual. Too casual. “You will show it to me if you find it, won’t you?”

  Distrustful oaf. “Of course. I’d hate to make you file a report with the Elders that I’d withheld information on Gerry’s disappearance.”

  Alex frowned. “I’m not the enemy, DJ.”

  I stood up and turned to sit on the edge of Gerry’s desk, facing him. “But you’re not just here to be a sentinel either, are you?”

  He looked at me steadily. “I’m here to be a cosentinel—to help you, not replace you, unless you really can’t do the job.”

  Which he would decide, of course, the jackass. I knew more about sentinel work than this pseudo mobster ever would.

  “I’m also here to investigate what happened to Gerry. It’s part of what enforcers do. The FBI training isn’t just an act.”

  “You really think he disappeared on purpose, that he’s done something underhanded and, what, now he’s figured out a way to hide from the Elders?”

  Alex sighed, pushed the chair back, and chose his words. “I think Gerry has a history of opposing the Elders, and they think this storm could have given him an opportunity to act on his beliefs. Maybe he did something, maybe he didn’t. That’s what I’m here to figure out. If something happened to him, and he’s de—” He stopped with the word dead halfway out, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t thought it myself.

  “If he’s in trouble,” he said, “we need to know that too.”

  “But you don’t think that, do you—that he’s in trouble?”

  Alex gave an impatient snort. “I think if Gerry didn’t go rogue, he’s probably dead. I’m sorry to be so blunt. But if he was injured, the Elders would still be able to detect his energy field.”

  The numbness returned, and my voice felt hollow. “You don’t know Gerry like I do. He complains a lot, I’ll give you that. He might even play the rules a little fast and loose, but he wouldn’t set himself against the Elders. He just wouldn’t.”

  I didn’t have to ask what the Elders would do to Gerry if they decided otherwise. Treason carried a death penalty. Even humans didn’t tolerate sedition, and they were a lot less rigid than wizards. That’s the way it worked, and Gerry knew it. He wouldn’t take the risk.

  Alex reached for my hand but I snatched it away and stuck it in my pocket, fingering my mojo bag more out of habit than need. He could shield his emotions as well as Gerry.

  He leaned back in the chair again. “DJ, I like your spirit. You’re smart and loyal, and the fact you held off Lafitte as long as you did shows you can think on your feet. You might even be dangerous if you could shoot. But you have to at least consider all the possibilities where Gerry is concerned.”

  I might buy a gun just to use at times such as this. “I will be open-minded if you will.”

  He considered it. “Fair enough.”

  We worked a couple more hours in tense silence, sorting out the study, and I moved on to Gerry’s bedroom. None of his clothes appeared to be missing. If he’d gone on a trip, he had packed light. He also hadn’t taken his toothbrush or razor.

  When I got to the far side of the bed, I stopped and stared at the floor. The interlocking circle and triangle of a transport had been drawn on the polished wood in dark powder. The symbols were unbroken, as they would be in a permanent transport, or at least one that had been used. I stuck
my hand in the field of energy that would have been created had the symbols been infused with magic recently, but felt nothing. The powder was fine and black, and I spread a little on my index finger, careful not to disrupt the figures. I held my finger to my nose and smelled smoke. Ash.

  “What does that look like?” I asked, holding up my finger as Alex came up behind me.

  “Looks like charcoal, or ash maybe,” he said, squatting and rubbing a pinch of the powder between his fingers. “What do you think it means?”

  “Ash is used for some magic, but it’s not a good conductor. Doesn’t last long enough.”

  I paused, wondering how much to tell Alex, whether to share information that might make Gerry look bad. But we’d agreed to find the truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

  “There’s something else,” I said. “I don’t know if you realize it, but the Elders recently changed their recommendations for ritual summoning, dispatching, and transports. Before, we used circles for everything, so if you found a circle it wouldn’t tell you what it had been used for. This interlocking circle and triangle is used as a transport and nothing else. But there’s no magical energy coming off it now. It’s closed, but I don’t know if it has been used.”

  Alex studied the figures. “Would the energy dissipate if the transport was used but there was no one behind on this side to break it? Like if he went somewhere alone and didn’t return?”

  “Eventually.” I eyed the transport again. “But like I said, ash isn’t a good conductor. An ash transport would lose its traces of energy a lot faster than something like sea salt or iron.” Of course, Gerry knew that. If he used a transport of ash, he wanted his trail to disappear fast. If I could come to that conclusion, I was sure the enforcer could too.

  Alex raised his head and looked sharply toward the door, then stood and left the room.

  I met him in the doorway as he returned carrying an armload of ear-flattened, hissing, chocolate-colored feline. I’d forgotten about Gerry’s cat.

  “Sebastian!” I reached out to pet him, happy to see any tangible sign of Gerry. At the sight of me, his ears flattened even more and he exposed a mouthful of sharp, pointy teeth. You’d think I had kicked that cat at some point in its wretched life, but I swear I had treated it only with kindhearted affection. Well, and periodic indifference.

  “It’s okay, boy,” Alex said, smoothing out Sebastian’s fur. The big cat began to purr and relaxed in Alex’s arms. Traitorous ingrate. “There was a huge bag of food and plenty of water set out for him in the other bedroom. He must have been hiding under the bed when I was in there before.”

  Sebastian’s slightly crossed blue eyes settled on me in a baleful glare. Still, Gerry had loved him, and he’d been through a rough couple of weeks. I reached out to rub behind his ears. He loved it when Gerry did that. All I got for my sympathy was another hiss, a show of teeth, and a scratch on the back of my hand.

  “Okay, I tried,” I said, annoyed. “He’s all yours.”

  “Jake’s allergic to cats, so you’ll have to figure out a way to get along,” Alex said. “There’s a carrier in the other room and I’ll put him in it. Once you get him home, you two are on your own.”

  Sebastian and I looked at each other, doubt written on both our faces.

  While Alex went to put the cat in the carrier, I sat on Gerry’s bed, a high four-poster covered with a simple dark-green duvet, and tried to figure out my next steps. The room smelled like Gerry, like his aftershave and cologne, a familiar undercurrent beneath the odor of mold. I traced a finger along the seams of the duvet and wondered how this could be happening.

  I needed to talk to Tish next, to get another opinion from someone who knew Gerry well. Then I’d start researching the weird symbols we’d been finding, and would have to do it the hard way. No electricity, no Internet. Before dark, I also needed to replace the wards on my house. Eventually, Jean Lafitte would come for me again.

  “Got it all solved?” Alex watched me from the doorway, a bland expression on his face. For once, I’d really, really like to read someone else’s emotions.

  “No,” I said. “I was trying to decide what to do next. We need to find out what those symbols mean.” I didn’t mention Tish. Talking to her was personal.

  He came in the room and sat on the bed next to me. “I have to ask you something.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Has Gerry ever asked you to do anything you thought might be a little off? Could you have helped him do something wrong without realizing it?”

  I stared at him. Oh my God, did he really think that? Did the Elders think that? That I was either corrupted myself or too stupid to know I was being used?

  “No, I have not helped Gerry do anything off.” Well, the Lafitte seduction scheme had been questionable on his part and stupid on mine, but still.

  Alex looked back at the transport. “I’ve told the Elders that whatever’s going on, I don’t believe you’re involved. But I had to at least ask you.”

  My voice gathered heat. “And after knowing me less than twenty-four hours you think I’m not involved because … ?”

  “Because I can tell how much you believe in Gerry and think something bad has happened to him.” He shifted on the bed and looked me in the eye. “Nothing personal, but I don’t think you’re a good enough actress to fake that much concern.”

  I had done very little magic today and Alex was an emotional void, but my muscles ached and my limbs felt heavy. Stress. I didn’t want to have to defend Gerry. I surely didn’t want to have to defend myself. I wanted to curl up in a sweaty ball and go to sleep on Gerry’s bed. Alone.

  Instead, I walked out of the bedroom and returned to the study, sitting at the desk to pull on my dirty boots. I stuck the wooden staff case under my arm, grabbed a bag of cat food in my left hand, clutched the handle of Sebastian’s carrier in the other, and headed downstairs. I heard Alex calling after me, saying he’d box up a few more things and be out soon.

  Hope he wasn’t packing more than he could carry, because I was taking my tired body and my new cat home to think. I squished through the living room and foyer to get outside, set the carrier and staff in the boat, pushed it away from the curb, and looked at the motor, trying to remember how Alex had started it. Didn’t you just pull a cord or something, or was that a lawn mower?

  “Damn it, DJ, stop!” Alex hopped out the door, pulling on his boots. “I’m just doing my job.”

  “Whatever.” I didn’t want to hear any more about his job.

  “I’m going back in for that last box of papers. Stay there.” He splashed back toward the house. “And don’t even think of trying to ditch me. I have the boat keys.”

  Boat keys. Who knew? Another emotional outburst spoiled.

  We rode down Fleur de Lis and back toward Canal Boulevard with no noise but the chugging motor. Jake had already returned and backed the boat ramp to the water’s edge. He sat on it, waiting, looking nice and friendly and agenda-less. He hooked a line as Alex killed the motor and we got out, then pulled the boat toward the ramp.

  He looked from me to Alex and back again. “Lovers’ quarrel?”

  I frowned and glared at Alex’s back. Lovers? How had he explained our relationship? Neither of us answered.

  Jake grinned as he and Alex got the boat secured. He walked with a limp, as if the most badly scarred leg, his right, wouldn’t quite bend the way it should. It didn’t seem to slow him down.

  “If you wanna ride with me, I’d be happy to take you home,” he told me, ignoring his fuming cousin.

  “She’s with me,” Alex snapped.

  The hell I was. “I’d love a ride, thank you.”

  I settled my backpack and Sebastian’s carrier in the bed of the pickup, snatching my hand back to avoid a well-aimed set of claws that swiped at me from the carrier vents. I tugged off the boots and got in the passenger seat of the truck, holding the staff in its case. Alex’s car door slammed, and his wheels spun on mud before he
gained traction and peeled off with a dramatic, messy splatter. Heh.

  Jake’s dimples deepened as he opened the driver’s side door, watching over the top of the truck as Alex left. “You just made my day, sunshine. Not many people can get under my cousin’s Teflon coat like that. What did he do?”

  “I’d just had enough of his sparkling personality for one day.” Guilt started setting in. He had only done his job, after all. I didn’t have to like it, but I also didn’t have to take my frustrations out on him. I was angry at the situation, not at the enforcer. Well, sort of.

  I sighed. “I probably overreacted. Now you’ll be in his doghouse too.”

  Jake laughed as he took a corner slowly, making sure the boat could clear the narrow street. “No big deal. We’ve spent most of our lives butting heads. This is normal.”

  We reached a security checkpoint. The officer waved at Jake and motioned us through the intersection without making us stop.

  “Old friend,” Jake explained. “Where’s your house?”

  “Nashville and Magazine—you know the area?”

  He nodded, and we drove in easy silence till we cleared the second checkpoint.

  Jake cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to stick my nose in your business, but how long you and Alex been an item? He’s been down here off and on since the storm consulting on cases with the NOPD, and he usually kisses and tells. I’d remember if he had a girlfriend in town.”

  Definitely should have ridden with Alex. “Uh,” I said. “We’ve been together awhile. But not that long.”

  He smiled. “Whatever you say.”

  I was such a bad liar. “Okay. Not long. We met pretty recently, in fact.” Like, yesterday. “Is he always so …” I searched for the right word. Grumpy. Stubborn. Monosyllabic.

  Jake raised his eyebrows. “Intense?”