Royal Street

by Suzanne Johnson

  —THE TIMES–PICAYUNE

  CHAPTER 21

  Storm preparation time. Again. I spent Friday morning moving plants, using a strengthening charm on the windows, and going through my grounding ritual just in case. I still had the cypress tree on my roof from Katrina. Maybe Rita would blow it off.

  Alex put his FBI badge to use and came in at midday with another cache of MREs, a generator, enough gasoline to blow Louisiana off the map without a hurricane, a half-dozen gallons of water, and way too many boxes of ammo. My kitchen looked like a survivalist camp.

  Jake arrived an hour later with a pickup load of supplies, adding to the warehouse ambience my first floor was beginning to acquire. I wasn’t sure if Alex had invited Jake to ride out the storm with us or if Jake had invited himself. Alex’s scowl made me think the latter as he grudgingly helped Jake cart in even more MREs, a cache of batteries for the radio, and at least three cases of beer. At this rate, I’d be dining on military grub and drinking Abita till I hit middle age.

  He also brought a deck of cards, poker being a Warin hurricane tradition. “You think you’re up to playing with the masters?” Jake motioned me to a seat between him and Alex at the kitchen table.

  “I won’t be able to keep up with you guys, but I’ll do my best,” I said, confident I’d beat the crap out of them. I had learned from a master; Gerry was one hell of a poker player. I might not be a good liar but I could spot a poker tell in a flash, even without using my empathy. All I had to do was lay back a few hands and pay attention, then go for the kill.

  “What should we play for?” I asked. “Pennies? Dimes?” I wasn’t rich enough for dollars, not being a Bourbon Street bar owner or a shapeshifting assassin.

  Jake and Alex exchanged knowing looks. I was about to be had.

  “Truth or Dare Poker,” Jake said. “Whoever has the lowest hand has to answer a question or take a dare from the person to his right.”

  Oh, boy. Why did I think they’d done this before? “Okay, but I’m not doing raunchy, on questions or dares either one.” I could see this easily getting out of hand. I slumped into my chair and wondered what laying back the first few hands would cost me. There was only so much truth I was willing to tell.

  I stuck to my plan, watching Jake first. He ran his fingers through his hair, then ended up with the low hand. Nervous gesture. He was going to be an easy read.

  Alex sat to his right. “Have you ever been arrested?”

  A muscle flicked in his jaw. “You know damn well I have, Alexander. I got two DUIs and a revoked license back in 2003.”

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. They weren’t going to play raunchy. They were going to play mean.

  Jake dealt the next hand, and I watched Alex, looking for a tell. He was inscrutable, didn’t even do his finger-drumming thing. He also won, and I ended up low. I gave Jake my best pleading, be-kind-to-me look.

  “Let’s see, short stuff. What would I like to know about you?” He leaned his chair back on two legs and flashed one perfect dimple. “If you had to be locked in a secluded cabin for a weekend with one person in this room, other than yourself, who would it be?”

  Dark brown eyes watched me from the left, amber ones from the right, cross-eyed blue ones from the top of the refrigerator. Thank God. “Sebastian,” I said, pointing. He hissed at me. Not technically a person, but close enough.

  I asked Alex who his first kiss was (Silvie Hollinsworth in first grade, which got a howl from Jake), the last lie he told (that he needed the generator for FBI business), and his worst habit (being stubborn. Duh).

  Alex let up on Jake after the arrest question and asked him his worst childhood memory (being whipped for dismantling the cash register in the family hardware store, then having to work off the repair cost). He took the dare on telling the worst joke he’d ever pulled and had to mime his most embarrassing date. Apparently, he’d fallen asleep and gotten slapped. What came in between, I wasn’t sure.

  I had to fess up to never skinny dipping (I am a city girl, after all), my worst fear (zombies, only Jake thought I was joking), and then I got the question that ruined the whole game: What do you want most?

  I wanted to find Gerry.

  We decided to quit playing and have a beer. By the time the electricity died again, we’d all retreated to different parts of the house to read or nap.

  The next morning, Rita blew in. Wind howled around the corners of the house, sounding like an inhuman scream, and I watched out the window as slanting rain pooled into a river along Nashville and Magazine.

  About noon, I took the lantern in the kitchen to fix MREs for all of us. We each had the Cajun Rice and Sausage meal, which included side dishes of cheddar-flavored pretzels, a toaster pastry, and raspberry jelly.

  It could have been romantic considering the handsome men sitting with me at the kitchen table had they not spent the entire meal engaged in a debate over the not-inconsiderable merits of the 9-millimeter semiautomatic (better accuracy, less recoil) versus the .38 snub nose (lightweight, foolproof) for personal self-defense—namely, my personal self-defense. I had no idea what they were talking about.

  Jake, who knew only that I had some nebulous relationship with his cousin and was missing an uncle, apparently didn’t find the subject of my needing a gun the least suspicious. Gotta love the South.

  I shook my head, threw the MRE packaging away, and went into the living room to read more of Gerry’s papers while rain continued to pound the windows. I curled up in an armchair and a pattern soon emerged. Gerry would go on a job, then use his report to the Elders as a platform for pointing out how things would be better if they’d relax the borders between the modern world and the Beyond. He’d had a lot of vampire cases in the last year—many more than I realized—and recorded several instances where he’d been contacted by various leaders from the Realm of Vampyre, the vamps’ part of the Beyond. He’d even had a couple of meetings with one of the vampire Regents, who were like Elders with fangs.

  He wrote about contacts with various members of the were community and some of the fae leaders. Gerry had his hands in a lot of political pots, but nowhere did any reference to voodoo appear.

  I set the papers aside and tried to reconcile this newly emerging picture of Gerry with the man who raised me. The one who’d taken me in and made me his family, but would change the subject if I asked about his real relatives. Who’d taught me to follow the rules, yet fought to change them. Who’d encouraged me to use my Green Congress skills, yet held back on helping me develop whatever physical magic I had. Who’d been so fascinated by elves and his elven heritage, yet never told me it was something we shared.

  I burrowed deeper into the chair, closing my eyes and listening to the rain and the cutthroat Warin poker game that had resumed in the kitchen with lying, cheating, name-calling, and betting.

  “I bet Dad’s boat you can’t win three hands in a row.” Jake sounded cocky.

  Outrage from Alex. “You can’t bet Uncle Eddie’s boat. You don’t own it.”

  “I have it, dude. You know what they say about possession and the law.”

  “It doesn’t apply to wagers.”

  I smiled. They sounded like kids. Probably had been doing this their whole lives. I tuned them out and let myself be lulled by the sound of the rain.

  “ … DJ?”

  I stirred, hearing my name as if from a distance.

  Jake’s soft drawl said my name again, but I realized he wasn’t talking to me. I blinked and pressed the stem on my watch to illuminate the dial. I’d lost a half hour. Must have fallen asleep.

  “So, let’s get this clear.” Jake’s voice carried from the kitchen.

  “Next high hand gets first dibs on DJ and the other one clears the path, right?”

  I gritted my teeth. They were betting on me? Unlike Uncle Eddie’s boat, I could fight back.

  Alex’s voice, in an exaggerated whisper. “No way. I got here first. Nobody invited you. You can take your Marine Corps,
camo-wearing ass back to the Quarter.”

  I got to my feet, walking quietly to the kitchen, and stared sharp, pointy knives in Alex’s back. Jake saw me and flashed a grin, and I had an embarrassing urge to let them play the hand and see if he won. But I hated to let myself be reduced to the status of a motorboat.

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Cuz,” Jake said, gaze trained on me. “What you want to have ain’t the same as what you think you got.”

  I eased across the kitchen to throw away my Abita bottle and gave Alex a hard thump on the head as I went by, startling him. On the way back, I put a hand on each of his shoulders, leaned over, and whispered, “Sexual harassment.”

  He at least had the decency to look guilty. Jake laughed, so I gave him a glare too. As near as I could tell, he had started it. Before I could think of a scathing comment for him, his cell phone rang. A few seconds later, so did Alex’s.

  Jake’s call ended first. “As much as I’d like to play that hand, I’ve gotta go.”

  “What happened?”

  “Me too,” Alex said, ending his call. “Will you be okay here by yourself for a few hours?”

  The boat and a couple of strong backs were needed just west of Houma, where a Warin cousin was slogging through his house in waist-high water, trying to salvage anything he could. This hurricane season just wouldn’t end.

  After Jake left to extract the boat from a garage space he’d rented outside the Quarter, Alex pulled an FBI windbreaker from one of his bags. “I hate to leave you here—it sounds like Lafitte’s a threat from this point on,” he said. “Say the word, and I’ll stay.”

  I shook my head. “No, you go. I’ll check my wards as soon as you leave.” I handed him the keys to the Pathfinder. “It’s not up to your usual standards but it’s better for weather like this. Good ground clearance.”

  He took the keys and smiled. “I’ll be back tonight.” He still looked undecided, so I pushed him toward the door.

  From the kitchen window, I watched him pull the hood up on the jacket and splash toward the Pathfinder. He’d left the keys to the Mercedes on the counter. I smiled and picked them up, rubbing my fingers over the soft leather of the key case and hanging them on the hook where I kept my own keys.

  The rain had slacked a lot since earlier in the day. I checked the wards on the back door, running my hand along the door facing and feeling for the slight resistance, then took the fluorescent lantern and walked to the front door. I squinted through a narrow gap in the plywood.

  Movement in front of the pizza place across the street caught my eye, and I strained my eyes to see through the drizzling rain, which was bringing on dusk earlier than usual. For a moment, no more than a blink, I saw a tall black man on the corner wearing a top hat, dancing around a cane on the sidewalk. He wore sunglasses in the rain, with one lens in and one out. He stopped and grinned at me, waved, then disappeared, leaving nothing but rivers of rainwater.

  I could feel my heart thudding in my chest. The figure hadn’t been Marie Laveau. It looked like the illustrations we’d seen of Baron Samedi.

  CHAPTER 22

  My hands shook as I rechecked the wards on every door and window. They were strong wards. Neither Samedi nor Jean Lafitte should be able to enter. But just in case, I took the lantern upstairs and locked myself in my library.

  I considered calling the Elders, but what could I tell them? That I saw a voodoo god dancing on the sidewalk in front of Marinello’s Pizza? That Jean Lafitte maybe had an affair with Marie Laveau a couple of centuries ago, therefore they were now in the midst of some nebulous anti-wizard conspiracy? That, somehow, all this might be related to Gerry’s disappearance?

  No contacting the Elders—not yet, anyway.

  I knew Alex would come back if I called him, and that realization stunned me. Our relationship had gone through some changes in the last week. Something to ponder later.

  The shrill blare of a car horn outside made me want to fly out of my skin, and the crunch of metal-on-metal sent me running to the window. I pulled the curtain aside and looked out at a pair of soldiers standing beside their respective Jeeps, arguing. Light rain reflected in their headlights—the only lights on the darkening street. I pulled the curtain back more and looked a little farther, toward Marinello’s. Nothing but shadows and rain.

  I paced around the room awhile, thinking about Gerry and Marie Laveau and Baron Samedi, the puzzle of it gnawing at me. And was Jean Lafitte involved with them, or was he an isolated problem?

  Scanning the bookshelves, I retrieved the volume on the first Marie Laveau, the one who might have dallied with Lafitte when she was very young. I hadn’t been able to summon Gerry, and I didn’t have the guts to summon Jean Lafitte or Baron Samedi. But maybe I could talk to the voodoo queen.

  To do the summoning, I needed four items related to her. I cut out an illustration of her from a book of local history, then read for other ideas. She loved jewelry, so I unlocked the library door and pulled a pair of gold bracelets from my jewelry box in the bedroom. Next, I ran downstairs and got the bottle of rum Lafitte had drunk from, and added to it dried red peppers from the spice rack—a ritual offering for voodoo ceremonies. Finally, I locked myself back in the library and chose red and gold candles to appeal to her power.

  Moving an area rug aside, I carefully drew a summoning circle in chalk not far from my Elder transport, and covered it again in sea salt for extra strength. I looked at the setup a moment, wondering what I should ask her and whether she’d tell me what I needed to know. Most pretes were bound by the blood of summoning magic to answer questions truthfully. The historical undead could lie through their immortal teeth.

  Scanning my supply shelves, I pulled out a plastic case divided into small compartments originally meant to hold nails and bolts. I kept magically infused gemstones in it. Most truth amulets contained red agate, so I chose one from the box and set it inside the circle. Then I placed the summoning items at the four compass points, and pricked my left thumb with my silver knife. As the blood hit the circle, I called her. “I summon Marie Glapion, also known as Marie Laveau.”

  Almost immediately, I felt the power spring up, forming an invisible containment cylinder. I backed away, knelt on a cushion, and waited. It took a couple of minutes. I was about to give up when a mist formed inside and gradually took on a feminine shape.

  The historical undead always came back at their most powerful age, or the time they’d been at their most famous. Jean Lafitte looked to be in his early thirties; Marie Laveau was a bit older, maybe forty. She was at least a head taller than me, with skin the color of caramel. Gold hoop earrings caught the light as she swept a strand of thick, dark hair over her shoulder and knelt inside the circle to get a better look at me, dark eyes flashing. I thought about hiding. This idea was making my morgue visit seem sane.

  “What do you want, wizard?” Her voice rose and dipped in a musical patois that made me think of palm trees and hot West Indies winds. Her long red skirt brushed the sides of the circle, and she reached her hands toward me, palms flat against the cylinder.

  “I want to ask you questions, and you are bound by my stone to answer truthfully.” I struggled to keep my voice even and calm. Something about her made me want to go blubbering behind the sofa.

  Marie stood and looked around till she found the agate next to her feet, and gave me a calculating look, a half smile on her face. “Clever. I repeat, wizard. What do you want?”

  I took a deep breath. “Why is the vévé of Baron Samedi marking the homes of wizards?”

  She smiled coyly, and knelt again. “Most wizards are enemies of those in the Beyond. We all want to know where our enemies live.”

  Obtuse. Try again. “When you say ‘we,’ do you mean the followers of voodoo?”

  “No.”

  “Are you speaking of only yourself?”

  “No.”

  Grrr. Avoid yes-or-no questions. “Who considers the wizards his enemy and wants to know where they live?”
/>
  “All of us, wizard, from Vampyre to the City of the Gods. We are all your enemy.”

  That was scary, not to mention unhelpful.

  “Are you leading a revolt?”

  “I am but a follower, wizard. You would do well to stay in your nice little home and not meddle with things too large for you.”

  Okay. She didn’t deny a revolt, even implied it. “Is Baron Samedi on this side of the Beyond?”

  “Samedi is the god of death and life. He is everywhere.”

  Useless. “Are you working with a wizard?” God, Gerry. I’m sorry I even had to ask that question.

  “No.”

  Rephrase. “Has anyone in the Beyond been working with a wizard since the storm?”

  “I have to answer truthfully, as you say. But only if I answer at all. I tire of your questions.” She clamped her jaws shut and stood again, looking down her nose at me.

  I stood and paced around the circle. “You and Jean Lafitte,” I said. “I hear you had quite the romance.”

  The comment took her by surprise, and she turned to watch me as I walked. “I did not know the pirate in my human life. But …” Her voice rose in astonishment. “You must be the one I heard about, the one who got the better of him. Yes, I see it on your face … . Ayeee.” She began to laugh, a rich and musical sound punctuated by the tinkle of bracelets on her arms. “The pirate Lafitte is not happy with you, little one, but he will tell you that himself soon enough.”

  Uh-oh. “What do you mean?”

  She continued to laugh.

  “What does he have planned?”

  A smile. “I will talk no more, wizard. Keep me here as long as you like, but you cannot make me answer.”

  I pelted her with a dozen questions more, and continued to be met with silence. For a while she remained standing, silent, bright-eyed, amused. I plopped down on my cushion and thought about leaving her there all night just for spite, but the smile on her face gradually grew harder, and her expression angry.