“Don’t worry, sweetcheeks.” I considered trying to move him somewhere to camouflage him, but decided it would take too long. If I could find Eugenie and get back to the transport, we’d just roll him out of the way. “You’ll thaw out in about four hours.” Maybe five. It had been a full vial.
He couldn’t move his vocal cords, so his only response was a barely audible snort of air through his open mouth.
“What was that? You’re sorry for scaring poor little old me? No problem. Gotta run now, honeybun. Bye.”
I left him snorting fiercely (but quietly) and headed in the direction from which he’d appeared since that seemed the most likely spot for the church. Sure enough, once I reached the far side of the tree line, I had a clear view of the cemetery, where Christof and Rand still stood, still shouting at each other. I glanced at my watch. It seemed like hours since I’d left Maison Rouge, but less than fifteen minutes had passed. Damn, I was efficient.
Good thing; the situation was deteriorating fast. The priest was still trying to make peace between Rand and Christof, but the sky above them had turned gray and roiling. Rand chanted in his gutteral elven language and glowed; Christof wiggled his fingers toward the sky and muttered in his more lyrical tongue.
I remembered why I’d been so attracted to Jake Warin when we first met, before he’d been turned loup-garou and he’d been the nice human cousin of the insufferable Alex Warin. Jake had been so damn normal. Unlike the faery prince and the elven clan chief facing off about twenty yards in front of me.
Was that snow or rain? Or both? White flakes fell from the sky, melting into raindrops hot enough to sizzle when they hit the ground. Both the elf and faery were working hard, their faces tense and hard, eyes locked on each other.
The weather war continued. Snow drifted down for a few seconds, then turned to blistering hard rain, then just as suddenly back to snow. After a minute of this, the poor bereaved widower, the other mourners who’d followed them outside, and the priest made a hasty retreat to the church. Eugenie remained rooted to her spot behind Christof. Good. That would make my work easier.
I looked around the area to find the two Blue Congress wizards, who’d finished their cigarettes and were sitting on a couple of grave markers, playing cards. Idiots.
Seeing no other werewolves, I skirted the edge of the clearing until I could make a run for the side of the church. From this vantage point, I was facing Eugenie and Christof, and Rand’s back was to me. Perfect.
I waved to get Christof’s attention. His only reaction at spotting me was a quick couple of blinks, followed by a slow smile directed at Rand.
Dru?
Holy crap. Rand was picking up mental static from me. We didn’t dare have a mental chat; my response would come in too clearly and he’d know I was here. I began slamming up every mental weapon in my arsenal. He’d get no more vibes from me, at least not until I could get Eugenie out of Shreveport.
She hadn’t spotted me yet, which was a good thing. Her acting skills were worse than mine. She wouldn’t even be able to feign a fainting spell for a less-than-genius werewolf.
Christof raised his voice. “Let us leave, Randolph, or I’ll put you in the ground.”
Kind of melodramatic, but effective. Rand glowed brighter than ever, and the grass near Christof’s feet burst into low flames. Damn. I’d always wondered what would happen if Rand glowed and chanted long enough. Fire elf. Duh.
I expected Christof to start a snowstorm above Rand’s head. What I didn’t expect was for the prince to lower his head and charge Rand like a raging bull, head-butting him in the midsection. They hit the ground, and I saw my chance at the same time Eugenie spotted me.
I motioned her toward the woods where the transport lay. To hell with the Blue Congress wizards. We were going to make a run for it while Christof kept Rand too busy to notice.
She set off for the woods, and I met her halfway. “My family thinks I’m crazy!” she wailed, loud enough to draw the attention of the tall, skinny Blue Congress wizard with the rooster haircut.
“Hey, stop!”
Holy crap. I whipped out the elven staff, paused long enough to aim Charlie just to the right of the wizards. They already had their hands up and were doing some of their nifty Blue Congress magic when I released my fire and blew up the tombstone next to them, sending a rain of marble and playing cards onto their heads. Around us, evidence of their magic appeared as tombstones began moving to block our escape route.
I grabbed Eugenie’s arm and pulled her around a marble stag the size of a small SUV that had lowered its head and pawed the ground as if to charge. Blue Congress magic was so damned cool—create and re-create.
“Stop, DJ!” Eugenie grabbed my arm as I tried to race past her. “A sinkhole!”
I looked stupidly at the ground in front of us, which had opened a gulf big enough to drive a Greyhound bus into. “Go around and run fast,” I shouted, sending another shot of the staff toward the Blue Congress wizards and blowing up a ginormous marble eagle perched atop a nearby tomb.
We didn’t stop to see if the stag was chasing us, but ran for all we were worth. At the edge of the tree line, I hazarded a look back at Christof and Rand. The faery stood watching us; the elf had crumpled on the ground. Not dead, though, because in my head, far behind my protective barriers, I heard him yelling my name.
Christof grinned and motioned for us to move along. He didn’t have to motion twice, because the wizards were chasing us, still chanting and doing their finger dance. The stag was getting way too close.
I raised the staff and blew a hole in the earth in front of the advancing stag, forcing him to change direction. Luck was on our side for a change—the stag began charging toward the wizards instead, who had to stop pursuing us in order to protect themselves from being trampled beneath marble hooves.
“Let’s run to the transport before those idiot wizards can get out from under the stag.” I grabbed Eugenie’s hand and we ran to the clearing. “Help me roll this frozen werewolf out of the way.”
To her credit, she didn’t ask a single question. We tipped the werewolf onto his side and rolled him outside the interlocking circle and triangle, leaving him at an awkward angle with his feet in the air. Oh well.
I touched the staff to the edge of the transport and said, “Winter Palace, Faery” just before the Blue Congress wizards reached the edge of the clearing. I waved at them as the transport sucked the air out of my lungs. They were too late.
Of course, they could follow us to Faery, but I didn’t think their magic would work there. Adrian’s didn’t seem to work anywhere in the Beyond.
As soon as we materialized on the round floor of ice in the Winter Palace, Eugenie screamed. I figured she was getting her first look at the grisly remains of Tamara until a blinding light knocked me off my feet and a big crack appeared in the ice between us.
“Where is my brother?”
I whirled around to see Florian sitting on a block of ice behind us bundled in a heavy coat, a blanket spread beneath him, no doubt to protect his royal assets from getting cold and wet.
“He’s in Shreveport, Louisiana, at Our Lady of Perpetual Help church, having a fistfight with an elf,” I said, pretty confident that of all the things he might expect me to say, that wasn’t it. “I’m sure he’ll be along at any minute.” Especially since the elf appeared to be incapacitated at the moment.
“Then we’ll all just wait for him, yes?” Florian squinted at me. “You still reek of dog. I thought you might have taken care of that little problem. Maybe it’s permanent.”
“Could be.” Eugenie and I still held hands, and I pulled her back into the center of the transport. So far, Florian hadn’t attempted to force us out of it. Bending down and touching Charlie to the symbols would be too obvious, but not if I fainted again. “When I scream, drop to the floor,” I whispered to Eugenie.
“No talking, witch.” Florian grinned. I’m sure he knew the worst thing one could call a wizard wa
s witch; they were wannabe mages and nothing more.
“I was just asking Eugenie where your sister was. Tamara. Nice woman. I met her when I was here with Jean Lafitte.”
“Your paramour, right.” Florian laughed. “I came so close to getting you with that last lightning bolt. Oh—look! Tamara’s here. She’s right behind you.”
I caught Eugenie’s gaze and nodded slightly, then turned toward the gruesome sight. The head had tilted at a precarious angle as the stalagmite upon which it had been impaled melted. Soon, it would fall off and roll away.
A deep, burning anger set my gut on fire. Florian had done this to his own sister, with no visible remorse. He should be set upon by a whole pack of dogs, perhaps rottweilers, and I’d like to be the one who sent them his way.
Screaming at the awful sight of Tamara didn’t take a huge stretch of imagination, so I screeched a good one and crumpled to the ground near the edge of the transport, Charlie in my hand. Eugenie hit the ice before I did, so I immediately whispered “Maison Rouge” and sent a jolt of energy from the staff to the transport.
Florian screamed in rage, thunder boomed overhead, and lightning again cracked too close for safety, but he was too late. The transport had already begun, and we landed with a splash in a foot of warm salty water and the sight of two loups-garou with guns drawn.
Thank God. The adrenaline drained from my muscles and I crawled out of the surf and flopped on the sand like a rag doll. Faux-fainting used up a lot of energy.
“You guys okay? We didn’t realize the transport would go underwater at high tide.”
Collette helped Eugenie up, and I opened my eyes to look at an upside-down Jake, leaning over to look at me. “Did you faint, sunshine?”
“Twice.” I moaned and managed to sit up, not turning down the hand he held down to help me to my feet. I could sleep for a month.
“Eugenie, are you okay?” I thought, on the whole, she looked better than me.
“Yeah, I’m just done. You can tell Rand…” She stared at the ground, then shrugged. “You can tell him whatever you want to. I don’t care.”
“Eugenie, why don’t we let him come here and see you tomorrow like we’d planned. We’ll make sure you’re not alone with him, and it might settle him down.” Rand had a right to see her, and to make sure his child was safe. Besides, I needed to find out if the elves were forming an alliance with Florian or if some faery had sold his or her services in order to set me up.
Eugenie sighed, too tired to argue. “Fine. Tomorrow afternoon, though, not evening. I’m having dinner with Chris.”
Chris?
Oh. Holy. Mother. of. Prompt. Succor. “Chris? As in short for Christof?”
She smiled, a coy look that told me nothing good was afoot. “Of course. Such a nice man.”
My friend turned and walked into the house. I couldn’t speak. Christof was not a nice man. He was a very powerful prince of Faery currently locked in a power struggle with his homicidal, sociopathic brother. He was Trouble. He was Dangerous. He was Unpredictable. He was not a Nice Man.
“Well, ain’t that sweet.” Jake shook his head. “In the meantime, we got another problem.”
“Fabulous.” I glared at him. “What now? Did Rene make it back okay?”
“That’s the problem. Come on.” Jake kissed Collette and left her beaming at him before resuming her seat on the beach near the transport. Jake was a nice man. Unfortunately, he had some anger-management issues and was spoken for.
“Rene’s really sick, and we don’t know what’s wrong.” Jake and I walked into the house and up the stairway. He knocked on a door down an upstairs hallway, and led me into a dimly lit room. Rene had his shirt off, and a sheen of sweat coated his upper body, which was covered with skillfully done tattoos—a painful, exacting process for a shifter. His face was as pale as a fish belly. All traces of the gunshot wound had disappeared, but he was either unconscious or sleeping deeply. Why hadn’t he shifted?
“Jolie, now I will rest more easily, knowing you to be safe.” Jean pulled me into a tight hug, and I hugged him back. It felt good to know someone was genuinely glad to see me, to be greeted not with lectures or censure, but affection and relief. His hand rubbed my back in a comforting way … then slid a bit too far south.
I pushed him away and glared up at his smirk. Thank God. Jean Lafitte and I had almost shared A Moment. At least one of us had the good sense to ruin it.
I wondered what kind of reception I’d get from Alex.
“Tell me about Rene,” I said. “His gunshot wound is healed”—I pointed at the spot where it had been—“but he was already getting dizzy and sick when he transported.”
I filled them in on the situation at the Winter Palace, dug the spent bullet out of my pocket, and handed it to Jean. “That’s what he was shot with. It’s a weird color.”
Jean turned it around in his palm, but shook his head. “This is unknown to me. Jacob?”
Jake held it under the light to get a better look, then sniffed it. “Has a funny smell and the color’s off—you’re right about that. I don’t have a clue. There’s one person who could tell you, though.”
I nodded, took a deep breath, and headed back into the hallway. “I’ve got to find Alex.”
CHAPTER 15
I couldn’t exactly pop over the New Orleans border into the arms of a wizard enforcer or a shifter security guard. This trip needed some advance prep work.
After checking on Eugenie, who defiantly refused to talk about either “Chris” or Rand but claimed to have a raging case of morning sickness (or in this case, late afternoon sickness), I returned to my room. I’d transformed one corner into a makeshift work area for potions and charms.
My supplies were limited and I had no electricity, so I was thankful I’d stuck one of Gerry’s black grimoires into my messenger bag the night I fled New Orleans. Laughing, I’d thrown it in as a joke because I knew I’d get screwed that night at the Interspecies Council meeting. I hadn’t anticipated how badly I’d be screwed, though. Even my well-honed paranoia hadn’t prepared me for the notion that I could end up running for my life before my own Elders could lock me up in Greenland.
Did Zrakovi realize that sending me to the wizard hospital-slash-prison in Ittoqqortoormiit was a passive-aggressive death sentence? The first time I “accidentally” got locked outside, my cold-sensitive elven genes would kick in, and I wouldn’t survive an hour.
Zrakovi had proven willfully ignorant of either my elven abilities or the price I paid for them, however. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he wanted to lock me away, not kill me. Maybe Alex had explained that by now, assuming Zrakovi would listen.
At any rate, I had made it into my pirate hideaway with the illegal book of spells. Gerry had several grimoires that I’d found in his flooded-out house after Hurricane Katrina, warded with so much black magic that even my house burning down around them didn’t leave a smudge.
I doubted that he’d done more than collect the books. Until his final days, my father had tried to be the loud, squeaky wheel working inside a system in which he didn’t believe. All it had done was earn him the reputation as a rogue wizard and a job in the insignificant outpost of New Orleans. Only now that outpost wasn’t insignificant at all, and if he’d never been sent here, I’d never have been born. I guess in some ways he’d had the last laugh; he just didn’t survive to enjoy it.
And the real St. Simon family rogue, the one operating outside the system, was turning out to be me.
I smiled and fingered the shabby, worn cover of the little black book, about the size of one of those spindly paperback romances I used to find in my grandmother’s nightstand drawer when I was plundering. How Gerry would have thrived in the chaos of today’s prete world. He’d be right in there with Jean Lafitte, plotting and scheming.
Instead, there was me. I didn’t want to plot and scheme. I didn’t want to be a key player in a band of misfits led by an undead pirate who excel
led at plotting and scheming. Yet here I was.
This bout of nostalgia bordered on self-pity, and it was getting me nowhere. I wanted to see Alex almost as much as I didn’t want to see him. I wanted to feel his arms around me, to hear how he missed me, to smell the warmth of him, to savor the sweet clean taste of his skin, to remind myself what it felt to really be alive in the present.
But.
I didn’t want to hear how I’d risked too much to cross the border, or how impulsive I was, or how much my unintentional alliance with Christof was going to cost me, or how I should just let Rand take Eugenie to Elfheim against her will, which might make a lot of this trouble go away.
Which of those scenarios was more likely to happen? Total crapshoot.
Opening the book, I flipped through the pages, looking for something that would help me slip into New Orleans with a minimum of risk, that didn’t take long to make, and that only called for a few simple ingredients. Which left exactly one viable potion.
The mixture was brilliantly uncomplicated, as long as elven magic would power it. If it succeeded, I’d have a window of time—the book was a little vague on how big a window—when my aura would be masked. If the wizards were on alert for my unique magical energy signature to enter one of the New Orleans transports, it should fool them.
The mixture of common herbs and extracts dissolved into the cup of the holy water with a noxious stench, and my stomach flip-flopped at the thought of drinking it. Maybe it tasted better than it smelled, or maybe the infusion of magic would improve its palatability.
No such luck. After zapping the mixture with a bit of energy from Charlie, I drank it and then hung my head over the side of the big metal “bathing tub” in the corner of my bedroom for what seemed like an hour, swallowing continuously until I thought I could move without heaving. The only thing that kept it down was the knowledge that if I threw it up, I’d have to drink more.
After changing into some clean jeans—blue, this time—I brushed my teeth in the hopes of eliminating the taste of skunk-tainted road tar, and stopped by Jean’s study for a shot of bourbon to take care of what the toothpaste had missed. He lounged in his tufted throne of an armchair, smoking his pipe and reading.
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