Augustine took the paper and tucked it into his jeans pocket. “Like I said, I don’t need to move just yet, but thanks.”
“As you wish. Now, if you’ll come with me, we can take care of the rest.” He tipped his head to Yanna. “If you’ll excuse us?”
“Of course.” She leaned up like she was going to kiss Augustine’s cheek. Instead she whispered into his ear. “I’ll be in your contacts list. Call if you need me. Otherwise, trust no one.” And then, with a sly smile, she was gone.
Head thick with questions, chest throbbing with pain, Augustine followed Fenton out and down the hall to see what new madness awaited him. They went into what must have been Loudreux’s study. A thick black leather roll lay on the coffee table. Fenton picked it up and handed it to Augustine. “Your weapons.”
“Such as?” The roll only weighed a few pounds but it was nearly the length of his leg and the thickness of his thigh.
Fenton shrugged. “Take it home. Follow the inscriptions. Do it tonight. And feel free to wear them. We have an understanding with the NOPD.”
“An understanding?”
“Yes. Our Guardian and his lieutenants may carry whatever weapons they see fit. The NOPD has quickly come to realize bullets do little to stop most othernatural criminals.” Apparently done with that explanation, he checked his watch. “Meet me tomorrow morning at Lafayette Cemetery Number One, six a.m. in front of the Miller crypt.”
“The cemetery doesn’t open that early.”
Fenton smiled. “Will that be a problem for you?”
If this was a test, it was an exceedingly simple one. “No.”
“Very good. After you meet with the prisoner, we can take care of everything else.”
“Such as?”
“Some details.” He waved a hand. “Nothing that can’t be discussed in the morning.”
Augustine wondered if these details Fenton didn’t want to talk about were going to make him regret taking this job. Even if they did, he was in this for Livie. That’s what mattered. Resolved to the course he’d chosen, he swung the roll’s strap over his shoulder. “See you at six.”
Chapter Eleven
Gloves off, Harlow sat on the guest room bed, laptop before her, fingers flying over the keys. She had no idea what the password was for the house’s Wi-Fi, but not knowing a password hadn’t stopped her in years. Once in a computer system, she flowed through it like she was one of the tiny info packets, except she was able to control where the packet went, what it saw and how it interacted with other packets.
She wasn’t a hacker. She was the hack. Pretty cool, but she’d give up the gift of reading emotions in a heartbeat. Once in a while it came in handy, but the reward was rarely worth what she had to endure to get it.
Worse, she hated being considered fae. She preferred to think of herself as a normal human being with mad computer skills, which was pretty easy to manage when you lived your life online.
Except here in her mother’s house, she couldn’t deny what she was. Everyone here knew her mother had been fae, so there was no way Harlow could say she wasn’t.
No way she could deny that the kind of fae she’d inherited from her mother was something… a little dark. A little devious. Something that pushed her to do things she knew she shouldn’t.
Like hacking into her bank account and changing the balance so her rent payment wouldn’t bounce. Since her conviction, the risk level on such a simple adjustment was massive. Something she shouldn’t even be attempting, but if she didn’t and her rent didn’t get paid, her landlord wouldn’t hesitate to change the locks. Or worse, put her stuff out on the street. She couldn’t bear that. Not with everything else going on. And anyway, she’d have some money soon, either from her inheritance or the sale of this house. Maybe enough that she wouldn’t need to rent anymore. She nodded as her fingers flew over the keyboard. She could do this without leaving a trail. She’d only been caught the first time because she’d been set up. That much she was sure of.
The account appeared before her and with a few more keystrokes, she postdated a deposit that added just enough to cover her rent. The wrongness of it made her stomach sick. But this was about self-preservation. Life would be so much easier once she had some money and her fine paid off. Then her freedom would be ensured, and she could focus on getting her own place, her own business, her own fortress of solitude where she’d never have to personally interact with anyone ever again if she so desired.
Which she didn’t. Unless it was someone with information about her father.
Before she logged off, she opened the app that monitored the webcams in her apartment. Her place wasn’t in a great section of town and after her first break-in right after she’d moved there, she’d set up cameras that were programmed to record continuously and store all data for up to a month. If someone broke in again while she was gone—whether it was to the grocery store or a con—she’d have great evidence of them in action and she felt pretty confident that her videos would give the police enough to catch the perpetrators. Overkill? Probably. But she had too much computer equipment that she still owed money on not to protect it with more than the standard security system.
Everything seemed exactly the way she’d left it. Neat, tidy and all in its place. Although her apartment looked smaller than she remembered. Smaller than this room, actually. Not that it mattered. She didn’t need a lot of space to be happy. Just servers and—
A knock on the door interrupted her.
“Yes?” She powered her laptop down and shut it, sliding the lock into place.
“Miss Harlow, supper be ready soon.”
In response to Lally, her stomach grumbled. Amazingly, her appetite was returning. She hopped off the bed and pulled her gloves back on before she opened the door. “Anything I can do to help?”
Lally gave her a dubious look, clearly still upset about Harlow selling the house. Finally, she nodded. “I guess. Come on down and you can snap beans. You know how to do that?”
Cooking for her usually meant takeout, but how hard could it be? “Oh yeah, I do that all the time.”
She followed Lally down to the kitchen, where the woman handed her a big bowl of green beans and another smaller, empty bowl. “Just put the ends in there.”
Harlow took the bowl. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”
Lally’s back was to her. “About what?”
“Selling the house.”
She turned and sighed. “House has been sold before. I manage. Have been for years.”
“You seem mad.”
“Child, you don’t know me mad and you don’t want to. Now, get those beans done if you’re gonna. I got to get them in cooking.”
Harlow sat at the table, staring at the bowls in front of her.
Lally shook her head. “The stem end, just snap it off, the little thin end you can leave.”
“Got it.” Harlow started prepping the beans, but Lally kept watching.
“Don’t you want to take those gloves off?”
“No.”
Lally nodded. “You got the same touch as your mother, don’t you? You sense things in people? Maybe see their futures?”
“Something like that,” Harlow answered. She quickly changed the subject to the real reason she’d offered to help. “So, Augustine, what’s his story?” Besides being almost more male than she could bear.
Lally turned back to the stove, where she salted a big pot of simmering water. The light in the top oven showed a roasting chicken, the source of the delicious aroma filling the house. “He was a child in need of a mother and Miss Olivia was a mother in need of a child.”
“She had a child. Me.” The old resentment reared its head.
Lally pulled a towel off a tray of raw, flour-dusted biscuits. “True, but seems to me you weren’t all that keen on her being your mother.”
“I was fine with her being my mother. I wasn’t so fine with her not answering my questions.” How many times had she tried to explain to h
er mother about the hole inside? The sense that something was missing? Nothing had swayed Olivia to talk. “Being sent to boarding school wasn’t high on my list of fabulous life experiences, either.”
Lally nodded. “I know you have your hurts, but I also know Miss Olivia well enough to know that whatever she did, she thought she was doing the best for you. You can’t blame a mother for that, child. She wanted… never mind.” Lally sighed and took a glass dish of crumb-topped macaroni and cheese out of the lower oven. “You weren’t exactly easy on her, now were you?”
“She wanted what? What were you about to say?” Harlow tossed a stem end into the trash bowl.
“Don’t feel right talking about a woman who’s dead and gone and can’t defend herself.”
Harlow shrugged. “I probably already know what you’re about to say anyway. How she wanted to give me everything she never had, all that.”
Lally nodded. “That’s right. But it was more than that. She wanted to protect you.”
“Protect me from what? The evils of Hollywood? I’ve heard that speech and I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. If it was that bad, she could have moved when I was born.”
Lally cocked a brow. “You know all those movies she made paid for that boarding school and all the other fancy things you had. And this house.”
Harlow snapped the last bean and pushed the bowl across the table to Lally. “I know where the money came from. That’s partly why I stopped taking it when I graduated.” Not that there weren’t a million times she’d come close to accepting it again. To say things were tight was an understatement. “And besides, most parents protect their children in person. Not by hiring an armed bodyguard.”
The pure gleam of truth filled Lally’s eyes. “What she wanted to protect you from, she couldn’t do herself. It wasn’t Hollywood, although I think that’s how it started, or maybe where it started, but there was something else.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know, child. Miss Olivia came close to telling me a few times, but the subject made her so jumpy she never did.” She picked up the beans and dumped them into the boiling water, then leaned against the counter. “I just think until you know the whole truth, you shouldn’t judge her so harshly.”
The conversation’s uncomfortable turn brought Harlow to her feet, guilt making her too itchy to sit. “I’ll be in my room until dinner’s ready.”
Lally lifted the chicken out of the oven and set it on the stove to rest, then slid the biscuits in to cook. “Suit yourself.”
Harlow turned to go when the back door of the house opened and Augustine strolled into the kitchen.
“Smells like Sunday dinner in here.” He grabbed a hunk of the crusty brown topping on the mac and cheese and shoved it in his mouth, then licked all six of his fingers. Slowly. Like he knew she was watching.
She was.
Lally swatted at him, but not with any real intent. “Everything go all right?”
“Went fine.” He planted a hip against the end of the counter and tipped his head at Harlow, those stormy eyes of his taking her measure. “You want to see the house now?”
“I can wait until it’s light out.” Traipsing through this big house with him in the dark seemed like a bad idea. Besides, there was no point falling in love with anything here. She was selling the house. Had to. A stain on his shirt caught her eye, giving her a chance to happily change the subject. She pointed at his chest. “Is that blood?”
He glanced at Lally, who met his gaze, then tucked her head down and busied herself with washing a bowl. “Must have cut myself. I should change.”
Harlow watched him go. That blood was fresh, his shirt still damp with it, but the shirt wasn’t cut, so any injury had been to his bare skin. She knew from personal experience that fae healed quickly. That wound should have scabbed over before he’d had a chance to put his shirt back on.
For once, she didn’t need to touch someone to know they were lying.
Augustine was on the second flight of steps when he heard footsteps behind him. He stopped unbuttoning his shirt and paused on the landing. “Changed your mind?”
Harlow climbed after him. “About?”
“Seeing the house?”
She made the landing and gestured farther up the steps. “Sure.” The hardness in her gaze told him she was upset about something. What, he had no idea. “Let’s start with your room.”
“Rooms.” He got moving again, wondering what had sparked this sudden desire to see where he slept. “I live on the top floor.”
“You mean the attic.”
He shook his head, muttering softly.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He pointed at the double doors facing them on the third-floor landing. “Through there is a large gathering room with its own bar. That’s original to the house.” He glanced at her, watching for her expression. “Olivia used it for a lot of charity events and parties, but in the house’s heyday it’s where the men used to play cards and drink in between girls.”
She looked in the direction he’d pointed. “In between girls?”
He barely restrained his grin. This ought to wind her up. “Up until the 1950s, this house was one of New Orleans’s most popular brothels.”
She grimaced. “Figures my mother would buy a house of ill repute. She loved drama.”
“You don’t think much of her, do you?”
“Just because we didn’t get along doesn’t mean I don’t love my mother. I also got enough of the guilt trip from Lally. I don’t need it from you, too, so do me a favor and don’t start.”
“I wasn’t starting anything. Just commenting.” Leave it to Lally to speak her mind. “Hey, I get it. My mother used to scream at me to act more human. She’d file my horns down and remind me daily what a disappointment to her I was.”
Harlow paused, her gaze traveling to the top of his head. “Why did you file them down again? Not all fae have them, and you’re all about being fae, so what gives?”
“Shadeux and smokesinger fae have them if the bloodlines are strong enough. Grinding mine down is just what I’m used to. Or was. When you first met me, I’d grown them out for a particular reason. I’ll be growing them out again now that I’m Guardian.”
“Fabulous,” she whispered, going slightly green.
Was kissing him that bad? He’d been sure she’d liked it a little bit. “What? Don’t think you can take the reminder of that kiss every time you look at me?”
“Actually, no.” She stepped back, maybe to put space between them, but her foot didn’t quite find the tread. Her hand shot out toward the railing but Augustine caught her first, his hand latching on to her forearm, just as he had that night.
He made sure she was stable, then immediately let her go. Now was not the time to play cute. “It’s not a big deal. It was Nokturnos. Everyone kisses a stranger.”
She nodded without making eye contact. “I suppose so.” She looked like she wanted to disappear. Or at least change the topic. Which she did. “So, ah, your mother, you said she used to scream at you. Did she pass away, too?”
“No. Still alive. Lives on the other side of the French Quarter and wants nothing to do with me.” Just like Harlow didn’t want anything to do with him, either. What was it about him that inspired such animosity?
“I’m sure it’s hard on both of you. I should go—”
He stepped around her, blocking her way. “You think it’s hard on my mother having a son like me? How do you know what kind of son I am?”
“I just meant—” Frustration brought her head up. “You didn’t have any problem moving in here, did you? Letting my mother take care of you. Don’t you think that had anything to do with your relationship with your own mother? With my relationship with Olivia? Having you around must have made it easier to ignore my questions about who my father was.” She jabbed a finger at him, but didn’t come close enough to touch. “I don’t think you have any idea what it was like growing up with a mother
like—”
“Olivia? Let me guess.” Dark, swirling heat built along his bones. “Olivia treated you like dirt, right? Probably threatened to give you over to an orphanage all the time, told you how you were an abomination, how she wished you’d never been born, slapped you silly when she found you trying to figure out what abilities you were born with—”
“You know she wasn’t like that.” Harlow’s voice was soft, her eyes flashing with irritation, reminding him very much of the woman she claimed had ruined her life.
He glared right back. “Yeah, I do know she wasn’t like that, but my mother was, so whatever bad feelings you have toward Olivia, keep them to yourself because I don’t have time for it.”
“Just because she wasn’t as bad as your mother doesn’t mean things with her weren’t hard. She told me my father was dead. No lead-up, no easing into it, just ‘He’s dead.’ Hitting me in the face with a hammer would have been less of a blow.”
He paused, as if considering her words. “I still take offense to you running her down. She was the closest thing I had to a real mother, and the only woman who ever cared enough about me to make sure I was fed and safe and had a place to rest my head.”
Her eyes went liquid, but the hard set of her mouth said she was fighting back the tears with everything she had. “You’ve already lied to me,” she rasped, her finger aimed at his chest. “Why should I believe anything you say?”
“What have I lied about?”
“That blood on your shirt is fresh and you acted like you didn’t know about it, but you do.” She pointed at the wound. “I’m barely fae and even I heal too fast to leave that kind of mark.”
He pulled his partially unbuttoned shirt open to reveal the brand. She cringed a little when she saw it. “Of course, I know about the blood. I volunteered for the mark that caused it. This brand designates me the Guardian of the city. New Orleans is a Haven city, meaning that as of this evening I am personally responsible for the well-being of every fae, othernatural and human within these parish borders. That included you, as difficult as that might be to believe. Anything else you want to know?”
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