Yeah, I’d be mentioning the farthing to Rene, too, right after the part where I threatened to exile him to the Beyond.
I ended the call and sat in the wheelhouse, procrastinating. I was exhausted. I knew it was a combination of physical magic and stress, but I’d also seen too much death the last few years. Gerry’s death and the revelation that he was my father weighed heavily on me when I didn’t lock it away. Sometimes, the sadness leaked out anyway.
My phone chirped to let me know the battery was low, startling me so that I dropped it on the console. My nerves were shot, too.
But I still had a body to dispatch. I left the wheelhouse and pulled my backpack off the winch platform, digging inside for a small jar of unrefined sea salt and retrieving the elven staff. I stared at the salt for a moment, then swapped it for a jar of iron filings. There were a bazillion insects out here, and my transport needed to be super-strong to avoid being broken by a horsefly or a swamp rat. A boar or a gator, I could do nothing about.
Returning to the bank, I filled Alex in on my conversation with Hoffman while trickling a stream of iron from my fingers. The standard symbols for transport consisted of an interlocking circle and triangle, and I created one around Douglas Hebert’s body. Making solid lines on the uneven soil proved tricky, so I worked slowly.
I studied the insect-covered treasures off to the side, namely Doug Hebert’s excised body parts laid out like gory souvenirs. I would bite off my own nose before I’d pick them up and move them.
Instead, I extended the circle around them, shooing flies away and trying not to breathe too deeply or look too closely.
Touching the elven staff to the transport for an extra kick of energy to complement my own waning powers, I willed magic into the invisible field that arose and quietly spoke the words to send the body to the Elders, along with a mass of teleporting insects. A quick shimmering of air and a few sparks from the end of the staff, and Doug Hebert’s body vanished.
Even using the staff for the ritual, my head swam and my arms and legs felt cast in iron. A transport was one of the most energy-draining actions a wizard could take, which is why we didn’t do it more often and magically fling ourselves willy-nilly around the globe.
I sloshed back to the boat and didn’t protest when Jean leaned over the edge to help me in, still singing the praises of that newfangled shower contraption. Couldn’t argue with him. This wizard needed a bath and a nap.
Alex followed me, even letting Jean help him aboard. In today’s sea of bad behavior, they’d both remained cool and professional. I hadn’t given either of them enough credit.
“You left the transport open?” Alex asked.
I nodded. “If Jake finds Jeffrey Klein’s body tomorrow, he can send it back to the Elders without me having to do it. It’ll hold for about twenty-four hours unless something big like a gator slides through and breaks the energy field. Worth a try.”
If I never visited Pass a Loutre again, it would be okay with me.
CHAPTER 10
Jean took the helm on the return trip, delighting in the novelty of a motorized vessel. He looked at home in the wheelhouse, his sharp blue eyes scanning the coast to our right and the open water ahead. I wondered how he must have looked commanding his heavily armed schooners as they crisscrossed the Gulf, looking for Spanish ships to pillage.
Alex had his cell phone plastered to his ear, putting in the formal request to the head of the enforcers for Jake’s assistance, so I went to talk to Rene, who was leaning against the rail on the portside aft deck. Maybe I could do a little merman fence-mending.
“I’ve been thinking about the water problem.” I stopped beside him, watching the shoreline slide past. He no longer projected hostility, a positive sign. “It doesn’t make sense that either your family or the Villeres would poison the water you want as your hunting grounds.”
He turned dark, long-lashed eyes to study me. “We didn’t do it, so who else could it be? Somethin’ is definitely wrong with that water, babe.”
I stared at the changing vegetation—more trees, fewer reeds—as we got closer to civilization. “I don’t know. But I promise I’ll find out. Just don’t do anything crazy till I’ve had time to find an answer, okay?”
He grunted, probably as close to an agreement as I’d get.
I had a sudden thought. “You say the water contamination seemed stronger today when you swam deeper, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“That means the contamination is probably coming from the riverbed. Maybe it’s something buried in the bottom that keeps sending out poison. It has to be some ongoing thing; otherwise, the poison would already have spread out and be too weak to make anybody sick.”
Rene turned and propped against the rail with his back to shore, frowning. “Makes sense, but that don’t mean the Villeres didn’t do it.”
He wasn’t going to let go of that idea until I could prove him wrong. “I’ll test the water as soon as I get home—it’s the only way we’ll know.” I wondered if the water problem had any connection to the dead wizards or if the deaths, the water contamination, and the mer feud were three separate issues. All it did was make my headache worse.
If mers had populated South Louisiana for centuries, long before the Wizards’ War of 1976, how many more were there now? Were there clans we didn’t know about, scattered all along the coastal areas? Were all merpeople mainstreamed, or did some still live in the Beyond?
“Were you around during the war?” I asked Rene. Like wizards, mers were long-lived, and I had no idea how old he was. He looked about thirty, but looks meant nothing. Jean Lafitte didn’t look much older, and I knew better.
“I was just a kid, but my papa, he had a bad time of it.” He paused a long time, eyes seeming to reflect faraway thoughts. “The wizards weren’t no friends of ours, of any of the water people.”
“Is that why you hate wizards?” Could it be something that old and deep-seated?
His jaw tightened. “I shouldn’t have said that. But yeah, that’s where most of it started.”
“What happened?”
“We ain’t talking ’bout this, babe. You want a history lesson, ask your Elders.”
We lapsed into silence. The wizards required training in magic via a mentoring system, but Gerry hadn’t dwelt much on magical history. I knew the war had begun when a small group of rogue wizards joined forces with Vampyre, Faerie, and a couple of lesser territories in the Beyond and tried to overthrow the wizard gatekeepers. They wanted to pull down the borders between the Now and the Beyond, and they’d almost succeeded. I didn’t even realize the water species had been involved.
We finally got back to Venice. While Alex and Rene made plans for a return trip, I called Letitia Newman, a Green Congress wizard and an old friend I’d seen way too little of the last couple of years. She’d been Gerry’s significant other as long as I could remember, even though they’d never married, and I wondered how she’d coped with his loss. I’d avoided her because it just hurt too much. But Tish worked as a water engineer for the port authority. If anyone could help me figure out what was wrong with the water, it would be her.
By the time I left a message on her voice mail, Rene had gone home and Jean and Alex stood beside the passenger door to my Pathfinder, having a metaphorical pissing match to see who’d be riding in front.
Yawning, I threw my keys at Alex. He caught them in mid-air. Good reflexes. “You drive. I’m going to nap. Play nice.”
After spreading out a newspaper to keep from leaving a pound of bayou mud all over my backseat, I climbed in and quickly locked the door behind me, just in time to keep Jean from following. I would not be napping with the undead.
Fats Domino began singing from my backpack about the time we reached Belle Chasse. “Walking to New Orleans” had been my ringtone since before Katrina. It seemed especially appropriate today since walking to New Orleans was what Jean would be doing if he didn’t stop watching me over the back of the passenger
seat. He’d ruined a perfectly good napping opportunity because I was afraid I’d drool or snore, and they’d make fun of me.
I dug the phone out of my pocket and looked at the caller ID. Jake Warin’s name brought a smile to the end of a long, stressful day.
The strains of an old BeauSoleil song filled in the background when I answered the phone, which told me he was calling from the Gator.
“Hey there, darlin’. Is this a bad time?”
That soft Mississippi drawl could make sparks fly out my ears. One conversation Friday night had reminded me of all the things I liked about him. Not that Alex didn’t have the same deep drawl, but he never used it to flirt, or at least not with me.
Jean whispered something to Alex and I knew from their stillness they were both eavesdropping.
“Your timing’s fine, but my phone’s almost out of juice,” I said, looking daggers at Jean. “I’m on my way back from Plaquemines Parish with Alex and Jean Lafitte.”
“Has Samantha been a busy girl today, twitching her nose and doing magic tricks?”
If only. “Today’s show was more like Bewitched meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And don’t call me Samantha—she was a witch, not a wizard.”
Jake laughed, and I heard a snort from Alex’s side of the front seat. Jean likely had no idea what we were talking about, not having yet discovered late-night sitcom reruns.
“Yeah, I just got my orders to look for a body out there tomorrow so I’ll need to get the details.”
My heart sank more than it had any right to. He hadn’t called for me. He’d called for Alex. “I’m water problem; Alex is murder problem. Hold on, I’ll put him on.”
“No, wait.”
I put the phone back to my ear. “What?”
“If I wanted to talk to my cousin, I would have called him, wouldn’t I?” The background music changed to a slow Cajun ballad, a sexy swirl of fiddle and accordion.
I smiled again, and saw Alex raise an eyebrow as he watched me in the rearview mirror. “Yeah, I guess you would have.”
“What you doing Wednesday night?”
I had a standing date with a grouchy cat and a DVD, but he didn’t need to know that. “You tell me.”
He chuckled. “Since we’re speaking again, why don’t we do something outrageous. Maybe dinner. Some music—Zachary Richard’s gonna play a set at the Gator. My first marriage didn’t last as long as it’s taken us to go on a real date. Talk about foreplay.”
“I can do outrageous, and I can definitely do Zachary Richard—well, you know what I mean.” I wanted to say I could do foreplay, but knew Alex’s head would explode and Jean would want foreplay defined. “What time?”
Jake and I finished making plans. If he was cracking jokes about his failed marriage that began just before his Marine deployment and ended just after his discharge, he must be handling life okay. Alex shouldn’t worry about him being an enforcer. He was a Marine. Weren’t they always prepared? Or was that the Boy Scouts?
As I ended the call, I glanced at the rearview mirror again and locked gazes with Alex briefly before he turned his attention back to the road. He’d just have to get over it. Jake and I were going to eat dinner at a restaurant and listen to one of my favorite musicians. No big deal.
Around us, ancient live oaks draped with Spanish moss gave way to more suburban clutter, and a burnt-orange sunset eased us toward nightfall. It was only five thirty, but already the shortening days felt like a clock running down and drifting toward winter.
“Your rogue wolf might not have adjusted as well as you hope, Jolie,” Jean said in a soft voice. “The loup-garou will find it difficult to live here, where his heart is.”
“Exactly what I’ve been telling her,” Alex said, flicking his glance to my mirror image again.
What strange bedfellows those two annoying busybodies made. I watched the traffic flow around us and ignored them.
“Most of the loup-garou live in the Beyond, right?” Alex asked Jean.
“Oui. The legends say the Acadian settlers brought a demon with them, one who appeared as a man unless the full moon shone overhead or he became angered. The loup-garou are larger than your werewolves and do not join packs. Even other werewolves fear them.”
I got sucked in despite my determination to pretend I wasn’t listening. “Since so many weres are mainstreamed, why do most of the loup-garou live in the Beyond?”
Jean and Alex exchanged a look. “Because their self-control is so bad,” Alex said in a flat voice. “They can change in an instant, putting everyone around them in danger.”
“Not Jake.” He might break my heart but he’d never hurt me physically. I hadn’t known him that long or that well, but I was a decent judge of character. “The enforcers wouldn’t have let him come back here unless he could handle himself.”
“I hope you’re right,” Alex said, his grim focus on the road ahead. “For all our sakes.”
CHAPTER 11
When my front doorbell rang after dinner, I figured it was Alex, ready to do his alpha dog routine and give me hell about embroiling him in the hot Corvette fiasco.
Instead, I opened the door to a pretty brunette in her early fifties, with soft brown eyes, a clear olive complexion, and an ability to strip a person’s heart bare with a single look. Tish Newman had been a fixture in my life since childhood, present for all the highs and lows as I grew up with the love of her life. Gerry’s death had opened a crevice of pain between us. My fault, not hers.
“I got your message and thought I’d drop by instead of calling,” Tish said, hugging me hard.
Unexpected, unshed tears pressed behind my eyes and I pulled away. I didn’t want a trip down memory lane right now. Stress and magic had worn me down today, and seeing her ripped the scab off a wound that had festered instead of healed.
“I just closed on a modified shotgun house up on Carondelet.” She threw her purse on the coffee table and shrugged off her light jacket. “I can’t decide whether to rent it out for the extra income or move into it myself because it’s closer to work—and closer to you.” She looked around at the double parlors. “You’ve done some redecorating since I was here last.”
I looked around, doing a quick tally. “Yeah, Jean Lafitte shot a hole in that armchair with the fleur-de-lis upholstery and I couldn’t replace the fabric. I burned up the ceiling fan and coffee table with the elven staff. I bled all over the old sofa.”
Since Alex had lived here briefly after the storm, trying to accordion his bulky frame onto a frilly daybed, I’d also turned the downstairs office into a proper guestroom.
Tish didn’t respond, and I turned, expecting to see pity. Instead, she had her teeth firmly clamped together, fighting laughter. She lost the battle, breaking into a bray that made me laugh too. “That’s pathetic, DJ.”
“Yeah.” I smiled at her, unable to shelter my heart by keeping her at a distance. I shouldn’t have tried. “I’ve missed you.”
“How are you, really?” Tish asked. “Are you happy about all the changes, or wish things were back like they were before the storm? The relaxed borders will affect the sentinels and enforcers more than anyone else.”
I had to think about my answer. I missed the innocence of life before the storm, not just my own innocence but the city’s. Before Katrina we all had a deep-seated naïveté that we might have our problems but somehow our foibles would never escalate into a full-out catastrophe. Katrina had been a big eye-opener.
I shrugged. “It is what it is. There’s good and bad. Not like we can do anything about it.”
She smiled. “Very practical. Very Gerry. You’re a lot like him.”
I laughed. “So people keep telling me.” A comparison to Gerry wasn’t necessarily a compliment, although I knew Tish meant it that way. The Elders had viewed him as impulsive and unpredictable, and he’d died in the act of betraying them. I suspected “sins of the father,” as much as my gender and non-warrior status, kept them from giving me the job as sole s
entinel. Although after today, I had to admit Alex’s steady nerves and investigative skills had been impressive.
I pulled out the vials containing the water samples and spread another set of testing jars along my worktable. I conducted meetings at my office, but the real business of magic took place here, on this long mahogany table surrounded by shelves of books and the building blocks of spells and potions.
While Tish unpacked her water-testing supplies, I filled her in on the day’s events in Pass a Loutre. “Any ideas on how to do this?”
She picked up one of the vials and poured a few drops into each of three culture dishes. “I’m just going to use a commercial kit for lead and other pollutants, so we can rule them out. There will be some—there always is—but if levels are high enough to make people sick we should be able to tell. The first thing to check for is E. coli. That’ll take a while to test—we’ll have to put the water samples in a growth culture, see if we can grow a colony.”
Ick. “How long will it take?”
“About twenty-four hours, and it has to incubate in the fridge. Forty-eight hours otherwise.”
I’d told Rene three days, which was cutting it close. Moldy leftovers were one thing, but I really, really didn’t want to incubate an E. coli colony in my refrigerator. “The mers can wait,” I said.
She finished setting up her dishes, covered them so Sebastian wouldn’t wander into the E. coli forest, and set them on a shelf. “That should do it for normal pollutants—we’ll know in a couple of days. I don’t have a clue how to detect magical contamination in water, though. We’re going to have to figure out how to do that.”
We left the worktable and eased into the armchairs near the windows. My house had weathered Katrina well. The high ceilings and soft lamps, the tall windows with their old Victorian crown molding, and the slate hearth in front of the coal-burning fireplace gave the room a solid, secure feeling. Nothing says permanence like an old house that has weathered hurricanes, high tides, and a few wars.
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