CHAPTER 15
By the time Alex showed up with bagels on Monday morning at seven, I’d finished a marathon series of phone calls. I’d missed our run because I was already on the phone with Willem Zrakovi—again—before six.
The head of the Yellow Congress had verified the water’s origin as being the Styx, although Zrakovi admitted they wouldn’t have known what to test for if I hadn’t done the elven ritual first. The good news for me: no more nosebleed-inducing visits to Hades. Bad news: I needed to come up with at least a stop-gap fix, and fast. The Elders would do what they could to help, but they were shorthanded and it was my job and blah blah blah.
Next, I’d gotten a call from Jean Lafitte to verify a time for our dinner date on Sunday night. He was definitely getting way too comfortable with the telephone, and someone needed to explain to him that just because he, in his undead state, no longer needed to sleep, that did not apply to the rest of us.
Jake needed the don’t-call-before-breakfast memo, too. He wanted to verify a time for our dinner-and-a-concert date on Wednesday night. My sudden popularity was epic.
Tish had a few ideas to try on the Styx problem, which I would certainly do if I could get off the phone.
I had only a scowl for Alex when he blasted in the back door, shouting greetings at my neighbor Eugenie over his shoulder—I was meeting her for dinner tonight to catch up on girl talk unless more crises intervened. He wore a caramel-colored short-sleeved shirt and khakis. Big-boy clothes without a trace of black. It looked good on him.
The bagels cheered me up. I pulled one in front of me, slathering on the softened cream cheese.
He poured coffee, got a plate, and pulled out a bagel for himself. “You’re quiet. Convo with Zrakovi went that bad?” He carefully spread a thick layer of cream cheese on each side of the bagel and took a monstrous bite that gave him chipmunk cheeks.
I told him about the Styx confirmation. “I’m going to have to assume there’s a physical rift that we can plug up, and see if one of the mers will risk diving again to check it out,” I said. “I guess that means going back to Pass a Loutre this afternoon.”
“I can’t.” He dabbed a few crumbs from his shirt into a napkin, folded it, and put it on his saucer. “I was up late fabricating documents to show the NOPD why the feds are taking over the missing-persons case they didn’t know about.”
That was too complex a thought after my marathon of phone calls. “What are you talking about?”
“I talked to Zrakovi again last night.” He took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “What is this—chicory and chocolate?”
I nodded. “Put some cream in it if you want to be a wuss, cuts the bitterness. What about Zrakovi?”
“We decided the only way to explain Doug Hebert’s and Jeff Klein’s absence was to not try to explain it—make it a missing-persons case,” he said. “By weaving in some phony evidence from Mississippi, it threw the case across state lines and into federal jurisdiction.”
“So you can legitimately question people and get warrants without worrying about the NOPD. Makes sense.” I pushed the rest of my bagel away. “But you realize it’s going to be all over the Times-Pic, even the local TV stations. Two missing college professors is big news. And then some reporter is going to call Melinda Hebert, which will be a disaster.” I didn’t know if the woman was stable enough to refrain from babbling about wizards and preternatural species.
“I’d hoped you could go and talk to her again today, convince her to keep her mouth shut. Maybe get her to go out of town for a few days till we figure this out.”
My cell phone rang before I could answer him. I looked at the caller ID and groaned. “Hotel Monteleone—has to be Jean. What does he want now?” Would the hotel disconnect his room’s phone service if I bespelled the manager? Or maybe I could get into his suite and put a mild electrical-shocking charm on the phone itself.
Pepé Le Pew appeared at my kitchen table again, disguised as Alex. “When shall we meet for our dinner date, Jolie?” he mocked.
I flipped him a one-fingered salute with one hand and flipped the phone open with the other. “Jean, didn’t we just talk a half-hour ago? Seven o’clock Sunday night. I haven’t forgotten.”
Jean’s voice was uncharacteristically grim. “Drusilla, I have spoken with Rene. One of his family members has fallen ill, and he is threatening to kill that blackguard Denis Villere. On this occasion, I believe he might be serious.”
Great. “Was his family member swimming at Pass a Loutre?”
“Non, that is the difficulty,” he said. “She was near the head of passes, at the convergence of the river mouths, where the river pilots gather. It is a popular spot with the mermaids.”
Yeah, I just bet it was. “Pilottown?”
“Oui.”
I closed my eyes and beat the phone against my head before putting it back to my ear. “Give me Rene’s phone number.”
* * *
For the second time in three days, I wound my way through the concrete jungle of the Westbank and left New Orleans for the wilds of Plaquemines Parish. This time, I was alone and headed to Orchard, where I’d try to work out a deal with Rene Delachaise to do the underwater work to unravel the Styx question. He didn’t answer his phone, but I’d activated his tracking charm so I knew he was there.
Rene or one of his kinfolk weren’t off the hook as suspects for the wizard murders, but we were going to have to work together. I made jokes about not being able to swim, but it wasn’t just me. Wizards and water are a bad mix, especially saltwater or brackish water like that in the South Louisiana marshes—it made our magic hard to channel, probably because we were too freaked out to concentrate. If we needed work done in water, we had to hire it out.
Alex and I had decided to treat the water problem and the murders as separate cases until we found something to link them. Alex and Jake had headed off for a day at Tulane, interviewing the associates of the professors. Then they’d tackle the NOPD, smoothing out red tape, getting a warrant for the professors’ homes and offices, and soliciting detective Ken Hachette’s help in finding Doug Hebert’s missing car. The cell phone records had shown nothing but a call from a pay phone outside a convenience store in Marrero, a Westbank suburb.
Meanwhile, I had a Styx problem to fix, and didn’t have a clue how big it was or what would work—only that if the contamination had reached Pilottown, it was getting way too close to endangering humans.
I’d done some quick homework. A triangle of land near the point where the Mississippi river mouth branched apart at the gulf, Pilottown was home base for not only a number of oil outposts but one of the river pilots’ associations.
Before going to Orchard, I decided to pay a surprise visit to the Villere family in Tidewater. I’d also checked to make sure Denis was at home. Now, as I reached the end of Highway 23 and wound my way along the narrow Tidewater Road, with water encroaching on both sides and no other traffic, I questioned my sanity. The few narrow side trails had names like Chevron and Halliburton, and the skeletons of Katrina-slain warehouses and boats peppered the landscape.
I finally came to a small path that branched into a marshy area and turned in according to the directions I’d gotten from an online map. I switched into four-wheel drive as the Pathfinder bounced over ruts and ridges, sending clumps of mud skyward. I eased my way toward a house set deep into the tall reeds.
The scents of new wood, saltwater, and fish surrounded me when I climbed out and looked around. I reached into the front seat and pulled out the elven staff. My backup. As my senses sharpened, what had seemed like silence gradually filled with the calls, clicks, clacks, and occasional splashes of the nearby marsh.
“Vous n’avez aucune raison de venir ici!”
An undignified squeak escaped me before I could squelch it, but I thought I’d just been ordered to leave. I swirled to stare into a pair of bright eyes buried in a face of tanned wrinkles. An old woman, wispy white hair escaping from a faded blue do
-rag, hissed up at me. Worn steel-toed boots peeked from the hem of her old cotton dress.
“Uh.” I tried to collect my wits and calm my thumping heart. “Do you speak English? I’m looking for Denis Villere.”
“La sorciere,” she said, poking me in the ribcage with a surprisingly strong finger, a much better option than the wicked kitchen knife she held in her other hand.
I took a step backward. I sure didn’t want to use Charlie to zap an old lady.
“La sorciere. Va-t’en, ou je vais vous faire bouillir pour le dîner!”
“Denis Villere?” I said again, backpeddling. I had no clue what she was saying, except the serrated blade of her knife was waving awfully close to my nose.
“You ain’t gonna boil da wizard for dinner, Grandmère.” A young man approached us from the back side of the house. Yegods. I’d never been so happy to hear English, especially since Grandma had apparently been threatening to serve me at the family dining table.
“Hold on a minute,” the guy told me. He wrapped a muscular arm around his vicious little grandmother and escorted her back to the wide porch that stretched along the front width of the house. Once she was settled back into the rocking chair from whence she must have sprung like an aged, lethal mousetrap, he trotted back to me. He was in his late teens or early twenties, with long black hair, warm brown eyes, and a compact, muscular build.
“Sorry ’bout dat—Grandmère don’t like wizards. You the one my pop talkin’ ’bout?”
He was smiling, and no further mention of boiling had been made, so I began to relax.
“Drusilla Jaco,” I said. “DJ.”
“TJ Villere, or T-Jacques or Tit-Jacques to the old-timers,” he said, shaking my hand. “My pop’s awful pissed at you for puttin’ dat tracking tattoo on him. I thought it was kinda cool, me.”
“Where is your dad? I wanted to talk to him about the water contamination.” I looked around at the small house, which looked to be a mix of old and new construction. They must have taken a Katrina-damaged place and patched it up.
“Just missed him, you. Went out lookin’ at the property you givin’ us now. He ain’t happy ’bout dat, neither.”
No kidding. “It’s the best I could do. The Delachaise clan has been on the Birdfoot Delta a long time so it was the best compromise we could come up with. But I wanted to tell you guys to stay away from the area around Pilottown, at least for the next few days. There’s more contamination.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell him,” TJ said, cocking his head at the staff in my right hand. “Dat the stick you threaten my pop with?”
Pop sure didn’t keep anything from his son, who looked healthy enough—he had the build of someone who either worked hard or worked out. If he’d been sick, his recovery had been complete. I threw the staff back in the front seat, lest TJ or his granny thought I was threatening them.
“Just tell your dad about the new water problem, and call me if you have any questions.” I dug a card out of my pocket and handed it to him.
He frowned. “Risk analysis? What kinda wizard stuff is that?”
“Just a cover. But the phone numbers are good. Call me if you run into any problems.”
I started to climb back into the Pathfinder. “And I’m glad you’re feeling better—sorry the water made you sick.”
His eyebrows bunched, and he looked puzzled. “I ain’t been sick.”
CHAPTER 16
I stared at T-Jacques. “You didn’t get sick from swimming in the water around Pass a Loutre? I thought—”
“Oh, yeah. Forgot about dat. I’m okay now, me.” He grinned at me.
I grinned back. He was lying through his teeth. I could feel the uneasiness wafting off him along with his cold, slippery mer energy. Why had Denis lied about T-Jacques getting sick from the water? An excuse to start a fight with Rene? To cover up the fact he’d poisoned it himself? But how had a mer gotten access to the Styx?
I wanted to pull my hair out. But first I wanted to leave before Grandmère came after me with a pot of boiling water and a big serrated knife. I wasn’t going to get answers from TJ.
“Glad you’re okay,” I repeated, climbing into the SUV.
“Bon chance, sentinel.”
Good luck? I couldn’t get out of here fast enough. These people gave me the creeping willies.
The drive from Tidewater to Orchard was short—just a mile of dirt road surrounded by a lot of water. The Delachaise land sat inside a wide path that looped out next to the marsh, encircling what looked like three or four acres of wilderness. Different types of boats sat tethered to a dock, and several small houses perched on high piers around the land, some with vehicles parked underneath. I recognized the twins’ pickups. This wasn’t a homestead. It was a compound, and the Delachaises were clearly more prosperous than their angry Tidewater rivals.
I parked behind Rene’s truck and got out, reaching across the front seat to retrieve my backpack. The elven staff lay on the passenger seat. I needed the twins’ help, and Robert, because of his little tiff with Denis in the parking lot a couple of days ago, knew I wielded the staff as a weapon. I closed the Pathfinder’s door with Charlie inside.
I didn’t want to go in armed. Not the signal I wanted to send.
“Hey, darlin’.”
I squeaked again as Robert put a hand on my shoulder from behind. I was either going to have to become more aware of my surroundings or take a sedative.
“Kinda jumpy there, wizard.”
Yeah, that’s me. Jumpy. With good reason. Robert wrapped one arm around my waist and the other jammed in the pocket of his shorts as he propelled me toward the house.
“You should try a massage. Robert has very talented hands.” I peered around Robert’s shoulder, looking for the source of the deep, sultry voice. Libby the nymph stretched artfully across a lawn chair at the side of the house, soaking up rays. Technically, she was wearing a swimsuit, although I’d seen dental floss more substantial.
“Hi, Libby. Didn’t expect to see you here.”
Robert left me and slid onto the lawn chair next to Libby, reaching over with his talented hands to smooth a swath of tanning oil across her thigh. I’d seen about all the hand-talent I needed for the day. “Is Rene around?”
Robert pointed to the small building nearest the water, a blocky, concrete structure and the only one not raised for flood protection. “Out in the fish house. Our cousin Amanda, the one that’s sick—she’s up in the main house.”
I started toward the concrete building, but stopped and looked back. “Is Amanda going to be okay? Do you want me to see if I can help her?”
Robert raised an eyebrow. “Don’t think so, wizard. You just fix the water problem and get rid of the Villeres.”
I’d already decided to tell them about the Styx. I didn’t want word spreading too far, but I also didn’t want more of the mers getting sick. “About the water. Somehow, the River Styx is leaking into the Mississippi,” I said, wondering if he was so mainstreamed he’d even grasp the danger of it.
Robert’s talented hand stopped mid-stroke and he sat up. “Shit. You sure ’bout that?”
Guess he did grasp the danger.
“That’s awful,” Libby said. She stood up and tugged a migrating string of dental floss back in place. “Has anyone else gotten sick?”
“What you plannin’ to do about it?”
I blinked at them. Neither had shown much interest in the contamination till now. “I tested the water using”—a mind-blowing elven trip to hell—“a magical procedure, then we confirmed it with a second test,” I said. “I’m hoping all of you can help with repairs.”
“Of course we’ll help,” Libby said, flipping a strand of red hair over her shoulder. “We don’t want any more of the mers to get sick.”
Robert jerked his head toward the fish house. “Go on and talk to Rene. He’s pretty pissed off, but tell him what you told us and he’ll help. Then we gotta figure out how them Villeres got water from the Styx.”
I left them murmuring behind me and headed to the fish house. Was it a place they kept fish? Was it a ceremonial name since they could become fish? The door stood open, and a blast of cold air hit me as I knocked on the doorjamb and stuck my head inside. “Rene?”
“Hold on, babe.” A disembodied voice came from inside what looked like a walk-in commercial refrigerator or freezer. I waited at the door to the building, the cold air sending goose bumps to pimple my arms below the sleeves of my light cotton shirt. Had nothing to do with the alien ambience I’d enjoyed all afternoon.
The room was windowless, with unadorned concrete-block walls and industrial tile floors that had drains set into them. Metal shelves and cabinets lined two walls, and there were several home-sized freezers in addition to the big walk-in cooler. A stainless-steel worktable the dimensions of a queen-size bed took up the middle of the floor.
“Had a feeling you’d show up. Woulda answered my phone if I’d wanted to talk to you.” Rene came out of the cooler with a dead alligator slung around his shoulders, head hanging off one side, tail off the other. “How ’bout you close the cooler door behind me.”
I edged along the wall, giving him and his gator plenty of space, and pushed the heavy door shut. He shifted the reptile off his shoulders, lifted it over his head, and slapped it onto the worktable. The gator looked to be about six feet long—small, as gators go. But it probably weighed a couple hundred pounds and he’d just hefted it as if it weighed no more than a puppy.
“What are you going to do with it?” Gator-hunting season had just ended. Guess that was one of the things mers hunted, but I couldn’t see the attraction. Gators had claws like Freddy Krueger and a temperament to match. Their meat did make a nice sausage, though.
“Gonna eat this one,” Rene said. “Hide’s too little to be worth much. You ever skin a gator?”
Uh-huh. “Sure, that was a required class in wizarding school.” He raised his gaze to meet mine, and I could’ve sworn he almost laughed. Maybe I was growing on him.
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