“Grab a stool and learn from a master.” He pulled out a drawer underneath the worktable and retrieved a black leather case filled with shiny steel knives. The kind of knife that killed Doug Hebert?
I looked around and found a stool. “Can you talk while you work?” I could always wait outside. In fact, that might be a good idea. I’d hate to barf all over his meat.
“Sure thing. Sit down.” He slid the strap of a white apron over his head and fastened the ties behind him, then pulled a short-bladed knife from the case and skated it back and forth across a black-handled sharpening steel.
I focused on an area behind his head and tried to close my ears to the sound of leathery skin being cut. “We did some tests with the water samples and we know what the problem is. The contamination is caused by water leaking in from the River Styx.”
“Shit! Motherf…” Rene’s knife slipped, slicing deeply into his left hand. He grabbed a handful of towels and started applying pressure to stanch the bleeding.
“Hang on.” I retrieved my backpack from where I’d dropped it next to the door, and pulled out my portable magic case. “I have a healing charm that should take care of that.” I guessed it would work on mermen. We’d see.
Rene looked dubious. “Won’t do anything else, will it? I mean, I don’t want no horns or wings, nothing like that. I’m a were—it’ll heal in a half hour anyway.”
I laughed. “No horns or wings, I promise. Give me your hand.”
He’d cut a two-inch gash through the tender web of skin between the thumb and forefinger. Using my teeth to pry the lid off the potions vial, I tapped a little of the clear liquid on top of the wound and used my finger to spread it.
Rene snatched his hand back. “That hurts.”
“Big baby. Wipe it off again and look at it.”
He took another wad of paper towels and wiped the blood off gingerly. The skin beneath it was unmarked. “Well, damn. Guess wizards are good for something.”
I’d take that as a thank-you. “Yeah, what we’re not good for is diving, and I want to see if you or Robert or one of your family members would help us try to figure out how the Styx is leaking into the water around Pass a Loutre. And now Pilottown, sounds like. Don’t even start about the Villeres. We’ve got to fix the leaks first, then worry about how they’re getting there. Otherwise, somebody’s going to die.”
He flipped the gator on its back and went back to slicing while I returned to my stool.
“What you got in mind?”
“We’d gear you up with a wetsuit if you want to dive without shifting, or at least a mask and oxygen tank if you want to partially shift, so you won’t get sick.” I’d been up half the night devising this scheme. “See if you can find a rift of some kind. If so, I’ll make up some charms so you can patch it at least temporarily while I look for a long-term solution.”
Most simple charms only held for a finite period. I’d have to come up with something more complex for the magic to hold permanently underwater.
“You gonna pay us? Cause if we take another day off work you need to pay us. We ain’t doing wizard charity.”
“Sure, we’ll pay—” I stopped, aghast, as Rene deftly flipped the gator on its belly again and used a longer knife to split its tail near the body and slice off the bony ridge along the animal’s back. He tossed that aside and continued cutting a couple of minutes more. Then he lifted the intact hide off the gator and spread it out.
“Cocodrie jolie,” he said. Great, me and the gator were pretty. I’d have to tell Jean Lafitte.
“What will you do with the hide?” I asked in horror as he took a large tablespoon and scraped stray bits of meat off the inside of the skin before salting down the hide and rolling it up. I wished I’d skipped the bagels.
“Sell it,” he said. “Sell the skull too, and the feet.” He chopped off the massive, clawed feet and tossed them aside, then took a serrated knife toward the head.
Oh. My. God. That was my cue to leave. “What time can you go tomorrow?”
He paused and looked up, breaking into a smile. “You in a hurry, babe?”
“I don’t want to watch you cut off its head.” Okay, so I’m squeamish when it comes to decapitation.
“I ain’t cuttin’ off the head. I’m slicin’ out the jaw meat.”
I looked at him, traumatized.
He chuckled. “Meet you at the marina at nine. Make sure your boss is gonna pay us, or it’s no deal. And we want the masks and tanks. Ain’t gettin’ sick doin’ wizards’ work.”
I escaped into the warmth, rubbing my arms, and walked back to the Pathfinder. Finally, it felt like we were doing something, or at least had a plan to do something.
Robert was chasing Libby around my SUV with a stick, all playful again. Damn it. Not a stick. Charlie.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hands off the staff.”
They came to a stop and watched me approach. “No harm done, chère,” Robert said, handing me the staff. “We didn’t hurt your little wand. Just wanted to see what it would do.”
I wondered what he’d planned to do with it. “My guess is that it did nothing. It only works for me.”
He jerked his head toward it. “That don’t feel like a wizard thing.”
“It’s very lovely,” Libby said. “Did you make it yourself?”
“No, I’m not much of a wood-carver.” The staff looked okay—as Robert said, no harm done. But I wouldn’t be leaving it in the car anymore.
CHAPTER 17
I’d just finished dog-earing some charm recipes I thought might temporarily seal a possible rift between the Mississippi and the Styx when Eugenie bopped in the back door. I’d almost talked myself out of going to dinner—as boring as a sandwich with Sebastian sounded, it fit my energy level. Mer negotiations had proven tiring.
A distant rumble of thunder promised rain and cooler temperatures, so it seemed like a good night to stay in. I’d dressed appropriately—jeans and an old JazzFest sweatshirt.
A cloud of guilt settled over me every time Eugenie came around these days. Before Katrina, we’d spent part of every weekend together, doing girl stuff. Shopping, movies, moaning over the lack of available men, and whining about trying to run a business in America’s most dysfunctional city. Well, mostly she whined and I pretended, since my fake risk-analysis business was a front for my fake FBI career. Or that’s the story I was currently telling.
“Guess what’s calling my name?” she asked, closing the door behind her. A loud clap of thunder rattled the windows, signaling a storm’s imminent arrival. She wore her usual low-slung jeans with a midriff top of a brilliant purple. It matched the lavender tips in her hair and showed off her belly ring and the assortment of celestial tattoos on her back. I wanted a tattoo but hadn’t summoned the nerve, couldn’t decide what I wanted, and didn’t know where to put it. A mistake seemed so … permanent.
What might be calling her name? “Cool Beans?”
We had a running joke about the coffee shop across the street that closed for Katrina and never reopened despite not flooding or having any wind damage. The empty building still had plywood over its windows, and gang tags covered it from top to bottom. Sad thing was, I’d gotten so used to seeing it that way it had begun looking normal.
“No way. I do have some news about that place, but what’s calling my name is Franky & Johnny’s. Wanna go?”
I weighed the value of a good dinner against the angst of making up phony FBI cases now that I was supposedly an out-of-the-closet consultant for the feds. Eugenie had never taken much interest when she thought I was in risk management. Now she thought the Tulane job was a cover while Alex and I did secret, nebulous work for the FBI, so she was persistent in her pursuit of details about our glamorous adventures as federal agents. I’d share a few lies and plead confidentiality on the rest.
A break from anything reeking of prete politics sounded good. The only water species we would see at F&J’s would be deep fried and served with a side o
f green pepper rings.
A light drizzle had started by the time we pulled into the gravel parking lot and entered the cavernous darkness. Tucked in the first floor of a yellow-brick building with a residential area upstairs, not only had Franky & Johnny’s not changed its décor in decades, but the same grease had probably coated the wooden bar since the 1960s and the same Miller High Life sign hung outside the front door. Katrina flooding had done nothing to change it, thank God.
Blinking to adjust to the dimness, we made our way across linoleum floors through the bar area, past pinball machines and old framed sports memorabilia, following our noses toward the smell of fried food.
Red and white checked oilcloth covered the tables, and we pulled back vintage red-cushioned chrome chairs to sit near the middle of the restaurant.
“Girl, we haven’t had a chance to catch up lately,” Eugenie said. “You and Alex figured out you’re the perfect match yet?”
I laughed. Eugenie was convinced Alex and I would end up being more than just business partners. “How many times do I have to tell you? Just friends. Besides, the man’s such a straight arrow, if he accidentally mixed business and pleasure his head would explode.”
We waited while the waitress informed us the meatloaf was sold out, and placed our orders for po’boys and beer. “But I do have a date with Jake tomorrow night.” And Norma Warin’s birthday dinner on Saturday and dinner with Jean Lafitte on Sunday night, but I didn’t volunteer those. Eugenie didn’t know about the historical undead, and she’d read way too much into my upcoming meeting of The Mama.
She took a sip of Abita Amber and processed that information. “I thought you and Jake had a falling-out after the storm, about your uncle Gerry’s place. So you’ve made up?”
That had been the cover story—I was just full of cover stories. I practically needed a database to keep all my lies straight.
“Yeah, I ran into him in the Quarter the other night and we decided to try again.”
“You’re deluded.” She waited till the server put our order of bell pepper rings and ranch dressing on the table. “Don’t get me wrong—Jake’s hot. But you and Alex are going to end up together. It’s inevitable.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I was tired of that conversation. Besides, she was biased. If Alexander Warin had a fan club, Eugenie would be president for life. He could turn on the charm like a spigot of cream, and she lapped it up. She hadn’t seen his monosyllabic, neanderthal side, and she hadn’t seen him play with a live grenade. I had.
“How’s business at Shear Luck?”
“I’m busy—the college girls from Tulane and Loyola all want highlights for Halloween. Wish you’d let me give you some. Some light and dark strands would look great in that honey color of yours.”
“Maybe.” A change might be nice. Things had been so crazy since Gerry died and I’d partnered with Alex, I hadn’t done much with it except braid it or tie it up. It was too long. Eugenie had been wanting to give me a makeover since I’d met her five years ago. Maybe it was time for me to put the stress and sadness of the last few years away, at least symbolically, and get a fresh start. Or at least a fresh look.
“Oh!” Our po’boys arrived and Eugenie had to try a shrimp before she could continue. “Cool Beans has been sold. A new nursery and landscaping business is opening up. Plantasy Island.”
We both groaned at the name but, really, it was kind of cute and I was glad the Cool Beans eyesore was going away. “Who bought it?”
The Mona Lisa had nothing on Eugenie’s wicked little smile. “My date Friday night.”
I almost choked on my oyster. “Fast work, woman. Who’s the guy?”
“His name’s Quince Randolph and boy, is he not my type. He’s a serious tree hugger. Wants to save the wetlands and the pelicans and the French Quarter rodents. You name it, he wants to save it.” She swigged her Abita. “The man doesn’t even drink.”
“So, what, you’re joining him on a nighttime wharf-rat rescue or something? Why are you going out with him?”
She laughed. “I have no idea what we’ll do on our date, but I know what I’d like to do.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Quince Randolph is smokin’. Tall, blond, big hands, good teeth.”
“You make him sound like a horse.”
“Yeah, a stud.”
We giggled and ordered more beer. Why not? It had been a weird, stressful day, and tomorrow promised more of the same. I deserved to unwind.
“Is this a new business for Quince, or is he moving it from somewhere else? He didn’t buy the house next door to mine too, did he?”
The young couple who owned the green shotgun house to the left of mine had put it on the market a few months ago. They’d come back to New Orleans after Katrina, but Eileen got pregnant and they were still paranoid about the ugly local politics and fast-rebounding crime rate. There had been an “offer pending” sign in front for about a week.
Eugenie shook her head. “No, I don’t know who’s buying that one. Quince just moved here from California. He’ll be living on the second floor over his business, like I do.”
“Did you warn him that running a business here could be, uh…” I looked for the right word. “Challenging?”
She laughed. “I don’t want to scare him off. He’ll find out soon enough.”
It helped to think of New Orleans as a picturesque Caribbean outpost rather than a modern American city so the laid-back inefficiency seemed quaint instead of making us want to slit our wrists with dull knives.
The city got under a person’s skin, though. Just when we’d think it wasn’t worth the aggravation, NOLA would seduce us anew with trills of jazz floating through the heavy night air, the aromas of pralines and crawfish boil assaulting our senses, the clang of old streetcars rumbling beneath a canopy of live oaks, or the peal of ships’ horns echoing off the river far into the uptown neighborhoods.
A river, I remembered, that could be in peril from the underworld sector of the Beyond and its poisonous waters. My beer suddenly tasted bitter, and I motioned for the waitress to bring our check. I had work to do.
* * *
Two hours later, a little before ten thirty, I’d made up every temporary charm I could think of that might help. I had to be physically present to do a ritual spell since words of power must be evoked, and a potion would become too diluted to work in water. Whatever temporary measures we used had to be solid, potent, and portable. Which left charms that could be placed inside amulets or weighted containers for the mers to carry. The Elders had already arranged for diving masks and oxygen tanks to be delivered to Venice.
I made cleansing charms from black cohosh and holy water that were supposed to purify anything within a three-yard radius. Sealant charms using magic-infused ground acacia twigs should spread a layer of protection across a span of several feet. And since the Styx was the river of the dead, I threw in a few different death charms—not to cause death, but to protect the living from the effects of the dead.
The death charms were complicated and required all the physical magic I could summon after such an exhausting day. Eventually, they were encased in weighted amulets the mers—and Libby if she wanted to help—could loop around their necks when they dove. My muscles ached from magical exertion, but my brain spun like a fastball at a Zephyrs game. No way I’d be able to sleep yet.
An hour later, I’d put on my Harry Potter pajamas to celebrate the first cool night of the year and settled in with a mug of cocoa and a DVD of To Catch a Thief. All I needed to complete the picture was a dog and an undead Cary Grant. The cat who’d just sauntered past me with a rubber rat dangling from his lips was not a relaxing-on-the-sofa kind of pet. That rat would be buried in my bed within the hour. Even knowing it was there, I would scream. It had become a nightly event.
I took a sip of cocoa and rested my head against the back of the sofa, watching the movie. My half-closed lids sprang open at the sound of footsteps on my stairs from the first floor. Leaning forward quietly, I eased Char
lie off the coffee table and breathed deeply to slow my galloping heart rate. My protective wards were in place, so how had anyone gotten in?
Setting the mug on the table, I stood and pointed the staff at the stairwell opening. One of the disadvantages of having most of my living space upstairs is the potential for being trapped. I’d learned that the hard way during one of my early run-ins with Jean Lafitte, back before he’d decided I was a better ally than enemy. Short of selling my house or learning how to land a jump from the second floor, I wasn’t sure what to do about it.
My emotional radar told me the intruder was a disgruntled shapeshifter and I relaxed. Only one grumpy shifter could get past my wards and he had a key to my house, which he’d been using far too liberally.
Alex’s voice beat his body up the stairs by a couple of heartbeats. “Put down the staff. If you zap me with it I’m going to have to hurt you.”
“How’d you know I had the staff?”
He rounded the top of the stairs and gave me a heated look. I still held the two-foot carved piece of wood in front of me, aimed at his head. “You might be able to tell how I feel, but I know how you think. Either use it or put it down. I’m tired.”
I propped the staff in the corner, reclaiming my cocoa and my spot on the sofa. “You’re tired? I spent the day with creepy mermen and Libby the airhead and watched an alligator get his feet cut off.” Although, to be fair, I kind of liked the Delachaise mers and Libby had been decent enough and almost clothed.
Alex stopped, sweeping his eyes from my face to where my feet balanced on the coffee table in their fuzzy blue socks. “What the hell are you wearing?”
I looked down at my black sleepshirt featuring the movie cast on the front and the pants emblazoned with Gryffindor logos. “Well, crap. Now the matching Harry Potter PJs I bought you for Christmas won’t be a surprise.”
Chuckling, he flopped on the sofa next to me. “I thought you hated Harry Potter.”
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