I’d been up late last night, making sure all the pieces were in place. Alex had told me Melinda Hebert’s body had been carefully laid out on the bank of the river near Duvic, fully dressed. A fisherman checking his traps had found her. The cause of death wasn’t known, but the body had been snapped up by the Plaquemines Parish authorities and Alex couldn’t get anywhere near it.
He also had run into Denis Villere, who was angry that we were using the Delachaise twins for all of our work. To appease him, Alex hired him to dive in the area where Melinda’s body had been found—thus the discovery of the new rift near Duvic, which was upriver and alongside human populations. I didn’t know what would happen if someone drank water contaminated with cooties from the Styx but it couldn’t be good.
Thankfully, Alex had been so preoccupied he hadn’t asked about the date with Jake, so I didn’t have to decide if I’d be helping or hurting Jake by keeping my mouth shut.
I thought everything was ready. Alex would be tied up most of the day trying to get access both to Melinda’s body and the police reports, and Jake would be digging through the contents of Doug Hebert’s filing cabinets. Their investigation hadn’t yielded any results so far, but at least my window of opportunity had opened.
My last call of the night, after much soul-searching, had been to Rene Delachaise. He’d been suspicious but agreed to be at my house by two, as long as I paid him for another day’s lost wages. If this didn’t go well, an overdrawn bank account and some pissed-off Elders would be the least of my worries.
I was sitting in the living room reading the paper when Tish arrived at seven, looking rumpled and frantic.
“What have you done?” She barged in the back door before I had it fully open, and tossed her purse on the table. Settling her hands on her hips, she looked me up and down. “Nothing looks out of place, just dark circles under your eyes. Are you getting enough sleep?”
Great. Add concealer to the shopping list. “Stop playing mama and pour yourself some coffee,” I said. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
“I don’t want coffee.” She sat in the chair facing mine and gave me a she-bear scowl. “What are you up to?”
“Have you come up with any ideas on how to permanently seal the rifts between the Mississippi and the Styx?” I laid the paper aside and crossed my arms, knowing she hadn’t.
She slumped. “No, it’s complicated, isn’t it? I mean, wizards aren’t built to do work underwater, yet unless some kind of direct magic is used, the repairs won’t be permanent. I’ve wracked my brain to think of another species that could do it, and I come up blank.”
Exactly. “Do you know anyone who’s ever done a power-transfer?”
“Oh my God.” Her voice cracked, and she went to pour herself a cup of coffee after all. “You are not going to transfer your power to anyone,” she said, panic taking her voice into the ozone. “Are you insane? What if it doesn’t work and you end up losing your magic altogether or, worse, draining so much you kill yourself?”
Her eyes grew narrower with every word. “And what if it does work and whoever you give your power to figures out how to keep it? Honestly, DJ. This is a million times worse than dilly-dallying with Jean Lafitte. Tell me you’re kidding.”
I just looked at her.
She set the coffee mug on the table and rubbed her eyes. “You aren’t kidding.”
She wasn’t taking it well, but at least she hadn’t threatened to tattle.
“I swear to God if you tell me you’re serious about this, I’m calling the Elders. You need to be saved from yourself. You’re just like Gerry.”
“Ouch.” Gerry had died in the process of going rogue. If his prete partner hadn’t killed him in a double-cross, the Elders would have given him the death penalty. This time, she hadn’t meant it as a compliment. “Look, Tish. I know it’s risky, but I think it can work. I’ve found a ritual for a short-term sharing of power, not an outright transference. Twenty-four hours, max. And we have to do something—the contamination is too close to where people live now. The Elders will drag their feet until it’s too late.”
“You don’t even know what’s causing the rifts.”
“No, but how many people do we let get sick—or worse—while we’re figuring that out?”
The rise and fall of her shoulders told me I’d won. She couldn’t think of a better idea, either. “Who are you going to do it with? Alex?”
I took a deep breath. “No. Alex is not to know about any of this till it’s over. I mean it. Not. A. Word.”
Her lips tightened into a narrow ridge. “Jake? I don’t think he’s stable enough.”
She had no idea how unstable Jake was. “One of the Delachaise twins. I considered each of them and finally decided on Rene.”
Tish didn’t answer for a long time. A really long time. Enough time for me to rinse out both of our coffee mugs and put them in the dishwasher.
“That’s a really smart idea.” I could tell she almost choked on those words as she watched me wipe down the counter. “Are you sure you can trust him?”
“Well, there’s the million-dollar question.” I returned to the kitchen table, where I’d piled a couple of Gerry’s black grimoires—the kind that still had instructions on things like power transference rituals, before they’d been outlawed by the Elders. I felt a twinge of guilt that I’d made Tish complicit in this harebrained scheme. But if Rene and I accidentally killed each other or I’d misjudged him and he was going to add me to his list of murdered wizards, I wanted somebody to know how stupid I’d been in my final moments.
“I don’t have much to go on except intuition, but my gut tells me Rene is a good guy.” Of course I also liked his Corvette-stealing friend Jean Lafitte. There were those—Alex, for instance—who’d say my judgment had a few flaws.
Tish nodded. “Robert seems less antagonistic toward wizards, but I don’t think he’s serious enough. I agree Rene’s the one to do it with. How can I help? Do you want me to be here?”
I thought about it. Knowing she was keeping an eye on things would make me feel better, but I thought my best chance of convincing Rene to do this was if no one else was involved.
Finally, I shook my head. “Just help pick up the pieces if it goes south.”
* * *
About two p.m., Rene Delachaise stood in the middle of my library, looking down at the shards of glass that until a few minutes earlier had been an 1882 vase in a pattern called Fish and Seaweed. The irony was not lost on me.
“Can you wave your wand around and clean it up?” he asked.
“You’ve seen too many movies.” I allowed myself a moment to mourn the vase as I pulled a broom and dustpan out of the upstairs storage closet. It had been one of my favorites. At least it hadn’t been full of herbs or iron shavings.
“Did you cut yourself?” I asked. Rene hadn’t thrown the vase when I’d proposed the power-share. He’d been holding it when I explained my idea and squeezed it so hard it imploded.
“No. Sorry about that, babe. What the hell you mean about sharing power?”
We sat in the armchairs, and I let him read the spellbook—in itself an act that would make the Elders hemorrhage—and explained how the ritual would work, at least theoretically. “I’ll give you the words to say, and you should be able to channel enough of my magic to do the underwater spells that will permanently seal the rifts.” Should being the scary-factor word. What abilities I’d get from him was a mystery. I just hoped I didn’t sprout fins.
I sat quietly while he stared at the floor. He wore tattered jeans and his usual tank, which showed off hard, muscular arms underneath the tats. He was a sober, serious man, and I thought I’d made a good choice—if he went for it. His only flaws were a hair-trigger temper and an innate dislike of wizards. I couldn’t read his emotions, but his energy felt less malicious around me than it had in the beginning. I was growing on him.
“You done this before? You know it’ll work?” His dark eyes bore into mine.
I had to be honest. “I haven’t done it before. I don’t know anybody who has—in fact, it’s illegal and I’ll get in a shitload of trouble if anybody finds out.”
He grinned, his teeth even and white in his tanned face. “How you know I won’t knock you off, keep your power, and become the Mer King of Louisiana, babe?”
Well, that was ambitious. I swallowed hard. “I don’t. I’m trusting you as much as you’re trusting me.”
“Yeah, you right.” He stared out the library window at Eugenie’s salon across the street. An elderly woman with a head of powdery, white poofy hair tottered down the steps toward a waiting cab. “I want the water cleaned up ’fore anybody else gets sick, and if there’s a rift at Duvic, there’s gonna be humans gettin’ sick too. And we don’t know what it’s doin’ to the wildlife.” He looked back at me and nodded. “I’ll do it.”
If we performed the ritual now—assuming I’d calculated the timing correctly—we’d both have several hours to get used to our new skill sets and go on the water at daylight to do the repairs. While Rene would pull power from me, I’d also pull from him. I had no idea how long it would take either of us to recuperate. But by the time my man Alex and I went to his mama’s birthday dinner, I should be back to normal. If not, and I had to stay home, what a pity.
Ever the optimist, I’d gotten the space ready before Rene arrived. I dragged chairs against the wall, tugged aside the large area rug to clear an end of my library floor, and used first chalk, then salt, then iron shavings to literally make an ironclad circle to contain the magic. Despite my vow to avoid using Charlie—make that Mahout—I would need the staff’s power to make sure I had enough amps to fuel the ritual.
I carried Rene’s gaze like a tangible weight as I set candles on the four points of the circle, then placed a large Fuji apple and a silver knife in the center. The apple had soaked in a magic-laced belladonna tincture for twenty-four hours, and I hoped it wasn’t too strong. Belladonna was powerful in transference up to a point; beyond a certain measure, it led to a swift, ugly death. This little experiment was fraught with peril.
I turned to Rene and took a deep breath. “You ready?”
“Hell no.” He grinned.
We were both barking mad. “Me either. Let’s do it.”
After I lit the candles and we entered the circle, I sliced into our left palms with the silver knife and we held our hands together, our mingled blood dripping into a small dish I held underneath. When I thought I had enough, I used the tip of the knife to mix the blood thoroughly and place a pea-sized drop on five points along the circle’s edge. I bent down, touched the staff to the circle, and shivered as the power raced around its circumference and trapped us inside.
Rene hissed and closed his eyes. He’d felt it too. “Now what?”
“Now we sit.” I was winging it at this point. The ritual instructions ended at close the circle and share the apple. I wasn’t sure it mattered whether we stood or sat or held a Cajun fais-do-do, but my legs felt wobbly from nerves. We sat cross-legged, knees touching, and I picked up the apple.
“I don’t eat fruit,” Rene said.
“You only have to eat one bite and swallow a couple of seeds.” I cut it in half horizontally. “The seeds form a pentacle design, representing the four elements plus spirit. Trust me.”
Yeah, famous last words. We were trusting an ancient book of unknown origin that Gerry had probably found at a rummage sale.
I took one slice of apple and halved it, each portion containing two seeds. I handed Rene his slice and took my own. “Now we eat it.”
“Should we hold hands or something?” Rene asked.
Hell if I knew. “Yes, my left hand and your right,” I said somberly. We clasped our hands together and ate the apple. Rene reached over and grabbed my other hand as we chewed. We stared at each other and waited. I was almost afraid to breathe. My heart pounded, and he swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple shifted.
“What’s supposed to happen?” he asked.
“I don’t—whoa.” My head spun and I tilted to the right. Without the anchor of Rene’s hands I would have fallen over.
“You’re freakin’ me out, babe. What’s going on?” He barely had the words out before a visible shudder passed through his body and he closed his eyes and threw his head back, nostrils flaring.
I’ve never felt this strong. I should have found a wizard earlier. Wish I was swimming now. I’d take Libby down to that cave under—
“Hey!” What the hell … I could hear his thoughts, and they were grossing me out. I snatched my hands back. “Why do I know what you’re thinking? I don’t want to know what you do with Libby. Don’t even think about Libby. She’s an alleycat. You can do better.”
This wasn’t like my empathic insight. I was inside his flippin’ brain.
“Shit.” He leapt to his feet and looked around, frantic. I felt him slamming mental walls up, but not fast enough to block out his fear. “Is it gonna kill me to get out of this circle, wizard?”
He was imagining himself keeling over and thinking how humiliating it would be to fall into a dead faint in front of me. Idiot.
He glared at me. “Don’t call me an idiot, witch.”
Damn it. He could hear me too.
“Yeah, I can.”
I reached out with my foot and broke the circle. The release of energy eased the pressure inside my head, and Rene sighed in relief as I clambered to my feet. “I can still feel you, babe, but it’s not as bad.”
“Me too.” I stumbled to one of the armchairs in front of the window and flopped into it. Rene took the other.
Neither of us spoke for a while. It was four p.m., and I think we’d done it. If the power part of it worked, by this time tomorrow the rifts would be sealed and I’d be alone inside my head again. Of course, we had a good thirteen hours before we could go out on the water. Unless we could do it now.
“No, too dangerous after dark,” Rene said. “We’ll go at daylight.”
I groaned. “I didn’t say that out loud.”
He closed his eyes. “Shit.”
CHAPTER 22
I heard my cell phone ring, persistent and annoying, but I was enjoying myself too much to answer. Or, rather, Rene was enjoying himself and part of my brain was doing a ride-along.
He’d hung around for a couple of hours while we tested the extent of our unexpected brain-meld—we could hear each other like background static on a radio, but had to concentrate to get thoughts or images. We also experimented to see how much of my magic he could channel. The elven staff wouldn’t work for him, but his own mer energy seemed to give my magic an extra zap, and vice versa. He definitely had enough to enact the ritual I’d prepared for tomorrow morning. I’d written the ritual words down for him to take home and memorize.
An hour after he left, he’d shifted—akin to what I imagined it felt like to be pulverized in a food processor—and now he swam through cool, deep water. I gave myself over to his pleasure, felt the rush of the current on my skin, and, if I closed my eyes, the strange, dark beauty of the marsh bottom played like a movie across the back of my eyelids.
“I’m at Pass a Loutre, babe. You hear me?” I almost eeked myself off the sofa in fright.
Crap on a stick. He could talk to me. I concentrated and sent a thought back: I hear you. This is seriously freaky.
“Tell me about it—you been swimmin’ with me. I felt you.” He swam deeper into the dark water. “I’m going near the rift. Tell me if you feel anything.”
I closed my eyes, and watched a turtle swim past as we swooped over and around a series of logs lying on the bottom of the pass. Small, colorful stones pebbled the marsh bed, with mossy growth on larger rocks and big chunks of wood probably left from Katrina.
Urg. I rolled to my side as a wave of nausea coursed through me, making my eyes water. No wonder the mers were getting sick. I feel it; get out of there, Rene.
Even after he swam near the water’s surface a
nd away from the contamination, my tongue felt too big for my mouth and I took deep breaths to quell the overwhelming urge to upchuck. Tomorrow morning couldn’t come soon enough.
“Over and out, wizard. Be in Venice at five thirty. We gonna leave from there instead of my place—the fewer people know about what we done, the better.”
Gotcha. I couldn’t agree more. The pressure inside my head eased as we stopped trying to communicate, and I let him swim in peace. I forced my eyes open and eeked again. Alex stared at me from an armchair he’d pulled in front of the sofa. He did not look amused.
His voice was low and constrained. “Tish tried to call you twice. When you didn’t answer, she called me in full-tilt meltdown. I’ve been sitting here trying to talk to you for five minutes, DJ. What the hell have you done?”
I eased to a seated position and waited to see if the nausea came back. It didn’t. Instead, hunger gnawed at my stomach lining. Swimming built up an appetite. “I need shrimp,” I said. “Let’s go to Felix’s.”
Alex moved to sit beside me on the sofa. He slid an arm around my shoulders and tugged me against him. This was nice; I hadn’t expected him to be understanding, much less supportive. He was big and snuggly and warm.
He lowered his mouth to my ear, and his whispered words puffed against me in soft minty bursts. “You have exactly one minute to convince me not to call Zrakovi. Tick. Tick. Tick.”
Rene laughed in my head as I elbowed Alex. “I’ll tell you over dinner. And if you call Zrakovi, I’ll tell him you looked the other way when Jean Lafitte stole a car, then falsified your reports. He expects me to do things like that but not you. You’ll be down in the Elder doghouse with me.”
Rene and I laughed. “Doghouse, get it?”
Alex pulled away and looked at me. “Are you all right?”
“No,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m starving.”
I explained the ritual over dinner. I ate a dozen fried shrimp with fries and slaw and an extra side of onion rings. I’d ordered a dozen oysters on the half shell before it finally occurred to me I might be eating for two. I frowned and concentrated. Rene, what are you doing?
River Road Page 17