Pirate's Alley

by Suzanne Johnson

  In my head, I yelled, Rand, whatever you’re about to say, don’t!

  He flinched, but didn’t look away from Eugenie. “Well, of course you can see him,” said Mr. Reasonable. “I’d like for Dru and myself to raise him in Elfheim, but I know she’ll want to stay here in New Orleans at least part of the time until I can convince her to quit her job and raise our own family. We can have a tutor that travels with us and can—”

  Oh holy mother of God. This elf was worse than delusional; he was insane.

  Alex growled, sounding an awful lot like his canine entity, a pony-size dog I called Gandalf. Eugenie jumped to her feet and kicked Rand in the kneecap, eliciting a hiss. “You and DJ are not raising my baby. Not there. Not here. Not at all.”

  She turned to make a dramatic exit, but Rand snaked out a hand and caught her ankle in his grip. She twisted around, probably to wallop him, but stopped when she saw his face.

  Rand’s eyes had narrowed, his frown etching deep grooves between his eyebrows. Not to mention he was glowing again. “I’ll have you restrained.” His voice was low, and vicious. I’d never heard this tone from him before.

  “Don’t test me, Eugenie. I won’t allow you to harm this child.” He let go of her ankle and got to his feet, looming over her. Eugenie’s eyes had widened in fear and she scrambled away from him, pressing her back against the living room wall.

  He turned from Eugenie to me. “Dru, she’s thinking she’ll kill my child before she lets me raise him, but I warn you all now. My son is elf. He will not be reared by a common human. I won’t allow her to destroy him, no matter what it takes.”

  Holy shit, what was Eugenie doing? She couldn’t even think crap like that around Rand. I needed to give her some tips on how to shield her thoughts, although her nature was not to be secretive or reserved. I wasn’t sure she’d be able to do it.

  “She doesn’t mean it.” I kept my voice even and calm. “You felt how much Eugenie loved the baby she lost, so you can tell she loves this child already. She’s just scared, Rand. You can be overbearing.” And pigheaded, and devious, and did I mention an insensitive boor?

  “You’re all talking about me like I’m not here, so I’m leaving.” Eugenie ran from the room, but at least she had the sense to not go outside. She clattered down the hallway and ended her grand exit with a slammed bedroom door.

  Well, that had all been just peachy.

  Time for damage control. I sympathized with Alex, who was always lamenting the fact that he had to negotiate with pretes rather than just shoot them and be done with it. I could shoot something right now.

  “Rand, please go home,” I said. “I guarantee you that Eugenie is not going to do anything to intentionally harm this baby.” Of that much, I was confident. “Give her time to calm down. Remember, this whole world of ours is new to her. She only found out things like wizards and elves existed a couple of weeks ago.”

  I was so going to take him to task for that common human remark, but now wasn’t the time to push him.

  “I’ll go only if you guarantee me access to her whenever I want, and assure me that if any decision is made that impacts my son, you will tell me if he can’t.”

  I nodded before I realized what he’d said. “What do you mean if he can’t?” Adrian had said the child would be able to communicate, but how soon?

  “If this were a full elven pregnancy, by the fourth month the child would be able to communicate mentally with both parents. Not words, of course, but just general feelings. Happy. Sad. Excited. Stressed. Since he’s half human, I don’t know. It might happen on schedule, or late, or not at all.”

  “That is just … freaky.” Alex uttered his first complete sentence since dumping Rand on the floor.

  Rand ignored him. “Dru, can you do a transport back to my house so I don’t have to go back out in the snow?”

  “Sure. Not a permanent one, though. Eugenie would have to agree to that and now’s not the time to ask.” I retrieved my messenger bag from beside the sofa and took out my portable magic kit, which badly needed replenishing.

  Taking a vial of unrefined sea salt, I spread a slapdash interlocking circle and triangle on Eugenie’s living room floor and looked up at Rand. “What’s the name of the transport in your greenhouse?”

  “Rivendell,” he said with a crooked smile, and I burst out laughing. So sue me. Every once in a while, he was funny.

  After he stepped in the transport, I pulled Charlie from the messenger bag and touched the tip of the staff to the transport. “Fly to Rivendell, Legolas,” I said.

  Rand was smiling when he disappeared.

  If only I could banish him to Mordor for the next six or seven months.

  CHAPTER 13

  Waking up with Alex wrapped around me like a big warm blanket should’ve been the perfect morning-after finale to a night—well, make that an early morning—of great makeup sex. As he’d noted, despite our lack of sleep, we had nervous energy to wear off and we’d almost argued, so makeup sex was appropriate.

  We’d finally drifted off sometime after four a.m., boneless and satiated and brimming with endorphins. I no longer felt deprived by my first, and I hoped only, vampire bite.

  But I awoke with thoughts first of Rand, which was libido-killing enough, followed by thoughts of Jean Lafitte, from whom I tried to keep my libido at a safe distance. It finally occurred to me that since elves found misery in cold weather, a historically undead pirate bent on revenge might see a snowstorm as an opportunity.

  I reached for the nightstand, grabbed my phone, and punched speed-dial number four. I’m not sure if it was practical or pathetic that the Elders had dropped off my phone list and my top four programmed numbers were now Alex (cell), Eugenie (cell), Rene (cell), and Jean Lafitte (hotel suite). Maybe I’d get the pirate a cell phone for his 231st birthday. Or not.

  “Bonjour, Jolie. Where are you?”

  Lying in a nice, warm bed with a man who isn’t dead. “At Alex’s. How’d you know it was me?”

  Said living man grumbled a couple of four-letter expletives in a bad French accent, turned over, and jammed a pillow over his head.

  “The telephone”—Jean still stumbled over the newfangled word a bit—“has a square on it where names of people magically appear when they call me. Did the wizards invent this magical square? It is quite clever.”

  The wizards could take credit for many innovations, overnight delivery service via transport from the wizards’ central supply house, for example. Caller ID was not among them, however. Many of the older wizards still thought cell phones were the work of demons. Real demons.

  “Nope, that’s a human miracle. When did you get back, and what are your plans for the day?”

  “I arrived shortly after sunrise so that I might avail myself of the hotel’s … what odd words do they use … ah. Breakfast buffet. One can eat as much as one wishes, for as long as one wishes, all for the same amount of money. It is a quite interesting experiment, although I do not feel it is practical for the building of wealth.”

  I tried to envision Jean Lafitte lining up at the trough of a hotel all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, stuffing down muffins and omelets and pancakes. I failed. “They make up for it by charging more for the rooms. And your plans for today?”

  He paused, which raised my warning flags up the mast of life’s sailing ship. “I thought I might explore the city. One does not often see Nouvelle Orleans under snowfall. I imagine it is quite beautiful.”

  Sightseeing? Something smelled rotten in the state of the historical undead. “I’d enjoy that, too.” I’d hate every second of it and might well freeze to death. “Can I go with you?”

  Another pause. Damn it. He was up to something.

  “But of course, Drusilla. We will have a dinner date at noon and then we shall enjoy a stroll.”

  Explaining the difference between a lunch date and a dinner date didn’t seem worth the effort. I glanced at Alex’s bedside clock. Holy crap; it was almost eleven a.m. alre
ady. “I’ll come to your room as soon as I can get back to the hotel from Uptown.”

  Next to me, Alex grumbled something into the mattress. I probably didn’t want to know.

  “I shall await your return.” Jean hung up.

  “Yeah, bye to you, too,” I said to the undead air.

  “Pirate’s on the move.” I poked Alex in the hip, probably harder than necessary, but I owed him. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Au revoir,” he said into the pillow.

  I waited a moment to see if he was joking, but he went back to sleep, or pretended to. One way to find out. “Okay, I’ll just take your keys and leave the Range Rover with the Monteleone valet. I’ll text you the ticket number.”

  He jerked the pillow off his head and threw it on the floor. “Having you sleep here seemed like such a good idea last night. Now, not so much.”

  Yeah, well, he hadn’t complained during the makeup sex. One of us had to work for a living, even if it meant babysitting an undead pirate who was plotting some type of mayhem.

  If possible, the drive back to the Quarter was worse than last night’s trip. The snow had tapered off, but more fools like us were out trying to drive around. The city had made a valiant attempt at dumping sand on a few of the major streets to provide traction but all it did was make a mess.

  By the time we turned onto Royal Street, my nerves were fried and I wasn’t even driving. “Why don’t you park and come into the hotel for a while? Don’t you have transport watch at the Napoleon House in a couple of hours?”

  Alex grunted, which is what passed for conversation with him until he’d been up awhile.

  “I don’t speak caveman. You’ll have to translate.”

  He pulled the SUV to a cautious stop in front of the Monteleone, which meant his answer was no. “I don’t want to see Lafitte before I’ve had coffee. Or after. And don’t let him touch you.”

  I kissed him, lingering over it a moment. We needed more time together than half an argument followed by makeup sex; our fledgling relationship was already treading water. Maybe all the pretes would retreat to their respective corners of the Beyond for Christmas and leave us alone for a day or two. A girl could dream.

  “Talk to you tonight?”

  “Later, Jolie.” He must be waking up. He’d managed to smile instead of scowl.

  I took off my coat as soon as I got inside the Monteleone lobby so security wouldn’t mistake me for a panhandler with bad fashion sense and toss me out on the curb. Then, on the elevator ride to the eighth floor, I felt guilty for that thought, and wondered how the city’s shamefully large homeless population was faring during this weather.

  Many of New Orleans’ homeless were the working poor, whose hard minimum-wage jobs didn’t provide enough money to pay the city’s inflated rent and utility costs. Between misbehaving pretes and personal crises, I hadn’t heard the news in a couple of days.

  A dark-suited room-service waiter exited Jean’s room as I approached down the eighth-floor hallway. “Is Mr. Lafayette in?” I asked. “I’m staying across the hall and was supposed to meet him for lunch.” Maybe Jean had gotten tired of waiting for me and ordered his own meal.

  The young man smiled. “The dude ordered two entrees, so unless he’s really hungry he ordered for you.”

  Great. Lunch a deux in the pirate’s suite. “How thoughtful of him. I’ll have to give him a special thank-you.”

  If he ordered me snails, he could eat them himself.

  I knocked on his door before going to my room. I heard a clatter of dishes behind the door, and then it opened to the man himself. “Ah, Jolie. You … Pardon, but do you realize your attire is the same as when you paid me such a delightful visit yesterday in Old Barataria?”

  “Thanks for noticing.” When I’d put the clothes back on last night, I hadn’t anticipated an all-night elven paternity intervention followed by makeup sex. “I need to take a quick shower and then will come back for lunch. It’ll take a half hour.” Give or take thirty minutes.

  “You are welcome to avail yourself of the shower in Eudora Welty’s rooms. I could be most helpful with your toilette.” He grinned, and I grinned back. One of these days I would agree to one of his smarmy suggestions and freak the hell out of him. But not this one, and not today.

  “I’ll see you in a few.”

  “A few what, Drusilla? Truly, your modern folk have the most disagreeable habits of language.”

  Whatever. I unlocked my door, retreated to the quiet warmth of my room, and gave a longing look at the neatly made bed. I’d rather eat and nap than let Jean drag me all over the frozen city. I was part elf, after all. I now had an excuse for my winterphobia.

  The hot water of the shower finally beat the rest of the chill out of my skin, and I took my time choosing layers of clothing that would add warmth without bulk: a T-shirt that said NEW ORLEANS: IT’S NOT THE HEAT, IT’S THE STUPIDITY, a thin black sweater with a tight weave, a bulkier red sweater, and black cords. Two pairs of socks, one wool. I finished drying my hair, looked at my makeup bag, and left it closed. This wasn’t a lunch date. Normal women carried oversize purses filled with cosmetics and personal items. I walked across the hall carrying my ugly coat, the elven staff, my boots, and the messenger bag containing my portable magic kit.

  Jean must have heard me because he flung open the door to his suite and greeted me before I had a chance to knock.

  He too wore layers. He’d added what looked like a long, fitted suede jacket over his usual white linen tunic. I fingered the lapel; it was thick but soft. “This is spiffy. Did you buy it or tan it?”

  “It was given to me in trade by an Acadian who wished to purchase a pirogue. In those days we did not experience such winters, so I had little use for it.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “And what year might that have been?”

  He pursed his lips and shrugged. “I do not recall, but believe it was before the war.”

  That would be the War of 1812. “It’s held up very well.” Of course, so had he.

  “Merci. And I must say you look…” He appeared to struggle for a word I wouldn’t find offensive. Captain Lafitte and I had very different ideas about the proper attire for a woman, modern or otherwise. “… warm.”

  “Exactly. And I’m hungry.” I eyed the room-service cart buried under silver-covered dishes. “You didn’t order snails, did you?”

  “Mais non. I inquired, knowing how anxious you were to sample these delicacies, but the weather delayed the ship filled with escargot for the hotel.”

  I started to explain that a shipment of escargot differed from a ship of escargot, but why bother. Thank God for blizzards. “That’s a real pity.”

  Much to my surprise, he had ordered burgers dressed with bacon, creole chutney, and cheddar cheese. Extra fries had been piled onto his plate in an artistic pyramid. I’d have to jog through the snow to work this off.

  I gave him a mock salute. “Congratulations, Jean. You have discovered hamburgers, a great American tradition.” The few times I’d been around him during meals, he’d proven to have an adventurous palate—developed at sea, no doubt, during a time when one ate whatever one could catch, trap, or plunder from an enemy vessel. If he’d ever resorted to trying long pork, as roasted human flesh was called due to its supposed porklike flavor, I didn’t want to know.

  “Our mutual friend Rene introduced me to this hamburger delicacy, although he has been unable to explain to me why it is called thus when it contains no ham. No pork at all, in fact.”

  I stopped with a French fry halfway to my mouth. I thought it had something to do with Hamburg, Germany, but wouldn’t bet on it. “Did he explain why French fries are called thus even though they don’t come from France?”

  He picked up a crisp potato and studied it. “I beg to differ, Jolie. Even in my youth, we consumed frites at my home near Bordeaux and later in Saint-Domingue. We did not have the sweet red sauce, however.” He dumped a quarter of a bottle of ketchup on his plate and
dragged a fistful of fries through it.

  We spent the next half hour discussing the many variations on the hamburger, leaving Jean anxious to try a Big Mac—I think it was the lure of special sauce that attracted him, plus my opinion, after much sampling, that Mickey Ds had the best fries in the universe.

  “Très bien, that was most enjoyable.” He settled back and gave me a sly look that sent my antennae of suspicion skyward. “Do you still wish to join me in a walk through the city, to avail yourself of its winter beauty? Or perhaps you would prefer to rest while I enjoy my stroll.”

  “I want to stroll.” Actually, I’d rather crawl under the duvet in my own hotel room—alone—until spring. “I’m ready when you are.”

  I noted he’d never said he wanted me to join him on his stroll. With the pirate, the words he didn’t utter were often more revealing than the ones he did.

  “Shall we then?” He opened the door as I struggled into my coat, but then blocked my way. “Pardon, Jolie. Your coat does not do justice to your beauty. Do you have another you might wear?”

  What a delicate way of saying the coat was hideous and he was ashamed to be seen with me. “I can’t afford a whole new wardrobe as well as a new coat, not being a wealthy historical figure with an unlimited supply of gold at my disposal.”

  “Ah, well, we must remedy this.” He turned and strode down the hall toward the lifting room, as he called the elevator, leaving me to chase after him. I wasn’t sure what his remedy might be, but maybe he’d get me a raise.

  I barely managed to jump into the elevator before the doors whisked closed and took off for the lobby. So that’s how we were going to play it. He was going to do his best to wear me out or ditch me, whichever came first.

  Game on, pirate. My stride might be short but my competitive spirit was gargantuan.

  As soon as he walked and I trotted through the lobby and out the front door onto Royal Street, I slipped my arm through his. He either had to walk at a pace I could maintain or blatantly brush me aside, which I didn’t think he’d do, courtly old-world gentleman pirate that he was.