Pirate's Alley

by Suzanne Johnson

  “DJ,” Zrakovi said, breaking my reverie. “As difficult as it is to believe, this trouble doesn’t seem to involve you, so feel free to leave.”

  He’d get no arguments from me. I got up and stopped next to the chair Alex had claimed. “We need to talk,” I said softly.

  His voice was equally soft. “I’ll call you as soon as I can get free.” He reached out and caught my hand. “I really am glad you’re safe. Are we okay, the two of us?”

  I stopped and thought about it for a second, then leaned down and kissed him, leaving a smudge of ash above his upper lip that looked like a milk mustache. I smiled. Yeah, we were okay. Somehow. So far. “We’re good.”

  I walked to the transport, stopping when I realized Hoffman’s bloody body still lay in it, and Zrakovi looked annoyed that I was still there. I’d go to Eugenie’s instead.

  Until the wind blew the shreds of my dress up and treated my nether regions to a subfreezing assault of icy wind, I’d forgotten I was not only coatless but half dressed.

  I hurried as fast as the heavy snow would allow, calling Eugenie on the way, thankful my phone had survived the blast. “Let me in before I freeze,” I shouted before she’d even gotten out a hello.

  By the time I skated across her frozen front porch, she had the door open. “Lord, girl, what are you wearing?”

  “Not much.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I see that. You have more chalk on you than clothes. I guess that’s chalk. Is that chalk?”

  I shook my head. “Plaster dust. It’s a long, ugly story. Can I get a shower and borrow something warm?”

  Here, at least, I felt at peace. No politics, no relationship worries, no judgment, no marauding vampires or elves. At least for the moment, no imminent baby crisis.

  The shower helped rinse away the last of the post-meeting aches. I towel-dried my hair and smiled at the clothes Eugenie had brought me. The teal sweater, my favorite color, was cashmere, which she could afford even less than I. She’d given me her best, which was so very typical.

  “DJ?” She knocked softly on the door. “Rand’s on the phone and wants to come over. Should I let him?”

  “Only if you’re comfortable with it.” As much as I hated to admit it, Rand had behaved better than my boss today. Zrakovi had been contemptible.

  She smiled when I walked out of the bathroom. “I always liked that sweater better on you than on me. It’s a good color for you.”

  Since Jean and Alex thought so, too, it must be true. I followed her into the living room. “Is Rand coming?”

  “Yeah, I thought about it a lot last night, and I figure I’m gonna need him. I mean, I don’t know anything about his people, and this little guy”—she rubbed her belly—“is going to be a part of that world. I’m just gonna have to stop looking at what he’s done in the past and keep looking forward, you know?”

  Yeah, too well. I curled myself into one of the armchairs near the fireplace and rested my head on the chair back. “I’m so tired.”

  “You want to stay here tonight? You can, anytime. Or are you staying at Alex’s? When’s he gonna put some heat in your house?”

  That would be never, the way things were going. Then again, it wasn’t his job to install a heating unit in my house; it was my responsibility. If I wanted to be treated like a strong, independent woman, I needed to act like it. When I could find enough time between crises.

  “I’ll probably go back to the Monteleone tonight, but thanks for the offer. Or maybe I’ll go to Alex’s if he finishes up with Zrakovi in time.” Alex wasn’t angry, which was a relief, but I still felt a widening gulf between us, partly because of our different personalities but mostly because we couldn’t find time to be together. We badly needed some alone time.

  “I think Alex has changed,” Eugenie said out of the blue. “Or maybe he hasn’t changed, but the world around him has. He doesn’t seem to be handling all this political mess very well, at least from what I’ve seen. He always seems, I don’t know, restless.” She chuckled. “Of course, what do I know? I didn’t have a clue your world even existed a few weeks ago.”

  Eugenie might be sensitive about not having a college degree, but she was plenty smart and had good intuitions about people—well, except for the whole hooking-up-with-Rand business. “Tell me what you mean.”

  She tucked her feet under her on the sofa. “I just mean with the pretes all living here now, coming and going when they want to … Alex is a guy who has it fixed in his mind that the world’s a certain way and he’s comfortable there. Then the world changes, and he doesn’t like it. And it keeps changing. Seems like something new comes up every other day.”

  Or a few times a day. I’d thought Alex’s problem was only with me and the chaos that always seemed to surround me. But maybe I was just a symbol of the chaos he saw infecting everything. It was easier to blame my nature for his discontent than to fight windmills and shadows, or elves and vampires who demanded equal access to the modern world.

  “I think you might be right.” I rubbed my eyes, which felt like a bucket of sand had been poured into each one. “Unfortunately, I think he sees me as part of the problem.”

  Eugenie laughed. “It’s because he doesn’t understand you, DJ. He wants you to be like him but you’re not. You’re okay with change. You roll with it where he fights it and gets thrown off-balance by it.”

  “But I—” A knock sounded from the front door. “That’s probably Rand.” I didn’t know what else to say anyway. Even if Eugenie was right and Alex was having trouble adjusting to our crazy new world with its lack of absolutes, I wasn’t sure how to help him if he saw me as part of his problem.

  Rand had showered and transformed himself back into his usual snow prince look, albeit a very cold snow prince with lips that had turned an alarming shade of icy blue.

  “You want something hot? I’ll get you some cocoa.” Eugenie hustled toward the kitchen. Rand stood in front of the fire, holding his hands toward the flames, flexing his fingers.

  “Lafitte wants you to call him.” Rand smiled at Eugenie when she brought in the mug of hot chocolate; she smiled back. Good. At least these two were behaving themselves. For now. I wasn’t deluded; the bad old Rand we all knew and hated would return eventually.

  “I’ll talk to Jean when I get back to the hotel.” I wasn’t sure I could hold up to the pirate’s complex verbal sparring tonight. I just wanted everybody to leave me alone for a while.

  “He says he knows what really happened to Hoffman, but he needs to talk to you before he can say any more.”

  I groaned and slumped down in the chair. “Oh, holy crap. I can’t handle one more disaster today.”

  Still, I dug my phone out of my bag and speed-dialed Jean.

  “You did not call me with proper haste,” Jean said by way of greeting. I really needed to teach him proper phone etiquette. “Or did your elf not relay my request? He is quite impertinent and self-important.”

  “Quite.” Because if anyone should recognize a self-important man, it would be my pirate. He saw one in the mirror every day. “What’s up?”

  A long pause while he translated “up”; I was too tired to do it for him. “Some information has come to my attention of which you should be aware, Drusilla.”

  Great. “What?”

  “I do not wish to impart such information on the telephone. You must return to the hotel tout de suite.”

  I’d toot his sweet, all right. “Jean, can it wait? I’m exhausted.”

  “Do you wish to help your friend Jacob?” he asked. “Do you wish to prevent a war?”

  Well, when he put it that way.

  “I’m on my way.”

  CHAPTER 26

  I had two surprises awaiting me on my return to the Monteleone, neither of them good.

  First, when I arrived at my room after a harrowing forty-minute cab ride through snow-strangled streets, my key card didn’t work. I trudged back to the lobby to get it rekeyed.

  “I’m so
rry, Ms. Jaco, but your card was declined,” the oh-so-polite desk clerk said, looking embarrassed on my behalf since I was too tired to do it myself. “Would you like to provide us with another form of payment?”

  Zrakovi had cut me off, the jerk. Then again, I guess my job of tailing Jean Lafitte was over and he saw no reason to continue paying several hundred bucks a night for a hotel room.

  I dug out my own credit card. It was eight p.m. and I was a zombie. I’d worry later about how to pay the bill. As soon as Christof followed through with his promise to send this weather system somewhere else, I’d check out and call somebody to install a heating unit in Gerry’s house. I still couldn’t quite think of it as mine.

  I trudged back to the eighth floor, dragged myself down the hallway, and dumped everything in my room except the staff. Then I knocked on the door of Jean’s suite.

  There are many people I could have found inside who would not have surprised me. Truman Capote wouldn’t have surprised me. Christof wouldn’t have surprised me. I’d even have been unsurprised to see Jean’s brother Pierre, half-brother Dominique You, or one of his pirate cronies. I half expected Rene.

  But not in my wildest dreams would I have expected to see Adrian Hoffman, fangs and all.

  He looked even worse than when I’d summoned him to my hotel bathroom to ask about elven pregnancies. Vampires always seemed to look elegant and refined and the prettiest version of whatever their human countenance had been. Adrian had always been very handsome, like a tall Montel Williams who enjoyed some ear bling.

  He was still handsome, but had been completely stripped of his cocky attitude. In fact, he looked scared.

  “Adrian.” I nodded at him and gave Jean a narrow-eyed what-the-hell look.

  “Would you care for a drink, Jolie?” Jean had his usual brandy; I didn’t see a cup of blood for Adrian.

  “No thanks. What’s this about?” One drink, and I’d be under the table, snoring and drooling.

  “Monsieur Hoffman came to me for asylum. Before I granted such a favor, I wished for your counsel.”

  After being dissed much of the day, I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or suspicious that anyone would seek my counsel. Or fearful, because Adrian Hoffman spelled trouble, and I had enough already.

  However, I sat down on the sofa opposite Adrian and reminded myself of how sorry I’d felt for him when he learned his father had conspired with Garrett Melnick to have him turned vampire. He’d sold me out, but he’d been sold out worse. A lot worse.

  “Better start at the beginning,” I said. “And tell me why I shouldn’t call Zrakovi and turn you in. He’s pissed off at me right now. I’d earn some Brownie points by turning in a wanted man.”

  Adrian swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing above the collar of his gray band-collared shirt. Silk, with charcoal trousers. Now that I thought about it, he’d always dressed like an urban vamp, even before he became one.

  He looked at the floor. “I don’t blame you for being angry, DJ. For whatever it’s worth, I am sorry for my part in what happened to you last month.”

  I sighed. “Look, we were never buddies. We probably never will be. You got caught up in something you never intended, though, and you paid dearly for it. So let’s forget what happened and start over.”

  “This is as I told you, Monsieur Hoffman,” Jean said, settling in on the sofa next to me. “You did not believe she would help you, but our Drusilla has a generous heart.”

  Yeah, yeah. Save the flowery speeches for someone who’d slept in the last three days. “So do you, uh … do you know about your father?” I know he had to be angry at his father, but still, the man was dead.

  “I saw it happen.” His voice trembled, and he kept his gaze fixed on the carpet. “Maybe I could even have stopped it but, God help me, I didn’t.” He closed his eyes. “I didn’t. I let someone kill him, then tear into him like a dog.”

  Or a wolf. “How’d Jake Warin get mixed up in it?”

  Adrian looked at Jean and made like a clam.

  “Drusilla, if Monsieur Hoffman tells us what he knows, he says that his life will be in grave danger,” Jean said. “Therefore, he will not reveal the killer’s name without assurance of his safety.” He leaned back and sipped his brandy. “I wish to know how the other members of the council would view such a thing?”

  That was a good question. “Well, it depends on who’s involved. All the alliances are shaky right now. Could you provide asylum to Adrian without anyone knowing?” Yeah, there I went, advocating lies and secrecy again. I was hopeless.

  “Perhaps, if Monsieur Hoffman is willing to live in Old Barataria,” Jean said. “No one who is not trusted by me or loyal to me is allowed to come there now. I have destroyed all but one transport, and have armed men watching it at all times.”

  I stared at him. It sounded as if Jean Lafitte were preparing for war. “And who are among those trusted and loyal people?”

  He gave me a small smile. “Other than my men? Jacob and his future wife, certainly. Rene and his father Toussaint. Christof. You, Jolie, and your friend Eugenie. And Adrian, should I determine he is deserving of my protection. No others at this time.”

  Interesting. Jean already had trusted allies among the fae, the water species, his own historical undead, the loup-garou, and me, a wizard. Eugenie, a human. Plus the vampires, if he took Adrian in. He’d collected quite a ragtag army.

  “Okay, then, let’s assume you can supply Adrian with protection and that the wizards don’t have to know where he is. How can he help Jake without going before the Interspecies Council?”

  Adrian cleared his throat. “I’d hoped you would intercede on my behalf.”

  Oh hell no. “Define intercede.”

  “I thought perhaps I could give my testimony on a video and you could present it at the hearing.”

  I closed my eyes. “And then they’ll demand I give up your location and I’ll have to lie to Zrakovi.” Again. “Won’t you be safe in Vampyre?”

  “No, and neither will Terri. She will have to come with me,” he snapped, sounding very much like the old Adrian. I hadn’t missed him.

  That meant he was going to sell out the Vice-Regent. “Melnick will track you down, even in Barataria.”

  Adrian looked away too quickly; I’d nailed it. Holy crap, Melnick was up to his fangs in all of this. “Look, I can’t make a decision without hearing the facts. All I can promise is that if I decide not to help you, I also won’t turn you in. That’s the best I can do without knowing more.”

  He didn’t speak right away. I went to pour myself a glass of water, and returned. I more than halfway hoped he wouldn’t tell me. If I had a lick of sense, I’d walk across the hall and go to bed, leaving Jean and Adrian to scheme and plot on their own.

  “It was Melnick, as you guessed,” Adrian said. “He killed my father because he’d decided to turn himself in and throw himself on the mercy of the Elders. His magic doesn’t work in the Beyond, he didn’t like being a feeder for the vampires, and he couldn’t see a role for himself. He, of course, wouldn’t consider letting them turn him even after paying Melnick to turn me.”

  I couldn’t blame him for being bitter, except he had almost gotten me killed. “How did Jake get involved? And what was the point of Melnick setting the bombs?”

  Adrian clammed up again, so I waited, and he finally spoke. “Jake happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. He saw Melnick setting the bombs, so Melnick lured him to Vampyre, had one of his men tear up my father’s body while he and Jake fought, then he trapped Jake in the transport and sent it back. Perfect timing.”

  Perfect indeed. And there was Zrakovi standing at the transport when Jake arrived. Talk about rotten luck.

  “Here’s something that’s bothered me all along.” I set my glass on the coffee table. “Who was Melnick’s target?”

  “Quince Randolph.” Adrian got up and began pacing. “It was all to get rid of Randolph, and if you got killed in the process, a
ll the better.”

  I was missing something big here. “Why would Melnick want to kill Rand?”

  Adrian stopped and looked down at me. “You’re missing an important question.”

  That much, I knew. “Which is?”

  “Ask yourself this: How did Melnick know when to strike, and where? How did he know Quince Randolph was still in the building, as were you, but that the rest of the potential vampire allies had left?”

  A chill stole across me, goose-pimpling my arms. “He was working with someone on the inside.” Who wanted Rand dead? Crap on a stick. “Melnick was working with Mace Banyan?”

  “Give the girl a prize,” Adrian said, sitting again. “After the bollocks of the first council meeting, Melnick was desperate for allies. He’d blown it with the wizards, and everyone knows the fae are crazy. So he and Banyan made a deal. He’d kill Rand, and the elves would align themselves with the vampires against the wizards.”

  God, my head hurt. With Rand gone, there would be nobody to oppose Mace, and unless the wizards secured an alliance with the fae, which would be difficult, they’d be outnumbered by a landslide.

  Forget Adrian. Maybe I’d move to the Beyond and ask for asylum.

  “So you see why I can’t go before the council,” Adrian said.

  “Sure.” I rested my head against the sofa back. “I need to think about this.” I needed to talk it out with someone, but there was no one I trusted. Maybe Jean, but he was too close to it.

  Wait. That wasn’t true. There was one person. I stood up. “I need to go back to my room and think a while.”

  “Very well, Jolie, but I request that you do not think too long,” Jean said. “I received a message shortly before your arrival that the council is to meet tomorrow to discuss Jacob’s fate.”