“Sure thing. Give me fifteen minutes. I’m still at the pirate’s suite. Need me to bring anything?”
I thought a second. “Get Eugenie out of there—see if Jean will take her to Barataria to keep her safe. Is Adrian still there? If so, see if he’ll come with you to the museum. He can stay hidden, but if something happens to me, he can make the transport and get Jake out.”
Rene’s voice grew muffled as he talked to whoever was still in the Monteleone suite. “He’ll do it. And, DJ. Ain’t just gonna be Jake we’re gettin’ out.” He spoke a few more muffled words, then, “We’re not leaving you there if things go bad.”
I let the tears fall as I ended the call and stuffed the phone back in my pocket. But only for a minute. It had never occurred to me that I might actually be forced to leave for real. When I’d been faced with the loup-garou crisis, Jean had offered me a home in Barataria, where I’d be safe from the wizards and not endanger those around me.
The thought of leaving my house, my job, and, most of all, Alex—those had been the things that made me most desperate. That, and protecting Jake, had been what drove me to agree to Rand’s bonding proposal in the first place.
Rand had done the bonding out of greed and the desire for power. I’d done it out of love—not for him, but for my life and the people in it.
I laughed a little as I picked out another garden-flag babushka scarf for my walk to meet Rene. My house across the street was gone. Within a few hours, my job might be gone. Maybe even my freedom. Alex would do what he could, but I wouldn’t let him throw everything away to save me if it came down to it.
Then my wallow in self-pity took a hard veer to the left. I wasn’t a run-of-the-mill wizard and I needed to stop thinking of myself that way. The Elders could strip away my wizard’s certification. They might even be able to strip away my limited physical magic. But I doubted anyone in Edinburgh’s hallowed wizarding halls had a clue how to get rid of my elven magic. I had skills they didn’t know about, as well as one righteous elven staff.
It made me stronger, and it made me a bigger target.
I rambled around Rand’s greenhouse and pinched off a few herbs, just in case I needed to make a potion on the fly. Then I slipped out the back door and walked as fast as I could back toward Tchoupitoulas Street and the river. I saw Rene’s black pickup waiting and wasted no time climbing inside.
“You okay, babe?” He reached across the front seat and pulled me into a hug.
“Rene, if you don’t stop being nice to me I’m going to cry.”
“Damn, don’t want that.” He pulled carefully onto the road, skidding into an icy U-turn, and drove toward the Quarter. “So shut up and fasten your seat belt, witch.”
I laughed and watched the white world glide slowly by as the snow crunched under the tires of his heavy truck.
“So what’s the next step?” Rene asked. “The pirate took Eugenie to his house, then he’s gonna meet us at the council meeting. What are you gonna do?”
“Get Jake’s escape hatch set up,” I said. “And then get myself arrested by one surprised enforcer.”
CHAPTER 30
The entrance to City Park was barricaded, with a sign announcing that Celebration in the Oaks was canceled this evening due to weather. About half of the sign was already covered in snow. The closure made our job both easier and harder. Easier because there were no humans around; harder because there were no humans around. Rene and I were the only things moving.
It was already growing dark, so Rene killed his headlights and eased the truck past the barricade. Not that there was anyone to see us.
We drove into a darkened Disneyscape. Wires stretched above the narrow drive and through the mature live oaks on either side of us. With the flip of a switch, all those lights would become twinkling animals and holiday scenes and fairy trees—or at least as humans might imagine light-filled fairy trees. I had no idea if the Monarchy of Faery had trees, but since some of their royalty had nature magic, I assumed so.
At the end of the long front drive, we reached the wide, neoclassical marble building that housed NOMA. Rene circled behind it. “How far you wanna go?”
“Not far. You need to be able to get Jake there fast.”
Rene stopped beneath a grove of trees with a small clearing tucked behind it. “This’ll work, but first we need to talk.”
“Rene, I’m talked out.”
“Good, then you can shut up and listen. I wasn’t kidding earlier. You need to get the hell out of here, DJ, at least until things settle down. Zrakovi is setting you up; I talked to my papa this afternoon. Don’t worry—I didn’t tell him nothing. But he said I should warn you. Zrakovi thinks … let me see, how did Papa say it…”
Rene broke into a heavy South Louisiana accent that would’ve made me giggle if the words hadn’t scared me so badly. “You tell dat wizard friend’a yours dat Zrakovi’s gunnin for her, him. He thinks if he makes an example of dat Gerry St. Simon’s girl, it’ll show he’s a hardass.”
I looked out at the snow, or at least what I could see of it in the near darkness. “So if he gets rid of me, he thinks nobody will have the guts to challenge his authority?”
“Somethin’ like that. The way I figure it, you scare the shit out of him because of that elf stuff you can do. Plus he thinks he’ll get Eugenie in the process, sounds like.”
“Right.” Because both Eugenie and I were just so scary.
“I’m serious, DJ. You can do some shit, you think on your feet, and you’re smart. And me and Jean and Christof, we talked about it this afternoon. We ain’t leaving you there tonight. So my question to you is: Are you gonna come with us, or are we gonna have to force you?”
I laughed at the notion of Alex arresting me on one side and my posse of misfits rescuing me on the other. “Jean just wants to add a wizard to his collection of followers.”
He grinned, his teeth shining white in the dark truck cab. “Nope. He’s got Adrian. And I think your old wizard buddy is finally growing a pair.”
I tried to imagine what my life outside New Orleans, outside the only world I knew, might look like. A world where I spent quality time with Adrian Hoffman, vampire at large. I couldn’t quite do it.
“Let’s just see what happens in the council meeting. We have a wild card unaccounted for. Rand is missing; my guess is that he’s gone after Mace Banyan. Calling Rand a wild card is like calling … well, something.” I couldn’t think of a suitably outrageous analogy.
Rene pulled up the hood of his jacket and opened the truck door. “Fill me in while we work. Is this transport gonna get buried by the snow?”
“Yeah, but it won’t matter. We just need to use landmarks as corners, like this bush.” I walked off an irregular interlocking circle and triangle, spreading the salt. It melted the snow beneath it, but quickly filled back in. I should’ve asked Rene to bring charcoal.
When I completed the figure, I placed the beads of mercury at the corner landmarks and touched Charlie to the clearest edge. A ripple of fire in the shape of the transport raced around the clearing, leaving a clearly marked edge.
“Did you know it would do that?” Rene asked.
“Just a guess. Snow transports are a newly acquired skill.”
“As long as we remember this tree is at the head of the triangle, we’re golden.” Rene pulled the white scarf from around his neck and tied it around the tree, high enough to allow for another foot of snow.
Okay, what’s next? “Let’s transport inside and take a look at the layout before the council arrives. You gonna leave your truck back here?”
“Yeah, I’ll move it farther under the trees, but we might need it. You never know.”
That was the God’s honest truth.
“I need to warm up first.” My limbs had gotten that bad old feeling that signaled impending hibernation.
“Come on.” Rene opened the door for me, then hopped in the driver’s seat and turned on the heater full blast.
“How lo
ng is Christof going to keep this cold business going? I thought he was about to get rid of it.”
Rene laughed. “He was gonna stop it tonight after the meeting until he met Eugenie. Now, he’s so pissed off at the elves he says he might let it snow until the Fourth of July. Got a soft spot for babies, him.”
I pulled my babushka flag aside far enough to see if Rene was joking. I didn’t think he was. “Christof is … interesting.” That word kept popping up in relation to the faery.
“Ain’t that right.” Rene cracked his window; shifters and elves did not share the same opinion of cold, even aquatic shifters like the mers. “He asked questions about her when you guys came to Barataria couple of days ago. He was glad to see her again, even if she is knocked up with an elf.”
I winced. Rene wasn’t the most sensitive guy, but I adored him anyway. The idea of Eugenie getting mixed up with the Faery Prince of Winter made me physically ill, however, so I changed the subject. “How’d your date go the other night?”
He shrugged. “It was okay. I need to find a good mer woman, but I’m related to most of ’em around here. Might have to go on an ex-plo-ra-tory trip over by Lafayette this summer. Need to widen the gene pool … get it? Gene pool?”
“Don’t tell me—an old merman joke.”
“Yeah, you right.” Rene leaned over to get a better look at me. “You don’t look like a corpse anymore. Wanna go?”
“Sure.” Some days, not looking like a corpse was the best one could do, I guess.
Snow blew straight into our faces as we hunkered down and made our way to the NOMA loading dock. “Can you unlock one of these doors?” Rene had to shout to be heard over the howling wind. Christof had outdone himself tonight.
“Yeah.” I half walked and half skidded my way down the dock, and touched the edge of the staff against the lock. Might as well save my native magic in case the staff got taken away from me, although I had a feeling Charlie would always find me eventually. I felt rather than heard the dead bolt sliding open, and pulled the heavy door toward me.
Once we got inside, it took another twenty minutes of wandering the bowels of the building to find our way to a stairwell. When we found the meeting room on the second floor north gallery, the clock on my cell phone read seven p.m. One hour until showtime.
The gallery had been transformed into an art-filled conference room, which we observed from an alcove across the hallway. A couple of Blue Congress wizards were experimenting with different coverings for the conference table: a burled wood, a dark cherry, an oak. They finally settled on mahogany. Lives were at stake tonight, and these twits were debating proper veneer etiquette.
“Sometimes I hate wizards,” I muttered.
Rene grunted. “Me too, babe. I been trying to tell you.”
“There aren’t any rooms off to the back, so reckon where they’ve got Jake?”
“No idea.” He looked up and down the hallway. “This place is bigger than it looks from outside. He could be anywhere.”
“That means you’re gonna have to stage his rescue from the council room, most likely.”
Rene nodded. “I agree. I’m gonna leave you to it and find the shortest route out. Two things first.”
He grabbed my arms and turned me to face him. “We ain’t leaving you, so don’t make one of us get killed trying to find you.”
I nodded; we’d see what happened. “What’s the other thing?”
“Can you take that thing off your head? It has smiling frogs on it, babe. Ain’t nobody gonna take a woman serious when she’s got frogs smiling on her head.”
I snatched off the babushka garden flag. “It’s all I had.”
He grinned and, with another look up and down to make sure things were clear, slipped away.
Next, I had to decide how I’d make my entrance. I was pretty sure Zrakovi expected me either to not show up or come in wearing Alex’s handcuffs. If I walked in with Rand, it would show a certain defiance—or stupidity. I could walk in last, wielding the staff and making a grand entrance.
Or I could walk in and zap Mace Banyan, although the satisfaction would last only as long as my death sentence.
The big question was what Rand had up his sleeve. I was pretty sure he’d gone to Elfheim, probably to make some kind of deal with Mace. I figured he’d protect me if he could, simply because it was in his best interest.
I hoped Rene was right about me thinking on my feet because all I could do tonight was react.
My heart took a nosedive into my ankles when Zrakovi strode by with Lennox St. Simon. I bet he no longer considered me a good role model for my cousin Audrey. No doubt Zrakovi had filled his head with stories about how much like Gerry I’d turned out to be.
Funny thing, that. I’d started sometime in the last twenty-four hours to consider it an asset.
I finally spotted Alex, dressed in black and leaning against the wall near the second-floor landing. A swell of love filled my chest, making it hard to breathe. When pushed to the wall, he’d chosen me. That’s all I needed. It would give me the courage to do what I needed to in order to protect him from whatever happened.
I knew how I needed to make my entrance. I stepped out of the alcove and waved to get his attention, then motioned him toward me. My pulse thumped so hard I could feel it throughout my body.
Then he was there, fear and love and hurt and anger, all wrapped up in one snarly shapeshifter ball.
“Does Zrakovi know I got away?”
“Not yet. What the hell are you doing here, DJ? We had it worked out.”
I held out my wrists. “Bind them, and take me in, or whatever you were supposed to do with me.”
“What?” Alex blinked. “Why, DJ? Why not let them think you outsmarted all of us? Why did you even come here tonight?”
Maybe he didn’t know me that well after all. “Because I want to have my say. I owe that to Jake, and to you, and to myself.” I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes, willing away the urge to cry. I didn’t regret a thing I’d done. I was finished apologizing for putting people before politics.
He blinked once, twice, and looked away. “DJ, I don’t want this.”
I stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “I know.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Absolutely. Just remember that Rand is an unknown factor, and Mace will be desperate once he’s exposed. Be prepared for anything.”
He pulled out handcuffs and snapped them around my wrists. “Where’s your bag? You didn’t bring your staff?”
“I have it. It’s hidden.” Charlie was currently tucked inside the leg of my Harry Potter pajama bottoms, which were beneath my jeans, but that fell under the category of TMI.
“Did I ever tell you how smart you are?”
If I was that smart, I wouldn’t be marching into the Interspecies Council meeting in handcuffs.
CHAPTER 31
I was pretty sure protocol called for Alex to grasp my upper arm and steer me to a bench that stretched along an inner wall—the prisoner area. I also was pretty sure protocol did not call for him to walk me in with his arm around my shoulders, almost protectively. Well, except for the whole part about me being handcuffed.
Zrakovi and Lennox had been talking, but Lennox stopped mid-sentence when he saw me. I thought a small smile crossed his lips before he squelched it. Zrakovi turned and his aura virtually leapt with joy to see me this way. “Good work, Alex. I can’t tell you how disappointed you’ve made me, DJ.”
How did he really expect me to respond to that? Apologetically? I wanted to say “Blow me,” but instead I smiled and kept my mouth shut. Lennox reached out and grasped my wrist as I walked past, which he really shouldn’t have done. I could read him like a first grade See Spot Run primer. He was excited, which I didn’t understand.
He stepped closer to me. “Hang in there, love. You’ve done the right thing, and we’ll get this overblown toad out of office before long.”
I smiled at him, too, mostly to keep from lettin
g my mouth hang open in shock. Lennox was a player; that much I knew. What I didn’t know was his game. Right now, it appeared to be Get Rid of Zrakovi the Toad.
“Will you be okay sitting here?” Alex stopped in front of the bench.
“Sure. Is this where they’ll bring Jake and Rand?”
My ploy to find out Rand’s status worked. “Jake’ll be here in a minute. We never found Rand to even deliver the warrant.”
I’d spotted a familiar halo of wavy blond hair near the doorway. “There’s your chance.”
Alex whirled. “Shit. I guess he didn’t know we were on to him.”
Oh yeah, he knew, thanks to his non-wife. But what he’d done about Mace—that was the question. Rand scanned the room until he found me, and treated me to a wide smile.
Whatever I say, just go along with it, Dru. When you get the chance, make a run for it. Stay gone for a while, until I give you the go-ahead to come back. It’s gonna be fine.
Oh, I so didn’t like the sound of that. Alex approached Rand, who turned a sunny smile in his direction and said a few words that caused Alex to shoot a bug-eyed look toward Zrakovi.
Alex shrugged, though, and walked back to me.
“He doesn’t get handcuffs?”
“Not yet,” Alex said. “He says we don’t have jurisdiction to arrest him here since he wasn’t served with the summons, but that if we want to get one trotted over here, he’ll be happy to comply.” He looked back at Rand. “He’s up to something.”
Yes, he certainly was. This was going to be interesting. I felt relatively sure that Rene and Jean would be able to get Jake out safely. I had no idea what I’d do, and I hated that my fate lay in the hands of an overly ambitious wizard, a temperamental faery, and a freakin’ elf.
Christof was the first of the contingent from Faery to arrive, and I was glad to see he’d abandoned his Justin Bieber face for a Viggo-Mortensen-as-Aragorn look, complete with the dark shirt, black, distressed-leather hooded cape clasped at the neck, and two-day stubble. Nice. Except for the little chocolate problem, being a faery could be fun.
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