A Taste of Love and Evil (19 page)

Gil gaped at her, crushing another coil in his hand.

“Who are you?” demanded Jolene, suddenly bitchy as all get-out.

“I’m Gil’s intern. See you at two! B’bye!” Juma hung up in a hurry and turned to Gil. “She can’t crawl all over you with me there, and if you let me do the talking, maybe she won’t even want to. Compared to Grandma, Jolene will be a piece of cake.”

After Tony left, Rose called the shop in Chicago to give Miles the good news, but he wasn’t in yet. Then Violet called Constantine Dufray to demand that he kill Titania.

“Mom!” Zelda’s small breasts quivered under her T-shirt, and her fangs were full down. “Tony said not to!”

“Tony was wrong.” Violet stormed into the kitchen with Zelda behind her. “Constantine, she’s trying to muscle her way into Bayou Gavotte. She’ll ruin everything!”

“You woke me up for this?” Constantine’s voice was drowsy and slow.

Zelda’s eyes were huge, and blood drizzled down her lip from where she’d pierced it with a fang. “You’re soliciting a murder!” she hissed. “On the phone!”

“Go back to bed,” Constantine drawled.

Violet wasn’t listening to either of them. “It’ll be worse than before you and Lep took over. She’ll break all the rules, and even the sissy clubs like Blood and Velvet will go bankrupt, because tourists won’t come here anymore.”

Constantine’s yawn came through clearly. “Maybe when you wake up again, you’ll make sense.”

“Bayou Gavotte will be destroyed!” Violet cried. “It’ll be all your fault!”

The line went dead. Violet shrieked and dialed again, but the call went straight to message. She threw her phone at the wall. “Why isn’t he listening to me?”

“Mom, you’re not thinking straight. Apart from Tony being right that it’s bad for Constantine to kill people, what if there’s a bug he didn’t find?” Zelda licked the blood off her chin. “Not that I approve of murder, but Constantine is special. We need to take care of him, not endanger him.” She gave Rose a suspicious look. “And you’d better keep your mouth shut, too.”

“I lived with a mobster for years,” Rose said. “I won’t blab.”

Violet glowered at Zelda and told her to get dressed for school. “Now that Rose is here, I don’t need you to keep watch.”

“No way,” Zelda retorted. “I’m not letting you call Constantine again, and not only that, you can’t design a costume without me. You have no sense of style. Just look at that nightgown you’re wearing and the tacky underwear you sell in the club.”

“People
buy
that underwear, darling,” Violet protested. “It’s one of our best sellers.”

“Most of your customers are screwed up. And I don’t mean to be rude, but judging by her clothes, Rose doesn’t have a sense of style, either. The Elizabethan gown is amazing, but it was copied from a painting. If you want to design something from scratch, I’m going to be involved.”

“I dress like this in the hope that no one will notice me,” Rose said. “My underwear is another thing altogether.”

“That’s all very well, darling,” Violet said, “but dressing cheaply never works. Neither does abstinence. We vamps have to embrace our natures, not suppress them.”

“All very well for you,” Zelda said morosely. “You’ve forgotten what it’s like at school.”

“Not at all,” Violet said. The subject was then hashed and rehashed as, obviously, it had been many times before. They leafed through magazines. Rose sketched and Zelda fended off Violet’s worst ideas, but Rose couldn’t keep her mind off Miles.

And Jack. With Titania.

She called Miles again, but he still wasn’t there. An hour later, she tried once more. “Miles hasn’t shown up,” said the intern, all by herself and sounding harassed. “Have you heard from him? Is he sick?”

“I think he had a late night,” Rose said. “Let him know I have a check for him, and tell him to give me a call.”

She forced her mind away from Miles and refused to think about Jack and Titania. “I’ll need to shop for fabrics. We can order some things online, but others I want to see and feel.” She settled herself at the desk in Violet’s study and brought up a couple of Web sites on the computer. Zelda shoved a chair next to Rose’s and devoured an array of lace trims.

Meanwhile, visions of Jack with Titania insinuated themselves into Rose’s mind like slimy parasitic worms. Ick.
Ick.

For lunch, Violet served them homemade vegetable soup. Then she lounged on a leopard-print daybed and made plans. “We’ll get you a bodyguard, someone who can double as a
lover. I know some clean, sexy guys who’d love to service a vamp. You can come to the club tonight and pick one.”

“I don’t want a bodyguard,” Rose said. “I had a few of those when I was a mobster’s mistress, and they were way more trouble than they were worth.” They also hadn’t kept Lou from being murdered.

“But you need one, darling. Titania’s sure to want vengeance. She’ll send her minions after you.” Violet cocked her head to one side. “Maybe you can seduce some of them away from her. She’ll be so irate! Has she figured out you’re a vamp?”

“No, but I’m not interested in seducing anybody else’s men, particularly not hers.” She made herself concentrate on scrolling through trims.

“It’s probably for the best,” Violet said regretfully. “She’d lure them right back, and by then they might know our secrets. Oh! Why not seduce Iachimo?”

Rose took a deep breath and ordered her fangs to stay still. “He’s too complicated. He has weird ideas about owing and not owing, and he hates himself for being affected by allure.”

Violet snickered. “He’s afraid of being dumped again. After Titania dropped him, he came to me, trying to make amends for something silly he did while he was under her power, and his chagrin was too, too obvious. Now he pretends to hate her, which only goes to show he’s still obsessed. You’ll be doing him an act of kindness by seducing him. Not only will Titania never take him back, she’ll be furious when she finds out. Oh, this is an excellent idea!”

It’s a terrible one.
“Why would she care, if she doesn’t want him herself?” Turning from the computer, Rose surrendered the mouse to Zelda.

“Because you’re a vamp, darling, and you already foiled her once. She’ll think she missed noticing something wonderful about Iachimo, apart from his money. Oh, this is such
fun!” Violet wrinkled her nose. “He might get obsessed with you instead.”

“I don’t want a man who’s in love or even lust with another woman.”

“You’re no fun.” Violet pouted. “But it doesn’t matter, because Constantine
will
kill Titania, and then you won’t have any competition, because she’ll be dead.”

Rose gave up and focused again on the computer. “Let’s start narrowing these trims down, and then we’ll start calling stores in New Orleans.”

By the time Jack got out of Blood and Velvet, Biff had vanished into the chaos of news vans, paparazzi, and rubber-neckers. Jack took a circuitous route home and went through the attic room onto the roof.

Several buildings away, Constantine lounged against the dormer wall of the Impractical Cat, talking to a woman who poked around in one of the potted plants situated between the tables in the rooftop garden. He glanced briefly in Jack’s direction and turned back to the woman.

Tentatively, Jack opened his mind. Nothing, neither welcome nor threat. For what it was worth, he doubted Constantine would murder him with the plant lady looking on.

He ducked below the parapet and semicamoed against the bricks, then dropped over the edge to the roof next door. A few roofs up and down later, he dropped his camouflage and hauled himself, in full view, onto the parapet of the Impractical Cat. Constantine merely watched him. The woman, noticeably pregnant, brandished her trowel above a pot of pansies. A fountain with copper lilies bubbled behind them.

“Calm down, he’s not a reporter,” Constantine said. On the table next to him, a tray held a carafe and two white coffee cups. An acoustic guitar was propped below the dormer window.

Jack jumped onto the roof. Constantine straightened.
“Tallis,” he said, with the same creepy chuckle he’d had twenty-something years ago. He showed no emotion: no surprise, no pleasure, no chagrin such as Jack had sensed last night. No anger pulsing against Jack’s brain. Bloody nothing.

“Dufray.” Running on instinct and hope, Jack held out his hand.

Constantine slid his hand into Jack’s in the smooth, light Navajo clasp and withdrew. “This is Ophelia, Violet Du-pree’s sister.”

Ophelia lowered the trowel. She had auburn hair and a very sweet, very vampish smile.

“Despite the weapon, she’s much saner than Violet.” Constantine pushed an intercom button in the wall. To Ophelia he said, “Jack lives in New Orleans, but when he’s in Bayou Gavotte, he stays over that new little pottery shop. He owns the building.”

So Constantine had been keeping track of him. Was this a positive?

“Poetic Options? Gil makes wonderful pots,” Ophelia said. “I’d like to commission some planters.” Her brow creased. “Is he all right? Vi says she vamped him last night, but I hope he doesn’t expect it to develop into something permanent.”

“Not at all.” Jack couldn’t help smiling. “He had no problem reading Violet.”

Ophelia looked dubious but returned to messing with the pansies. A voice crackled on the intercom, and Constantine asked for more coffee and another cup. He sat at the table, and Jack took a chair opposite him.

“Tony Karaplis is on his way over.” Constantine poured a coffee and pushed it across to Jack. “Why were you in Blood and Velvet?”

“I was looking for a bug. Trying to figure out who overheard a phone call the day before yesterday between me and Violet Dupree.”

“Who shot at Tony?”

“His name’s Biff. He tried to kill me yesterday.”

Constantine’s face hardened. That look worked better on an adult than on an eight-year-old kid, but Jack didn’t like it any better than he had back then. Implacable, devoid of any emotion…No, it wasn’t the same. The hatred ruling the eight-year-old had been replaced by something much more complicated, and the look Constantine gave Ophelia now was almost tender. “Sorry, babe. You about done?”

“Two minutes.” Silence reigned except for the trickling of the fountain and the clink of cups on saucers. A dumbwaiter in the wall appeared with a fresh carafe and another cup. The coffee was excellent.

Jack, too, was more complicated than he’d been back then, especially since the fiasco with Titania, when he’d been smitten with such self-loathing he’d wanted to curl up and die. Meanwhile, the tabloids had blazed with scandal about Constantine and his druggie-actress wife, first her wild life and then her death. His own misery had opened him to Constantine’s, and it had hurt like the devil, so he’d shut it off and kept it off. But maybe he shouldn’t have. Maybe, instead of wallowing in his own hell, he should have sought out his old friend, who was doubtless in a far worse one. Rose would never ignore—no, abandon—a friend like that.

Ophelia brushed off her gardening gloves, packed up her tools, and kissed Constantine on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, sweetie.” She nodded good-bye to Jack and went through a door around the side of the dormer.

“She’s always been down on violence, but now that she’s married a cop, she has conflict-of-interest problems, too.” A silence. “Do you know why Biff tried to kill you?”

“No.” Do
you?

The telepathic link didn’t work both ways. Constantine couldn’t receive Jack’s thoughts, and yet the flash in Constantine’s eyes looked almost like pain. Cautiously, Jack opened
his mind to see if Constantine was sending. Pain, indeed. Hell’s own fury, more like.

He shut it out with a ripple of shame. He couldn’t bear to let Constantine know of the moment he’d feared Constantine had sent Biff to kill him. Jesus God, especially not after last night, when countless people were blaming him for all those deaths and injuries at the concert. Indirectly they might be his fault, but he had not intended them. Of that, Jack was entirely sure.

Constantine gave him a look that would annihilate most people. “What do you want from me?” His voice was tight and hard. Malevolence reverberated all the way down Jack’s spine. “ ‘Vending Revenge’?” Constantine quoted the title of one of his viler songs and stretched with a lazy agility in contrast to his eyes and voice. “Unnecessary. I have reasons of my own to kill Biff.”

Shit, no. “I don’t want him dead. I want to know why he shot me.”

“You’ve always been too soft, Tallis. You want me to off someone else? Is that it?”

A thought of Titania dead, of Rose safe, crossed Jack’s mind. He shook it away. “Damn it, Dufray—”

“This morning, Violet asked me to kill some vamp she doesn’t like. You’ll have to wait your turn.”

Jesus Christ. “No, I want—”

Tony Karaplis appeared through the same door by which Ophelia had left. Constantine poured Tony a coffee. “You guessed it. Tallis was my friend back on the Rez.”

I’m still your friend, damn it. How many other people have you told about me?

His annoyance must have shown, for Constantine said impatiently, “Tony won’t tell anyone. He’s kept my secrets since I was a kid.”

“Thank you,” Jack said ungratefully.

Constantine shot another vicious blast his way. When
Jack didn’t flinch, Tony blinked with surprise. “Told you,” Constantine said, not letting up one iota. “You want—?”

Jack took a breath. He’d always stayed calm in the face of Constantine’s rage, but he was beginning to be pissed off.

That’s not an appropriate response.
His mother’s patience blew through his brain in all its exasperating sweetness.
Look at it from the other person’s point of view.

Impossible in this case, but his aggravation dissipated, and he managed to blurt the whole sentence this time. “I want to use Bayou Gavotte as a refuge for battered women.”

Tony nodded in approval. Constantine just looked blank.

“That’s what I do when I’m not running fundraisers for my old man. I rescue abused women, and sometimes children, too, but I want someplace tighter and safer than New Orleans and Baton Rouge. I need to know I have underworld support. That abusers won’t be given a second chance if they show up here.”