Black Magic Bayou (2 page)

There was a chance I might never understand my uncle’s motivations, however, and I was okay with that.

I guided us through the streets of New Orleans, with Magnolia offering navigation and Wilder staying stoic and quiet in the back. When we pulled up to an unremarkable street outside a dive bar in Treme where my pack mates were being held, I sat for a moment, staring at the old brick building that had weathered a thousand storms and was still standing.

You can do this.

And I
would
do this. I had to prove to Callum he hadn’t royally fucked up—no pun intended—by putting a twenty-one-year-old princess in charge of one of the most visible packs in the country.

Before getting out of the car, I gratefully noted an absence of press. We were off to a good start if the camera crews hadn’t arrived yet. Maybe there was still a chance I could keep this one close to my chest and handle things quietly before they blew up.

Plainclothes officers and some uniforms were milling around the sidewalk, and a few cruisers and unmarked cars were parked along the street. Police tape blocked a nearby alley and the front of the bar from public access.

I noticed there was a coroner’s van but no ambulance, which didn’t bode well. No one at the scene seemed to be in any particular kind of rush, as if there wasn’t any urgency to the situation.

We got out of the car and approached the police tape, where a young woman in a uniform was standing. She let out a yawn, barely paying attention to her guard position, since there were no busybody bystanders nearby.

“Hello?” I waved.

She glanced up, her long black bangs hanging directly in her eyes. I put her age at about twenty. Considering the dark purple bags and ashen skin tone, I was betting she was just wrapping up her overnight shift and didn’t get to see much daylight on her normal rotation.

“Can I help you?” Her fingers hovered over her side arm but didn’t undo the clip. Little jumpy. She gave the three of us a look like we were a distraction she wasn’t willing to give much time to.

I glanced over at Magnolia, who had more of the necessary details than I did, feeling vaguely stupid for not getting more information before we arrived.

“We’re here for Emmett Hardy and Mason Terrell,” she supplied.

“Are you their lawyers?” the officer asked, bored again.

“I’m their Alpha.” Now it was my turn to jump in.

“Oh.” She paled for a moment, then rebounded by giving me a dubious expression. “Really?”

Ugh, this crap. “Yes.”

“No offense, but you look more like a college girlfriend trying to use the Alpha legal loophole to get access.”

Uh, offense
taken
, lady. Wilder stiffened next to me, and Mags might have been ready to shift right there and tear the girl’s head off. Personally, I wasn’t any more impressed with the treatment than either of them, but the fact of the matter was, I was only twenty-one. I resembled a college student because four months ago I’d
been
one.

But I was also a motherfucking Alpha, and I wasn’t going to be talked down to in front of my subordinates.

“Can I speak to someone in charge? Or if you’d prefer I can call your captain and let him know you didn’t provide me access to my pack members upon request.”

Now she went extra pale as the realization sank in I hadn’t been lying. With that one demand, she knew I was exactly who I claimed, and I was also about to repeat her insult to her boss.

“The c-captain isn’t at work yet.”

“I can wait. I need to get his number anyway,” I replied coldly, pulling my cell phone from my bag. I had no desire to call the captain, and I
knew
she didn’t want me to either, but I had to let her know how serious I was so she would put up a reasonable counteroffer. The officer wanted me out of her face, and I wanted my wolves. We had to be able to find a common middle ground that didn’t cost her her job.

She glanced over her shoulder, as if hoping someone would appear and miraculously save her. Spotting someone who fit the bill, she said, “One of the detectives in charge of supernatural offenses for the precinct is still here. Would you like to speak to him?”

I bristled at the idea that
supernatural offenses
was the name of a department, as if werewolves and vampires were extra offensive somehow, but I didn’t bother complaining about it. She was human, and at this point I’d made her so uncomfortable she was willing to let me speak to someone with authority. I’d take it.

“Please.”

She waved to a man exiting the alley. “Detective Perry, can you come here for a minute?”

I heard him mutter, “What fucking now?” under his breath.

Werewolf hearing was super fun sometimes.

When he spoke at a volume we were meant to hear, he said, “What is it? I’m just about to head back to the station.”

“There’s a gir…a woman here about those two werewolves in custody.”

“A lawyer?” His gaze brushed over me, but the question was for the officer and not me, so I didn’t answer.

But seriously, way to bury the lede, lady.

“Actually, she says she’s the Alpha of New Orleans.” She had trouble keeping the incredulity out of her voice as she stared at me.

Whatever.

The bedraggled but handsome detective in his early thirties came to stand next to her on the opposite side of the tape from us. His shirt and auburn hair were equally rumpled, and it looked as if he hadn’t shaved in several days. The dark circles beneath his bright blue eyes matched those of the young officer. Not a lot of sleeping going on around these parts. He pulled a pair of dark-framed glasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on, obscuring the signs of exhaustion. The lenses were smudged and in desperate need of cleaning.

I wanted to put this whole man into a washing machine on the delicate cycle and help him sort himself out.

“Eugenia McQueen?” the man asked, giving me a wary once-over, like he was hoping he’d picked the right woman. To be fair, Mags did have a more regal first-glance appearance to the human eye. To a werewolf, though, there’d be no mistaking who was the leader here. My power would dwarf both hers and Wilder’s. A wolf with its eyes closed would have no problem figuring out which one of us to bow to, even in human form.

I offered my hand to the adorably human detective. “Please call me Genie.”

“Aren’t we supposed to call you Your Highness or something?” The detective wasn’t trying to be a jerk—I could tell from his tone—but the question was still annoying. The news broadcasts, loving a chance to mix royal-watching with the supernatural, insisted on using my full title. Her Royal Highness Eugenia McQueen, Alpha of New Orleans, Heir to the Southern Pack.

It was a mouthful, to say the least.

I felt, more than saw, Wilder smirking next to me. Apart from outsiders who didn’t know better and formal gatherings where tradition was essential, Wilder was the only one who called me Princess and got away with it.

“Genie is fine.”

He shook my hand, having settled on what my name was. “Detective Bryce Perry.”

His skin was dry and faintly rough, but his handshake was firm. I liked it when men didn’t shy away from a good grip with me. Truth be told, I was the one who had to hold back, lest I accidentally crush someone’s fingers. When alphas met each other it was like a contest to see who could shake hardest and longest. I’d seen two particularly stubborn men go an hour once before one yielded, on the verge of losing a finger to lack of circulation.

“You’re in charge of the supernatural cases?” I asked.

Perry gave a curt nod and pushed his thick copper-tinged hair back from his face, making him look five years younger in an instant. “Yeah, I’m on the night beat and Detective Mercer does the day shift. Guess I’m keeping this one though.” He smiled apologetically when he saw my confused expression. “This one was a bit… Well. It’s been a long night.”

I could win a
who has had the longest night
contest without even getting into the super-grim stories, but Detective Perry was obviously exhausted, and I just wanted to know my wolves were okay.

He lifted the police tape and indicated we should follow him as he headed in the direction of the weather-beaten bar. “I met your sister once,” he said, making friendly conversation as we walked. “She’s something else.”

The way he said it, much like the way he’d fumbled over my title, told me a lot about him. For one, he wasn’t entirely comfortable with this new world of shapeshifters and vampires. I couldn’t blame him. It was a lot to swallow. But the other thing it told me was that Bryce Perry wasn’t put off by powerful women. When he referred to my sister, Secret, as
something else
, his tone was more awestruck, reverent even.

She had that effect on people.

“Where did you meet Secret?” I asked, eager for any tidbits. She and I had a standing biweekly Skype date, but I still loved to know what was going on with her professionally. She was one-third of an FBI task force in charge of mediating human and supernatural relationships.

“All law enforcement assigned to supe-specific departments had to take mandatory training in DC last year. She was leading a couple workshops.”

I had a hard time imagining Secret in a classroom teaching cops and marshals about different classifications of supernatural beings and why someone should never, ever call a werewolf a
bitch
. She wasn’t the most patient woman in the world, and she had a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit. Come to think of it, I’d have given my left arm to sit in on one of those training seminars. I’d have to email her and ask for a drop-in pass for a future one.

I suppressed a smirk. We were here on business, after all.
Focus, Genie
. “I’m sure it was very educational.”

“Hell of a lady.” He nodded approvingly. “And she’s like you, hey? Royalty, I mean.”

“Princess by birth, Queen by marriage.” This was such an abbreviated version of Secret’s rise to pack leadership it was borderline lying. But to tell him the entire thing would take hours, and that wasn’t what we were here for.

“Wild.”

We arrived at a parked squad car where a heavyset older officer was leaning against the hood typing something into his phone. I peered in the backseat of the cruiser, half-expecting to see Emmett and Mason inside, but the car was empty.

“They still inside?” Perry asked, indicating the heavy wooden door at the front of the bar. It was so weathered and scarred it looked as if someone had tried to take it down with a battering ram at some point in the past.

“Yeah. They’ve been pretty calm, no trouble. This who they called?” The older officer jerked his chin towards me, his expression cool and unreadable.

Actually, Emmett had called his father, and his father had called me via Magnolia, but the end result was the same, so I just nodded.

At least this guy didn’t care enough to ask who I was.

“I’m afraid your friends will need to wait out here.” Perry jerked his thumb towards Wilder and Mags, like maybe I’d be confused about which friends he was referring to. “Typically we only allow lawyers beyond this point, but with the new laws…well, you know.”

I did know. One of the few pieces of legislation to go our way recently had been a federal law recognizing the importance of pack and—in the case of vampires—council power. This didn’t mean our law superseded human law, it just meant law enforcement recognized the ability of our people to self-regulate. No one wanted to have werewolves and vampires mixed into gen pop in a prison. We had begun working alongside local officials wherever possible to offer solutions to crimes involving the supernatural population.

The efforts had their detractors, of course, but overall it was proving to be an incredibly efficient system. Especially considering it was the way things had been done for thousands of years before humankind figured out we were here.

The “leave them be” mentality seemed to be most popular. We had governed ourselves for a long time while still adhering to the laws of American government. As long as nothing we did—and no one needed to know
exactly
what we did—broke those laws, we were left alone.

Things were trickier for vampires. They were technically dead, so how did one regulate their procedures? Secret had once been one-third of their ruling council, the Tribunal. She’d told me about a few vampire punishment techniques that had made
my
toes curl. If humankind at large knew what the vamps were up to, they would not be as cool about letting the Tribunal run things.

What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, though. Not all werewolf punishments would be considered humane. But it was the way things were done.

Wilder probably wanted to argue that he should be allowed to join me, but one glance from me and he bit his tongue. Instead he leaned up against the tail end of the cruiser, crossing his arms with a casual grace that made him look absolutely edible. How could he make the simplest gesture that hot?

He caught me staring at him and winked.

Cheeky bastard.

Detective Perry knocked twice on the front door of the bar, and a huge man who smelled distinctly of bear opened it up. He was about six and a half feet tall with a bald head and broad chest. His nostrils flared when he smelled me, and we both nodded our awareness to each other. It was smart using a shifter to guard the wolves.

“Do you normally keep suspects at a crime scene like this, Detective Perry?” I followed him through the door, and it shut behind us with a whispered click.

“Normally, no. But I think we both know this isn’t the most normal situation. And there aren’t a lot of places in town where we can safely hold a shifter, let alone two of them. We’re not allowed to keep them with humans in the holding cells and, well, like I said, it’s been a hell of a night. This was our best option. Kind of a last resort.” He half-shrugged in a
what can you do
manner.

The bear-officer asked to see my ID and checked it against a list of authorized pack representatives. This didn’t bother me because I liked that humans were able to confirm which wolves could and couldn’t speak for the pack. Explaining our power structure to those who couldn’t feel it was about as useful as describing a Picasso painting to a blind person. It was beautiful and functional, but if you couldn’t sense the whole thing, it might seem like a giant mess.