River Road (18 page)

“Look, I don’t trust the guy. Hate that you seem to like him. Really hate that he wants you. But he’s smart. He’ll help you because he knows the wizards would come down on him like a brick shithouse if he didn’t.”

Oh, good grief. “He doesn’t want me. He wants to figure out a way he can use me to his own advantage.”

Alex’s eyes were dark and unfathomable. “Oh, he wants you.”

He moved slowly, inching toward me till we were nose-to-nose, giving me a close-range view of velvet brown eyes and dark evening stubble. I wanted to back away but refused to let him see he made me feel unsettled. “Just remember this when he makes his move.”

His lips met mine. He tasted of cocoa and mint, and the hand that slid to the back of my neck felt like fire. He pulled away with a hard nip at my lower lip.

“Ouch!” I beat him over the head with the nearest weapon I could find. Unfortunately, it was only a throw pillow. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

He grinned and ruffled my hair like I was a precocious five-year-old. “Just sayin’.”

Alex rolled to his feet and headed for the stairway. “I’ll talk to you when you get back tomorrow.”

I stared after him. “Just sayin’ what?”

CHAPTER
18

Jean was sitting outside the Riverside Market Walgreens when I arrived at my office at eight thirty. I parked the Pathfinder and watched him a few moments, sprawled across the bench like a ruler surveying his kingdom, long legs splayed, arms stretched along the wooden seatback. He watched people coming and going from the drugstore, his glance occasionally lingering on certain customers. It wasn’t attractive women he was ogling, I finally realized. It was customers leaving the store with large bags.

Probably thinking of ways to rob them and resell the merchandise.

As I got out of the SUV, he spotted me and rose, catlike, to prowl my way. His blue tunic, with black pants tucked into the black boots, made him look even taller and more broad-shouldered than usual, but at least he didn’t have his gun visible. It was there somewhere, though.

“I was most pleased that you called for my assistance last evening,
Jolie
. However, I am disappointed you chose to once again dress as a field worker.”

I looked down at my jeans and lightweight sweater. “They’re blue jeans, and I’ll have you know they cost a small fortune.” Plus they had boot-cut legs that made me look taller.

He followed me in the office door, trailing too close, resting a hand on my shoulder. I thought about Alex and what he’d said, and the kiss. I’d already thought about that kiss too much. It kept me awake half the night, wondering what it meant and wondering what I wanted it to mean. Which was just, no doubt, what Alex had intended. Manipulative alpha shapeshifter.

I shrugged from beneath Jean’s hand and pointed him to a chair. “We’re supposed to meet the twins and Libby at ten, so we’ve got a few minutes.” I made coffee and began a quick check of my e-mail. The Elders had sent a new memo letting all the regional wizards know the nymphs had formed a coalition called the Greater Mississippi River Nymphs. Glad to know the big guys were on top of things.

Jean sipped some Amaretto Mocha dark roast and looked at his coffee cup in disgust. “Who is this Libby?”

I gave him the scoop on the nymph. “She’s kind of an airhead, but Rene and Robert like her, so mostly we want to keep her from distracting them from their dive,” I said. Maybe Libby would dive herself—I’d brought an extra mask. “Have you had experience with nymphs?”

I expected a ribald comeback or at least a good leer, but Jean answered seriously. “I have long heard stories of how they lure sailors to their death but I have never met one. This Libby does not interest me. I will ensure she does not interrupt your business.”

That sounded ominous.

“You can’t kill her,” I said. Such a fiasco would generate enough paperwork to keep me filing reports for months. I finished my e-mail, shut the computer down, and grabbed my backpack, making sure the elven staff was seated firmly inside. “Let’s do it.”

“Do it?” Jean followed me outside with a put-upon sigh. I turned to lock the door behind us. “People have lost the proper art of language. It is a great pity.”

Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I wasn’t going to take diction lessons from the Miss Manners of the historical undead. “You ever been to a drive-through?”

Louisiana Highway 23 was becoming overly familiar, but we were too busy slurping chocolate milkshakes to banter. Jean was content to sip quietly after he got the hang of using a straw.

*   *   *

Four hours later, as the
Dieu de la Mer
bounced over the choppy water outside Pilottown, the milkshake was a distant memory. I was hot, hungry, and annoyed.

We’d gone to the small settlement at the head of passes first. The mouth of the river spreads out like tree roots into the Gulf of Mexico. The point at which the roots all joined the trunk, or the river proper, was the head of passes.

Like the rest of Plaquemines, Pilottown was a blend of new construction and Katrina debris. A new plantation-style raised house shone white in the soft sunlight, linked to smaller buildings by sidewalks built on posts above the swampy, unreliable land. Piers stretched into the water, several with boats docked at them that had PILOT printed on the sides of their wheelhouses. Oil derricks dotted the water in the distance.

“River pilots can stay here overnight when they waitin’ for a ship to come in real late or real early,” Rene explained, easing the boat beside a pier. Seagoing vessels navigating the Mississippi were required to have a licensed river pilot aboard.

Jean and I had spent most of the trip in the wheelhouse with Rene, trying to avoid the antics of Robert and Libby. They’d turned the aft deck into a combination tanning salon and boudoir. To my surprise, Jean had proven old-fashioned when it came to PDA. Apparently, he liked his affection more private.

Rene did the first dive just outside the Pilottown marina and confirmed a rift in the riverbed big enough to swim through. Robert and Libby dove with the amulets. All they had to do was open them and lodge them into the mud near the rift. Rene waited an hour after their return, then dove again to make sure the charms were still in place and the water clean.

So far, so good.

Now we were headed back to Pass a Loutre. Once we got out of the main current of the river and the water was smoother, I climbed onto the railed area above the wheelhouse to enjoy the mild October sun and think. Rene and Jean began talking softly as soon as I was gone, and while I couldn’t hear them I had no doubt they were cooking up some new business scheme. I wanted no part of it.

The good thing about charms is they’re quick to make and can be invoked easily by a second party. They also work fast. The bad thing? None of today’s charms would last more than seventy-two hours. I had another three days to come up with something permanent.

And I had to figure out how the rifts were happening. Had something come in from the Underworld, creating its own improvised transport? Were the rifts spontaneously appearing because of some weakness in the fabric of reality between the modern Mississippi and the Styx?

The boat slowed as we made the turn toward Pass a Loutre, and I climbed back down and joined the happy couple on the aft deck. Rene guided the
Dieu de la Mer
into an area of dense growth about fifty yards past the place we’d found Doug Hebert’s body.

The breeze had died down, and the call of birds and buzz of insects were the only sounds other than the soft slap of water against the hull.

Jean and Rene joined us on the aft deck. “Same routine here as before?” Rene asked.

I knelt to the deck and pulled the remaining charm amulets out of the front pocket of my backpack. “Whoever dives might as well take these on the first trip. Since there was a rift at Pilottown, we can assume there’s one here as well.”

“Makes sense, babe. Robert, you wanna take this one?”

“Sure thing.” He looped the amulets around his neck, slid the tank on his back, pulled on the mask, and dove.

Rene joined Jean in the wheelhouse to continue their conversation. That left me on the aft deck with Libby.

So she made me feel short and dumpy; I’d have to live with it. I flopped to the deck next to where she lay sunning in her barely there swimsuit. What did one talk about with a nymph?

“You seem to like the twins,” I said. “Do you know a lot of mermen?” I almost bit off my own tongue, for fear she’d think I meant “know” in a biblical sense.

“They are my first.” She sat up and offered me some sunblock. I took a dab and spread it on my face and hands—the only part of this sunbather that was exposed. “I find them interesting. They are like most men, however. They see what they want to see and believe whatever I tell them.”

I lowered my sunglasses and looked at her. “You mean they make assumptions about you, and you take advantage of it?”

“Of course. Don’t men make assumptions about you? That you are not as smart as they? Or that they know what you need more than you yourself?”

I pushed my sunglasses back up and reclined on the deck. Damned if Libby and I didn’t have something in common. How had that happened? “Yes, I know exactly what you mean. But, no offense, you do kind of encourage them to not take you seriously, you know.”

She stretched out beside me and closed her eyes. “Well, of course. I am a nymph. It is my nature.”

Glad we got that straight. I lay in the sun and thought instead about the Stygian rifts. I had been pondering a permanent solution short of donning a wetsuit and diving myself. Because even if the Underworld opened up and Hades himself came swimming through, I wasn’t going in the water. Yet any long-term fix would require direct use of magic.

Early this morning, I’d come up with a crazy plan involving a sealing ritual that would permanently adhere a blanket of magic over even a large rift, but Tish and I needed to talk about it, and I needed to gauge how far I could trust the Delachaise twins.

I sat up when I heard a splash from the foredeck and saw Jean at the rail. I joined him, looking around for Rene. “Did he go in too?”

“
Oui,
since Robert was taking longer than usual and Rene sensed one of the Villeres in the area, he wanted to ensure no harm had come to his brother.”

I hoped Robert was okay, but the absence of both Delachaises gave me time to play
Grill the Pirate
. “How long have you known the twins?”

He eyed me a moment before answering. “Rene, I have known for several years, perhaps ten. Robert I met only one or two years ago. They are good men.”

“Which one of them is the most reliable?”

He frowned at me. “That you like my friends is pleasing to me,
Jolie
. As long as you do not like them too much.”

I turned with my side to the rail and looked up at him. Jean was completely misconstruing my interest, but I pushed ahead. “I don’t like them too much. I just want to know which you feel is most trustworthy.”

“Bah.” Jean shrugged. “How does one measure the honesty of a man’s heart?”

Great. He’d be spouting poetry next.

“However, I will only say this: of the two, Rene is the more serious of purpose. Robert is a fine man, but he can be easily distracted from the task at hand. Does this answer your question, Drusilla?”

“Yes it does. Thank you.” Although it occurred to me that asking Jean Lafitte for a character reference was akin to getting relationship advice from Hugh Hefner.

“But I must say this in my own defense
, Jolie
. That I made your acquaintance before my friend Rene.”

I hadn’t felt the need of my mojo bag today since I’d done a heavy grounding ritual this morning before leaving, but I felt possessiveness wafting off Jean as he leaned closer to me.

“Jean—” I’d been about to repeat my whole “you’re sexy as sin but this isn’t going anywhere” spiel when shouts from the front of the boat drew both our attention. A rolling tangle of arms and legs and fists ping-ponged from one side of the deck to the other, while Libby leaned over the rails on top of the wheelhouse, watching.

Holy crap. A merfight had broken out right under our noses. I grabbed my staff as Jean barreled past me, leaping nimbly around the narrow edge of the wheelhouse and onto the foredeck. I carefully sidled behind him, fearful I’d fall in the water. A dark braid flew above the fray before a hand grabbed it and used it for leverage to throw a punch. Denis Villere had indeed appeared from somewhere, and he and one of the twins—Rene, I thought—were beating the crap out of each other. Libby played the role of wanton cheerleader.

Jean struggled to separate them, and ended up with a fist to his nose. Instead of stopping the fight, he shouted French epithets I couldn’t understand, and decked Denis with a powerful roundhouse punch. Great. The three men separated briefly before Denis took another lunge at Jean, Rene tried to get between them, and all three toppled over the side of the boat with a leviathan splash.

I briefly considered letting them kill each other. It would solve all kinds of problems—Rene and Denis would be out of my hair, and Jean would go back to the Beyond to lick his wounds a couple of weeks before coming back good as new. But then the war would just mutate to Robert and T-Jacques.

I ran to the rail and looked down. The three men, looking like mud-covered swamp monsters, had moved their brawl onto the bank. Jean was making no attempt to stop it. In fact, he and Rene were exchanging punches as well.

“Better stop ’em, wizard.” Robert had reappeared during the excitement, and was slipping back into his clothes.

“Why don’t
you
stop them?” It was his brother, after all.

“No way, darlin’. Rene and Jean get rid of Denis, that’s a good thing.”

Idiots. I raised the staff and pointed it at a tree a few feet beyond where the men fought. I prayed my aim would be true, although it usually wasn’t. I really needed to take Charlie out somewhere and practice.

I released a bit of my own energy into the staff. Red ropes of flame shot out, hit the bank, and glanced off the shoving, punching tangle of bodies before ricocheting into a stand of reeds behind them. Reeds that promptly burst into flames.