River Road (23 page)

*   *   *

Friday morning dawned warm and clear, with the blue skies and low humidity that marked late October in Louisiana. It was the perfect day for a swim.

Alex and I rode in uneasy silence as we left New Orleans heading southeast. He’d insisted on driving this time, probably out of fear that my merman mind-meld would send us into a watery grave.

Were things changing between us in some subtle way, or was it my imagination? Of one thing I was sure: any relationship examinations would have to wait. We’d bought a
Times-Pic
on our way out of town, and the lead story was about an odd, nasty strain of stomach virus sweeping through several communities in South Plaquemines. Three people from Duvic had been hospitalized, and more than a dozen from the general area had sought medical attention. Which probably meant at least ten times that many were sick—most men had to think they were at death’s door before they’d see a doctor. I didn’t have proof the Styx contamination caused it, but I didn’t need proof. I knew it.

Halfway there, Alex finally broke the silence. “What should I expect today?”

I had no clue. “What I hope is that Rene can dive to the rifts and seal them. They need to be set with magic to make them permanent. He’s going to be drawing magical energy from me, but I don’t know how it will affect me. He swam around all night practicing how to focus the magic to a single area.” I knew, because I’d been there with him whether I wanted it or not. And the more magic he pulled, the more my muscles ached and head throbbed.

Alex cleared his throat and didn’t answer for a while. When he did, his voice was soft. “Why couldn’t you trust me with the truth? I wouldn’t have tried to stop you.” He smiled. “Well, yeah, I would have. But you’d have done what you wanted anyway. I could’ve been there if something went wrong.”

It was a serious question and deserved a real answer, even if it made me sound like a sap.

“I didn’t want you stuck in the middle if I screwed it up.” One of the things I most respected about Alex was his strong sense of right and wrong. Not that I didn’t want to do the right thing and follow the rules, but my world had more shades of gray in it and I was comfortable with that. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you—I trust you more than anybody. I just don’t like what it costs you to support me sometimes.”

I didn’t have to explain what I meant. My insistence on trying to handle things in my own screwy way after Katrina had forced Alex to choose between me and his duty to the Elders. That, and Jake’s attack by the loup-garou, had shaken the way he looked at the world. I wouldn’t put him in that position again.

“We’re not done,” Alex said, turning into the parking lot of the small marina where Rene’s truck was already waiting. “We’ll finish this later.”

My partner wasn’t big on soul-searching talks, so maybe he’d forget about it. I had nothing else to add.

CHAPTER
23

By the time we’d finished repairs at Duvic and Pilottown, I was drooping from Rene’s drain on my energy. As soon as Pass a Loutre was out of the way, this little wizard planned to nap until the power-share wore off.

Rene, on the other hand, bounced around the
Dieu de la Mer
like a kid on a sugar high. I sat on the aft deck, leaning against the side of the boat, and listened to the stream of thoughts running nonstop through his head while Alex navigated.

How his gator season would have been even better if he’d had my power last month. How he wished Denis Villere would show up before the ritual wore off so he could buzz the hell out of him. How he could run the whole mer empire if he married me and had access to my power whenever he wanted it. All he needed was a night alone with me and he could do things that would knock my socks off, although he’d have to get rid of Alex first. Then I was treated to a visual image of what might knock off my socks.

Good grief. I slumped over and curled into a ball, resting my head on a coiled pile of rope. I focused on details around the deck to try to shut out that steady stream of inner mer babble. Compared to this, my empathy was easy. He did have a big black hole at the back of his thoughts he was keeping on tight lockdown, though, and he’d snarled at me when I tried to pry my way in. So Rene had some secrets he didn’t want me to know, and that made me uneasy.

I had learned a few useful things. He’d spent a lot of time wondering about the Styx rifts and how they might have been made. His theory was that the Villeres, who were part of the Houma tribe and had some native magic of their own, summoned the water to drive the Delachaises away, or even kill them. That theory had more holes than a box of doughnuts, and I had mentally told him so at about three a.m.

I’d also learned what kind of business he and Jean Lafitte engaged in, and it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. He bought things that had value in Old Orleans—alcohol, alligator skulls and claws for voodoo rituals, tobacco, even fresh foods—and Jean sold them in the Beyond at highly exaggerated prices. The currency of Old Orleans was gold, which Jean would then bring back to Rene to cash in at high twenty-first-century values. The Corvette had simply been a crime of opportunity.

What Rene
didn’t
think about was the murder of the wizards. Not a wisp. Either it wasn’t important enough for him to exert brain cells on, or it was locked away in that black hole.

“You okay there, babe?” I jolted awake from my doze. Rene sat behind me, massaging my shoulders. I relaxed into it, until I remembered his sock-knocking aspirations. “We are not making this permanent,” I muttered, almost moaning as his fingers dug into my tight shoulder muscles. “I don’t care how well you visualize that sock thing.”

He jumped to his feet, pulling me with him. “We’re almost there. I better steer us in before Alex runs us to ground.”

Yeah, whatever. I propped on the rail as Rene returned to the wheelhouse and began winding us toward Pass a Loutre. I spotted an alligator sunning on the bank; as the boat passed, it raised its massive armored head and streaked into the water in a gray blur. Alex and I had been lucky not to stumble across one when we’d combed the bank for clues on the professors.

Rene killed the engine and tethered the boat to an overhanging tree near the rift, then disappeared onto the foredeck beyond the wheelhouse. He’d gotten fast at donning the mask and strapping on the oxygen tanks. By the time he splashed into the water, I’d already slumped back onto the deck and lay curled up with my head on the ropes again.

I closed my eyes as I watched the repairs play out through Rene’s eyes: the muddy bayou bottom, the hole in the mud where tainted water rushed through, the beauty of the ritual as Rene drew on my magic to embed charmed stones in a circle around the rift and then invoke the spell to reknit the solid bed beneath him. I was even able to mentally prompt him on a few words of the ritual.

He was heading back to the surface when I sensed Alex sitting beside me. “Rene’s on his way back,” I mumbled a few seconds before we heard the thump of the mer climbing onboard.

Alex pushed my hair away from my face and placed his hand on my forehead. “How you doing? You look pale.”

“Just awesome.” I sat up, and had to wait a heartbeat for the dizziness to pass. “Rene’s wearing me out. For a guy who doesn’t talk a lot, he keeps a constant chatter going in his head. And he’s enjoying my magic way too much.”

Alex sat next to me. “We should try it sometime. I always wondered what it would be like to channel energy that way.”

Was he insane? “Do you really want me to know every thought that goes through your head? Because I would. I can tell you things about Rene Delachaise his twin brother doesn’t even know.”

Alex watched Rene climb back aboard, strip off the diving mask and tank, and shake off the water. “Like what?”

“Like what he and Libby did in the pirogue Robert uses for fishing.” I shuddered. Food, sex, money. Rene’s driving needs, or at least the ones he let me see. Was that a mer thing, or just a guy thing?

“Yeah,” Alex said. “But I’d know every thought you had, too.”

Exactly. Such a bad idea.

My response was cut off by the buzz of a boat engine as a smaller, lighter craft rounded the bend in the bayou and pulled up alongside the
Dieu de la Mer.
Libby stretched the length of the boat like Cleopatra being sailed down the Nile by her faithful mer-servant, Robert.

He tied the smaller boat off and jumped aboard, joining Rene on the aft deck, where he was getting dressed. In under a minute, they’d raised their voices. I heard the word “wizard” more than once, usually with a four-letter word preceding it.

“Incoming,” Alex warned, and I got to my feet just in time for Robert to stride around the side of the wheelhouse and get in my face. “What the hell you done to him? Your smell is all over him.” He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me toward him. “And his is all over you.”

I smelled like Rene? Robert was wrenched away from me by Alex, who had wrapped a big hand around the mer’s upper arm. “Calm down, man. She hasn’t done anything to him.”

Alex was a full head taller and a lot broader than the pissed-off mer, so Robert finally stepped back and I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

Libby climbed onboard and cozied up to Rene as he joined us. “You do smell like wizard,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Hope that washes off.”

Great. I hated weres and shifters and that enhanced-sense-of-smell thing. I always felt the need to sniff myself.

Robert gave Alex a wide berth and circled back to his brother. “You only leading this clan ’cause Papa wanted to stay in Chenoire,” he said. “Soon as he hears you screwin’ a wizard, you’re gonna be back shrimpin’ in St. Bernard and livin’ next door to him.” He shoved Rene hard enough to crack his brother’s head against the wheelhouse wall. “You know what wizards done to him after the war. He had to sell out his own people just to get his land back. You think about how you sellin’ us out when you with her.”

I hadn’t brought Mahout with me. Now that I knew the elves could tell when I used it, I was trying to wean myself. But I wished I had it. My reflexes were slow, and Rene still had access to any physical magic I possessed.

He pushed Robert back. “Fuck you. I ain’t sellin’ out nobody.” I watched, openmouthed and helpless, while he grabbed his twin around the neck with one arm and gave him a good zap in the chest with the other, using my freaking magic.

“Oof.” Robert sank to his knees at the same time my legs gave way, my energy depleted. Only Alex’s quick move to catch me prevented me from tumbling next to the mer. He dragged me out of Robert’s reach and lowered me to the deck. “Don’t move.”

Like I could. “Stop them.” Rene’s rage filled my mind with red heat. He didn’t know how to tamp my energy when it was fused with his. If he used more magic on Robert, he’d end up killing his brother and I wasn’t sure what it would do to me.

As soon as Robert caught his breath, he launched himself at Rene, and the two traded punches while Libby sat on the rope coil and watched, smiling.

Alex tried to separate them, but couldn’t. They’d tuned out everything but their rage for each other. I closed my eyes and groaned, trying to send Rene calming thoughts. I couldn’t penetrate his anger, which had started much earlier than today. Rene had been pissed at Robert a long time for not doing his share of the work, not sending money to the family in St. Bernard Parish, not taking his responsibilities in the clan seriously. At least I’d done my grounding ritual and had my mojo bag in my pocket, so I couldn’t tell what Robert felt in return.

I felt a sizzle of power in the air and opened my eyes as the air around Alex blurred and crackled. Within seconds, a two- hundred-pound pony of a golden dog stood in his place, surrounded by discarded clothing. Gandalf.

Teeth bared, he plowed into Rene and Robert, knocking them off-balance and startling them so much they stopped fighting to stare at him.

“Ooh, I wondered what he could turn into—a big, warm, furry thing.” Libby leaned forward to snag Alex’s shirt, held it to her nose, and took a whiff. I wanted to rake her eyes out, just on principle.

Rene and Robert remained on their butts, staring stupidly at Gandalf as he bared his teeth and growled menacingly at first one, then the other. “Yeah, okay, shifter. You made your point,” Rene said.

Robert wiped blood off his lip and felt inside his mouth for loose teeth. “Sorry, bro. But you gettin’ too close to the wizards if they’ve given you powers and got you doing their dirty work.”

“Ain’t like that,” Rene said, climbing to his feet. “We had to get the water cleaned up before somebody died. Didn’t want it to be one of us.”

His sharp teeth no longer needed, Alex walked to his clothes, snagged his pants leg in his teeth, and trotted toward the wheelhouse. He paused briefly next to Libby, who still held his shirt, and growled. I didn’t think he was flirting.

*   *   *

The trip back to Venice was blissfully uneventful. I curled up on the bench in the wheelhouse while Alex steered and Rene navigated. The power-share was beginning to wear off; Rene’s thoughts were just white noise in the back of my head, and he seemed almost as subdued and exhausted as I was.

On the drive home, we hit a drive-through in Belle Chasse and the food revived me.

“Think you can go through that again if more rifts show up?” Alex asked.

“Don’t even say it.” I was pleased with the way the actual repairs had gone, but round two? Uh-uh. “And after all that, I still don’t know if Rene is off the suspect list for killing the wizards, although he didn’t try to hurt me. He had a lockbox in his brain he was able to keep me out of.”

“What about Robert?”

I sighed, wondering if this was a safe conversation to have. I wasn’t hearing Rene’s thoughts anymore, and my attempts at mental conversation were going unanswered. I assumed he couldn’t hear me either. “Don’t know about Robert, either. Only that the twins are not getting along that well these days.”

Alex grunted. “You think?”

“Smooth work back there, Gandalf.” I looked at the muscled shoulders and arms that flexed as he turned the steering wheel and drove onto the Westbank Expressway. No tattoos, just smooth, tanned skin over muscle. I needed to write Libby a thank-you note for keeping Alex’s shirt.