River Road (29 page)

The tea smelled like apples and cinnamon, and I inhaled deeply before drinking. The effect was immediate. Warmth washed through my body, and my mind cleared. It cleared so quickly, in fact, that I sat up straight, scraped my sleeve across my eyes, and frowned at the mug.

“What is this?” Either I’d just experienced the quickest recovery in history or Rand had slipped me an endorphin cocktail.

“It’s just herbal tea,” he said. “I found apple juice in your fridge and added it.”

I was too glad to have my brain working again to argue about it. “Does Rand need to stay?” I asked Alex. I’d have to thank Rand later for helping, and apologize for lashing out at him, but I didn’t have it in me to do it yet.

“Yes, sorry. The police are on their way.” He turned to Rand and began firing questions at him.

Good, let him deal with things. And of course the NOPD had to get involved. We were in the middle of the city, and Rand had seen the body. There would be no whisking this off to the Elders.

The tears started again as I thought of Tish’s family. Her parents and brother had all lost their homes in Katrina, and her folks weren’t in good health. Who would tell them? It would have to be me.

I used the edge of the blanket to dry my face. “Alex,” I interrupted him mid-question.

He turned back to me. “You okay?”

“I need to call Tish’s family and her boss—there’s no one else to do it.” I didn’t know how I would say the words, but it had to come from someone who cared about her. Loved her.

A clatter of feet near the front door and the reflection of flashing blue lights from out front signaled the arrival of the NOPD. The siren of an EMT van echoed down Magazine Street—they were all on their way.

“You’ll have to wait till we finish here before you call—and we can notify the family unless you know them.” Ken Hachette wasn’t a large man but he had a presence about him that filled the room with a crackling energy. About five-ten and lean, his skin was the color of milk chocolate, his eyes a greenish-brown, his demeanor exactly what one would expect from a homicide detective. I’d never seen him crack a smile, but then again, the only time I’d met him was outside murder scenes. And here we were again.

Ken shook hands with Alex, ordered him and Rand into the kitchen, then pulled the other armchair next to mine. “Let’s talk about what happened.”

CHAPTER
28

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, relaxing against the soft leather seats of Alex’s car as we sped across the long Causeway Bridge over the middle of Lake Pontchartrain. Neither of us was in the mood to talk. We both wore basic black, appropriate for the first part of our day. We were headed to the tiny town of Bogalusa, to Tish’s funeral.

It had been a long three days since Tish died. The Elders had questioned me repeatedly, but I didn’t have any answers. It was three a.m., so the normally busy restaurant across the street was closed, as was the coffee shop down the block. No one had seen anything—except Alex, who found traces of brackish water on the steps before the EMTs arrived and was able to get a miniscule sample.

No headway had been made on the case. My only foray had been to go back to Melinda Hebert’s house and snoop around. In the bottom of a fly-covered can of outdoor trash, I’d found the missing photographs—or at least pieces of photographs that had been ripped apart. I’d shoved all the tiny pieces into an envelope, which still sat on my kitchen table.

Alex and Jake were convinced Tish died at the hands of the same person, or creature, that had killed the two professors, though they were waiting on the medical report. They also thought I was the target, not Tish, an announcement that had sent me into another day of weeping. How many people had to die or have their lives ripped apart because of me?

Alex fiddled with the radio, finally settling on a classical station. “I think I need to move back in with you till this case is solved.” He didn’t look at me, but I could see the tension in his posture.

I didn’t want him moving into my house, where he’d automatically become a target. I wanted to lock myself in, put up my strongest wards, and sleep for a month. “I can protect myself—I pulled the elven staff out of the closet.” If the elves had a problem with it, too bad.

“No arguing, DJ. The only reason the killer didn’t come after you was because you were smart enough to put up your wards.”

“Then the wards work,” I said. “I don’t understand why I’d be a target anyway. I didn’t know either of the professors. If it is some revenge thing related to the war, I wasn’t involved—I hadn’t even been born. Tish was more involved than me.” None of it made sense.

Alex thrummed his fingers on the steering wheel—a sure sign he was thinking hard. “But you’re involved in the investigation, and Tish wasn’t, at least not directly. I think you’re getting too close to figuring it out.”

Glad the killer thought I was close. I sure didn’t. And I didn’t care what the elves thought; Mahout was going everywhere with me from now on.

“What have you done on the investigation the last few days?” Alex asked.

I frowned, thinking. “I’ve been researching the water species and looking through the Elders’ records for anything specific on the Delachaise and Villere clans. I’ve also been leaving messages with the new office of the Greater Mississippi River Nymphs to check out Libby’s background, but I swear those women are so unorganized I doubt they could find their keys on a keyring.” I tried to remember the week—the last three days had all been a long, sad blur. “I’ve asked Adrian Hoffman to send me background files on Melinda Hebert to see if I can find something he missed. Oh, and I have the torn-up photos.” I also needed to use the translation charm to read Gerry’s remaining Greek texts on the Styx.

The first person had died from the “Plaquemines Plague,” an elderly woman who lived south of Buras. More than fifty people had sought medical help, and the Army Corps of Engineers was testing the river for contamination. My test for standard pollutants had come up negative, but they had more sophisticated equipment. Would they find something they couldn’t explain? This had disaster written all over it, but at least officials had told people to use bottled water until the tests were complete.

“Have you met any of Tish’s family?” Alex’s voice broke my reverie.

“No. She and Gerry had been an item for years so she didn’t have a spouse or kids. She has a brother and sister, and nieces and nephews. Only her parents knew she was a wizard—it came from her dad’s side of the family, and they didn’t realize she was practicing.” I stared at the sprawl of commerce that had exploded north of the lake after Katrina. “I wondered if I should even go. As soon as they hear my name, they’ll know I was the one who…” Found her. Got her killed.

“Jake wanted to come, but he was going down to Port Sulphur with Rene and Robert to replace the temporary charms,” Alex said. “You know Jake thinks one of the twins might be our murderer—he wanted to keep an eye on them today.”

I nodded. “I don’t know much about Robert, but I just don’t think it’s Rene.” I hadn’t told anyone because I was afraid to, but Rene and I still could communicate a little bit mentally. It took a lot of concentration but I’d get occasional words or images, and so did he. At least he couldn’t still pull power from me. We’d agreed not to do another ritual until all the other loose ends were tied up. I was afraid of being linked to him forever. Neither of us liked that idea.

“What about Libby?” Alex said. “You said yourself she’s a lot smarter than any of us gave her credit for. Think she could have done it?”

I shrugged. “What’s her motive? What’s any of their motives? A grudge after the war—that’s all we have. It could be any of them or none of them. It could be some species that’s come in since the borders dropped that we don’t even know about.”

Alex shook his head. “Rule of thumb is, if you hear hooves, look first for a horse. Don’t run off looking for a zebra. Chances are good that our murderer is not some mystery species we don’t know about.”

Alex slowed as he reached a crossroads and the car’s GPS voice told us to turn. “The thing about the mers, though—they’ve been mainstreamed for years. If they’d wanted to go after wizards, they’ve had plenty of time to do it unless they were waiting for other species to blame it on.”

“Except Denis has anger issues, and his mama is insane.” And has a nice, sharp knife.

“The Villeres are crazy, but they don’t strike me as dangerous,” Alex countered. “I like the mertwins, but I’m not willing to give either one of them a pass yet. And Libby has been watching the repairs more closely than she wants us to think. She only pretends her goal in life is screwing Rene’s and Robert’s brains out. And Jake’s and mine, if we’d give her a chance.”

“Ick.”

He gave me a dirty look. “Until you stop dating the undead Pirate of the Caribbean, you have no room to judge.”

My smile faded as he turned into the parking lot of a small funeral home located in a dark-shuttered colonial-style building. A few cars peppered the pavement, and I wondered how many from the river authority would drive up from New Orleans.

It struck me again how lonely and isolated most wizards were. Tish was kind and good, and she should have been mourned and celebrated by a parking lot full of people who loved her and really knew her, people who understood who and what she was. All of us spent too much time hiding our real selves from the people who were supposed to care about us.

Alex parked the car and we got out in silence. I took his hand, and he squeezed mine back as we got ready to say good-bye to our friend.

*   *   *

I sucked the salty orange remains of a bag of Cheetos off my fingers and checked my watch. I’d made up a translation potion, thinking if I read the text aloud in some approximation of Greek, the potion would translate my words as I spoke them. No such luck.

We’d gotten back from the funeral a couple of hours ago, and I’d finally convinced Alex to leave. He was going to Orchard to talk to the twins, then to Tidewater to see Denis and T-Jacques Villere. I hoped he listened to my warning about the murderous granny.

I rubbed my eyes, and tried to think. I didn’t know any potion or spell that would automatically translate printed Greek into English, but I could bespell a pair of glasses.

Upstairs in my library, I pulled out my backpack and retrieved my portable magic kit. I kept a translation potion ready for encounters with multilingual members of the historical undead such as Jean Lafitte. He was fluent in Italian and Spanish, as well as French and English, so when I pissed him off he was prone to rant in a language I couldn’t understand. It worked well on most prete languages as well.

I found a dusty pair of reading glasses on a shelf and poured the potion over them in a bowl—a simple mixture of ground sage, sunflower, hawthorn, and purified water, infused with a little magical energy. I added pomegranate essence, a bit of olive oil, and coated the lens of the glasses. Sounded more like a salad, except for the magic part.

I let them cure for a half hour, then wiped them off and took them downstairs to where I had the old texts spread out on the kitchen table.

I pulled a book from the stack and was relieved to find the charmed glasses worked perfectly. The Greek characters swirled and reformed themselves into English.

Looking up the lengthy entry for the River Styx, I began to read.
The River Styx was one of the five rivers of the Underworld,
blah blah blah.
The goddess Thetic dipped the infant Achilles into the river to make him invulnerable, holding him by his heel,
blah blah blah.
Oaths sworn by the waters of the Styx could not be broken,
blah blah blah.
The water was so poisonous it corroded clay containers,
blah blah blah.
The river was named after a nymph
 …

A chill ran through me. How closely were nymphs affiliated with the River Styx? I rifled through the piles of books and found a yellow-paged, dog-eared book on nymphs that had been in Gerry’s collection.

I began scanning.
Styx was the eldest daughter of the god Okeanos.

There was a Mardi Gras krewe of Okeanos—could they be involved? No, too far-fetched.

Lived in Hades. Had a slew of daughters. Can’t resist honey. Sexually aggressive and promiscuous.

No kidding.

Can cause nympholepsy, described classically as “divine madness” or mental rapture.

That could be what Alex was calling enthrallment.

I frowned and took off the glasses. Marking the page, I shoved the book and glasses aside. I needed to talk to some nymphs.

Digging out my contact sheet again, I called the Greater Mississippi River Nymphs office, but got a machine message:
Hi, this is Blueberry Muffin—call me Muffi. We’re ready to escort you to your next event, or make all your wildest dreams come true. Leave a message, and we’d loooove to call you back.

Escorts. Talk about a thinly disguised service industry.

I set the phone aside and picked up the Melinda Hebert photo pieces. I’d always been good at jigsaw puzzles, and that’s essentially what this was. You do the outside edges first, then fill in the middle.

I worked a half hour and had three photos outlined. Still no answer at the nymph office, so I kept working. Finally, one was almost finished. I could see a happier, prettier Melinda Hebert standing alongside another woman. I looked for eyes among the remaining unused pieces, and slipped one into place, then stopped breathing. I had about eighty percent of a beautiful likeness of Melinda Hebert and a woman who looked a lot like her, only trampier: Libby.

CHAPTER
29

The Nymph line was busy now, so I ran to the Pathfinder and drove like a lunatic to the Faubourg Marigny, a neighborhood just east of the French Quarter.

A small sign on the door of the renovated double said, complete with exclamation points:
GREATER MISSISSIPPI RIVER NYMPHS! ESCORTS AND MORE!!!
It looked like every other house-turned-business in this gentrified neighborhood: cute and Victorian, with lots of gingerbread.