River Road (32 page)

Once the box grew hot enough to begin burning my hand, I set it carefully on the floor and opened the lid. A clear liquid floated inside, a puff of steam rising from it.

Gandalf walked over to look at it, sniffed, then cocked his head at me.

“If it works, it will work within a few minutes,” I said. “It might not be strong enough, but if it doesn’t work it won’t hurt you.” It might have some short-term side effects but I didn’t want to freak him out.

His tail lowered, he lapped up the potion. When it was gone, he looked up and growled at me.

“I didn’t promise it would taste good,” I said. “Now, we wait.”

And waited and waited. After twenty minutes, Gandalf sneezed four times. Jake and I sat up from where we’d slouched in the armchairs by the window, watching him. He watched us back, and sneezed again.

“What’s with the sneezing?” Jake asked.

“Side effect. It didn’t work. He’ll quit in a few minutes.” I whispered, but Alex had canine ears now. He barked at me, then sneezed again.

“Okay, let’s try the second one.” I took a small iron ring and placed it in a pan, then covered it with a mixture of ground meteorite, some poke greens, and holy water. It had to cook over low heat for an hour, during which time I stretched out on the loveseat by the fireplace with a book on nymphs, and Jake read a biography of Jean Lafitte. Gandalf sneezed and stared at us. It was about as romantic as a bingo game at the assisted-living center.

After an hour, I poured the mixture into a clean glass bowl, let it cool off, and again put it down for Gandalf to drink. He sneezed twice and lapped it up.

The changes began within seconds, only they weren’t the changes I’d hoped for. It started with one ear, which began to change from gold, first to gray, then white, then palest pink, then darker. Within ten minutes, Gandalf’s body looked like it had been dipped in bubblegum.

Jake and I couldn’t look at each other. If we did, we’d laugh and Alex would never forgive us. He didn’t realize what had happened until he noticed a pink paw and began trying to look at himself. He ran to the full-length mirror in my bedroom, then raced back, barking furiously at me and bouncing up and down so hard all four pink paws left the ground at once. I was glad I didn’t speak dog. Foam dripped from his jaws and his white teeth flashed, but it just wasn’t scary coming from a giant pink fluffball.

I tried to keep a straight face, to let Alex know I appreciated the depth of his humiliation, but Jake finally lost it. He practically brayed, and I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I closed my eyes. The only way I could keep from laughing was not to look at him. “I’ll do the third spell. It’s a guarantee, but it takes a long time. I thought it was worth it to try the easy ones first.”

Gandalf bit Jake soundly on the leg, hard enough to rip his jeans, and huffed back to the bedroom.

“Damn, I’m bleeding.” Jake wiped tears of laughter away as he examined his dog bite. “Don’t think he has rabies, do you?”

I had already begun pulling out the final hex-reversal ingredients. “I doubt you could catch rabies.”

He sobered as that idea sank in. “Yeah, guess I’m pretty much immune to everything now except self-control.” His self-hatred had finally shown up to the party, and I wasn’t happy to see it.

The third potion differed from the other two in that it needed something from the person who created the hex—in this case, Libby. I opened a drawer built into one of the shelves and pulled out a tiny vial: remains of the drops of brackish water Alex had collected from my porch the night Tish was murdered. I added a teaspoon of purified water to it and swished it around the vial to blend in what I hoped would be at least a wee bit of Libby DNA. In the remote chance I was wrong and Libby wasn’t Tish’s killer, the potion simply wouldn’t work.

“Why did you want to do this one last?” Jake asked, watching me mix the ingredients.

“This form of reversal takes several hours. He’ll probably shift back a piece at a time, a limb or digit or organ at a time. The bones will reform slowly. It’s going to hurt.”

He winced. “Before I shifted the first time, my enforcer sponsor warned me it was going to hurt but, God, you can’t imagine. It’s like every bone is breaking and then repairing itself in a span of minutes. After the first few times, you just endure it knowing that once the shift is over, you’ll feel amazing.”

I nodded. I’d heard weres describe their shifts like that, and I’d shared a taste of it with Rene.

“Alex isn’t a were, so his shifts are different. He says they’re painless and instantaneous. It’s all fueled by magic. So he’s never been through what you have, with that kind of pain, and the potion says it can take more than twelve hours to reverse the hex once it starts working.”

Jake winced. “Now I’m sorry I made fun of him.”

I pulled a locked box from a bottom shelf and dug a tiny key from inside a jar of iron filings. In the box was a bottle of wizard’s bane (one sip and any wizard’s a goner in seconds) and a bottle of painkillers—the kind people get hooked on and sell their souls to a demon for. In the Beyond, that could be done literally, with a wide variety of demons to choose from.

I ordered a bottle from the Elders each year and kept it on hand in case of an injury. I counted it a good year when I could dispose of the pills and replace them with fresh ones. Wizards didn’t heal like shifters.

I held the bottle up and showed the label to Jake, a question on my face. He looked worried, but nodded. I shook out a couple of pills, then added a third after some thought. Alex was a big guy, and he was in for a rough night. Better if he slept through it.

Finally, I gathered my mortar and pestle from a lower cabinet. The pestle made a squeaky noise as it ground the pills into a fine, white powder that I stirred into the potion. I added the drops of Libby juice last, shook the whole mixture well, and poured it into another bowl. Finally, I closed my eyes and infused it with magic using the staff. I wouldn’t risk this one on my unenhanced magic.

“Alex, come here—it’s ready.” I heard a thump as he jumped off the bed and came padding into the room, Sebastian at his heels. He looked at the bowl, then sat and looked at me with doubt written all over his pink face. Sebastian sniffed at the bowl till Jake jerked him up and held him.

“Here’s the deal,” I told Alex. “I’m certain this will work, at least, as long as I’m right about Libby. If I’m wrong it won’t do anything. I saved it for last because it takes a long time. It will make you sleepy, and it will take all night to completely reverse the curse. You sleep and heal, and I’ll be here when you wake up. Okay?”

His bark was laced with a low, threatening rumble (still not very scary coming from a bubblegum-pink face), but he slunk to the bowl and lapped up the potion without hesitating.

“You can go back in my room and sleep on my bed,” I said. “It’s going to knock you out. You need to stay here tonight.”

Alex gave Jake a poisonous glare and made his pink way back to the bedroom.

Jake gave me a faint smile. “You look worried. You think this isn’t going to work?”

“No, I’m sure it will,” I said. “I just hate that he has to go through the pain of it. He never really trusted Libby. I didn’t take her seriously enough, and I should have thought about the damned necklace Melinda Hebert was wearing.”

Most wizards I knew were so arrogant they’d never dream of disguising what they were or helping anyone else do so. But it wasn’t like I’d never heard of bespelling a gemstone.

Jake pulled me to the loveseat and held on to my hand as we sat. “Listen, I’m sorry I’ve been such a chickenshit. I should have called you.” He laced his fingers through mine. “I wanted to, especially after I heard about the thing with the elf. But after what happened on our date and then at Aunt Norma’s…” He shrugged. “I figured you were better off without me.”

All of a sudden I was tired, just bone tired. “I don’t know where things could go between us,” I said. “But I don’t think you get to make the decision about what is or isn’t good for me. You scared me that night, yes. But I still don’t think you’d hurt me. Thing is”—I shifted on the sofa to face him—“I don’t want to make things harder for you. If it’s easier to not be around me, just say so. I hope we can at least be friends.”

“What’s easier isn’t always what a person wants.” He leaned in and kissed me, then rested his forehead against mine. I wasn’t sure if he was saying hello or good-bye, and wasn’t sure what I wanted. Except that at this particular moment I needed simple, and Jake would never be simple.

“While we’re being honest here, I have to ask you something,” he said.

“Okay.” We shifted till we sat side by side again, his arm around me and my head resting on his shoulder. “What’s between you and Alex? And don’t give me the ‘We’re just partners’ stuff or the ‘We’re friends’ stuff. I want you to think about it and give me an answer.”

So I thought about it. And in the end all I could come up with was an answer that didn’t help anybody. “I don’t know anymore. I honestly don’t know.”

He nodded. “Good. Because if you’d told me nothing, I wouldn’t believe you. And if you’d told me you loved him, I’d have been really, really”—he kissed my cheek—“really disappointed. Now, I figure we’re both in the game.”

I sighed. “It’s not a game, Jake. I’m not part of your rivalry. Or at least I shouldn’t be. I don’t want to be.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I have a confession to make, since we’re laying it all on the table tonight.”

Much more honesty and I was going to have to hurt something. “Yeah, what’s that?”

“I showed up tonight because I knew Alex would be here.”

I turned to look at him. “Of course you did—you knew he’d been cursed. So?”

Pain haunted his gaze. “So, I knew I’d have a chaperone, even if it was a furry one.”

Understanding didn’t sink in for a few seconds. “You don’t want to be alone with me without a chaperone? What are we, thirteen?”

“Thirteen-year-olds don’t have to worry about being killed by their dates.”

I couldn’t answer that. I was tired of talking and wasn’t sure how much longer I could argue something I no longer felt certain was true. I didn’t think he’d ever hurt me. But I didn’t know it.

He smoothed my hair away from my face and kissed my forehead. “You still got that magic stick of yours in case Libby shows up tonight?”

I pointed to the worktable, where the staff had moved itself. “You need me to take you back to the Gator?”

“I’m sleeping here. Loup-Garou Security, at your service. I’ll crash downstairs; you stay up here in case Alex needs you.”

I nodded, thinking about Tish, the last person to stay in the guest room. “There are fresh sheets on the bed downstairs. Help yourself to whatever you want.”

He squeezed my shoulder and got to his feet. “Not whatever I want, DJ.”

CHAPTER
32

Jake’s call woke me at noon, and I wrestled to find the phone in my pocket. My arm didn’t want to work. I’d fallen asleep, fully dressed, on the chair next to my bed about five a.m. after spending hours poring through some of Gerry’s black grimoires and sending Jake home in a cab. I wasn’t sure if Libby was immortal—some nymphs were and some weren’t—but, just in case, I wanted to know how to kill her.

Finally, I’d tried to stretch out on the bed, but when Alex’s shifting began, he’d thrashed so violently I was afraid I’d end up with a black eye. But I didn’t want to leave him alone, which brought back Jake’s unsettling question about my relationship with Alex. I’d want to stay with anyone in this situation I considered a friend, right? My concern for him didn’t mean anything more or less than that.

Except for a bit of pink fur on one foot, he looked like his old self. He was still zonked, but his flushed, feverish skin testified to the trauma his body had gone through over the past nine hours. I straightened the sheet I’d pulled over him and took the phone to the library.

“Any sign of Libby?” I asked Jake, after giving him the update on Alex.

“No, but I’m on my way to Plaquemines to talk to Rene and Robert—see if she’s with them. That’s where she’ll show up, sooner or later.” He sounded pissed off. Anger would make his control even worse.

Leftover pizza melted into a sticky goo in the microwave and that, along with a diet soda, made for a quease-inducing breakfast. One of these days I’d concede adulthood and actually start cooking. Or not.

By the time my cell rang just before two, I was in a bored stupor reading
The Compleat History of Elves
’ chapter on their political structure, trying to figure out what Synod leader Mace Banyan had done to me when we shook hands. The phone’s caller ID read 504-MER-TWIN, and I answered the phone with a “Yo, mer,” expecting Rene. But it was Robert.

“Yo yourself, darlin’.”

I regrouped. Laid-back twin, not serious twin. “Hey, Robert, what’s up? Did Rene talk to you last night about Libby? Has Jake been out there today?”

“Yeah and yeah.” He laughed. “Jake was here earlier but he’d done gone by the time Libby called—think Rene said he was headed to the Villeres’ place. Thought I’d give you a heads-up. I’m meetin’ Libby at three thirty at Pointe a la Hache. Thought you and the shifters might wanna be there.”

Holy crap. Alex was out of commission. I could probably wake him up now, but he’d be groggy for a few hours and sore as hell. He wasn’t ready to face off with Libby. I should be able to catch Jake, though.

My watch said three twenty. “It’s almost that time now,” I said. “Are you already on your way?”

“Yeah, just getting here, darlin’.”

I groaned. He hadn’t called me till he’d almost gotten there? The idiot. “Stay out of this, Robert. Just tell me exactly where she is, then you hang back and wait for us.”

He made an impatient snort into the phone. “Rene’s boat is tied up behind a white cinderblock building just past the ferry on Highway 23.”

Yeah, I knew exactly where it was.

“Robert—”

He cut me off. “She won’t hurt me none, darlin’. I’ll keep her busy till you get here. Might be my last chance.” He laughed again and hung up.