River Road (4 page)

“If you’d rather run with the redheads, you’d probably get lucky before you got halfway down the riverfront path,” I said as he walked up. “Bet they’d both do you.”

He stared after them as if considering it, then grunted something unintelligible. Full of his usual early-morning charm. His voice was still rough from sleep. “Ready to hit it?”

I set off at a lope. Alex had a tendency to be monosyllabic until he warmed up. I’d give him time before I asked where all the crap about Jake had come from last night—and broke the news that Jean Lafitte would be joining our merman confab. Nothing he could do about it. I’d already gotten the go-ahead from the Elders, along with some ideas on a possible territory settlement.

He caught up with me and eased into his own steady pace, which meant I had to speed up. There’s a big stride difference between five-four and six-three, so I figured I worked harder than him and therefore could stop sooner. He only ran with me because he thought I wouldn’t do it otherwise. He knew if a beignet called my name, I’d leave the jogging trail in a dusting of powdered sugar and never look back.

Neither of us spoke till we reached the point of the path that edged closest to the river. “I have to stop.” My breath rasped in and out like a bellows.

Alex ran a few strides ahead, then circled back. “This is pathetic, even for you.”

“Ha, ha.” I pulled the vials from my pocket and held them up. “I wanted to take some water samples here to compare with what we get at Pass a Loutre today. Baseline pollution. In fact, the water near the mouth of the river should be a lot cleaner than here.”

“Good idea.” Alex knelt to retie his shoe. “Figured out how you’re going to test it?”

I carefully walked downhill to the river’s edge, looking for a place where the bank looked solid and not slippery. “Not yet. I’ll run tests for standard pollutants before I start looking for anything that might be caused by a merman.” Whatever that might be.

I paced back and forth. Had to find the right spot. A spot where there was no chance of me reaching over too far and falling in. A spot where I wouldn’t have to lie on my stomach in the mud and reach down the bank.

“Oh, for God’s sake. Give me the vials.” Alex held out his hand and I forked them over. So I’m a little afraid of water. I’m a wizard. We don’t do water.

He squatted and stretched a long arm over the bank’s edge, filling the vials and handing them back to me for stoppering. I held one up and looked through it at the sun rising over the river. It looked like a roux gone awry. “This is nasty stuff.”

“Tell me about it.” Alex grabbed the hem of my T-shirt and dried his hands, getting a kick in the shins for his effort. He grinned. “See why I tell you not to drink the tap water?”

“I never drink tap water.” I drank soda and juice and wine and, on really bad days, bourbon. I had nothing to fear from the river.

I put the vials in the glove box of my Pathfinder and rejoined Alex at the nearest table. He’d stretched out on the concrete top, doing crunches. I peeled the wrapper off a chocolate bar and sat on the bench, enjoying the view—and I wasn’t looking at the river. Just because Alex and I had agreed to be friends without benefits didn’t mean I’d been stricken blind.

He finished some ridiculous number of reps and moved to the bench next to me. “So we have mer troubles in Plaquemines Parish? Give me the details, or should I say the details according to Jean Lafitte.” He raked his hands through his thick hair and trained dark brown eyes on my face. His eyes were the same color as my Hershey bar, and equally melt-worthy. “He didn’t try anything with you, did he?”

If Alex was jealous, I couldn’t tell it, even with my empathic abilities, and it wasn’t fair that part of me wanted him to be. Besides, his and the pirate’s hatred was mutual. Alex didn’t despise Jean because he might sully my honor or even because the man was a thieving pirate. Alex despised Jean because, as one of the historical undead, he was virtually immortal. My partner couldn’t kill him. Such indestructibleness placed Jean in a gray area, and Alex liked things sharp and structured and straightforward.

Jean hated Alex for essentially the same reason. The short-term pleasure he’d enjoy from killing Alex wouldn’t be worth the problems it would cause with the Elders. My partner and the pirate were at a homicidal stalemate.

I gave Alex an account of my conversation with Jean, omitting the little detail about the dinner date.

He watched a couple walking hand-in-hand near the river, his brows tightened in thought. “I knew there were some merclans in Southeast Louisiana, but I thought most of them were in St. Bernard Parish and the Atchafalaya Basin. How long have these two clans been there?”

How’d he know there were merclans outside the Beyond? I handed him the last third of my chocolate. “Jean made it sound like the Villeres just moved in but the Delachaise family had been there since his time. Well, his first time.”

Speaking of which, I said a quick prayer. “By the way, Jean will be at the meeting today—the mers insisted on it. He’s going to ride with us.”

I waited for the rant to begin, or at least a smartass comment. Alex pursed his lips, staring at the water. “You run that past the Elders?”

“I did.” He seemed to be taking the news remarkably well.

He finally slid his gaze to me. “You could have told me last night. Don’t try to manage me. You’re not that good at it.”

I thought my Alex-management skills were excellent. “And you weren’t managing me by hiding that little bit about Jake becoming an enforcer? We’ll end up working together. I’d have found out eventually.”

A mix of emotions played across his face before he clamped down on them, and for the first time this morning I was tempted to try my empathic skills on him.
Try
being the operative word. As a shapeshifter his emotional patterns took wonky twists, and as an enforcer he’d been trained to shield himself from mental invasion.

“Is this some kind of competition thing?” I kept my tone light. Alex and Jake were more like brothers than cousins, and had the near-sibling rivalry to prove it. “Why did you want to know if I’d been alone with Jake last night?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, and I was struck by how tired he looked. Not stayed-out-late-with-Leyla tired, but worried-as-hell tired. “I’m not convinced he has his wolf under good-enough control to be here, especially working for the wizards. The Elders want another enforcer in Louisiana now that the Beyond’s opened up. Jake looks perfect on paper, but…” He trailed off, eyes following a cruise ship as it made its way upriver.

“He seemed fine last night.” Jake thought this job gave his life meaning again, and I wanted him to have the chance to prove himself. I knew how that felt. “This is really important to him, Alex. He needs it.”

“I know.” Alex swung his legs over the bench and started back toward his car. “But I still don’t want you alone with him.”

CHAPTER
4

After a quick shower, I threw on jeans and a tank with a denim shirt on top, scarfed down some toast, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and still made it to my Tchoupitoulas Street office with twenty minutes to spare before the nine a.m. rendezvous. A bracing cup of strong coffee in the peace and quiet of my office would help me prepare for what I expected to be a trying day. Angry mermen plus Jean Lafitte plus Alex equaled a tense DJ.

I unlocked the office and flipped on the flourescent lights of my generic, rectangular home away from home. A tasteful sign,
CRESCENT CITY RISK MANAGEMENT
,
had been painted on the door, which was protected by a magical security system that would cause discomfort in any human who felt an urge to drop in for a chat about insurance risks.

I hadn’t felt the need for an office until recently, when the dissolution of the borders with the Beyond had become imminent. Before that, the only thing I’d needed for work was my upstairs library-cum-laboratory, where all the makings of a good potion were catalogued, sorted, and stored. I’d been a deputy sentinel mainstreamed as a risk-management consultant for nearby Tulane University. The perfect geek job.

No more. Now that the preternatural floodgates had opened and I was a full sentinel, tasked with wrangling misbehaving pretes and keeping the humans clueless, I figured it was only a matter of time before I came home from grocery shopping to find a fairy on my front porch or a vampire in my vestibule. I needed a neutral space to do business, thus my little strip-mall office halfway between Winn-Dixie and the Heavenly Ham store. At least lunch was handy.

At a yard sale, Alex had found a round table and some chairs to use for clients, and I’d set up Gerry’s antique desk with a phone and laptop. There was room for Alex to put a desk of his own, but so far he’d declined. My partner’s more of a fieldwork kind of guy. Unlike most sentinels, I wasn’t an almighty Red Congress wizard who could summon vast amounts of physical magic at will, plus—God forbid—I was a woman. So the Elders had decided I needed a partner who knew his way around a weapon.

As much as Alex meant to me, it still stung.

I filled the coffeemaker with water, measured a hefty scoop of Colombian dark roast, and checked email. I got a good snort from the Elders’ latest memo. The brass seemed to march a step behind when it came to developments with Southeast Louisiana’s newest citizens. This morning they announced the presence of merpeople in the region. I didn’t consider myself particularly well-connected in the prete community, so the fact I’d been the one to tell them about the Villeres’ move and the simmering mer feud didn’t bode well for their ability to manage this ridiculous post-Katrina world of ours.

Maybe we should hire Jean Lafitte as an informant so we’d know what was going on—unless the Elders knew more than they were telling.

I shut down the computer and opened
The Wizard’s Field Guide to Water Species
. In reading last night, I’d been surprised to learn that mers were aquatic werecreatures who could half-shift into a classic mermaid/merman body, or shift fully into a fish. Different clans turned into different types of fish. I’d also discovered mers were born, not made, so I didn’t have to worry about being bitten by an angry merman and turning into a big fish who was afraid of water.

I flipped through the book, studying the images of mermaids as depicted in folklore and literature. Not a single merman to be found, and all the mermaids lacked upper-body attire.

Alex opened the door, waiting half a heartbeat for the security wards to drop before entering. “I wish you’d fix those things so they wouldn’t make my ears pop.” He poured a cup of coffee, peered over my shoulder, and growled in appreciation. “That is one sexy pair of fins. I always wanted to meet a mermaid.”

He’d changed into jeans, a muscle shirt, and boots—all black. The man considered gray a carnival color, but got huffy when I pointed out that he was a walking enforcer cliché. He stood still while I studied him, head to toe, trying to figure out where he’d stashed his gun. It was our version of a party game.

“Ankle,” I finally said. Those jeans were eye-catchingly tight, and no way he’d even fit a flat holster under that shirt.

He grinned. “Search me and find out.”

“One of these days I will, and it will scare the hell out of you.” I thrust the book at him. “Here, entertain yourself. I’m only expecting merguys to be at the meeting today, and there are no pictures of them.” Either the male mers didn’t get out much or, more likely, men had written all the history books.

“How is Lafitte getting here?” Alex looked at his watch. “He’s already late.”

It was two minutes after nine, for crying out loud. “No clue. Maybe he’s getting a taxi.” I paused. “Think he knows what a taxi is?”

“He’ll probably steal one of the French Quarter mules.” Alex stuck one arm of his sunglasses into the neck of his shirt. “We’re taking your SUV. I don’t want to get mud and shit all over my car.”

God forbid. “Fine, although the roads in Plaquemines Parish
are
paved, you know.” Well, mostly, until the roads ran out and one had to travel by boat.

We went outside, and I reset the wards on the office, wondering if the manager of the pet supply store next door thought it odd that Crescent City Risk Management stayed locked and dark half the time.

After putting a pair of rubber shrimp boots (black) in my Pathfinder, Alex leaned against his car, studying a map of Plaquemines Parish. I dug in my backpack to make sure all the day’s necessities were covered. I didn’t own shrimp boots, so my running shoes would have to suffice. I’d brought a bunch of vials to test the river water at different spots, a Saints cap in case the sun got too hot, some mosquito repellent, my wallet, my portable kit with the most commonly used potion and charm ingredients, and my elven staff for an extra dose of protection in case anyone on my little scouting team misbehaved.

My money was on the pirate.

The staff poked out the top of the backpack, and I grasped the end to jam it farther in. As usual, it vibrated at my touch and the carved sigils on its polished wooden surface glowed like a banked fire.

I’d found it in the attic of Gerry’s flooded-out house after Katrina, but in my hands it was still like a live grenade in the grip of a toddler. I was never quite sure when it would go
boom
and leave me floating to earth in a million grisly pieces, but I loved the strong magic it let me channel.

As a Green Congress wizard my specialty was ritual magic, and I’d grown up forever trying to do what Red Congress wizards could accomplish with the flick of a finger. With the staff, I’d match my skills against any Red Congress wizard out there. The Elders thought I could use the staff because I had elven ancestors on both sides of my family tree—a rare thing, and something of which they were highly suspicious. I just thought it was cool to have a magical toy that wouldn’t work for anyone else.

A squeal of tires echoed through the neighborhood as a cherry-red Corvette convertible screeched down Tchoupitoulas Street, sideswiped a stop sign on its way into the parking lot, and lurched to a halt inches from Alex’s pristine paint job.