Adrian’s upper lip curled. “Of course not. Why on earth would I want to meet a vampire?”
Maybe because he was one. A few minutes in Adrian Hoffman’s company could suck the soul out of a banana. “I’m going to talk with him tonight at his bar. It’s not far from your apartment. Why don’t you go with me? I’d like to get your reactions and compare them with my own.”
Yeah, I was sucking up, and he fell for it. “That would be most . . . interesting. Yes, I’ll go.” He almost smiled.
Good. Sucking up done. Now for the real show. “What are we doing today?”
I expected a bunch of dry lectures on elven history and lore, but he surprised me. “Show me what you can do.” He sat next to me on the rusty bench, crossed his legs, and waited for me to perform like a trained seal.
The thing I’d most like to do was point my elven staff at him and set him on fire, but such an act would probably hurt my opportunities for career advancement. “Can you be more specific?”
He rolled his eyes heavenward as if asking the Almighty to spare him from idiots. “What elven skills do you claim to have? We’ll start there. Next time I’ll test you on some other skills known to be elven.”
Wait, this might actually be helpful. My mouth dropped open involuntarily.
He sniffed. “Unless, of course, you’ve highly exaggerated your abilities.”
What a jackass. “Fine. I can do hydromancy. I can—”
“Show me.”
I sighed. “It’s daylight. And we’re outside.” The ideal time to do hydromancy was at night under a full moon and, failing that, indoors in a dark place.
“You’ve a reputation for being
creative
.” His tone left no doubt as to what he thought of creativity: out-of-the-box thinking sat atop the undesirability scale alongside horrible things like genocide and polite behavior.
“Some people consider creativity an asset.” He wanted creative? I’d show him creative. I studied the area around us, grabbed my pack, and walked toward the long midway, filled with a couple dozen dilapidated wooden structures tricked out like French Quarter buildings. Before the hurricane, they’d sold overpriced Cajun- and voodoo-themed souvenirs. The sign leading into the area read PONTCHARTRAIN BEACH, a lakeside amusement park in New Orleans that had been closed years ago. The name had a certain irony now.
The storefront on the end had once been bright yellow, with orange window and door trim and sage-green shutters. Designed to mimic a Creole cottage, the building more resembled something a colorblind do- it- yourselfer had painted using clearance-bin paint from Home Depot, then left to rot for several years. The windows gaped open, and graffiti covered the front. In bright red, VENDETTA; in black, ROACHERY.
Shuddering, I stepped through the open doorway and picked my way around shards of glass and empty display cases, dodging a rodent-like skeleton the size of a terrier and taking shallow breaths to protect my lungs from the chalky smell of dried mold spores—a scent I remembered too well from the post-Katrina city. Gerry’s entire neighborhood of Lakeview had reeked of it for a year.
I knelt in the darkest corner. Not pitch-black, but dark enough to work. My skin jumped and twitched and itched with the feet of imaginary spiders and roaches and God knew what else crawling inside my clothes. At least I hoped they were imaginary.
“What in bloody hell are you doing?”
I started at the sound of the petulant voice coming from the doorway. Adrian had been following closely until I reached the building.
“I’m going to do some basic hydromancy and I need darkness. Come closer—just past the giant mutant rat carcass. I can’t do it any closer to the door.”
Glass crunched under his feet, and he muttered curses at me all the way across the room. A pair of dust-covered, fancy loafers came to a stop about a yard to my left. Had the man thought he was dressing for a garden party?
The creak of his knees as he squatted echoed in the dark, and the crackle and whisper of something crawling nearby made the little hairs on my arms prickle. We needed to get this done and get out of here.
I felt around in my backpack and pulled out my portable hydromancy kit. Unzipping the leather pouch, I removed a small black-glass bowl, a flask of holy water, and two cones of patchouli incense. If I did the ritual at home, I used mimosa leaves, but the incense was more portable.
I looked up. “You got a match?”
“Did you not even inherit enough of your father’s Red Congress magic to light incense? What a pity. He was a powerful wizard.”
I hoped he didn’t see my teeth gritting in the gloom. I could light incense; I just saw no need to waste my energy reserves.
“How well did you know Gerry?” I touched a finger to the incense cones and sent enough physical magic into each one to ignite the ends. My father, whom I’d known only as a mentor until he went missing after Katrina, had been a strong Red Congress wizard, warrior class. I’d inherited very little of his physical magic and Adrian was right—that was a pity.
“I knew him too well.” I imagined the wizard assuming his most condescending expression, which would match the tone of his voice. “He squandered more talent than most wizards ever have. He was arrogant and unwilling to follow the rules or respect the traditions of wizardry.”
Adrian would hear no argument from me. Gerry had raised me since I was six. I loved him and I missed him. But I wasn’t blind to his faults. Willem Zrakovi had expressed much the same opinion.
I poured the holy water into the bowl and sat back on my heels. One final element. “You have a pen? Or anything small that I can use for a focus?”
Fabric rustled as Adrian dug through his suit coat and handed me a fountain pen. A really nice one, judging by its sleek casing. Exactly what I’d need to help me stage a little magic show he’d appreciate.
“Okay, keep your focus on the water,” I said, and closed my eyes. In my left hand I clutched his pen while my right index finger touched the surface of the water. I used a little more of my native magic to shoot a small burst of energy into the bowl, keeping Adrian’s face fixed in my mind.
I heard a sharp intake of breath and opened my eyes. He squatted next to me, and peered into the water at the image of himself as viewed from above. I shifted my finger to different sections of the water’s surface, and the view of his image shifted in correlating angles. I twirled my finger more deeply into the bowl and the image zoomed in on his horrified face.
“Enough.” He reached out and pulled my hand from the water. The image vanished, the chain between me and the magic broken. “Give me my pen.”
I handed it to him without comment, and he stood up. He was shaken, broadcasting fear like a human or a young wizard who hadn’t learned to put up mental shields. After a few seconds I felt them slam into place, but too late. My little demonstration had surprised him. In theory, Adrian knew I could do hydromancy, but he hadn’t realized I could use it on him.
“You realize that is regulated magic.” His smooth exterior slipped back into place.
“Of course.” Anything the Elders couldn’t do themselves tended to go on the “black” list of illegal or regulated magic. I poured the water onto the incense cones to douse them, then returned the bowl and bottle of water to my pack. “Okay, your first show-and-tell is over.” I stood up and motioned toward the door. “After you.”
We walked back into the sunlight, blinding after the darkness of the store. Squinting, I took a lungful of clean air. “Want to return to the bench?”
He shouldered past me and returned to our former perch, where he’d left his briefcase. I slung my pack over my shoulder and followed.
Once we were seated, he crossed his arms and met my eyes for the first time today. “What else can you do?”
Guess we’d finished hydromancy class. “Well, Gerry and I were able to communicate through dreams.” A truly awful thing I didn’t want to try again. “Never happened with anyone else.”
Adrian nodded, looking thoughtful. “My understanding is dreamsharing only works between people who have a blood bond. The skill’s probably dormant now that Gerry’s dead.”
Anger leapt up, hot and sharp, followed by a blur of tears. I glanced away so he wouldn’t see them. I’d accepted Gerry’s death, mostly. But grief has a way of slapping you silly when you least expect it. Sitting here, surrounded by so many reminders of what had happened during Katrina as if three years hadn’t passed, and listening to this jackass talk about Gerry’s death so callously . . . it hurt.
“What else?” asked Mr. Oblivious.
I choked on a lump of grief. “The empathy and energy recognition.”
He laughed, a sly, silky flex of vocal cords and throat muscles. “Ah yes, the famous ability to read auras and emotions.”
Yeah, the famous empathy and energy recognition he’d ignored, which cost some lives and got him publicly chastised by Zrakovi. “Despite your disregard for them, my empathic skills are valuable,” I said, my tone flat.
“They could be,” he said. “But they’re a tool, and like any tool they have to be taken in context.”
I swiveled on the bench to face him. “Well, it told me how my hydromancy display—a minor example of that skill, by the way—made you uncomfortable.”
He nodded. “But how do you know I wasn’t thinking of something else that made me uncomfortable?”
He was right. I didn’t know. “Okay, I’ll give you that one. But knowing what emotions are driving an adversary’s actions can be a powerful weapon, regardless of their source.”
His brown eyes narrowed. “And am I your adversary, Drusilla Jaco?”
I gave his question serious consideration. I was angry at Adrian Hoffman and we’d never be friends—maybe not even friendly acquaintances—but we were fellow wizards. “No, you’re not my adversary. We differ in our methods, we certainly have different temperaments, but in the end we’re on the same side and that’s what matters.”
His face relaxed, and the man actually smiled. “So, shall we agree we’ll never be chums, get through this exercise as pleasantly as we can, and then go on our way?”
“Great idea.” I had enough to deal with between the Axeman and the loup-garou crisis without adding political warfare. “So, that leaves the staff.”
I pulled the ancient weapon out of my backpack, its carved sigils glowing under my touch, and enjoyed Adrian’s naked admiration. He’d never seen the staff, and if he’d spent his academic years studying elven magic, he’d probably be itching for a closer examination.
I held it out to him. “This is the staff known by the elves as Mahout.” I’d leave off the Charlie nickname.
His face was reverent, eyes shining like a sugar addict in a praline factory. He better be careful, or I might decide to like him.
“This is amazing.” His voice held reverence but his heart held jealousy—which I was able to tell with my useless empathic ability. “How did the claiming happen? You found it among Gerald’s belongings, yes?” He ran a finger over the sigils, which had stopped glowing as soon as he touched them.
“I found the staff in Gerry’s attic after Katrina. I knew from his journals he’d never gotten it to work for him, but it began glowing the instant I picked it up. It began following me from room to room, although it’s never come right to my hand except once when I summoned it using wizard’s magic. It really amplifies my physical magic.”
The staff did other things too. It ramped up my hydromancy and just about any other kind of spell or ritual I’d tried, but I didn’t volunteer that. I didn’t like the way Adrian caressed it, almost possessively. He might as well be Smeagol cooing over the One Ring and muttering “preciousssss.”
I held out my hand. “I’ll give you an example.”
He laid the staff across my palm but didn’t let go until I finally pulled it away. My aim was notorious, in a bad way, so I searched for a broad target. The side of the Jean Lafitte Pirate Ship ride looked un-missable. I took a deep breath, pointed the staff at the skull and crossbones painted on the ship’s hull (which Jean would never have permitted lest he be seen as a real pirate instead of a “privateer”), and channeled a bit of magic through it.
“Holy Mother of God!” Adrian jumped to his feet as a stream of red fire flew from the tip of the staff and burned a hole in the side of the ship about six feet to the left of where I’d been aiming. He’d never know the difference.
An acrid, smoky odor wafted our way as flames began to lick along the hull of the rotted vessel.
“I suggest you put that conflagration out.” Adrian crossed his arms. I’d really shaken him this time.
“Um, well, I haven’t gotten to the ‘undo’ lesson yet.” I’d been working on a flame-retardant charm but hadn’t perfected it enough for it to work on something as large as the pirate ship. The vial was in my pocket, but the ship would burn down to water and then the fire would be automatically doused. No point in wasting good magic.
Adrian snorted and ran toward the edge of the small boat landing, chanting and twisting his fingers in front of him like he was speaking to the fire in sign language. The flames flickered, then died, leaving a charred, gaping hole.
Adrian fisted his hands on his hips and stared at the ship a few moments before turning back to me with an assessing look.
I gave him one right back. “You’re Blue Congress?” I’d never seen magic like his. It differed from Gerry’s brute-force Red Congress magic and my own methodical rituals. Blues were artistic, creative—a congress I’d never have pegged for Adrian. His magic was poetic, almost delicate. “That was beautiful.”
He looked back at the ship. “Normally, that spell would restore a magicked situation to its previous state, but it apparently doesn’t quite work with elven sorcery. Let’s try something else. Just don’t burn anything down.”
I followed him down the midway, dodging the patches of weeds that had sprung through cracks in the concrete. He came to a stop near a giant clown’s head lying on its ear, red mouth gaping in a curve like a parenthesis, blue eyes goggling at us. Mr. Happy was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle and made me shudder. I freakin’ hated clowns. They weren’t as bad as zombies or elves, but close.
“Shoot the clown, aim for his right eye, and put as much of your own power into the shot as you can,” Adrian said, moving to stand behind me and, theoretically, out of harm’s way.