“Get out of here.” My voice rasped. “Until you’re ready to tell me the truth about being an elf, get out.” He had to be an elf.
“We’ll talk later, when you’re not so upset.” Rand gave me a final, almost tentative smile before opening the back door.
“I’m not your enemy, Dru.”
I
spent the rest of Wednesday trying to clean my living room— thankfully, the only place the Axeman had left his calling card. I’d felt his residual energy in the room when I first went into the house, but it had dissipated quickly. I’d also driven to the Quarter to talk to the new age shop owner and necromancer, but his store was closed until tomorrow morning. Because he’d been busy directing the Axeman to kill me?
Why me? Why would I be a target for a necromancer? Alex and Ken were running background checks on all the victims and trying to find a link between them and me. I thought they were wasting their energy. The necromancer hadn’t been in charge of any attacks before the numbers of my house appeared— just a taunt, apparently. They should focus on the wizard with the target on her back. The killer had missed me once but he’d be back—unless I could summon him first.
I also had downloaded hours’ worth of jazz and had it playing in a nonstop loop on my iPod, with speakers attached so it could be heard in every room.
My sixth construction-size trash bag overflowed with white, cottony stuffing that had been ripped out of my living room furniture before the Axeman chopped off the arms and legs. Probably what he’d planned to do to me, which should scare the crap out of me but I was too pissed. It wasn’t like I could call my homeowner’s insurance company and file a claim, and I didn’t make the money Alex and Jake did since they had the “high-risk” jobs and I didn’t. Yet, exactly who was being stalked by a psychotic ax murderer? Oh yeah. That would be the girl with the low-risk job. The high-risk guys were noodling through computer data files.
“Son of a bitch.” The bottom of my trash bag caught on the wrought-iron railing that ran along my back steps, spilling broken glass and furniture stuffing all over the sidewalk.
I fetched a new bag and squatted beside the mess, picking up glass shards and setting them aside.
“Rand told me someone broke in and wrecked your house.” Eugenie knelt next to me and began picking up trash. “I’m sorry. Not just about this. About everything.”
I stopped her hand halfway toward the trash bag and squeezed it with mine. “I’m sorry too. Nothing is going on with Rand and me, I swear to God. I care about you too much, and I care about Alex too much.”
I didn’t add that I thought Rand was a slimeball of undetermined preternatural parentage. She was definitely not ready for that conversation.
“I believe you. And I’m glad you finally realize what all the rest of us knew about you and Alex.” She sat on the stoop above the trash while I swept the last bit of furniture fluff into the bag and nudged a broken candelabra off the stoop with her tie-dyed sneaker.
I set the bag aside and took the seat on the step below hers. “Do you ever wish we could go back three years, before the storm, and just have things the way they were?” Life had been so simple then, in retrospect, and the things I thought were life or death were nothing of the kind. My biggest concern had been how I could prove myself to Gerry so I could get bigger assignments. Well, now I had them.
“It wasn’t so much better,” Eugenie said. “My shop is doing more business now than before Katrina. And I met Rand.”
That was a subject best avoided. “Yeah, I guess. Life just seemed easier then.”
She reached down and hugged me. “It might help if you’d talk to me, DJ. You think I don’t know there’s a lot of stuff going on in your life that you’re keeping to yourself? That you aren’t able to do things with me anymore? That you’re always stressed out? Especially the last couple of months. You lost Gerry and Tish both. I wish you’d let me help you—by listening, if nothing else.”
I swallowed a lump of guilt. I had been so consumed with my own post- hurricane dramas that I hadn’t given a lot of thought to how it might look from the viewpoint of the woman who was supposed to be my best friend. When was the last time we’d gone shopping or seen a movie?
“I’m sorry, Eugenie. There are just—”
“I know, I know.” She smiled. “Things about your job you can’t talk about. Just remember I’m here when you can.”
I could start by listening to her. “What’s going on with you and Rand?”
She sighed. “Who knows? He can be sweet one minute and an hour later he’s just . . . not there. I don’t know where his mind gets off to. He’s a very deep thinker, you know?”
“I guess.” He might be a deep thinker in ways neither of us could imagine.
“His ears must have been burning.” Eugenie pointed, and I followed her finger to the street. Rand’s long legs ate up the distance across Magazine and Nashville, bringing his bright, smiling self to my doorstep way too soon. Just when Eugenie and I were starting to finally talk to each other, here came a major source of contention.
“You have some big furniture pieces that need to come out, don’t you? I’ll get them.” Rand tossed a paper sack on the steps next to me, pushed past us, and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Yeah, hello to you too, and thanks for asking before you went inside,” I called after him. Presumptuous jerk.
“See, he can be so thoughtful.” Eugenie propped her elbows on her knees. “But he didn’t even look at me. Sometimes I don’t think I even know who he is.”
This conversation was dipping further into the pool of surrealism. “You really haven’t known him that long.” I measured my words. “You guys went from handshake to full-tilt almost overnight.”
She laughed, flipping a strand of auburn hair out of her eyes. “We all can’t be you and Alex, with three years of foreplay.”
“You had foreplay for three years?” Rand stood behind us in the doorway, holding the sofa. The whole sofa. Without straining. “Let me get past you and set this on the curb, then I want to hear about three years of foreplay.”
I would not be discussing foreplay with Quince Randolph. And who the hell could walk around carrying a sofa—even one without arms or legs? I doubt Alex could have managed that.
Rand settled the sofa skeleton next to the street, then arranged my collection of trash bags next to it.
“Looks like you’re about done except for sweeping it out.” He ran fingers through his hair and pulled it back into a tail very similar to mine, binding it with an elastic band from his pocket. “When you decide on your new furniture, let me know and I’ll bring you some plants from the shop.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet.” Eugenie was hopeless. “Isn’t it, DJ?”
“Yes. Sweet.” Rand and I exchanged meaningful looks.
Mine said:
I don’t know what you are up to, but I will
. His said:
I love a challenge
— or so I imagined it, since I couldn’t read him.
Rand settled on the step below Eugenie and leaned back against her knees, which gave her a chance to begin trying to weave his thick hair into a braid. She was a hairdresser; she couldn’t help herself.
“You spent the night at Alex’s.” Rand jerked his head away from Eugenie’s clutching fingers, which stopped braiding once his words sunk in.
“You what? Did you . . . How was . . .” Eugenie huffed at the questions she wanted answers to but wasn’t willing to ask in front of Rand because she knew damned well I wouldn’t talk.
“How was it you happened to know my house had been broken into?” Alex and I had wondered about that this morning after Rand left. The doors weren’t standing open. He either saw the Axeman go in or out, or had been snooping around and looking in my windows. I voted for number two.
Rand smiled at me and paused a moment too long. Oh God help me, he was going to say something outrageous. “I came by with some beignets, hoping we could share breakfast. When you didn’t answer the door, I got worried and looked in the window.”
“You were bringing her breakfast?” Eugenie’s surprise and hurt flared around her aura, and I winced. Damn him.
“I knew she liked beignets, so I picked some up from Café du Monde after I went to the market this morning.” Rand’s gaze held steadily to mine as he nudged the paper sack. I wanted to rip his eyeballs out and chop them up for Sebastian to eat.
“I need to go.” Eugenie stood up and almost tripped on her way down the steps. Rand reached out to steady her, but let her go as soon as she regained her balance. She turned to look at him, uncertainty in her eyes.
“You need to leave too, Rand,” I said. “Maybe you and Eugenie can have dinner.” If he could read my moods as well as I suspected, he’d know I meant it, as well as my underlying message: Hurt her, and he’d have to deal with me.
“I’d like that,” he said, grinning, before he turned to follow Eugenie across the street.
I wasn’t sure which he meant: he’d like dinner, or he’d like to deal with me.
I
wouldn’t be able to talk to the other local necromancer until tomorrow morning, so rather than sit around and imagine horrific loup-garou scenarios or, worse, pack my bags for a life in the Beyond, I decided to try summoning the Axeman. Ever since Etienne had suggested it last night, I’d been thinking about how best to do it.
I’d strengthened the security wards on my house again, jumping at every gust of wind, then wandered from room to room to make sure the new window glass remained reinforced and the curtains closed. As if sensing my discomfort, Sebastian twined between my ankles at every turn, clingy and skittish.
After Katrina, Alex had left a couple of small grenades at my house and I had them locked in the bottom shelf of my library cabinet along with the really strong painkillers and a few particularly dangerous potions ingredients. Now, I removed them and gingerly set one on my worktable. After much inner debate, I put the other behind a vase on the mantel of my front parlor. Alex had assured me they were the best things for destroying zombies. The Axeman wasn’t a zombie, but he still might need destroying.
Alex had been called to Monroe on a DDT case, to take down a vampire who’d ignored warnings to shut down his gaming operations. He’d exposed his fangs to a roomful of gamblers and had been turned in by none other than Etienne Boulard, his own Regent. With Alex out of town and Jake gone, that left Ken Hachette as my primary backup. As much as I liked Ken, he didn’t have enough experience to handle the Axeman or a necromancer.
Still, I’d vowed not to charge into any more dangerous situations alone, so I pondered my backup options. Louis Armstrong would be no help in a fight if the Axeman escaped, although I guess he could play some jazz. Jean Lafitte would be more useful if things turned violent, but I needed someone who was straightforward and agenda-less.
I called my favorite aquatic shapeshifter, Rene Delachaise.
Two hours later, the merman arrived on my doorstep carrying a big plastic bag. “Hey, babe.”
We hugged a long time. It had been less than a month since his twin brother Robert had died at the hands of a nymph we’d all trusted—the same woman who’d killed Tish. He’d saved me from drowning, fishing me out of the river and administering the CPR that cracked my ribs. And we’d done a power share that left us living inside each other’s heads for about seventytwo hours, which, freaky as it was, had led to a deep mutual respect. Rene was a good man.
“You doing okay?” I stepped back and took a look at him. Like most mers, Rene was of short-to-average height, about five-nine, but he was shapeshifter strong. He had a wiry, tanned body, a thick South Louisiana accent, dark liquid eyes that showed the stress of the past month, and an impressive set of tattoos that spread across every bit of his skin I’d seen—and I’d seen a lot. Like most shifters, Rene had no body issues.
“Some days are better than others.” He retrieved his bag from where he’d set it on the floor inside the front door. “How ’bout you?”
I could think of Tish some days without crying now, and could remember more good times than bad. “Yeah, same here.”
“I brought dinner. Just caught these yesterday.” He led me into the kitchen and pulled a big plastic bucket out of the bag, along with a pile of old newspapers. In the bucket was a mountain of shrimp and new potatoes, both boiled with enough cayenne to clear out my sinuses for a month.
He spread the newspaper on the kitchen table and dumped the shrimp and potatoes out on it. “Is this a social call, babe, or you come up with some crazy shit for us to do?”
I pulled a couple of beers out of the fridge and set them on the counter. “Hey— the power share thing was crazy but you’ve gotta admit it was fun.”
“Yeah, you right.” He grinned, reminding me how it had felt to be in his head while he swam through the marshy waters near the mouth of the Mississippi River. “It was nuts. Want to try it again?”
“No way.” We settled in at the table and began eating the shrimp and potatoes with our hands. “But I do have another adventure you might find interesting.”
“I knew most of that,” he said after I’d filled him in on the Axeman case. He pulled the tail off a fat shrimp and popped it in his mouth. “The pirate’s been staying in the Beyond trying to find the killer, but he ain’t showed up. So Jean Lafitte thinks he’s in N’Orleans most of the time now. Jean, he’s still nosing around trying to find out what wizard is pulling the strings.”
Rene and Jean had been business partners for quite a while now, so it made sense he’d be keeping up.
I washed down a red-hot potato with my beer. “I’d hoped Jean had found something. When you see him, ask him if he can figure out why I’d be the target.” I shared the information about the numbers at the crime scene, and the Axeman’s arrival at my house. “You notice I don’t have any furniture in my living room? He broke it all.”
“So, what’re we doing tonight, babe? Furniture shopping or huntin’ down the Axeman?”
“Neither.” I smiled. Rene liked anything that might lead to a good fistfight, and he was surprisingly open- minded for a mer. As a species, they tended to be surly and pigheaded. “We’re going to summon the Axeman. Bring him to us.”