Alex had two vehicles but he hadn’t offered to let me drive the Mercedes, and I’d be damned if I was going to ask him. Rand would probably let me use the Plantasy Island van or his little boxy car, but I’d be damned if I’d ask him, either.
Instead, I called a cab to take me to a car rental place on Canal Street. I was perfecting self-pity and martyrdom to an art.
A half hour later, I puttered toward home in the cheapest car available, a domestic model built from an old soup can that I had to pay extra for because it was the weekend before Thanksgiving. When my cell rang, I saw Alex’s name on the screen and waited a couple of rings before answering so I could get my professional self in charge. He wanted time, and I was determined not to push him until he was ready to talk. Maybe he was ready.
“Hey, what’s up?” I was the soul of professionalism.
He paused before answering, and I wondered if he’d expected me to be either crying or angry. “Can you meet me for lunch? Liuzza’s? We need to talk about the Axeman case and decide what to do next.”
“Half hour?” I was already near Mid-City, so no point in putting it off. We needed to talk about the case before the Axeman came after me again. I promised myself we’d only get into relationship stuff if he brought it up.
When I pulled into the tiny, crowded parking lot at Liuzza’s, I was disappointed to see Ken’s sensible tan sedan in the lot instead of Alex’s car or SUV. This wasn’t going to be lunch for two, but I could be patient. Alexander Warin couldn’t hide behind Ken forever.
Liuzza’s had been up to its aging rafters in floodwater after Katrina, but had rebounded with fresh paint, glass tiles, and wood paneling that still managed to make it look retro and wellloved. As I squeezed through the crowds milling around the door, I spotted Ken and Alex at a table in the far corner of the front room.
A few fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade later, we’d had a perfectly professional conversation. Ken had found only three places renting sedans with dark-tinted windows, including one in Baton Rouge, so he was going to each of them this afternoon to chat with managers and employees and look at rental records.
We needed something more proactive, though. “The Axeman will have to lead us to the necromancer—it’s the only way we’ll ever catch him.” I pushed a shrimp around my plate. “And the only way we can get the Axeman to do that is draw him out, and either catch the person who drops him off or follow his trail back to his summoner. I’m looking for a spell or charm I can use to do that.”
Alex nodded. “Agreed. We just have to figure out how to draw him out since we don’t know where he’s going to be until he shows up.”
I pointed at him with my cocktail fork. “Wrong. We don’t have to know where he is. We just have to make sure he knows where I am. I’m the bait.”
“Oh, no you aren’t.” Alex set his spoon down with a clatter. “We’re not setting you up as a lure. We’ll find another way.”
Ken cleared his throat. “She’s right, Alex.” He nodded at me. “The only way of controlling this guy is to be a step ahead of him, not a step—or two—behind. I don’t like it either, but DJ’s the one he’s after, so she’s the only one who can draw him out. We just gotta set the trap and be smart about it.”
Alex tapped the table with his fingers. “You get in enough shit on your own without us creating more trouble for you to get into.”
This was business, not personal, and he should know better than to mix them. “I’m in more danger not knowing when he’s going to jump out from behind a bush and split my head open with a Home Depot special.” I struggled to keep the anger out of my voice. “I’m the sentinel, I’m the target, and it’s my call. You don’t get to decide.”
“We don’t know how long it will be before he can come back.” Alex’s face looked as stony as Abe Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. “And even if we knew he was coming back tomorrow, how do you plan to get word to his summoner—post your schedule on the front page of the
Times-Picayune
?”
I probably wouldn’t have to. “I’ve thought about how the Axeman could have known I was at Six Flags yesterday. Either the necromancer followed me or he knew my schedule with Adrian. Chances are, as long as I let a few people know where I’ll be and then be there, he’s going to show up.”
Alex frowned, but he didn’t argue.
“Did you find out how soon he can come back?” Ken asked.
I paused while the waitress delivered three steaming bowls of gumbo. “If this were a normal case, it would take the Axeman a couple of weeks to build up enough strength to return—maybe more. But the necromancer is a wild card. The necromantic magic could compel the Axeman to return immediately. He doesn’t need the strength to cross the metaphysical borders since he’s not coming in under his own power.”
Ken picked a crab claw out of his gumbo and held it up with raised eyebrows. Alex grabbed it.
“Once we get a rough timetable and plan the trap, who will you share your whereabouts with?” Ken picked out a couple of shrimp with a fork and scraped them into Alex’s bowl. Why the man ordered seafood gumbo and then picked out the seafood was beyond me.
I thought about necromancers and the people who might know them. “Etienne Boulard and Jonas Adamson, of course. Adrian Hoffman. And I’ll get Rand to spread the word among the Synod.” That pretty much covered my least-trustworthy list, and Adrian was only there because he’d proven he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was the only one who could have told Lily about my abilities in hydromancy.
Ken leaned back in his chair. “You really think there’s a chance the elves are involved in this?” Then he shook his head. “Man, I cannot believe I just asked that question. The words that have been coming out of my mouth this week. Damn.”
I grinned at him. It had been so long since I smiled it felt unnatural. “You’ve had a steep learning curve.”
“Tell me about it.” He hunched over his gumbo, but paused with the spoon halfway between bowl and mouth. “Seriously, though. You think the elves could be behind the Axeman?”
A day ago I’d have said no, that they were more into mental than physical violence. The sight of what they’d done to Rand, one of their own, had changed my opinion. “They’re not necromancers.” My anger bubbled to the surface again, just thinking of Lily letting Rand drown and of Mace wielding his cane. “But the elves are beasts, and they know how to hire black-market magic. We’d be nuts to not consider them.”
“Does that include Quince Randolph?” Alex’s question was asked in a tone that caressed like velvet, but his expression hinted of razor blades and gunpowder.
We glared at each other until Ken cleared his throat and pushed back his chair. “I gotta . . . make a call, or answer the call of nature. Or see a man about a call.”
I waited until he got out of earshot, then leaned close to Alex. “Okay, look. You know damn well I didn’t”—I made quote marks with my fingers—“
marry
Quince Randolph. I wanted out from under the loup-garou curse. I didn’t want to give up this job I’ve worked so hard for. I didn’t want to give up my magic, which would happen if I moved into the Beyond. I didn’t want to give you up. You were a big part of my decision.”
Alex slumped in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry. Damn it, I know you didn’t really have a choice. But Randolph’s like your buddy Jean Lafitte—another example of the chaos that surrounds you. It swirls around you like a dust cloud.”
Alex took a sip of his iced tea and avoided making eye contact. “As much as I want to be with you I don’t know if I can handle everything, and everybody, that comes with it. And I don’t like admitting there are things I can’t handle.”
“That’s . . .” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. This had been the problem all along. He’d just finally verbalized it, and I didn’t have any answers.
“Alex, I want to be with you too, but you’re the only one who can decide what you can live with,” I said, finally. “You’re an adrenaline junkie with a control fetish, and maybe I’m a chaos junkie who doesn’t want to be controlled. I’d like to tell you I could change, but most of the crazy crap in my life is not stuff I go out looking for.”
Yet chaos always found me, and I was Gerry St. Simon’s daughter. I’d come to accept that I would always have a streak of rogue in me.
I’d been obsessively flipping a cardboard coaster as I talked. Alex reached out and rested his hand over mine. “Let’s slow down and see where it goes.”
Which was probably manspeak for
let’s go back to being friends
. Maybe it was for the best. The highs of being together were amazing, but the lows hurt. Right now, it hurt a lot.
I nodded, pulled my hand away, dug my wallet out of my purse, and tucked a twenty under the edge of my plate. “Ken wanted to visit L’Amour Sauvage tonight and see some vampires. You want to go?”
Alex shook his head. “I have a meeting with the head of the enforcers, to fill him in on how Ken’s doing. I’m hoping he doesn’t ask about Jake.”
God, Jake. I’d gotten so caught up in my own drama I’d forgotten him. I needed to get word to him, maybe through Jean Lafitte or Louis Armstrong, that even though I wasn’t going to shift it wasn’t safe for him to return. Not until the elves played their hand.
***
The lines stretching from the door of L’Amour Sauvage were especially long on a Saturday night, even the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I stood off to the side until I caught the eye of the bouncer, and he motioned me to the front. The grumbling masses would have to get over it.
I weaved my way through the well-dressed crowd. I’d made more of a stab at blending in tonight, or at least at sucking up to Etienne by respecting his dress code. I’d slithered into a curvehugging red dress with a low back and high hemline, wore my hair down, and gave up my boots for a pair of ridiculous red heels.
Heels I almost fell out of when I rounded the end of the bar and came upon Adrian Hoffman in a cozy clutch with Etienne’s leggy red-haired assistant, Terri. I’m not sure whose eyes widened the most.
“You’re back,” I finally coughed out.
Terri gave me a disconcerting, fangy grin. She wasn’t supposed to flash those things in public. “Adrian couldn’t stay away from New Orleans too long.” She pronounced the city’s name like a tourist—
New Or- leens
—but who was I to correct a woman with oversized canines?
Adrian, who’d also never pronounced the city’s name correctly, clearly hadn’t heard about the staff’s untimely breakage. “I’d planned to contact you on Monday about resuming our lessons.”
“The staff got broken during another Axeman attack yesterday.” What would his reaction be?
A smirk. “You really are quite the menace. We’ll continue, nonetheless. You have other skills that don’t involve the staff.”
Fabulous. “Call me Monday with our next class time. Good to see you feel up to making regular blood donations now that you’re back.” And with that zinger, I turned and walked across the bar to the table where Ken waited, all buttoned up in a dark sports jacket and slacks.
“You ready to play spot the vampire?”
He scanned the room. “How can you tell who’s vampire and who isn’t?”
“It’s hard unless they flash fangs at you, and most of them won’t do that. Doesn’t pay to scare your food supply.”
I looked around the room, pointing out vamps of both genders. “They’re pale— no sunlight, you know. Although most of the Midwestern tourists are just as pale. Vamps also tend to be very attractive. When they’re changed it maximizes whatever physical potential they had as humans. The better looking they are, the easier for them to lure in potential blood donors.”
Ken’s eyes had grown wider by the second. “Isn’t that one sitting with your wizard friend Adrian?”
I watched them a moment. Adrian looked kind of besotted with her. Good for him. Somebody should be happy. “Yep. Really, all you need to know is to not make direct eye contact, especially with Etienne. He likes to play mind games.”
As long as we were here, why not drop in on our local Regent? “You want to meet him?”
Ken looked a little fearful, but nodded. “Why not?”
“Follow me.” I walked into the hallway and slipped through Etienne’s office door without knocking—the better to learn something. The post-Katrina influx of pretes hadn’t done much for my manners.
The blond vampire had his back to the door, phone clamped to his ear. “I don’t care—forget it. It’s too risky to—” His posture straightened, his body stilled, and his voice lost its anger. His French accent, much lighter and more Americanized than Jean Lafitte’s, assumed a friendlier, more neutral tone. “I’m sure you’ll know what to do.”
He ended the call and finger-stabbed a couple of buttons on his keypad, still facing the other way. I held my breath. “Terri,
ma chère
. Unless you wish to be locked in a coffin for a month, I suggest you leave your new plaything alone and keep any other
sorcières
and their human friends from prancing into my office unannounced.”
I had never pranced anywhere in my life, and I doubt Ken had either. “How’d you know we were here?”
He clicked his phone shut, rose to his feet, turned, and prowled toward us. I had to force my feet to not prance away from him. Standing entirely too close, he lowered his head and took a long, leisurely inhale in the vicinity of my jugular. Ken tensed beside me, but to his credit, he hadn’t yet pulled out a weapon.
“Wizard blood is so very tempting, and yours is especially interesting.”
Yeah, obviously. “Sorry to drop in unannounced, but I was in the neighborhood.”
He straightened and walked back to his desk with a laugh, but I could sense his tension. Something had our Regent out of sorts tonight.
I had enough crises without volunteering for more, though, so I sat in the chair facing his desk. “I have another question or two about necromancy.”
“You should introduce me to your human friend first. I didn’t know wizards had allowed humans in on preternatural business. It seems unwise.” He’d fixed Ken with a vampirelike, unblinking stare, but Ken kept his eyes focused on Etienne’s desk.
The detective was determined to be a polite cop, however. “Ken Hachette. I’m with the NOPD homi cide unit as well as consulting on preternatural cases.”