“What does that look like?” I asked, holding up my finger as Alex came up behind me.
“Looks like charcoal, or ash maybe,” he said, squatting and rubbing a pinch of the powder between his fingers. “What do you think it means?”
“Ash is used for some magic, but it’s not a good conductor. Doesn’t last long enough.”
I paused, wondering how much to tell Alex, whether to
share information that might make Gerry look bad. But we’d agreed to find the truth, whatever it might turn out to be.
“There’s something else,” I said. “I don’t know if you realize it, but the Elders recently changed their recommendations for ritual summoning, dispatching, and transports. Before, we used circles for everything, so if you found a circle it wouldn’t tell you what it had been used for. This interlocking circle and triangle is used as a transport and nothing else. But there’s no magical energy coming off it now. It’s closed, but I don’t know if it has been used.”
Alex studied the figures. “Would the energy dissipate if the transport was used but there was no one behind on this side to break it? Like if he went somewhere alone and didn’t return?”
“Eventually.” I eyed the transport again. “But like I said, ash isn’t a good conductor. An ash transport would lose its traces of energy a lot faster than something like sea salt or iron.” Of course, Gerry knew that. If he used a transport of ash, he wanted his trail to disappear fast. If I could come to that conclusion, I was sure the enforcer could too.
Alex raised his head and looked sharply toward the door, then stood and left the room.
I met him in the doorway as he returned carrying an armload of ear-flattened, hissing, chocolate-colored feline. I’d forgotten about Gerry’s cat.
“Sebastian!” I reached out to pet him, happy to see any tangible sign of Gerry. At the sight of me, his ears flattened even more and he exposed a mouthful of sharp, pointy teeth. You’d think I had kicked that cat at some point in its wretched life, but I swear I had treated it only with kindhearted affection. Well, and periodic indifference.
“It’s okay, boy,” Alex said, smoothing out Sebastian’s fur. The big cat began to purr and relaxed in Alex’s arms. Traitorous ingrate. “There was a huge bag of food and plenty of water
set out for him in the other bedroom. He must have been hiding under the bed when I was in there before.”
Sebastian’s slightly crossed blue eyes settled on me in a baleful glare. Still, Gerry had loved him, and he’d been through a rough couple of weeks. I reached out to rub behind his ears. He loved it when Gerry did that. All I got for my sympathy was another hiss, a show of teeth, and a scratch on the back of my hand.
“Okay, I tried,” I said, annoyed. “He’s all yours.”
“Jake’s allergic to cats, so you’ll have to figure out a way to get along,” Alex said. “There’s a carrier in the other room and I’ll put him in it. Once you get him home, you two are on your own.”
Sebastian and I looked at each other, doubt written on both our faces.
While Alex went to put the cat in the carrier, I sat on Gerry’s bed, a high four-poster covered with a simple dark-green duvet, and tried to figure out my next steps. The room smelled like Gerry, like his aftershave and cologne, a familiar undercurrent beneath the odor of mold. I traced a finger along the seams of the duvet and wondered how this could be happening.
I needed to talk to Tish next, to get another opinion from someone who knew Gerry well. Then I’d start researching the weird symbols we’d been finding, and would have to do it the hard way. No electricity, no Internet. Before dark, I also needed to replace the wards on my house. Eventually, Jean Lafitte would come for me again.
“Got it all solved?” Alex watched me from the doorway, a bland expression on his face. For once, I’d really, really like to read someone else’s emotions.
“No,” I said. “I was trying to decide what to do next. We need to find out what those symbols mean.” I didn’t mention Tish. Talking to her was personal.
He came in the room and sat on the bed next to me. “I have to ask you something.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Has Gerry ever asked you to do anything you thought might be a little off? Could you have helped him do something wrong without realizing it?”
I stared at him. Oh my God, did he really think that? Did the Elders think that? That I was either corrupted myself or too stupid to know I was being used?
“No, I have not helped Gerry do anything
off
.” Well, the Lafitte seduction scheme had been questionable on his part and stupid on mine, but still.
Alex looked back at the transport. “I’ve told the Elders that whatever’s going on, I don’t believe you’re involved. But I had to at least ask you.”
My voice gathered heat. “And after knowing me less than twenty-four hours you think I’m not involved because … ?”
“Because I can tell how much you believe in Gerry and think something bad has happened to him.” He shifted on the bed and looked me in the eye. “Nothing personal, but I don’t think you’re a good enough actress to fake that much concern.”
I had done very little magic today and Alex was an emotional void, but my muscles ached and my limbs felt heavy. Stress. I didn’t want to have to defend Gerry. I surely didn’t want to have to defend myself. I wanted to curl up in a sweaty ball and go to sleep on Gerry’s bed. Alone.
Instead, I walked out of the bedroom and returned to the study, sitting at the desk to pull on my dirty boots. I stuck the wooden staff case under my arm, grabbed a bag of cat food in my left hand, clutched the handle of Sebastian’s carrier in the other, and headed downstairs. I heard Alex calling after me, saying he’d box up a few more things and be out soon.
Hope he wasn’t packing more than he could carry, because I was taking my tired body and my new cat home to think. I squished through the living room and foyer to get outside, set
the carrier and staff in the boat, pushed it away from the curb, and looked at the motor, trying to remember how Alex had started it. Didn’t you just pull a cord or something, or was that a lawn mower?
“Damn it, DJ, stop!” Alex hopped out the door, pulling on his boots. “I’m just doing my job.”
“Whatever.” I didn’t want to hear any more about
his job
.
“I’m going back in for that last box of papers. Stay there.” He splashed back toward the house. “And don’t even think of trying to ditch me. I have the boat keys.”
Boat keys. Who knew? Another emotional outburst spoiled.
We rode down Fleur de Lis and back toward Canal Boulevard with no noise but the chugging motor. Jake had already returned and backed the boat ramp to the water’s edge. He sat on it, waiting, looking nice and friendly and agenda-less. He hooked a line as Alex killed the motor and we got out, then pulled the boat toward the ramp.
He looked from me to Alex and back again. “Lovers’ quarrel?”
I frowned and glared at Alex’s back. Lovers? How
had
he explained our relationship? Neither of us answered.
Jake grinned as he and Alex got the boat secured. He walked with a limp, as if the most badly scarred leg, his right, wouldn’t quite bend the way it should. It didn’t seem to slow him down.
“If you wanna ride with me, I’d be happy to take you home,” he told me, ignoring his fuming cousin.
“She’s with me,” Alex snapped.
The hell I was. “I’d love a ride, thank you.”
I settled my backpack and Sebastian’s carrier in the bed of the pickup, snatching my hand back to avoid a well-aimed set of claws that swiped at me from the carrier vents. I tugged off the boots and got in the passenger seat of the truck, holding the staff in its case. Alex’s car door slammed, and his wheels spun on mud before he gained traction and peeled off with a dramatic, messy splatter. Heh.
Jake’s dimples deepened as he opened the driver’s side door, watching over the top of the truck as Alex left. “You just made my day, sunshine. Not many people can get under my cousin’s Teflon coat like that. What did he do?”
“I’d just had enough of his sparkling personality for one day.” Guilt started setting in. He had only done his job, after all. I didn’t have to like it, but I also didn’t have to take my frustrations out on him. I was angry at the situation, not at the enforcer. Well, sort of.
I sighed. “I probably overreacted. Now you’ll be in his doghouse too.”
Jake laughed as he took a corner slowly, making sure the boat could clear the narrow street. “No big deal. We’ve spent most of our lives butting heads. This is normal.”
We reached a security checkpoint. The officer waved at Jake and motioned us through the intersection without making us stop.
“Old friend,” Jake explained. “Where’s your house?”
“Nashville and Magazine—you know the area?”
He nodded, and we drove in easy silence till we cleared the second checkpoint.
Jake cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to stick my nose in your business, but how long you and Alex been an item? He’s been down here off and on since the storm consulting on cases with the NOPD, and he usually kisses and tells. I’d remember if he had a girlfriend in town.”
Definitely should have ridden with Alex. “Uh,” I said. “We’ve been together awhile. But not that long.”
He smiled. “Whatever you say.”
I was such a bad liar. “Okay. Not long. We met pretty recently, in fact.” Like, yesterday. “Is he always so …” I searched for the right word. Grumpy. Stubborn. Monosyllabic.
Jake raised his eyebrows. “Intense?”
That worked. “Yeah, is he always so intense?”
“It’s an act.” Jake chuckled. “He works hard at that tough-guy thing. Alex is a marshmallow underneath all the crap. You’ve just gotta dig for it.”
“Hmph.” Jake hadn’t seen the grenade-toting, pirate-killing side of his cousin, obviously.
We spent the rest of the drive to my house in comfortable conversation. I described my evacuation, minus the magic parts. Jake told me about the damage his and Alex’s families had in Picayune, what it was like riding out the storm at his bar, the Green Gator, and some of the things he’d seen running rescues out of Gentilly and Lakeview and the Lower Nine.
Jake Warin was open and talkative and way too charming. Uncomplicated. Untainted by the Elders and their political machinations. By the time we got to my house, I’d fallen for the dimples and the amber eyes enough to accept a dinner invitation, time to be determined by Katrina recovery. The storm shaped everything now, even a dinner date. We had to wait till a restaurant opened, or at least till the electricity came back on.
Jake didn’t mention my boyfriend Alex, and neither did I.
I smiled as I climbed out of the truck and said good-bye. He’d helped me step outside myself and distracted me for a few minutes, an unexpected pleasure in what was shaping up to be a frustrating day.
“Oh, wait.” I stuck my head back in the passenger window. “You’ll probably see Alex before I do. When he gets back to his room at the Gator, tell him I’m sorry I overreacted.”
Jake laughed. “He isn’t staying at the Gator, but I’ll tell him whenever I see him.”
He waved and pulled away, leaving me to wonder what the enforcer was up to.
B
y the time Alex showed up at my house an hour later, a box of papers under each arm, I’d mentally chastised myself for leaving him and had sworn to be more cooperative. For one thing, we had to work together, like it or not. For another, I wanted him to share information with me, which meant sucking it up and letting him do his job.
I hate it when life forces me to be mature.
After Jake dropped me off, I’d reestablished my wards. I filled seven small pouches with a mixture of protective herbs, infused each one with magic, and planted them in a rough circle around the house. Then I walked the circle, connecting the energies and repeating the safe word that would drop the wards. I chose
Lafitte
as my safe word, a reminder of why I needed protection.
Raising the wards depleted what little energy I had left. When Alex pulled his mud-splattered car into the driveway at dusk, I was sitting on the back stoop, trying to muster the strength to take a shower.
He dropped the boxes and a bag of cat litter next to me with a thud and turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said to his back. “I’m sorry, okay? I know you have to look at all the possibilities and I’m the one who works with Gerry. Your asking if I helped him … well, it took me by surprise. I’m sorry I overreacted.” No point in waiting to apologize. Crow is a dish best served warm.
He looked back at me, dark eyes softening as he opened his car door. “We both had a long day. See you tomorrow.”
Guess we’d discuss why he lied about his living arrangements another time.
By eight, I’d taken my second shower of the day, hopefully drowning another generation of coffin flies, and had lugged the lantern back downstairs in search of dinner. I stashed the pile of nonperishable food I’d brought from Gran’s—Cheetos, crackers, chips, tuna—in the cabinets, then studied the dozens of MREs Alex had brought with him last night. I’d kill for something cold, but I doubted there was a single ice cube in Orleans Parish.
I dumped some cat food and water in bowls for Sebastian, who’d been giving me the stink-eye from beneath the kitchen table since I’d let him out of his carrier, then opened an MRE for myself. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, vanilla wafers, cocoa mix, and jelly. Military menu planners are either crazy or sadists, but the self-heating element was genius.
Between bites, I dug my cell phone out of my backpack to call Tish. She had driven from Houston to Bogalusa a few days ago to help her family clean up storm damage, but made me promise to keep her up to date on Gerry. They had been together a long time, but didn’t seem interested in even living together, much less getting married. Whatever their relationship dynamic, it seemed to work. She was about ten years younger than him,
which put her in her mid-forties, and was a smart woman who’d taught me a lot of ritual magic Gerry didn’t know. We’d developed my grounding ritual together, and she helped me repeat it till I gained the focus to do it consistently.
On my fifth try, I finally got a call to go through.
“Thank God. I’ve been trying to get you since last night—it’s hit and miss with any five-oh-four area code,” she said. “What’s the news on Gerry?”
“He’s just gone, Tish. I don’t know what to think.” I filled her in on the trip to his house, then backed up to tell her about the visit from Jean Lafitte and the arrival of the new cosentinel.
We sat in silence a moment while she processed it.
“Do the Elders and this enforcer really think Gerry went rogue?” she finally asked. “Do they have any proof other than his reputation for being a curmudgeon where their policies are concerned?”
I thought about my conversations with Alex. “No proof, at least nothing I’ve been told. But they seem to believe he’s either gone rogue or he’s …” I couldn’t say
dead
. My throat closed around the word.
“Tish, do you think there’s any way they’re right about him taking some kind of action against the Elders?” I hated to even ask the question but I guess, like Alex’s question to me, it needed asking.
Long silence. “I know Gerry’s unhappy the Elders hold such iron control over the borders to the Beyond. He’s felt that way a long time, but …” She trailed off, then started again. “I can’t see him acting on it. He crossed the Elders once and paid a heavy price for it. He wouldn’t do it again.”
Huh? “What do you mean?”
Tish gave a short laugh. “I’m not surprised Gerry never told you—it wasn’t his finest hour. He was in Edinburgh during
the Wizards’ War in seventy-six. He fought for the Elders, of course, but you know Gerry. He wasn’t shy about telling them they were handling it wrong, that they should relax the borders instead of fighting the pretes. They finally shut him up by sending him to New Orleans as sentinel. Important job, but about as far from the halls of power as one can get.”
Hmph. I’d asked Gerry once why he’d come to New Orleans. He’d talked up the city’s appeal as one of the world’s greatest supernatural hot spots. No mention of it being a punishment to keep him isolated from the decision making.
No wonder the Elders were suspicious. But the wizards who had openly sided with the vampires and other pretes in that war had been executed. More reason for Gerry
not
to have betrayed them.
“What do you think happened to him?” I asked.
Another pause, then a quiet voice. “What are officials doing with the bodies … the people they’re finding who died during and after the hurricane?”
Oh God, I hadn’t thought of that. “All the hospitals in Orleans Parish flooded. A makeshift morgue has been set up in St. Gabriel—I think that’s just outside Baton Rouge.” Few, if any, of the bodies had been identified. Hundreds had already been found in New Orleans alone, and more were being found every day. “I’ll find some way to check.”
“I wish I could come and help you, honey.”
“I know. I’ll be okay.” I knew Tish’s elderly parents, who were mundanes, had lost their home and she was trying to get them resettled in a trailer, plus straighten out their insurance. Her brother had his hands full with his own home loss in Ocean Beach, Mississippi. Finding Gerry—and exonerating him—would be up to me.
We talked awhile longer before the signal failed and we got disconnected. My few bites of military meatloaf sat like
concrete in my stomach. I pushed the rest of it around the plastic container for a while before giving up.
I had pulled a notebook from my kitchen drawer and started sketching out the symbol from Gerry’s house when I heard a scratching sound at the back door, followed by a bark. I peered out the window, but it was über-dark outside, the kind of dark city dwellers forgot about until the electrical grid went black. Surely a looter—or Jean Lafitte—wouldn’t bring a dog.
I held up the fluorescent lantern and opened the door,
eek-
ing like a girl as something big and solid raced past me into the kitchen. Sebastian, puffed out like a brown dandelion, shot off the top of the fridge and into the parlor.
“What the … ?” I stared at an enormous golden dog with a shaggy coat, floppy ears, a big grin, and a tail that plumed over his back. A black and pink spotted tongue lolled out the side of his mouth. Too bad my wards didn’t work on dogs, although this one looked about as dangerous as the Taco Bell Chihuahua.
I held a hand out for him to sniff, then scratched the top of his head. “Where did you come from?” I felt around his furry neck for a collar but came up empty.
I knew from news reports that thousands of newly homeless dogs roamed the city streets. Their owners had evacuated without them, earning their own place in the fiery pits of hell, or they’d gotten separated during the storm. This one looked healthy. If he’d been on the street almost three weeks in these conditions, he must have a talent for scrounging. He didn’t seem feral.
Not that I was paranoid or anything, but I didn’t want to take any chances that this wasn’t a real dog. A girl can’t be too careful. I put a hand on either side of his head and closed my eyes. He pulled away at first, but finally stood still while I tried to feel his energy. He gave off a little buzz, but nothing more than he’d get from crossing my wards. Certainly not enough to be a prete.
Then he stuck his big baby-blanket of a tongue out and licked my mouth. Yuck, and no way. I’d just acquired a cat that hated my guts. I wasn’t ready for a French-kissing dog.
“You can’t stay here,” I said firmly, opening the door wider so he could leave. I got behind him and tried to push him out but he dug his toenails into the wooden floor and wouldn’t budge. It was like trying to prod a balky mule, not that I’d dealt with any balky mules myself, but I’d seen the carriage drivers in the French Quarter coaxing and begging their beasts to cooperate without much luck.
The dog yawned and trotted farther into the kitchen, resting big paws on the edge of the table and grabbing my plastic MRE container with his teeth. He was after my meatloaf.
“Wait a minute, buddy.” I stood stupidly at the door for a while, looking from dog to yard, but finally surrendered. “Okay, I’ll give you something to eat, but: You. Are. Not. Staying. Here.” I punctuated each syllable with a pointed finger as if it would make him understand me better.
He grinned and wagged his tail, spotted tongue hanging askew. He must have some chow chow in him. And maybe golden retriever. And pony.
I scraped my leftover meatloaf onto a saucer, added some tuna, and set it on the floor, then put down another bowl filled with bottled water. I spotted Sebastian back under the kitchen table, spearing the invader with a malevolent glare. Or maybe he was looking at me.
The dog gobbled the food, sucked down the bowl of water, and padded off into the parlor, followed by Sebastian.
“Hey!” I shouted, taking the lantern and following them. The dog stretched out his considerable length on one of my sofas, head propped on the arm and one paw draped over the edge. A fine, clear stream of slobber trailed down my custom
upholstery. Sebastian jumped on the back of the sofa behind him and curled into a ball. He liked the dog better than me. That was truly insulting.
I tried the front door, opening it and making clicking sounds with my tongue. The dog rolled his head around and grinned at me from the shadows, his teeth picking up a gleam from the lantern. Unyielding, I opened the door wider and pointed outside.
He sighed, the weight of the world on his furry shoulders, and slouched past me out the door, flopping in a heap on the front porch.
“Fine, stay there if you want.” I locked up and headed back to the kitchen, but not before I heard the soft thump of the dog settling against the door. In the lantern light, I saw a bit of golden fur poking between the door and the threshold. For the first time since returning to New Orleans, I laughed. I laughed so hard it brought tears.
Then the laughter left, the tears stayed, and I sat in the middle of the floor next to my fluorescent lantern. I cried for Gerry, for New Orleans, and for myself. I didn’t know what to do for any of us.