I
bolted out of the library, crossed the sitting room, and caught a toe on the banister as I rounded the top of the stairs. I half-ran, half-fell down them, picking up a couple of splinters along the way. I should have carpeted those stairs a long time ago. I should have kept my shoes on. And a shirt.
Lafitte wasn’t far behind me, his heavy boots pounding down the stairs as I crossed the office and raced into the parlor. I got halfway through the room before a knife went flying past my ear (again) and shattered the beautiful old stained glass panes set into my front door.
I should have kept running. A smart Green Congress wizard would have zipped outside and barreled down the street till she found a nice soldier to help her. But damn it, that stained glass was half as old as Lafitte himself, and he’d already trashed my library door. I whirled to face him, furious. Did he have any idea how much I had to pay for this house? I would be ready for the old wizards’ home by the time it was paid for.
Gerry always said my temper would probably do me in. Part of my brain acknowledged that I was acting on emotion,
doing the very thing he always said kept me from being ready to take big, dangerous jobs like fighting pirates. But I loved that old stained glass and my cypress library door and my plaster walls. They were among the reasons I’d bought the blasted house in the first place.
“Do you know how old that glass was, you son of a—”
Lafitte pulled a modern semiautomatic on me. Guess he’d found his gun in my kitchen drawer after all.
I dove behind one of the overstuffed armchairs, pulling it in front of me like a shield while I backed toward the door on my knees. The chair back blocked my view, so I popped my head over it, ready to duck fast if the pirate was still aiming at me. Instead, dark-blue eyes met mine over the back of the chair. We were practically nose to nose. I might as well be sitting in his freaking lap. He didn’t need the gun and he knew it.
He was smiling again, but not in amusement. More like the gloat of a terrier after it has finally trapped a troublesome rat.
He pushed the chair aside, grabbing my arm as I tried to spin away. When he drew me closer, I bent my head and sank my teeth as deeply into his forearm as they’d go. It was his right arm, his shooting arm, and I hoped it hurt.
He hissed and pulled away, giving me time to lunge toward the door. I spit out a mouthful of blood along the way, the taste salty and metallic. At least it was his blood and not mine. Score one for the home team. I hoped he carried the mark of my teeth on his forearm the rest of his miserable life. Considering he was virtually immortal, that would be a really long time.
I would have made it to the door if I’d been quicker, or he’d been slower, and if he hadn’t managed to grab me around the ankle and send me sprawling facedown a few feet short of freedom. My cheek bounced off the floor and I had a quick, close-up view of the wood grain before Lafitte flipped me on my back and began pulling me toward him.
I gritted my teeth and scrabbled around with my hands, trying to find something to hold onto. The broken stained glass sliced into my palms and thighs as I slid. I might never wear shorts or go barefoot again, assuming I lived long enough to ever worry about wardrobe choice. But the pain helped me focus as I reached in my pocket for the wolfsbane.
I managed to thumb off the top of the vial one-handed and fling the contents at Lafitte. It wasn’t the deadly form of wolfsbane—just a mild variety that would numb his skin and blur his vision. He shifted his head at the last second but still got an eyeful.
Any remaining trace of good humor disappeared. He snarled and released me, swiping at both eyes to try and clear his vision. I pushed away from him and had crawled half the distance to the front door when the room seemed to explode.
I instinctively rolled into a fetal position and wrapped my arms around my head. I hadn’t seen the pirate pull his gun. Both his hands had been busy rubbing his eyes. Maybe his gun had gone off accidentally. Maybe it killed him. If his own gun killed him, it wouldn’t be my fault. Of course, he wouldn’t really be dead, either, but he’d fade back to the Beyond for a while.
It was quiet, too quiet. I conducted a quick mental self-inventory to see if any body parts were missing or maimed. My shorts and stomach were spattered with blood and my kicking foot was coated in red, but it didn’t seem to be my blood. My legs and feet hurt from the glass cuts, I had a wooden splinter in my knee, my cheek was throbbing where it had hit the floor, and my head pounded from the magic I’d used. I couldn’t sense any other injuries, and I didn’t seem to be dead. If I was dead and this was the afterlife, I was going to be ticked.
A rasping noise near my feet broke the silence, and I sat up. Lafitte lay on the floor wearing the same startled, angry look he’d had after I immobilized him in the swamp. His hands covered a
spot in the center of his chest, where dark blood seeped through his fingers. Our eyes met a moment before he quit breathing. What the hell had happened?
I gave a girly squeal of surprise as someone grabbed me under the arms from behind and pulled me to my feet. I should’ve known not to let my guard down, but how many times in one day should a woman expect to be assaulted in her own home?
I grabbed a shard of glass and spun around, brandishing it in front of me. It was a pretty, stippled blue piece, nice and sharp.
“Hold on, tiger. I give up.”
A bear of a man stood in front of me, hands raised in mock surrender—well, except for the shotgun in his right hand. He towered well over six feet and was shaped like a linebacker, one who’d gone a little too long between haircuts. Dark curls hugged the collar of a basic black T-shirt that almost camouflaged a black shoulder holster holding some type of nasty-looking black handgun. It all matched his black jeans and boots. He looked like the poster child for an upscale
GQ
mercenary. The only shred of color on him was his eyes, and they were dark brown. Mr. Monochromatic.
He laid the shotgun on the table near the door and stepped back, hands up, watching me from beneath hooded lids.
A lesser woman would have noticed the thick muscles moving under his tanned skin when he raised his arms, or the T-shirt that fit just snugly enough to send a girl’s thoughts to the Promised Land. Good thing I don’t notice stuff like that.
“If you want to search me for more weapons, I’m game.”
My eyes shot back to his, and I felt my cheeks flush, hot and bothered on the way to angry.
Leave it to a guy to open his mouth and ruin a perfectly good moment.
I’m not sure my fight with Lafitte would have ended well, but I’d finally gained an upper hand with the wolfsbane, and it
infuriated me for some ripped Romeo with a gun to come in and blast him. For one thing, it broke magical treaties. These days, even the undead have legal rights in the preternatural community.
For another, regular bullets don’t faze the undead, which meant this guy was packing special ammunition. You can’t really kill the historical undead anyway—you simply send them back to the Beyond so they’ll be truly and righteously irate next time they come across. There is always a next time for someone as resourceful as Jean Lafitte.
Finally, deep down, I didn’t think Lafitte planned to kill me. He might have an eighteenth-century view of women and a nasty temper but, by all accounts, he was a shrewd and practical man. He’d eventually have realized hurting me wouldn’t be worth the trouble it would cause with the Elders. If he’d really wanted me dead, I would be. His aim wasn’t that bad.
I tried to convey all this in my glare. “Who are you, anyway?” I had an annoying urge to straighten my hair and wipe the plaster dust off my cheeks. And find more substantial clothes.
“Don’t bowl me over with gratitude,” he said in a baritone drawl, relaxing his posture.
He was awfully sure I wouldn’t snatch up the shotgun and blast his arrogant, black-clad self all the way to St. Bernard Parish. If he laughed at me, I might try. At close range, I’d at least clip an arm or leg. It would be a pity to mar such beauty but sometimes sacrifices are called for.
Instead, I chose the moral high road. “Thank you. Now, who are you? How did you know what kind of ammunition to use?”
He stepped around me to examine Lafitte’s body, which had turned translucent on its way to disappearing. With a few more seconds and a soft whisper of energy, the pirate disappeared back into the Beyond along with his original weapons, leaving only an evaporating puddle of ectoplasm and the gun.
I’d have to find a better hiding place for the gun next time, and there would be a next time. Jean Lafitte knew where I lived now, and eventually he’d return for round three. I sighed, wondering if he’d left me any cheap rum.
The Man in Black didn’t seem disconcerted by the body’s disappearance, another clue that he knew his way around the magical block. He picked up Lafitte’s gun, popped the clip out, and laid it on the table next to the shotgun.
I was tired, bloody, my legs hurt, and my magic-hangover was pounding the back of my eyeballs like a woodpecker. “Last time, Terminator. Talk to me. Otherwise, you can leave—with my undying gratitude, of course.”
One corner of his mouth curved up as he reached in his pocket and tossed a small leather case in my direction. Black, of course. I felt it hit the floor by my feet, but I didn’t break my stare. We weren’t playing charades.
Give the man two points for reading body language. He finally broke the stalemate, walking around the parlor and peering out windows and inside bookshelves and cabinets while he talked. Snooping, in other words. “I’m Alexander Warin, and I came here to find Drusilla Jaco, also known as DJ. I assume that’s you.”
He looked back at me, raising one dark eyebrow. “Of course, no one told me what to expect from my new partner. I read your file, but without photos I was expecting the robe, the wand. You know: more Merlin, less Glinda the Good Witch.”
I gritted my teeth, trying to decide what needed addressing first:
partner
or
file
or
witch
. Best to stay on the moral high road—he was trying to push my buttons with the witch wisecrack.
“What’s this partner business? What file? Who sent you?”
“I hear you’re an empath. Can’t you tell?”
Body of an Adonis, brain of an anchovy. “I’m an empath, not a psychic or telepath. I can tell what an arrogant letch you are but I can’t read your flipping mind.”
For some reason, I also couldn’t read his emotions very well, a little detail he didn’t need to know. Either he was a soulless freak or my mojo bag had kicked into overdrive.
He jerked his head at the leather case on the floor, turned his back, and unclipped what looked like a small cell phone from his belt. As he strolled around the parlor and stuck his head in the kitchen and office, he held it out in front of him.
Whatever else he might be, Alexander Warin was insufferable.
I snatched the case off the floor and flipped it open. It had two sections. The first held a badge, much like mine from the Green Congress, only this one said CONGRESS OF ELDERS. I stared at the interloper’s broad back, frowning.
I sent out my empathic senses, trying to feel any buzz of magic coming from him. There was still a tingle in the air that wasn’t wizard’s magic, but it was probably left over from Jean Lafitte. So he wasn’t a wizard, and he didn’t look old enough to be an Elder. I studied the badge, flipping it over. The back of mine identified me as a licensed sentinel. His read, simply, ENFORCER.
Good Lord, he
was
a terminator.
The second compartment of the case held a badge identifying Alexander Warin as a field agent with the FBI office in Jackson, Mississippi. The woodpecker in my head began a frantic cadence.
I threw the badge on the coffee table and scrambled to remember anything I’d heard about enforcers, because I’d certainly never met one. They did the Elders’ dirty work, took out the preternatural trash, made problems disappear. If an enforcer showed up at your door, you might disappear, too. Enforcers didn’t have partners.
By the time I looked back at him, he had finished his inspection of my downstairs and stood with his arms crossed,
watching me. I think he’d grown a couple of inches while I wasn’t looking.
“Why are you here? What’s an enforcer doing in New Orleans?”
He gave me a predatory smile, even more carnivorous than the one I’d seen on the face of Jean Lafitte. “Congratulations, DJ. You’re the new sentinel of the New Orleans region, and I’m your partner—at least through the probationary period. You can call me Alex.”
I
really wanted to hit something.
“Why would the Elders send you? We don’t need an enforcer in this region. Do you have any magical skills, or do you just shoot people? How are you going to be a sentinel if you can’t do magic?”
He cocked his head. “If you don’t understand why you need an enforcer, you should replay that little scene with your pirate buddy. You might have gotten the upper hand temporarily, but he was going to win that fight. You were about thirty seconds away from getting to know Jean Lafitte
really
well.”
His jaw clenched. “In fact, you owe me some serious gratitude—unless you
wanted
him.”
God help me. I fought the urge to pick up a heavy vase and chunk it at his head. It had worked on Lafitte, but something told me this guy would probably catch it and bean me with it. “The fight wasn’t over,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’d have won it.” Probably.
“Right,” he said. “And something just flew past your window. It was oinking.”
Words failed me, so he kept talking. “Look, the Elders want an enforcer here because of the breaches caused by the hurricane. They don’t know what to expect from the Beyond, and I have ties to both local law enforcement and the were community.”
Alex slipped out of his shoulder holster. “Did Jean Lafitte get summoned, or did he just show up?”
If the Elders thought New Orleans needed an enforcer with police and werewolf ties more than a Red Congress sentinel, the breaches must be serious. Blunt force might be trumping preternatural diplomacy. Gerry said the Elders always talked first and fought as a last resort. Well, the last resort had just unsnapped a knife sheath from his belt and laid it on my sofa table next to his guns.
I tried to remember the exact words the pirate had used when I found him in my La-Z-Boy. “Lafitte came on his own, but he also hinted about having new business partners. He’d tried to work smuggling deals with Gerry and me in the past.”
I squinted at Alex. “Of course we can’t ask him any specifics because you shot him. It will take a while for him to be strong enough to come back.”
“The Elders don’t know who or what is going to come across,” he said, ignoring the Lafitte situation. “You’re the first line of defense with your”—he waved a hand in the air—“magic tricks. If that doesn’t work, I finish the job.”
I had a few magic tricks I’d like to show him. “So you’re the backup plan.”
He retrieved his badge from the table and stuck it in his back pocket, then picked up Lafitte’s gun again. “Let’s just say the Elders don’t want the borders to break down either because we’re outnumbered or some of us are too inexperienced.”
Ouch. That hurt. I might not be the world’s most experienced wizard but at least I
was
a wizard and not just a bundle of testosterone with legs and opposable thumbs.
One part of his argument made sense, though. If too many pretes flocked across the border at a faster rate than we could send them back, the system would collapse. Some of the more organized and ambitious groups, such as the vampires and the fae, resented the wizards’ control of the borders.
“You said you have ties to the were community,” I said. “Does that mean they’re already out of the Beyond?”
He didn’t look up from his examination of Lafitte’s pistol. “Most are mainstreamed, except a few like the loup-garou—rogue werewolves who live in the Beyond. A lot of enforcers are lycanthropes.”
Holy cow. I didn’t know that, and I should have. Did Gerry not know, or did Gerry not tell me?
“Are you a werewolf?” I studied his dark shaggy hair and powerful build, wondering how that big body could be condensed into a four-legged canine.
“I’m not a were-anything,” he said. “Next full moon, I’ll look the same as now.”
Too bad. A werewolf partner might have been interesting.
“So, who reports to whom?” I asked. “And how exactly do you see this partnership thing working? I’ll tell you right now—my first priority is finding Gerry St. Simon, at which point you can go back to Jackson or wherever you came from.”
“We both report to the Elders, and we’ll both be looking for Gerry. Day to day, we’ll play it by ear. If a prete comes across, we’ll try it your way, with your little spells and potions. As you said, I’m backup if your magic doesn’t work or if we get too many things to handle at once. I’m already working on a potential case.”
“What kind of case? Finding Gerry is our case.”
He strode to the front door, crunching over my broken stained glass and grabbing a briefcase from the porch. He’d shown up at my door with a shotgun and a freaking briefcase. In what universe was that normal?
He set the case on the coffee table and opened it, pulling out a file.
I craned my neck to see what an enforcer might carry in his briefcase. I couldn’t help myself.
He handed me a sheet of paper containing a rough sketch of a decorated cross atop two wide, shallow rectangles. Two boxes shaped like sarcophagi sat to either side of it. Stars and squiggles came off the figures at different points.
I’d seen that symbol before, on TV. “There was a murder right after Katrina hit. Wasn’t this drawn on a building at the murder scene?”
“Good memory. Do you know what it means?”
I looked at it again and shook my head. “No idea.”
“Me either, but it’s been at both crime scenes.”
I handed the paper back to him. “Crime
scenes
—as in plural?”
He nodded. “There was another one last night, down in …” He grabbed the file again and opened it. “An area called Faubourg Marigny—you know where that is?”
“Sure, it’s just east of the French Quarter. One of the unflooded areas.” I sat on the arm of a chair, exhausted and beginning to feel rubbery as the adrenaline drained from my system. “How does this involve us?”
Good grief, what was I saying? There was no
us
. “How does this involve
you
?”
Alex shrugged. “I just wanted to see if you recognized the symbol—the Elders have us on high alert for pretes right now, and I’m in a good position to look. The NOPD is shorthanded so they’re willing to let the feds come in and help. I’m consulting on both cases.”
No kidding. The local cops were not only shorthanded. They also were stressed-out and jumpy. “You think it’s something supernatural? The Elders didn’t mention it.”
Alex stuck the folder back in his briefcase, keeping it turned
so I couldn’t see inside. “Nothing to indicate the supernatural is involved, not yet,” he said. “But according to police reports, there were voodoo ritual items at both crime scenes—black candles, dead roosters. It might be supernatural, or it might be a plain-vanilla serial killer.” He locked the case. “Just something for us to keep an eye on.”
Seemed too paranoid to me. We had enough problems without looking for more. “You go ahead and work with your police cases. I’ll look for Gerry.”
He propped the briefcase against the wall next to the fireplace. “We’ll both work on it if it turns out to be related to the breaches with the Beyond, and we’ll both look for Gerry. By the way, what do you shoot?”
He might as well have asked what planet I’d hailed from. “I’m a Green Congress wizard,” I said. “We don’t shoot.”
“You’ll need to learn. I’ll teach you as we have time.” He pulled the handgun out of his shoulder holster on the table and looked at it, then at me.
“Let me see your hand.” He held out his own.
“Why?” I stared at his outstretched hand, which looked roughly the size of a catcher’s mitt.
He grasped my arm and pulled it toward him. “I won’t bite. I want to see how big a gun you need.”
Thumbing a chip of plaster off my knuckles, he spread out my clenched fist using fingers that looked strong enough to choke a horse. Or a wizard.
I snatched my hand away. “I don’t need a gun.”
A whisper of a smile crossed his face. “My gun would be too big for you, so I’ll find something that’s a better fit. And Lafitte’s needs to be checked out before it’s used again.”
He turned back to the table and began pulling other lethal objects off his person, having apparently confirmed that he needed no protection from me. He raised the bottom of his
shirt—revealing an alarming set of abs, not that I noticed—and unstrapped a double-bladed silver knife from a sheath around his waist. I bit my tongue as he propped a black boot on one of my upholstered chairs and pulled out another knife and handgun. With a quirk of a smile in my direction, he reached for another clip on his belt and unhooked what looked like a small grenade.
“Do you think you brought enough firepower?” Talk about overkill. He could take down a small third-world country.
He looked at the stash and shook his head. “I didn’t expect trouble today, except maybe with you. I was told you could be, ah, hard to handle.” He gave me a slow once-over. “Might be more fun than I thought, but you sure do need a shower.”
That did it. This day felt like it had lasted a month. I got up and wiped blood and plaster dust off my face with the doctor’s scrubs still piled on the sofa, and walked over to look at my door, or what was left of it. “Here’s the deal, Alexander Warin,” I said as I studied the shattered panes. About two-thirds were broken but the wooden framework was intact so it could be saved. “I’m too tired to even think about this right now, and I sure don’t want to play
flirt with the enforcer
.”
I turned to face him. “Let’s set a few ground rules. First, turn the sexist crap down a notch. Make that two notches. I’m sure lots of simpering women fall for your tall-dark-and-dangerous routine, so save it for the next simpering woman you see. It isn’t me.
“If we have to be coworkers, fine—at least until we find Gerry. But if you think I won’t report you for sexual harassment, think again.” Of course, first I’d have to find someone to report it to. Somehow, I doubted the Elders would care.
No response.
“Second, if you’re going to be the cosentinel, we decide together the approach to take with interlopers like Jean Lafitte.
You didn’t need to shoot him, and because you did, he’s going to come back looking for revenge, and I’ll be the one that has to deal with him, not you.”
His mouth twitched.
“Finally, can you keep the arsenal out of here? Especially grenades.” I shuddered. What kind of person walked around with a grenade clipped to his belt?
He gave me a tight smile. “Here’s the deal. I’ll follow your lead on cases until you need me to step in, and I’ll decide when that is. The guns stay. A grenade’s the best thing to use on a zombie and this is New Orleans, after all, so it stays too. And you
will
learn how to use a gun. I need a backup I can count on.”
He took a step closer and his voice had a soft, dangerous edge. “Kindergarten is over, DJ. As we say in Mississippi, if you want to play with the big dogs, you have to get off the porch.”
I hated him. My fingers itched to grab his knife and poke it in his arrogant back, which would be easy since he’d turned away to look at the door.
“We’ll need to patch over the missing glass. I have a small sheet of plywood in my trunk that will work, and I need to bring in my stuff. Which room will be mine? Needs to be downstairs.” He turned back to look at me, unaware that I’d been considering how he might enjoy a nice cup of tea laced with horsetail and birch oil to make hair grow out his ears.
I searched his face for any sign he might be joking. I didn’t find one. “You’ve been working on police cases, so you must have been staying somewhere.” Competition for unflooded housing was fierce among relief workers and would only get worse as more people returned to the city.
“I’ve been driving in as needed from my family’s place in Picayune,” he said. When I didn’t respond, he added, “Mississippi,
about an hour north of here. I’ve been based in Jackson, covering the Southeast for the FBI’s prete force, but they’re putting me in New Orleans full time now. It’s too far to commute every day, so I need a place to crash.”
Pain began throbbing behind my right eye again. “Since when does the FBI have a preternatural force?” Gerry had never mentioned it. I would have remembered.
“Officially, it doesn’t.”
Right. I tried to shake off the exhaustion settling over me. The room spun when I closed my eyes more than a blink. “Fine. You can stay here tonight and find a place tomorrow. There’s a daybed in the office right off the kitchen.” I watched as he arranged his weapons in a line on the sofa table. A tad obsessive, our enforcer.
I pointed at the device he’d been looking at earlier. “What was that gizmo you had before, the one that looks like a cell phone?”
Alex handed it to me. It had a larger screen than a phone, and no keypad. A glowing red ball blinked rapidly in the center of the screen.
“Tracker,” he said. “Special enforcer issue. Helps us detect magical energy, sort of like a homing device. I’ll have to calibrate it so your energy doesn’t interfere with anything coming in from the Beyond. You’re all that’s showing up on it now that Lafitte’s gone—it’s how I knew he was here. The Elders are supposed to send us a bigger one in a few days.”