I had a thought. “Is Jacob an enforcer too, or a were?”
Alex frowned. “Jake is probably the least magically inclined person on God’s green earth.” He didn’t offer more, so I didn’t ask.
I finished my breakfast in silence, then trashed the MRE wrappings. I wondered how many months it would be before things like mail and garbage pickup would resume. I already had a pile of street and yard debris the size of a small car in my side yard.
“I’m heading to Gerry’s this afternoon if you want to go,” I said. I thought it was a generous offer, an olive branch of cooperation and goodwill.
He looked up from his report. “I think we should call the Elders to see if there are any breaches they want us to check out first. Besides, Lakeview’s still flooded. You planning to swim?”
I looked at Alex, his pen poised over that damned report like the Sword of Damocles. Screw it. “You check on breaches. My top priority is finding Gerry. The Elders might be ready to write him off, but I’m not.”
He leaned back in his chair. “The Elders aren’t writing Gerry off. They’re taking his disappearance very seriously.”
Yeah, right. “You don’t seem in any hurry to help look for him.”
“Wasted effort. If Gerry is alive, what makes you think he wants to be found?”
Of all the idiotic … “You think he’s playing hide-and-seek for the fun of it? At a time like this?”
Alex laid the pen down. “Look, I read his file as well as yours. Gerry’s had his issues with the Elders. He doesn’t like the way they run things. I’m just saying maybe he has his own reasons for disappearing at this particular time, and I’m not sure walking around his empty house will tell us anything useful.”
Understanding finally slapped me on my bruised cheek. “You think he’s disappeared deliberately so he can, what, enact some devious plot against the Elders?” My blood pressure soared. The nerve of this guy. His gall knew no bounds.
Alex shrugged and stuck his papers in a manila envelope. “It’s a possibility.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Gerry was a complainer but he wasn’t a traitor. He thought the Elders were bureaucratic idiots, but he also drilled every magical law into me like gospel.
This big jerk wasn’t going to help me find Gerry. He wanted to
catch
Gerry. Big difference.
“Fine,” I said. “You flit around town running errands for the Elders like a good little soldier. I will look for Gerry myself.”
He sealed the envelope and stuck it in the back of his notebook. “I repeat: How do you plan to get into Lakeview?”
Like it was any of his business. “I’m calling Tish—Gerry’s girlfriend—to get contact info on some of her coworkers from the Port of New Orleans, and see who’s in town with a boat. If I find a boat, I’ll get in.”
“She’s a wizard?”
I nodded. “Green Congress, an engineer. She’s as worried about Gerry as I am.” And would snatch Alex bald when she found out he suspected Gerry of disappearing on purpose.
Alex looked at me a few seconds, drumming his fingers on the table. “I might have a quicker way.” He pulled out his cell phone and hit a speed-dial number. “Jake, do you … Damn.” He clicked the phone shut and tried the call again. And again. Fourth time was a winner.
“Jake has his dad’s boat and can meet us in Lakeview about one thirty,” he said when he ended the call.
“What’s this
we
business? I thought you had breaches to find.”
He stood up and stretched, rolling his head side to side and popping his neck. “Partners, remember?”
Like I could forget. Still, it solved my boat problem and gave me an hour to unload the rest of my stuff from the truck. Jean Lafitte had thrown me off schedule. Without a way to get ice, the perishable herbs were going to have to be trashed, but I lugged everything else upstairs.
Alex helped, pausing to look at the mangled library door. “What happened here?”
“Jean Lafitte happened,” I said. “My house has sustained more damage in the last twenty-four hours than in the whole last century.”
He raised an eyebrow at the aluminum pan that still lay on the floor, coated with ashes. “Do I want to know?”
“Homemade smoke bomb. It got me away from the pirate. Well, for a while.”
He fought to keep the serious look on his face. “You really do need a gun.”
Yeah, and I had lots of ideas on what to do with it. I grabbed the pan and set it on the worktable without comment.
He continued his inspection of the library, pausing to look at jars and amulets, plants and powders, occasionally asking questions. Fine, let him snoop. I had nothing to hide.
It was clear from his comments he was pretty well-versed in magic, but then again, I guess he’d have to be.
“Have you worked with a lot of wizards?” I asked as he scanned the titles in the shelf where I kept most of my personal spellbooks.
“A few—all Red Congress,” he said. “Enforcers usually get pulled in last, when the wizards have done all they can, or else we get called when the Elders need something taken care of fast. Red wizards don’t have all this stuff.”
I smiled. “No, physical magic is pretty straightforward. No bells and whistles. I like to think ritual magic is more flexible, though.”
He stopped at my worktable and ran a hand along the dark mahogany wood beginning to turn red with age. Since I had been gone for a while, the table was mostly empty except for a layer of dust and a large wrought-iron cross I’d found in an architectural salvage yard and paid a local welder to put on a stand. It kept me centered, reminded me who was really in charge when things got crazy.
“I like this.” He fingered the cross. “I used to not buy into my family’s religious beliefs—thought I was too smart for it. But the more evil I see, the more I realize it has to be offset by an ultimate good, or else there’s no point to it.”
Sheesh. Talk about a hot- and cold-running enforcer. Just when I decide he’s an Elder-toady conspiracy theorist, he turns into a philosopher.
I made a concentrated effort to read his emotions, opening up my mind to anything that might drift my way, but got nothing except a light magical buzz from the magic-infused herbs in my library. Maybe the renewed mojo bag and grounding was blocking him.
“Stay out of my head—it’s invasive,” he said, giving me a sharp look.
I opened my mouth to tell a big, whopping fib of denial, but stopped myself. He’d caught me. “Sorry,” I said. “I just can’t figure you out. How did you know what I was doing?”
“Enforcers learn how to put up mental blocks and recognize when someone’s trying to get in. You’re the first empath I’ve met, but some pretes can play serious mind games.”
“So you were shielding yesterday.” No wonder he’d been such a blank, although he could still be a soulless freak. Jury remained out on that one, although I couldn’t imagine a soulless freak with eyes the color of dark chocolate.
I didn’t have to be an empath to interpret his tight smile. “You bet I was. Took a lot of concentration, too. I wasn’t planning to come in with such a bang.”
No kidding. “You do know Jean Lafitte’s not really dead, right?” I asked, not sure how often—if ever—enforcers came up against the historical undead. “All you did was send him back to the Beyond, slow him down a little, and make him even madder.”
He shrugged. “No problem. I’ll just kill him again.”
T
ruth be told, I’d rather have gone to Gerry’s house alone, at least this first time. Not just because of the inevitable onslaught of memories, but so I could really look around without Alex watching me. Despite a couple of hints that a decent guy might lurk beneath all the cold iron and hot ammo, we didn’t have the same agenda. I wanted to find Gerry, and he wanted to find out what Gerry was up to.
I’d be watching Mr. Warin, and not just because he was easy to look at.
“I’ll drive,” he said, heading toward the small parking area behind my house. It had enough space for both my truck and the vehicles belonging to the young couple who owned the dark-green shotgun house next door. I figured I’d seen the last of Bill and Eileen. She was pregnant, and their business had flooded. They had nothing to come back to.
I looked at the spotless Mercedes sitting next to my dusty Pathfinder. Black, of course. What a surprise.
“Do you really want to take your nice, shiny Batmobile into the flood zone?” The thing reeked of money and frequent,
loving hand-washings. Apparently, assassins got paid better than deputy sentinels. Bet you didn’t see Alexander Warin buying cheap Winn-Dixie rum to save a few bucks.
“It needs washing anyway.”
“Okay, your choice.” I stuck my keys in my backpack and headed for the Mercedes. I’d never ridden in one anyway—it might be my only chance. Besides, despite all my preparations, I wasn’t sure how seeing my childhood home in ruins would hit me. Even driving to Lakeview would be stressful. Might as well let him handle that part.
I settled into the buttery soft seat—black—and strapped myself in. It still had the new car smell to it. “So, why aren’t you driving some big studly truck with Playboy Bunny mud flaps?”
“Why aren’t you riding a broom?” he muttered to himself as he crossed St. Charles into the flood zone and began winding his way through side streets, dodging swaying power lines and weaving through haphazard piles of debris.
He turned onto a street that hadn’t been cleared very well and stopped the car. A boxy white washing machine rested in the middle of the pavement, surrounded by limbs and leaves. We stared at it in silence a few seconds before Alex backed up and headed down another street.
“Turn right up here and the next left, and it’ll take you all the way to Lakeview.” It finally occurred to me that he was lost, and God forbid a man should ask for directions.
He grunted and turned right. “I knew that.”
Heh. I shook my head and looked out the window, staring at the ruins. My hometown, my own wasteland of stony rubbish and broken images. I needed someone to share my horror with, to lie and tell me it would be okay. I needed Gerry.
I thought the devastation in Mid-City had given me a good idea of what to expect from Lakeview, but I was wrong.
Alex’s FBI badge eased us through two checkpoints, and as we got closer to the 17th Street Canal, the mud on the road began to thicken. So much for the spotless car.
Still cursing under his breath, he pulled to the roadside on Canal Boulevard and stopped. We sat a moment and looked at the sea of brown and gray that coated everything in front of us—mud. Wet mud, dried mud. Mud on trees, on cars, on houses. Mud on top of mud.
Alex sighed and reached into the backseat, handing me an oversize tan plastic bag with a blue Dillard’s logo on the side.
“Aw, a present, and my birthday’s not until February.”
He almost smiled. “Well, I saw these and thought you’d look hot.”
I either had to joke or cry, and Alex’s strained expression told me he felt the same way.
I opened the top of the bag and peered inside, pulling out a pair of clear rubber galoshes, the kind little kids used to wear over their shoes on rainy days. Except these would come up to my knees. Great. Clear rubber go-go boots.
“I’m touched, but you shouldn’t have.” I looked at them again. “Really.”
“Put them on. We’re going to have to walk a few blocks. I’m not going to risk getting my car stuck in this.” He retrieved a pair of more dignified shrimp boots for himself and opened his car door, sliding them on before hitting the ground. “And don’t get mud in my car.”
Sure, no problem. Grimacing, I slipped the boots over my Nikes before getting out. Good thing. When I stood up, my feet sank about an inch into what I could only hope was mud. It smelled like a lot of other, less savory ingredients had been mixed in. I coughed, sneezed, and trudged my way after Alex,
struggling to pull my feet far enough out of the muck to move them.
A weathered black and silver Dodge pickup towing a small motorboat pulled up behind us, and Alex circled back to greet the driver. I couldn’t see who sat behind the crusted and dirty windshield, but Alex stood at the driver’s window and pointed down the block where the boulevard disappeared into floodwater.
The truck pulled ahead, maneuvered a deft U-turn, and backed toward the water. Alex motioned for me to follow. By the time I lurched my way to the truck, he and the pickup driver were sliding the boat down the trailer ramp.
Sweat trickled down my neck, and if I hadn’t been afraid of being poisoned by toxic sludge, I’d have made like a pig and wallowed in the mud to cool off. I kicked at a fire hydrant, trying to jolt some of the heaviest sludge off my boots, and heard a soft laugh behind me. With a final kick that sent a spray of brown gunk flying, I turned to see what was so funny. I needed a laugh.
A man leaned against the side of the pickup with his arms crossed. He was a few inches shorter than Alex, maybe just shy of six feet, with sun-streaked blond hair that reached his collar and a sleeveless blue T-shirt and khaki shorts. His tanned legs between the bottom of the shorts and the top of sturdy black shrimp boots were scored with scars, bad ones, as if whatever made them meant to do serious damage.
He’d been grinning when I turned around, flashing a heart-stopping set of dimples, but when he saw my eyes linger on his legs, the grin eased into something more wary.
I smiled and squished over to introduce myself. “I’m DJ Jaco. Thanks for letting us use your boat.”
The dimples returned as he took my hand in a firm grip. “Jake Warin. Actually, it’s my dad’s boat. I was running rescues
after the storm, but there’s nobody left to rescue now.” He had the same Mississippi drawl as Alex, only softer around the edges. New Orleanians sounded more like New Yorkers than Southerners.
Nobody left to rescue.
I looked over my shoulder at the corpse of Lakeview. Not a tree or a blade of grass was alive here.
“Oh God, I’m sorry.” Jake ran a hand through his hair. “Alex told me your uncle was missing. I’m sure he got a ride out and is waiting for the mayor to tell folks they can come home.”
I turned back to look at him and managed a smile. “I hope so.”
Alex splashed up to join us. “You met?”
“We did,” Jake said. His gaze trailed to my feet and his smile grew wider. “Nice boots.”
“Thanks. It’s a fashion statement.”
Alex shook his head and sloshed back toward the boat, sending waves to the top of my fashion statement. “Time to go. Meet us back here at five thirty.”
Jake did a pretty good Alex impression at his cousin’s retreating back. “Guess that’s my cue to leave. Alex said you didn’t need any help.” He looked back at me with eyes the color of amber. “I hope you find your uncle.”
I nodded and turned to follow Alex. I hoped so too.
Walking in the floodwater was easier than the mud, and it had washed most of the gunk off my boots by the time I half-fell into the boat. Alex started the motor and steered us toward Bellaire Drive, which ran alongside the breached canal all the way to the lake.
“So, what’s Jake’s story?” I had to talk loud to be heard over the chugging of the motor.
Alex gave me an inscrutable look. “Why?”
“Just curious. I noticed the scars.”
“Ex-Marine. Got hurt in Afghanistan. Don’t let the laid-back, country-boy act fool you. He’s one tough SOB.”
Whatever that meant. We rode a couple of blocks farther
before the engine started bellowing like a tortured animal and died, leaving us surrounded by an ocean of gentle sounds. The chop of a helicopter in the distance. Water lapping at the side of the boat. Alex trying to restart the motor. Our own breathing.
Empty houses rose around us like a surreal architectural city of the dead—except for a healthy-looking rat swimming past. I flinched and wrapped my arms around my middle.
It took a few tries, but Alex got the motor started again. It didn’t sound happy as it gamely churned through the murk. Only ten or so blocks to go. There were no water rings on the houses now, at least not on the one-story places. The water had been over the eaves, and I tried to imagine it two weeks ago, escaping from home on a boat like this one, floating so high, knowing your whole life lay immersed beneath you.
I squinched my eyes halfway shut to block out the images, but I couldn’t shut out the chalky smell. It permeated everything.
“Where’s the house?” Alex asked.
“Another block, on the left. Two stories—balcony off the top floor.” I mentally ran through the list of neighbors as we motored down the block. Grumpy Dr. Michealson, house totaled, hot tub in palm tree. Old Mrs. Finney, first floor flooded, hole in roof. The Zellners next door, nothing left to save.
And Gerry’s house. My home until a few years ago. A big chunk of the brick veneer on the south wall had been sheared off and Gerry’s old BMW remained upended. Otherwise, everything looked intact. No holes in the roof. Gerry wouldn’t have needed an ax; he could have blasted his way out.
The double driveway in front wasn’t visible under the black water, but Alex steered the boat slowly toward the house until we scraped concrete. The motor belched one final protest and died again.
He got out to secure the boat, but I couldn’t stop looking at
the house. I was seven years old again, sitting in the backseat of my grandfather’s car, having just seen the expanse of Lake Pontchartrain as we crossed into the city, so wide I thought it must be the ocean. I’d been spellbound by the exotic landscape, the tall buildings, the size of the place, all the cars and people and sounds and smells.
I wanted to look at it, and then go home. I didn’t want to live here with a stranger. I didn’t understand why my grandparents didn’t want me. But the man, Gerry, had stood in the door, smiling and telling me he was glad to meet me. He was the first person I’d met in my seven years whose emotions didn’t bombard me, and being with him was peaceful.
“You okay?” Alex’s voice brought me back to the still water and the empty houses.
“Fine.” I took a deep breath, which made me cough again, then climbed out and headed for the front door.
“Wait.” Alex opened a duffel bag in the front of the boat. “Jake brought this stuff. We need to use it.” He pulled out big yellow rubber gloves, white strap-on face masks to cover our mouth and nose, and goggles.
“That’s overkill.” I shook my head and turned back toward the house.
He grabbed my arm. “You’re the one who wanted to do this today, so at least do it right. There’s no medical care here, and God knows what’s in this water.” His mouth twitched. “Although if you get sick I can do good sponge baths.”
“I have two words for you: sexual harassment.” I snapped the white mask on as I headed for the door.
When I reached it, I stopped, my breath caught in my throat. The symbol Alex had copied from the crime scenes, the one he’d seen on his jog this morning, shone faintly in red from beneath the shallow water covering Gerry’s top doorstep. I shivered despite the heat.
Alex swore when he saw it, then splashed to the houses on either side of Gerry’s and studied their entrances. “Nothing on those,” he said, pulling the tracker off his belt and turning it on. “It’s reading faint magical energy here—had to be recent because it usually dissipates quickly.”
“Did you adjust it so it wasn’t reading me?”
“Yeah, this is someone else—or some
thing
else.” He frowned and walked back to the door. “It’s definitely stronger at the house. Do you have a key?”
I gave him a withering look and pushed the front door open. “None of the locks held.” I’d noticed open doors on most of the houses along the way. There was little left in Lakeview to steal, and no one to steal it.
I stepped inside, sliding and skating on the mud-covered tile of the foyer.
“The signal’s a little stronger in here.” Alex walked past me into the short hallway leading to Gerry’s living room.
I stopped and took a cautious breath. I smelled mud, drywall, mold—the source of the chalky odor. I hadn’t let myself think it, but deep inside, part of me had been afraid we’d walk in and find the stench of death. The house smelled awful, but no one had died here.
My shoulders sagged in relief. He couldn’t be in the house, injured, or the Elders would have detected his energy field. So we were looking not for a body, but for clues.