Everyone gaped at the parrot, which quite honestly Cort had forgotten was still perched on his shoulder. Clearly his memory still wasn’t working quite right. Who forgot about a large red bird on their shoulder? The same guy who very possibly forgot that he bit a woman then married her. Or vice versa.
“The bird must be talking about Krazy Korner. They have three-for-one specials,” Drake said, as if they all didn’t know that very well. “Maybe we were there last night? Maybe someone there remembers something.”
“That could be,” Cort agreed, although he wasn’t sure following the ramblings of a tropical bird was their best strategy.
“Going to the chapel and we are going to get married,” the bird said in its strange singsong voice.
“The chapel,” Drake said, seeming encouraged by the bird’s comments. “You two need to go to the all-night chapel on Burgundy.”
Cort gave him a doubtful look. “Really? We are going to wander around the French Quarter because a crazy bird is saying random things? He’s probably just repeating phrases he’s heard.”
“Crazy train. Crazy train,” the bird called.
“Do you have a better idea?” Drake said.
“But what about the priest?” Cort said.
“Like you said, he’s drunk or drugged or something. And I think the bird is a good lead. We can come back and see if we can wake the holy guy after we check out these places,” Drake said.
Cort wanted to argue, when was a talking bird ever a good lead? But Katie touched his arm, her fingers pale against the sleeve of his black shirt.
“We need to try to find out something,” she said. “And a chapel seems like a good start.” She lifted her left hand and wagged her fingers. The gold band flashed in the light.
As if he needed a reminder.
Cort’s gaze moved from the ring to her pale face. A wave of protectiveness rushing over him again. She deserved answers. After all, even if they weren’t married, her whole life was changed. She didn’t have a life anymore . . . she had an eternity.
He nodded, but then turned to Drake. “You take the parrot.” He jerked his shoulder toward his bandmate. The bird ruffled its feathers, but didn’t budge.
“I’m not taking the parrot,” Drake said, eyeing it dubiously.
“You were the pirate,” Cort pointed out.
“I wasn’t a pirate. I was a convict on a penal ship, which eventually turned to piracy. But that doesn’t really make me an actual pirate, per se,” Drake said.
“Penal.” Saxon chuckled. “That’s funny.”
“Fine,” Cort said. “We’ll take the bird, but you have to take Saxon.”
Drake hesitated, glancing at the bird, then their blonde bandmate thoughtfully.
He sighed. “Come on, Saxon. Let’s go to Krazy Korner.”
“Okay,” Saxon agreed readily, oblivious to the fact he’d just barely been chosen over a bird as a search partner.
They both headed to the door.
“Well, I guess you are stuck with me and the bird,” Cort said.
Katie nodded, but didn’t say anything. She still looked as if she might get hysterical at any given moment. She didn’t seem like she needed to feed. Her color was good and her eyes didn’t have that dark, glazed look they got when vampires were hungry. This seemed to be just natural hysteria, for which he couldn’t blame her.
They followed the other two out of the apartment, but once they reached the street, Drake and Saxon went in one direction, while Cort and Katie needed to go the other way.
“Call me if you find out anything,” Cort called after his bandmates.
Drake waved in response without looking back.
Cort sighed, then fell into step beside Katie.
“Why do I have the feeling we just sent Shaggy and Scooby off to find clues?”
Katie smiled vaguely, but he could see she was lost in her own thoughts.
“Jinkies. Jinkies,” the parrot called.
Jinkies, indeed.
Chapter Four
WINGING IT
S
TELLA
watched all the guys leave Cort and Drake’s apartment with a sense of total disbelief from where she hovered by the ceiling. What the hell had happened last night? Granted, she had to admit she was grateful Cort was whisking the shrieking washboard player out of the room because Katie was about to shatter her eardrums. But the fact that Wyatt was going off in search of her, Stella, when she was right there in the room was a frustrating irony for a self-proclaimed control freak.
Never in eighty-five years of her undead life had Stella found herself trapped in bat form. Saxon did it all the time but Saxon smoked too much of the wacky weed. Stella never even drank, if you didn’t count the last two nights, and she swore once she was walking on two legs, she never was touching the stuff again.
Stiff from hanging upside down off the chandelier all night, Stella took another turn around the apartment, doing a kitchen flyby in search of blood to drink. It seemed logical to her, given the deep thirst she was feeling, that she was dehydrated, and once she had a pint, she would be able to morph back. But Cort didn’t have anything in his kitchen but a pile of mail and Victoria’s Secret catalogs. She tried not to throw up in her mouth. Sometimes it wasn’t a lot of fun being the only girl hanging with a bunch of boys—in fact, most of the time it involved a lot of eye rolling on her part. The question was why she stayed.
The real answer was she had stayed because she loved her brother. She loved New Orleans. She loved rock. And if it meant she had to organize their blood bags for them and soothe their ego-induced spats, she had.
Overcome with melancholy in the suddenly super quiet and empty apartment, Stella rested on the counter, her wings heavy. How the hell bats didn’t get tired of the damn things she didn’t know, but then again she’d frequently asked herself how men could stand walking around with testicles and yet they seemed pretty happy with them. It was just a matter of what you knew, she figured.
A snore cut through her musings.
She remembered there was a mortal guy in the bathroom. There had been a whole lot of yelling to that effect earlier. Apparently they’d left him there.
Perfect. Breakfast.
Stella flew into the bathroom and eyed the priest passed out in the bathtub. He didn’t look like a real priest. He looked too young. Too good-looking. Not that men of the cloth couldn’t be hotties, but she hadn’t seen any lately. You know, with all the time she spent in church. Stella mentally eye rolled herself. Settling on his shoulder, she went for the open ribbon of skin between his collar and neck and bit.
It had been a long time since she’d fed off a live mortal. It wasn’t really de rigueur these days in socially acceptable vampire circles. It was more for rogue types and newbies. But she had to wonder why they had ever stopped, because truth be told, it tasted divine. Salty, warm, delicious. It slid over her fangs and down her throat with satisfying ease. Though it wasn’t as good as sex with Wyatt, it was a close second, reminding her of the pure physical and emotional joy she’d gotten as a mortal child licking a stick of candy.
So good she didn’t realize that her donor had woken up from his snooze until a sharp pain hit the side of her head and she lost contact with his flesh, tumbling down onto his crotch. Yikes. Wincing as he started yelling and waving his arms, Stella was horrified to find she was morphing back. When the hell had she lost control of the ability to morph? But she clearly had, as last night and now proved. While she was grateful to be back in human form, she wasn’t loving that she was sprawled across a stranger in Cort’s bathtub.
Or that he had seen her transformation.
His eyes were huge, his breath coming in rapid little anxious bursts. His fingers inched up to his neck and when he pulled them back covered in blood from her feeding he said, “Holy shit.”
That about summed it up.
“It’s okay,” she said, in the most soothing voice she could muster. Every vampire had the ability to influence humans, but Stella’s had always been slight. She was a veritable weakling when it came to talents primarily because Johnny had turned her as a fledgling himself. It had never particularly bothered her because she had always wanted to live as normal a life as possible, but at the moment she could have used some memory wipe mojo.
Maybe he hadn’t really seen what had just happened.
“Oh, my God, you’re a vampire,” he said, gazing from the blood on his fingers to her and back again. “That is the shit.”
Or maybe he did. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Stella pushed on his very muscular chest and sat back away from him.
“You were a bat and you were biting me and OMG you just turned back into a beautiful woman vampire.”
Well, that was nice to hear considering her hair was a wreck from the wind and the dunk in the river. But it was irrelevant. “I’m not a vampire.”
“Yes, you are. Bite me, please, Dark Angel.”
Oh, no. He was tenting that priest robe, his eyes rolled back in ecstasy, his hand reaching for hers. This was creepy. “I’m not going to bite you.”
“You already did.”
“No, I didn’t. There was a bat in here biting you and I came and swatted it away. It flew into the other room. I hope your rabies shot is up to date.” Stella hauled herself out of the tub and away from Boner Boy. “Who the hell are you and why are you dressed like a priest?”
It was New Orleans. There was probably a festival of some kind going on. Maybe there had been a showing in the CBC of
The Exorcist
or something. So truthfully, the costume didn’t really matter. What mattered was that she was now realizing that she was at Cort’s with no purse and no cell phone and Wyatt was who knew where with both.
“I’m a dancer at Bounce.”
Ah, a stripper at the gay bar. That suddenly made so much more sense, though she had to question the political correctness of his outfit. “You strip as a priest?”
“It was tarts and vicars night,” he said. “Tranny crowd. The tips aren’t as good, but hey, it’s a living. I’m Benny, and I’m straight. Who are you, besides my darkest desire?”
Stella sighed. Curses on all the vampires in pop culture. It made being turned suddenly sexy.
“I’m Stella. And you need to leave.”
Benny struggled to sit up, his erection no longer on full display, which was an improvement. “What happened last night? My head is killing me and I don’t remember anything after I left work.”
That made two of them. “I have no idea.”
“Do you think we had sex?” he asked hopefully. “Did you imprint on me?”
“No!” she snapped, losing patience with Benny, the vicar stripper. “Look, I need to go find my friend and I can’t just leave you here alone. No offense, but you need to go.”
“Is my cross bothering you?” Benny fingered the cross hanging around his neck. “It’s not real. It’s a prop.”
Was there such a thing as a fake cross? A cross was a cross. The shape never changed, no matter the material. “It doesn’t bother me. What’s bothering me is that I lost my purse and my cell phone and I want them back now.”
Ignoring her denials, Benny still tucked the cross into his robes. He flung a leg over the side of the tub and heaved himself out. “Do you need me to help you? I could totally help you. What, do you need to, like, file a police report? Were you mugged? God, it’s too bad I wasn’t with you. I would have kicked the ass of anyone who messed with you, my goddess.” He slapped a fist into his opposite palm to give force to his vow.
Stella raised an eyebrow. Being called a goddess was a first. Hopefully it was a last as well. “No, I don’t need to file a police report, but thank you. I just need to find my friend. If you wouldn’t mind lending me your phone, I’ll give him a call.”
“Sure, of course, right, absolutely.” Benny lifted his robes.
Stella’s jaw dropped. He wasn’t wearing anything but a Speedo under all that fabric and he was either hauling home a brand-new pack of tube socks in his drawers or he was hung. And then some.
Most women would have been attracted to all that hard thigh muscle and tightly packed junk, but Stella wasn’t interested. The only penis she really cared to see was Wyatt’s.
The thought gave her pause. She did? She did. Wow. That merited analysis later.
“Sorry,” Benny said with a sheepish grin as he pulled his phone out of his butt crack. “I don’t usually leave work without changing but I was going straight to a party last night and it was only two blocks up Bourbon. What the hell happened to me in two blocks? Alls I can say is I hope I had a good time.”
Stella shook her head, not at all sure she wanted to know what had happened. “I have no idea.” Gingerly taking the phone, she held it with the end of her sleeve. There was no way she was putting that up next to her face.
Hitting Speaker with her knuckle, she paused. What the hell was she going to dial? She didn’t have Wyatt’s number memorized. She didn’t have anyone’s number memorized. They were all in her phone. With Wyatt.
Not helpful. “Shit.” She hung up the phone and handed it back to Benny. “I don’t know his number.”
“You could go to his place.”
“That’s true. I could do that.” Without a purse, she didn’t have any money but Wyatt’s apartment was only ten blocks or so. Getting back to her place if Wyatt wasn’t at his was a bit more of a problem. Maybe Benny could give her a ride. “Did you drive to work?” she asked him.
“Oh, hell no. Too expensive to park and finding a spot on the street is like digging for gold in a diaper.”
Stella didn’t even know what that meant but she supposed it didn’t matter. Benny put his phone back in his sack. “So how are you getting home?”
“Cab. I live in Harahan. How about you?”
“I live uptown. Can I borrow a buck for the streetcar?” She would happily show up at Bounce and tip him when all of this was said and done.
“Sure. If you bite me again.”
Really? “No. Stop asking.”
“I want to be a vampire, too.” He flexed his muscles. “I’d never have to work out again.”
“That’s shallow. And there’s no such thing as vampires.”
“My Dark Angel, I know the truth. I’ll give you a dollar and my devotion.”
Benny was getting a weird look on his face. Stella was afraid to look at the lower portion of his robe. “Let’s just go.”
She went into the living room and almost ran into Saxon. “Ack! Saxon, what are you doing?”
He held up a tube. “I was going out looking for clues, you know, about what happened last night, but I forgot my lip balm. Can’t think with cracked lips.”
She could ignore the stupidity of that because she was happy to see him. “Where’s Wyatt?”
“Don’t know. He went looking for you. Guess he didn’t find you.” Saxon laughed, then stopped short. He grimaced as his gaze shifted behind her. “You!”
“Who, me?” Benny asked, looking behind himself.
“Yes, you! You cross-wielding freak! Dude, that was seriously not cool.”
“Uh . . .” Benny looked a little scared. “Are you a vampire, too?”
“Duh.” Saxon pulled his bangs to the side and pointed to his forehead. “Yes, crosses burn vampires.”
“Holy shit.” Stella gaped at the wound on Saxon’s smooth vampire skin. “Why hasn’t that healed? How did you get that?”
“Your little boy toy laid a crucifix on me. Totally not funny, man. Now I have to grow my bangs out forever and get a forehead tattoo. Who has a forehead tattoo? Like no one.”
“He’s not my boy toy.” Stella moved away from Benny. She’d had no idea a cross could actually hurt a vampire. That was an old wives’ tale. Maybe. But now she wasn’t taking any chances. She didn’t look good with bangs.
“How do you know it was me?” Benny asked. “I’m not the only guy in the Quarter with a cross.”
“You’re the priest.”
“Benny, you should just go,” Stella said, her head starting to pound. “Saxon, can I borrow ten bucks?”
“No can do, Stella-roo. I think I must have gone to the casino last night because all I have in my pocket is a receipt for condoms.”
What? “You always buy condoms at the casino?”
“No. Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know! Let me borrow your phone.”
“It doesn’t work. I forgot to pay my bill again.” Saxon wrinkled his nose. “I’m leaving. It smells like cheese in here. See you later.”
“If you see Wyatt, tell him to bring my purse to work tomorrow night, okay?” She supposed she could live twenty-four hours without her cell phone. Worse came to worst, she would just get it at the bar when they all showed up for their usual Thursday-night gig.
“No problemo. Catch you later.”
Saxon was gone with a wave and Stella pointed Benny toward the door. “Time to go.”
“I’m going where you go.”
“Fine.” Only because she might need to use his phone again or get that streetcar money. Not that she could get into her apartment without her key. What a total disaster.
“Can I hold your hand?” Benny asked.
She’d rather go tanning and die. “No.” Stella pulled the door to Cort’s apartment shut behind them.
“Can we stop for a daiquiri? I feel dehydrated. I think you took too much blood.”
She’d taken like a thimble’s worth, but she wasn’t about to argue with him. It made her feel a little sheepish to be strolling around with her unwitting blood donor. Though Benny unconscious was a lot more desirable than Benny awake and gazing at her in total mortal devotion.
“Sure.”
As the sounds of Bourbon Street hit her when they stepped outside, Stella sighed.
It was going to be a long night.
* * *
WYATT WAS OFFICIALLY
freaking out. Stella wasn’t anywhere. No one had seen her since the night before, when he had gone out on the deck with her. Granted, no one remembered a damn thing after the wake, which was weird in and of itself, but it seemed like someone should have noticed Stella at one point or another.
Stella was noticeable. Wyatt noticed her all the time. Like every second of every night when they were at work. He even knew when she went to the restroom, that’s how constantly aware of her he was. He could tell her what T-shirts she’d worn for the last five nights and if she’d worn her hair in a ponytail or not.