[Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine (20 page)

Rage roiled up inside Constantine. He squashed it right back down before he gave her a headache on top of everything else. Right emotion, wrong time and place. Instead, he watched her hand run over each of the cross-stitched herbs in turn. The flowers were all pink, even the lavender and borage. Not impossible, but definitely boring. Boredom was a fair antidote for rage.

“There’s nothing more sinister,” Lavonia said. “I suppose we should have tried to catch him, but he was gone before we even realized what had happened—”

“No.” Constantine put up a hand. “I’ll find him, and I’ll take care of him.”

For a long moment, no one said anything. They all seemed suitably impressed. Too bad he couldn’t impress himself so easily.

Marguerite, he realized, had homed in on Nervous Glennis, watching those flying fingers with a telltale little frown, raising her eyes to assess the entire woman, then deliberately letting her gaze wander. She’d be hopeless at poker.

He telepathed a question.
Is she usually so tense?

Marguerite’s eyes flew to his in a glance compounded of wariness and concern. Well, well. Progress on two fronts at once. Glennis might just be unnerved because of his rep, of course, but… Marguerite grabbed another cushion, Pepto-pink corduroy this time. A tiny white quill poked through the fabric. She pulled out the feather and smoothed it between her fingers.

Constantine let his gaze wander from one woman to the next until he’d done them all and then settled on Horny Janie again. Judging by her catlike expression, she was as usual trying to figure out how to seduce him. He gave her a tiny jolt of encouragement. She lit up instantly, and across the room, Marguerite went very still.

Of course. As usual, she just knew.

“There’s got to be a clue someplace,” Janie said with a blatantly fake innocence that reminded him of Jonetta. His dead wife had been a lousy actress, too. He’d always known that, but he’d thought she was a reasonable woman and had been blindsided by her obsessiveness and spite.

Janie batted her eyelashes at him. “Like, uh, maybe in that stuff that was on the mound this morning. I mean, it’s all got to be connected, right?”

“Clever of you to think of that, Janie.” He sent her another hot little jolt, followed by buzzes of approval to each of the other witches in turn, wondering if it would bother Marguerite. “Have you ladies seen the photos on the Internet?”

There was a chorus of assent and commentary from the others, and for the first time, Glennis spoke. Blurted, to be accurate. “I really must be going. I have work tomorrow.” She bunched up her knitting.

Janie smirked. With short, sharp movements, Marguerite plucked out a couple more feathers.

“Work?” Lavonia said. “On Sunday?”

“Oh,” Glennis quavered. “Right. I don’t have to work.”

“Did anything in the photos ring a bell?” Constantine gave Janie a hint of a smile and plenty of sexual pull. Marguerite’s nose twitched as if at an unpleasant smell. Was his deliberate response to Janie pissing her off? Not a way he’d envisaged getting rid of her, but it might do the trick. Whatever worked, right?

The bird grumbled sleepily.
Would you bloody stop lying to yourself?

Glennis stuffed the knitting into a tote bag. “This has nothing to do with me, and it’s awfully late, so—” She rose.

“Wait, Glennis. Where are your beads?” Janie sounded positively gleeful. Constantine resisted the urge to look at Marguerite. The faintest sign that he was interested in other women—without even a suggestion of sex—had driven Jonetta into violent rages. She’d hated his fans. She’d even attacked a few.

Either Marguerite saw what he was doing or she didn’t. Either she could handle it or she couldn’t, and he didn’t know which he wanted anyway.
And that’s not a lie
.

Joan said, “That’s true, Glennis. You had a string of beads on before Circle.”

Glennis threw a look of sheer loathing at Janie. “So what? I’m going home.” Reluctantly, Constantine sent a tad of paralyzing fear Glennis’s way. Apart from the panicked flickering of her eyes, she didn’t move.

“Now that I think about it, those beads were something like the ones on the mask,” Lavonia said. “Not the same color, and it’s not so obvious from the photos, but Marguerite showed me the real thing.”

Constantine telepathed:
Did you show Janie, too?

Marguerite gave the slightest shake of the head. She must have noticed what he had done to Glennis—how, damn it?—for he read disapproval in her eyes, and her voice was gentle when she said, “Please let us have a look at them, Glennis. We need any help we can get.”

Glennis was near to tears. “They have nothing to do with anything, and I have to go now.”

Janie tittered. “What’s the matter, Glennis? Not so sanctimonious about right and wrong anymore?”

Lavonia shot a glare at Janie, grabbed the bag from Glennis, and dug around inside. She pulled out a long leather thong twined with copper filament and decorated with jasper and glazed green ceramic beads. “Yes! They’re very much alike. Where did you get this, Glennis?”

“I don’t remember. It was ages ago.”

“No, it wasn’t!” Janie scoffed. “It was last month. We were manning the Magical Oils booth in the town square, and you kept going on and on about how Eaton Wilson gave it to you.”

“You must be mistaken.” Glennis pressed her lips together, martyr-like.

Janie smirked. “No, I remember wondering how you could possibly want to sleep with such a dork.”

“He’s not a dork!” Glennis cried. “He’s a gentleman, and you’re disgusting. You never think of anything but sex. Such spells are an improper use of magic. They’ll come back to bite you, and you’ll be sorry!”

“Hey, if that sex spell I’m sending Constantine bounces onto a vampire, I’ll be
very
happy.” Janie grinned. “If it lands on Eaton, I’ll barf.”

“Your spell wouldn’t affect him anyway,” Glennis said passionately. “He’s too
good
.”

“What if it turns out he’s not so angelic after all? What’ll you do then?” Janie cast a coy glance Constantine’s way as she taunted the other witch. Without the slightest hesitation, he responded with more sexual pull. If Marguerite didn’t like it, she could lump it.

She was watching him, but as far as he could tell, she didn’t react at all.

“We’ll ask Eaton,” Lavonia said firmly, looking as if she couldn’t decide which of the players in this dumb drama pissed her off more. Constantine sent her a little buzz just for the fun of it.

Lavonia’s eyes grew wide, and Marguerite bit her lip on what he was sure was a smile.
Yes!
A peacock pranced through his head in full display.

Lavonia cleared her throat. “He’ll remember if he gave her the necklace, and if so, he’ll know where he got it, and that might lead us to the source of the beads.”

Janie wasn’t about to leave her spot in the limelight. She put her hands on her hips. “Maybe we don’t need to ask Eaton. What color was the van that chased you, Marguerite? What make?”

“A Ford, black as far as I could tell, or maybe a very dark blue or green. Why?”

“Cha-ching!” Janie spread her hands. “Eaton Wilson has an old black Ford van.”

CHAPTER TEN

I
t wasn’t Eaton,” Marguerite said flatly, but Glennis let out a yowl of fury and lunged. She got in one resounding slap at Janie’s face before Constantine slid smoothly in to separate them with a lot of aura force and scarcely a touch.

Marguerite sprang up to take Glennis back to the couch. Janie took advantage of Constantine’s proximity to cling to him; his aura shot her a hot, sensual pulse before he peeled her away and handed her off to Joan. He wasn’t turned on by Janie at all, just playing her.

“Janie, you should be ashamed of yourself.” Marguerite put an arm around Glennis. “Eaton’s completely harmless, and you know it.”

Janie responded with a malicious little smile. Marguerite let out a breath. Things would not be pretty when Janie figured out she was a pawn in Constantine’s game.

Whatever that was. He hadn’t seemed surprised at Janie’s revelation, but he leapt on Marguerite’s immediate defense of Eaton. “Are you saying there was something about the man who chased you that definitely marks him as ‘not Eaton’”?

Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything physical, but she hadn’t had much of a look. She couldn’t explain that Eaton simply couldn’t have had her attacker’s aura. “No, but Eaton
wouldn’t do something like that. He’s a good person, as Glennis said. And if he has a black van, I’ve certainly never seen it. He usually drives a Volvo.”

Constantine surveyed Lavonia and Joan, nudging them with his aura. Did they have any sense of what he was doing?

Lavonia sighed. “It’s true about the van. He doesn’t use it much, though, except for carrying lumber or furniture or whatever. He loaned it to me to pick up a dresser I bought not long ago, which is how I know. But I can’t picture him stalking and chasing somebody.”

“He’s been auditing an anthropology course,” Joan admitted—she was the secretary of that department at Hellebore U—“but that doesn’t prove a thing.” She passed a box of tissues to Glennis.

“He’s a gentle soul,” Lavonia said. “A New Age hippie, totally into peace and love.” She put up her chin at Constantine. “You were on the mound this morning up in that oak tree. I have no idea how you managed to stay out of sight, but you must have heard what Eaton said. He’s the one who wants to experiment with visions on the mound.”

Janie had been pouting again, but she pounced on this. “See what I mean? He’s nuts. He used to pester us about Celtic myths and Wiccan rites. Before that, it was Hindu goddesses. Now he’s into Native American religions. Who knows? Maybe he’s having visions ordering him to kill people.”

“You bitch!” Glennis sobbed. “How can you say such awful things?”

“Just trying to get to the truth,” Janie said. “Right, Constantine?”

“Yes,” he said, “the truth.” His aura flared, and Janie backed right into the sofa and plopped down. “Easy enough to ask Eaton,” he added coolly.

Janie bounced up again. “You can’t trust him to give a straight answer. He’s got some weird-ass shit going on right now. I know, because I went to Alabama with him a while ago.”

Glennis raised her eyes from a clump of soggy tissues. “You
what
?”

Janie’s shrug could only be called insolent. “Seeing as it was my first time casting a sex spell, I figured I’d try it on Eaton, because a hard-up, dorky sort of dude should be easy, right? And he sure was. Fell like a tree and asked me to spend the weekend with him.”

Glennis paled. Something shot out from Constantine’s aura and tapped Janie upside the head.

“The whole truth,” Janie said, almost as if she were talking to herself. “I wish I’d bespelled him earlier, because he’d already made his plans and wouldn’t budge. We went to these dumb Indian mounds and walked and walked and walked, and he tried to convince me to talk to Constantine about his research on visions. He took measurements and drew maps, and went on and on about performing sacred ceremonies to cleanse the earth, which he figured Constantine would relate to. Ritual fires and purifying drinks and a bunch of other crap.”

“Knives?” Constantine smiled at her.

“N-no.” Janie gazed back, all adoration. “Not that I remember. But that doesn’t mean he’s not crazy.”

“How about songs or prayers?”

“Yes!” Janie arched her back, thrusting her breasts forward, eyes half-closed. “He even tried one of your songs, but he can’t sing worth a flip. But the weirdest of all was that he’s still madly in love with Veronica Bonnard.”

A shiver traversed Constantine’s aura, dark and swift, and hung there. “Bonnard. A relation of Zeb’s?”

“She was his mother,” Lavonia said, “but she’s been dead for several years.”

He shrugged, and the shiver dissolved and was gone.

Janie came to herself and realized she wasn’t the center of attention anymore. “I mean, how boring would it be, screwing a guy who can’t stop talking about a dead woman? So I didn’t bother with him in the end.”

Glennis straightened, pale with dignity and blotchy with tears. “No, he turned you down.” As if she’d been let off a leash, she grabbed the string of beads and stuffed it into her bag. “And I’m leaving!”

“Going to warn Eaton that Constantine is after him?” mocked Janie with a triumphant glance at the rock star, but Glennis was already out the door.

Constantine motioned with his chin to Marguerite. “Thanks again, ladies. Come on, gorgeous. Let’s get you back to bed.”

The expression on Janie’s face would have been priceless if it hadn’t been so enraged. Marguerite downed the rest of her coffee and thanked them all again. Outdoors, they watched Glennis zoom away.

Marguerite’s car was parked across the street. Jabez must have dropped it off while they were inside. She opened the rear door for Lawless. “I’m going to follow her.”

“Why? You don’t believe Eaton did it.”

“I want to see what happens when she tells him what’s going on.” She got into the driver’s seat and started the car. “You can come if you promise not to hurt him.” Which was an entirely ridiculous thing to say, and she knew it.

“If he’s innocent, he’s safe. I won’t condemn him on the say-so of some dumb chick trying to impress me.”

Marguerite took off after Glennis. “It was creepy how you played her. How you played all of them.”

His voice went hard, his aura prickly. “For a second or two there, I thought you were enjoying it.”

“Oh, it was definitely cool. But it’s still creepy, and Janie will refuse to talk to me for months.” She added ruefully, “On the other hand, your adoring female fans must love it.”

“That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” Those bitter little prickles shot in all directions. “Songs, visions, feel-good vibes, even orgasms for the luckiest ones, and the result is lots and lots of sales. It’s just hunky-dory, babe, but sometimes it backfires.”

“You mean obsessive fans? Or women who realize you’ve just been playing with them and that you don’t really want them at all?”

“You do see a lot, don’t you, Marguerite? I bet you could do a mighty fine job of playing me, if you wanted to.”