Pirate's Alley (21 page)

“Did she live in the rooms of Eudora Welty?” Jean asked, sending the whole insane conversation into Wonderland territory.

As they discussed the literary history of the Hotel Monteleone, I pondered the drop in temperature and the sudden buddy status of Jean Lafitte and the Faery Prince of Winter. Silent across the table, Christof kept his gaze on me like a jagged iceberg.

I leaned back and focused instead on the large-screen TV playing in one corner, hoping to bore him into warming things up. Its sound was turned down too low to hear, but the picture switched from a report on the Saints’ NFL playoff hopes to—what else—the weather.

Snowy vista after snowy vista filled the screen, replaced by a red-nosed, heavily bundled reporter whose breath plumed in white clouds as he talked into his microphone. Heavy snow swirled behind him. A map appeared on the screen, showing the Southeastern U.S., where everything was green and clear except for a big white circle sitting over that part of Louisiana just south of Lake Pontchartrain.

The Faery Prince of Winter arrives in town at the same time we have the unexplainable winter of a lifetime. We have the winter of a lifetime at the same time Jean Lafitte, said prince’s new BFF, wants to punish the elves for their part in last month’s fiasco.

This weather had crippled them. Rand was the only one still staying in New Orleans and couldn’t leave his house without risking hibernation. Mace Banyan had fled back to Elfheim. The elves, Jean wouldn’t want to kill—Lily had already been decapitated. But he would enjoy tormenting them.

Crap on a freaking stick.

I shifted my gaze back to Christof, and in his cold stare and another dip in temperature, I saw the truth in my suspicions.

“Christof,” Jean said, touching the prince’s arm. “Perhaps you should go back to Faery this evening and appease your queen. As you yourself said, she is displeased with your continued absence from her court.”

“Very well, my friend.” Christof leaned back, and I sighed in relief as the temperature rose again. “You will take care of this problem?”

I didn’t look up at him, but I was pretty sure “this problem” meant me.

“
Oui,
give my regards to your queen and your brother.”

Christof laughed. “Well, my queen perhaps. Florian and I do not talk more than is necessary, as you know.”

He bade good-bye to Truman Capote, who’d fallen silent during the exchange, and turned last to me. “I’m sure we’ll meet again soon, DJ.”

I kept my eyes on Jean. “Undoubtedly. Safe travels.”

He shrugged into a long wool coat and swept from the room. The temperature continued to rise.

Capote began chatting again, telling stories and engaging Jean in conversation, which was fine with me. I needed to think.

I owed Jean Lafitte my life, as Willem Zrakovi had pointed out. More than that, I considered him a friend. Maybe not the most straightforward friend, but I had no doubts that if push came to shove, he would protect me. I also felt certain he would never betray me, even at cost to himself.

If I turned him in for burning the vampire club and using the Winter Prince to make the elves miserable, he’d lose his spot on the Interspecies Council at the very least. He might face prosecution for consorting with the fae while the Elders were still paying him to provide them with updated navigational maps of the Beyond.

I also was likely not the only one turning a blind eye toward his business dealings with Rene, and those could be shut down, which would hurt both of them. Jean could even be confined to the Beyond, which would hurt him far worse than a temporary physical death. He was adventurous and independent. Chaining him down would kill his spirit even if his body survived forever.

So far, he hadn’t actually hurt anyone. He was playing mental games, like a big old French cat toying with a vampire mouse and a few elven cockroaches.

There was another issue that factored into how I dealt with Jean. I considered him a friend, and I owed him. Beyond that? I had avoided thinking too hard about my feelings for him, and had no idea what his were toward me. We’d been flirting for years. He’d made it clear that he found me desirable, and I’d unfortunately not hidden my attraction from him nearly well enough or Alex wouldn’t continue to see him as a threat.

I couldn’t make a reasonable decision about his dealings with the fae or his potential arson case until I knew where Jean and I stood. For Alex, it would be black and white. Jean broke the law, so Jean should be punished, whatever that meant. I couldn’t think that way. I didn’t want to think that way. Right or wrong, my heart had a say in whatever decision my mind reached.

Jean had told me a time would come when I’d have to choose sides. I hadn’t thought it would be now, or in this way. Then again, maybe it wasn’t as complicated as I was trying to make it. There was only one way to find out.

“Jean.” I interrupted Capote in the middle of a rousing story about his adventures growing up in the city. “We need to talk.”

Something on my face seemed to tell him this was not a light request. “Truman,
mon ami
. Our time here draws to a close.”

Capote looked from Jean to me and back. “Good, I was tired of talking. I can expect that portable computer tomorrow?”

Jean gave a single nod.
“Bien s
û
r.”

“And you’ll set up lessons for me on how to use it?”

Jean looked at me, eyebrows raised.

Oh, hell no.

My go-to-the-devil look must have been enough; Jean turned back to Capote. “My friend Rene will arrange these lessons.”

Guess laptops were the cost of an alibi in the financial realms of the historical undead, and Rene would be making a visit to an electronics store. The Geek Squad probably didn’t make house calls to Old Orleans.

Capote wandered out of the lobby and turned toward the central Quarter. I wasn’t concerned about him being recognized, and he was smart enough to keep his identity hidden. He was just one more eccentric guy in a city full of them.

What concerned me was the man who sat next to me at the table, watching me with cobalt-blue eyes that had seen much and were often far too perceptive.

He held out his hand, and after a pause, I took it. “Shall we, Drusilla?”

God help us, we shall.

CHAPTER
17

Throughout the walk across the hotel lobby and into the elevator, I tried to talk myself out of having this conversation. It wasn’t too late. We could go upstairs, Jean would ask if I really wanted the truth about his involvement in the fire, and I would tell him no. Then he could spin a few lies about his lack of involvement, both of us knowing they were lies. I could then pretend to believe him and pass the lies on to Zrakovi.

Here was the problem: I’d also have to pass the lies on to Alex, because if I told Alex the truth, he’d tell Zrakovi. Never mind that it hurt Rene as well as Jean. Never mind that it hurt me. He’d do the right thing as he saw it; he might feel badly about it, especially if it hurt me, but he’d believe he had no choice.

I admired that about Alex, his sense of moral absolutes. I also hated that about Alex, his inability to acknowledge the gray areas and shadowy corners of life.

Maybe one of the reasons I didn’t want to have this talk with Jean was that it would make me confront my feelings about Alex. Did I love him or did I just desperately want to love him? Did he love me? Even if the love was there and was real, was it enough?

One crisis at a time.

Before following Jean into the elevator, I slipped my mojo bag from around my neck and stuck it in my messenger bag. Normally, my empathic abilities were more crippling than illuminating. The more of other people’s emotions I could filter out, the better, and my daily meditation and my locket of magicked herbs and chips of gemstones helped strengthen those filters.

Tonight, I wanted a read on Jean’s emotions and I was glad that, unlike a lot of pretes whose readings were hard to interpret, I could read the auras of the historical undead just like any other human. I wasn’t sure Jean knew I could filter and absorb emotions. I had never told him and, if he knew, he’d never mentioned it. Advantage: DJ.

So as we walked side by side on our silent way down the hall to Jean’s suite, I knew he was worried. I didn’t know if he was worried about his deal with Christof being exposed, concerned about our pending conversation, or fretting about the value of gold bullion in Europe.

The lack of specifics were empathy’s greatest shortcoming. I knew what he was feeling, but not why. It required a lot of interpretation on my part. For better or worse, I was pretty good at it, and my instincts told me he was as worried about upsetting the status quo between us as I was.

“Would you like to have our talk in the rooms of Eudora Welty or in your accommodations?” Jean asked.

“Your suite.” There was nowhere in my room to sit other than the bed and an armchair, and he had a nice, neutral living room.

When we reached his suite, the edge of a white sheet of paper stuck out from beneath his door. Looking across the hall, an identical sheet stuck out of mine.

I walked over to procure my folded sheet, then followed Jean into his room. The sound of the door closing behind me had an ominous finality to it, as if momentous things would now take place within these walls. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, noted a missed call from Alex, and turned off the ringer.

Jean, meanwhile, had unfolded his paper. “The Interspecies Council will meet once again, on the morrow,” he said. “Where is this meeting place?”

I opened my sheet. I was not a voting member of the council, but as sentinel I’d always be dragged into their meetings because chances were good that anything they had to discuss would somehow involve me. The announcement, handwritten in a florid script, said the meeting would take place at ten a.m. tomorrow morning on the third floor of Hebert Hall on the Tulane campus, which already had closed for the holidays.

“It’s a building at Tulane University,” I said. “Across from Audubon Park, where the de Bor
é
plantation sat during your day. There’s no reason to hold the meeting at night since the vampires aren’t invited.”

I knew this because the sheet contained a list of the expected attendees. Both Alex and Jake, as well as a couple of names I didn’t know, would be on security duty. Noticeably absent from the list were Garrett Melnick, any other representative of Vampyre, and Geoffrey and Adrian Hoffman. Noticeably present was Lennox St. Simon, my mystery uncle representing the UK and EU, and, at the head of the list, Willem Zrakovi, Acting First Elder.

At the bottom of my sheet, scribbled in blue ink, was a postscript:

DJ—Please be prepared to discuss what you know about Eugenita’s intentions toward the elven child of Quince Randolph, as well as Etienne Boulard’s whereabouts and Jean Lafitte’s involvement in the burning of his club.

—Wm Zrakovi

I had an overwhelming urge to run away from home. Except unless I jumped over to the Beyond, the Elders could track me down using my unique magical signature. And the number of places in the Beyond where I didn’t have enemies was dwindling fast.

“Might I interest you in a brandy,
Jolie
?”

It couldn’t hurt. “Please.”

When Jean handed me the glass of amber liquid that I knew would set my insides on fire but numb the panic building inside me, I handed him my paper. “Read the note at the bottom.”

He studied it a moment and tossed it on the coffee table.

I sat in the middle of the sofa facing the large windows, and he sat on the matching sofa opposite me—exactly where Rene and I had sat earlier this evening. It seemed like a week ago.

“We appear to be at a crossroads, you and I.” Jean’s voice was soft and deep, without a trace of smarminess or sarcasm. His mood was somber but no longer nervous.

I looked at this undead pirate who was causing me so much inner turmoil. Really looked at him. He bore the scars of the difficult life he’d led in his human years. His skin was tanned and smooth on his face but for the jagged scar across his jawline. But there were stress lines at the edges of his mouth. Deep blue eyes conveyed so much, from arrogance to sincerity, but often distrust as well. His dark hair had been pulled back and tied with a leather cord.

He was very handsome, without a trace of prettiness. He had a mouth that could be cruel. A mind that was nimble and sharp as razor wire. A sense of values that were his own and no one else’s.

What did he see when he looked at me? A child, or a woman? A valuable ally? A potential lover? Or a means to an end?

“Let’s start with the easy part,” I finally said. “Did you order your men to burn Etienne’s club?”

He settled back on the sofa with his brandy and regarded me, lips pursed. “Do you wish the truth, Drusilla? Once I have told you, the burden of what to do with that truth falls to you. You may yet postpone your time for taking a stand, and I might yet postpone my time to decide whether or not to place my fate in your hands.”

“I know that.” Oh, how I knew that. My gut told me now was the time, though, while the crisis was relatively minor, while I still could think and not just react. “I can’t make an honest decision about what stand I should take—or if I should take one—unless I know the full truth. And the time for honest decisions is here, I think.”

Everything—Eugenie, Alex, Jean, Rand, the council, the political tensions—seemed to be hurtling toward various cliffs, with me standing at a series of crossroads between them and their destinations. I felt it in my gut; if I didn’t choose which cliff I was going off, and with whom I’d take the plunge, I’d be torn to shreds as they each tried to take a piece of me.

If I were Alex, my answer would be simple. I’d go in whatever direction the Elders were headed. I’d side with the wizards, right or wrong, because that was what was expected of me. At one time, even as recently as a few months ago, I’d have thought my choice was that simple, too.

But I’d seen too much since Katrina’s aftermath had thrown our world into chaos. The wizards’ political machinations and paranoia were as much to blame as anything for the current interspecies tensions.