Dead Lucky (3 page)

I laughed. I had to. Whether Marie liked it or not, it was funny.
 

I thought she might slap me in the face again. Instead, she laughed with me.
 

I respected that.
 

"If your mother knows that the dice are the real thing, and not just another replica, that means..."

"Yes. My father, Rene. He died before I was born."

I'd never met another necro. I doubted I ever would. Finding someone who knew one was probably the best I would ever do. "How did he get the dice?"

"He didn't. They've been in our family for as long as anyone knows. They were special because they were an heirloom. We didn't know they had power until my father got sick."

"What kind of enchantment do they have?"

"I don't know."

I stared at her, trying to figure out if she was lying. Why would she? "He never used them?"

"What for? He had everything he wanted. Besides, he was only sick for ten weeks before he died. He didn't have much time to figure out how the power worked. But... you have. How?"

It was the meds that kept me alive. Black market, experimental. I wasn't about to tell her about them. "Just lucky, I guess." I looked over at Dannie again. "I don't supposed you can let her go now?"

"She'll be released when we're finished."

I hoped whatever was holding her didn't hurt.

"You told me the job. What about payment?"

"For one, Mother will lift the hex she put on you."

"Hex?"
 

"The reason you came so quickly when she called. The further away you get from the source of the hex, the more it will bother you."

"At least now I understand the crazy need to be here. What else?"

"Two hundred thousand dollars."

It was more than decent payment to walk into a casino and steal a pair of magic dice. Then again, the payment probably wasn't as much to steal the dice as it was an incentive to do that job, instead of just going after her mother. Hexes weren't heavily used because while they could compel people to do things, they couldn't actually
make
them do it. And killing the person who had placed the hex would remove it as surely as having it wiped.

"Where do I find you once I have them?"

"We have an estate on the west side of the wall, near the airport. When you get the dice, bring them there."

"The west side of the wall?" That meant they were in the wilderness.
 

"As I said, we try to stay out of sight of the Houses, and we have our own protection from the monsters. Take the 10-gate out, and then follow the signs to the Laveau plantation. I trust you can take care of yourself well enough to get there in one piece?"

I nodded.
 

"Very well. I'll return to Mother and let her know that you've accepted the job." She turned and went over to the door. She paused before she finished closing it, her head poking through the crack. Her eyes were bright, sincere. "Thank you."
 

"...For."
 

Dannie's arms moved back into position, and she kept reaching for the tote as though nothing had happened.
 

"Dannie," I said.
 

She unzipped the bag and reached in. "Just give me a minute. Hey, do you know if they had free wi-fi here?"

"Dannie."

She pulled her laptop out and started to turn. She was sharp, observant. She saw the bullet marks on the door, and her head snapped towards me. "What the hell?"

"We have a job."

CHAPTER FIVE

Rats.

It sounded simple to break in somewhere and steal something, and maybe if you were a thug it was. For a ghost working for and against the Houses there was no such thing as simple. If you wanted to survive, you needed to be ready. That meant a lot of things depending on the job, but it always covered the basics. Intel about the target, some greased palms, some social engineering, and the procurement of the exact equipment needed to maximize the chances of not only succeeding, but succeeding unharmed.
 

Having only hours to get ready for the heist left us with little time to do any of those things, and the idea of going in blind left Dannie and me pissed off and edgy, which tended to be a bad combination.

"How do I look?" she asked, stepping out of the bathroom.
 

She was wearing a long, strapless maroon gown we had picked up nearby, along with a pair of black heels. Considering she had to sponge clean in the sink and put her hair up herself...

"Not bad."

"Try to hold back your gushing."

I reached up and shifted the mop of fake brown hair back into position. It was hot and itchy, and I hated it. Dannie had insisted I buy and wear it so that I would look a little less dying necromancer, a little more human being. I thought I just looked like an idiot.

"Fine, you look amazing. If I could still get hard, I'd say we should forget the job and stay here to screw."

"Shut up."

"I don't know why you ask me anyway. You don't need me to compliment you to be confident."
 

"I ask because I value your opinion."

I shrugged. "We don't have time for you to buy anything else, so it doesn't really matter what I think."

"Do you have to be an asshole?" She shook her head and walked over to the bed. She'd bought a small black clutch, and now she unzipped it and shoved one of the guns inside.
 

I took a deep breath. "Sorry, Dan. This whole thing has me a little out of sorts. Do I really have to wear this?" I shifted the wig again.

"Have you looked in a mirror lately? If this Despre knows that only a necro can spot the real artifact, he's going to mark you from a mile away."

"And this rat on my head is going to reduce that to what? Half a mile?"

"We still need to get you made-up. A little bit of concealer and you'll almost look normal. Speaking of which, come on."

I followed her into the bathroom. Evan was still resting in the tub, though half the ice had melted and gone down the drain. A bottle of makeup was sitting on the sink.

I glared at it while she picked it up, unscrewed the cap, and dumped a little bit on an already stained sponge she'd produced from who knows where.
 

She started wiping it across my face.

"The treatments hurt. This is torture." I squinted my eyes against the cold, wet onslaught.

"Stop being a baby and calm your face."

"That's easy for you to say."

"Just do it."

I fought through it, grateful when she put the cap back on. I turned and looked in the mirror. The wig was horrible, and the makeup made me feel like a prostitute. "Maybe I should just send Evan in to shake things up a bit."

"Stick to the plan, and stop whining."

Dannie was in full job mode. It made her easy to work with, hard to live with.
 

I'd already done my warm-up. It was time to get to work.

"Rise and shine, Evan," I said, reaching down and putting my hand on his wrist. I could feel the warmth of the magic passing between us, the power that would pull his soul back from wherever, sticking it in what remained of his mortal shell and allowing me to command it.

His head turned, and a chattering cough followed.
 

He was laughing at me.

"Holy shit. Are you for real?" The laughing continued. "What the fuck died on top of your head?"

"Stow it, Captain," I said, forcing him to quiet down.
 

"I told you not to call me that." The words were strained as he fought against me.

"Get up, it's time to go."

He planted his hands on the tub and pushed himself to his feet. The water ran off him. "I'm soaked."

"Change of clothes in the other room. Be gentle toweling off, you have enough missing flesh already."

"What's another fingernail? I already lost the most important part."

He climbed out of the tub, still laughing, and made his way into the other room. I'd left him an old tuxedo we'd picked up at a nearby consignment shop, black and wrinkled, complete with top hat and tails.

He held it up. "Are you serious?"
 

"It'll make sense when we go outside."

The clothes didn't make him look any less like a corpse. This time they weren't supposed to. Dannie sprayed him down with some heavy cologne, and the three of us made our exodus from the Jambalaya. Of course we caught a lot of eyes on the way from the elevator to the front. I kept a closer eye on the expressions, and was relieved to see it was standard distrust.

"Eu de toilette doesn't mean I should smell like one," Evan said as we crossed the floor. "What did you pay for this shit?"

"I got it at the dollar store," I replied. "Only the best for you." I pulled harder on his reigns, preventing him from trying to hit me.

"Will you two try not to attract any more attention than we already are?" Dannie said.

"Don't look at me, I can't help the way I look. Rat-hat on the other hand..."

Another pull, and Evan was silent. We got out to the street, where a cab was already waiting. We piled in, with Evan behind the driver to help avoid too much scrutiny.
 

"Where you headed dressed so fine?" he asked. He was small and dark, and he smelled like pot.

"The Oubliette," I said, reaching into my pocket.

He shook his head. I could see his eyes measuring me in the rear-view. "I been living in the city going on twenty years now. There's no such thing as the Oubliette."

I smiled, pulling a few bills from my pocket and handing them over. Dannie had done the research while we'd waited for night to fall. She knew how the system worked.

He took the money and tucked it into a shirt pocket.
 

"Welcome to New Orleans," he said, laughing and pulling away from the curb.

CHAPTER SIX

I hadn't been planning on a gunfight.

He dropped us off on the corner of Chartres and Toulouse.

"Keep walking east to Jackson Square. Find Madame Rouge there. She'll show you the way." He turned and looked back at us. "They may not let you in, smelling like an ogre's ass."

I handed him some more cash and pushed open the door. "We'll take our chances."

He headed off as soon as we were out. I glanced back at the cab as it sped away, certain that our driver was phoning into somebody to announce our impending arrival.
 

"I guess there is one place on Earth I still fit in," Evan said.

"I told you it would make sense."

New Orleans had the water, and they had the walls. That meant they were safer than a lot of places, and that safety translated to the city becoming a major destination for all kinds of tourists to indulge in all kinds of nightlife. Once upon a time, the place had been known for Mardi Gras, a yearly event that boiled down to being one massive party.
 

Today, that party was every night.

It meant a lot of people from all walks out on the streets, dressed up however they pleased. There was no shortage of face paint, makeup, costumes, or beads. Tuxedos, bathing suits, ball gowns, jeans and tees - it was all proper attire, and none of it drew any of the wrong kind of attention.
 

It also meant Evan could stand shoulder to shoulder with the world of the living, and nobody knew he hadn't just done a fucking awesome job with his get up.

"Been a long time," he said, his head shifting back and forth. His eyes paused on a pair of younger women flashing a group across the street. "Long fucking time."

"Come on," I said, getting us moving east along Chartres. I could already hear the music rising from the Square, mingling with the din of the nearby bars and restaurants, their windows and doors open to combat the heat.

The crowd was dense, and it only got worse the closer we moved to Jackson Square. It made sense, since it was the hub of the whole thing, the center space ringed by modern high-rises with lower facades designed to match the more classic New Orleans style. It made for an ugly mashup that nobody seemed to care about.
 

"Nice costume." An older man put his hand on Evan's shoulder. "Your makeup is unreal."

His coughing laugh followed.
 

"Hey, watch where you put that fucking hand." Dannie grabbed the wayward limb and twisted it expertly. A college-aged guy in a skeleton bodysuit that covered everything, including his face, screeched like a little girl and backed away, drawing jeers from his companions.
 

This wasn't my kind of place, or my kind of town. Get to the Oubliette, grab the dice, get the hell out.

We moved past goblins and elves, a couple of dwarves and one of the tallest ogres I'd ever seen, finally reaching the base of the statue that gave the Square its name.
 

Madame Rouge was easy to find.

She was three hundred pounds, in a thick wig with bright red curls, wearing a Victorian era red dress with a huge bustle and lots of frills, along with sparkling red stiletto-heeled boots. How those things didn't snap under the pressure was a magic of its own.

She was standing alone, smiling and laughing at nothing obvious.
 

"Madame Rouge," I said, stopping in front of her. "We're looking for the Oubliette."

She stopped smiling and looked at us. Her eyes ran up and down our length before she starting beaming again. "Certainly. Certainly. Follow me."
 

A copy of her fell away, a translucent ghost of Madame Rouge. It started walking north.

"Well, don't just stand there," the real version said.

Was it that easy? I was expecting some kind of challenge. Knowing who to ask must have been enough. We followed the ghost back through the crowd, working to keep up. It was easy to pick out who spent a lot of time here by their reaction to it. Most ignored the specter, but the newer tourists gawked and pointed and laughed when it passed by, or through them.

It led us up the street, to a small alley between a pair of newer buildings, disappearing against an unmarked door.