Pirate's Alley (12 page)

“The preternatural world, as your wizards call it, is marching toward war, Drusilla. I do not see enough people of unselfish nature and good will to prevent it. At some time, and perhaps soon, you will be forced to decide on which side you will stand.”

I took a deep breath and let it out, the pain from my bruised ribs, an injury beyond the help of my healing potion, helping to ground me from the worry that sprang up at the talk of war. I’d been privately concerned about the same thing. Power was an intoxicating prize, and no one—including my own people—wanted to share.

But figuring out the power balance had been the whole point of the council formation. “Surely those of you on the Interspecies Council will do whatever’s needed to prevent a war.”

“My apologies, but I do not believe this is so.” Jean got up and moved to sit next to me on the settee. He was walking with less stiffness than before, so my potion had already done some good. “Drusilla, you must listen well. The council members might surprise me, and I pray this will be the case. But I believe the wizards will find themselves opposed more strongly than they expect.”

I twisted to face him. “Now that Melnick’s been exposed, the vampires—”

“The vampires will side with whoever they believe will win the war.” He propped his arm on the back of the settee. “They wave to and fro like a flag on a storm-tossed vessel. Garrett Melnick is not a reliable ally.”

Not that Jean was exactly unbiased. Then again, that freaking vampire had bitten me. “I know the elves hate us, but…” I trailed off at Jean’s look of impatience. What was I missing?

“The elves and the wizards are more closely aligned than you might believe, as long as Monsieur Banyan and your Quince Randolph remain in power. Their alliance with your wizards must hold if the wizards hope to prevail.”

“He isn’t
my
Quince Randolph. But if the elves and wizards are aligned, and the vampires go with whoever’s in power, that just leaves the small groups and…”

Jean raised an eyebrow.

Oh shit. That left the second-largest group, the fae. They’d stayed out of preternatural affairs for so long I tended to forget about them. Which probably wasn’t wise.

“You think the people of Faery will oppose us? I’d heard they stayed too busy fighting among themselves to fight anyone else.” They were a huge question mark. Would faeries plus vampires outnumber wizards plus elves? It would be close in terms of numbers. In terms of power, I had no clue.

How ironic if a war broke out and the tipping point lay with the alliances of small groups like the water species and the historical undead. With people like Jean Lafitte. My friend the pirate could end up being the key to who held power in the entire preternatural world. I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or bad, but I sure bet he was aware of the potential.

Jean watched me as I processed it all. “I do not know where the support of Faery will fall,” he said. “There is a struggle between two princes, brothers, as to who will ascend to the throne once their aunt, the Queen Sabine, is gone. She is childless and quite ancient.”

I narrowed my eyes. Jean stayed awfully well informed about prete politics, and often told me things the Elders hadn’t yet learned. I suspected this might be one of those things. “How do you know all this?”

He shrugged. “A wise man watches as if he were
un aigle
and listens as if he were
un faucon
.”

Eagles and falcons. Both predators. Appropriate.

My French predator leaned toward me slightly and twined a strand of my hair through the fingers of the hand he’d stretched along the sofa back. I steeled myself for the wandering fingers or the smarmy comment, waiting to see which would arrive first.

“You should wear your hair up as the women of my time often did,
Jolie
. I enjoy seeing the graceful neck of a woman.” He smoothed the strand of hair away from my neck, then frowned and grasped the crew neck of my sweater, jerking it aside and almost pulling me facedown on the sofa. “
Mon Dieu,
explain this.
Tout de suite.
”

I slapped his hand away and straightened up. “Stop it.” How did I seem to always attract bossy men? “It happened last night in the transport. Garrett Melnick decided to have a taste. You were preoccupied.”

He frowned. “My apologies. Your protection should have been my first concern.”

Oh please. Who did he think he was, Alex? “I can take care of myself, thank you. Besides, he said I tasted vile.”

Jean laughed, which made me laugh. Again.

I tried an experiment. “You also missed seeing First Elder Hoffman trying to fry me before remembering his magic wouldn’t work in the Beyond. He was not a happy wizard when he flung a spell at me and nothing happened.”

Jean’s smile widened into a grin. “I should have enjoyed seeing his face. He is a specious toad.”

See? I knew it was funny.

The laughter faded as my thoughts returned to the fae and the worsening relations among all the pretes. I needed to do some faery research along with my elven-reproduction research. I didn’t know a damned thing about the fae except what I’d learned from Gerry’s sketchy history lessons. At least I still had my collection of black grimoires—the only thing among my personal possessions that had made it through the house fire unscathed. Apparently, the books of black spells and illegal magic were protected with so many dark charms that even a couple of grenades detonated by an undead serial killer couldn’t destroy them.

Male and female voices sounded from outside, accompanied by footfalls on the verandah. “Sounds like Eugenie’s back.” I got to my feet. “Let me know when you get to New Orleans. I’ll be living in the Monteleone, in the room across the hall from yours. You know, so I can keep an eye on you.”

He smiled again. “You could keep both of your eyes on me”—great, he’d learned a new modern phrase—“if you resided in my rooms alongside me. Madame Eudora Welty would not object, nor would I.”

Uh-huh. Madame Eudora Welty would probably mind a great deal that an extremely expensive and lavish hotel suite had been named after her, only to have it occupied long-term by an undead French pirate.

“Thanks, but you probably snore in French.”

The front door opened, sparing me what was probably going to be an outrageous comeback, judging by Jean’s animated expression.

Eugenie and Collette came inside, chatting like they’d known each other forever. Two men walked in behind them. One I knew very well. The merman Rene Delachaise and I had once done a highly illegal and ill-advised power exchange to solve a murder case. The case had been awful and the power exchange had been freaky, but we had ended up friends. Whenever I came up with a harebrained idea and needed backup, Rene was my man. He was fearless and didn’t bother himself too much with the ramifications of whatever scheme we might be undertaking.

The other guy looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. About six feet, well built, dark hair flopping over green eyes, LSU T-shirt and jeans. Maybe I’d seen him with Rene.

“Well, if it ain’t my favorite wizard.” Rene pulled me into a hug, and I absorbed the happy vibes of his shapeshifter energy. Like most of the water folk, the merpeople hated wizards for past misdeeds, so I was proud of the friendship Rene and I had forged despite all our species baggage.

“And I am Christof,” his companion said, smiling.

“DJ.” I smiled back but inside I was racking my brain, trying to place him. I also didn’t detect any aura on him, and a quick scan of his visible body parts didn’t reveal any peridot jewelry—often used by pretes to hide their species. There was quite a black market for wizard-bespelled peridot on eBay, as I’d learned from Quince Randolph, a frequent buyer. Oh well, I’d call Rene later and ask him to dish on Christof.

After some quick farewells, Eugenie and I made our way back across the verandah toward the transport. I had a few hours to check in to the Monteleone and take a nap before Jean returned to the city, or I could do the responsible thing and track down Alex.

“Why don’t you come to the hotel with me and hang out?” I asked her as we stepped into the transport, and I used the staff to power us back to New Orleans. “I’ll treat you to a mani/pedi on my Elder Express credit card.”

“Maybe a rain check? I have something else I need to do.” She didn’t elaborate, but closed her eyes until we materialized behind St. Louis Cathedral, made sure the coast was clear of tourists, and left the transport. “I hate that squished feeling, and I’d forgotten how cold it was here.”

We quickly bundled ourselves back into our coats and set out to see if Alex’s SUV was still parked nearby. We’d been gone almost four hours, so I didn’t have much hope.

“So what do you have planned?” Whatever it was, I hoped it didn’t involve going anywhere near Rand.

“I need to think about things for a while. I want to go home and put my feet up, enjoy the fire, and just think,” she said. “It was good for me to get away from all the worries for a few hours. I don’t feel so much like I’m drowning. But Rene agreed with you about the wizards.”

“Which part?”

“He said the wizards will—how did he put it? They’ll stick their big noses in my business and try to control everything, including my pregnancy. So I need to decide what I want and how I’m going to handle things before I get the choice taken away from me. Was he exaggerating?”

She looked at me with such a serious intensity that I knew she deserved the truth, without sugarcoating. “No, he wasn’t exaggerating. It’s why I wanted to get you out of there today before Zrakovi could barge in and start barking orders or asking questions you weren’t ready to answer.”

She nodded and we walked along silently for a few moments. “Thanks for being honest. Don’t try to protect me from the truth. You’re the only one I can really trust to be on my side. Promise me.”

That stung a little, but if I’d been straight with Eugenie from the beginning that Rand wasn’t who or what she thought, she might not be in this situation. I wasn’t letting her down again. “I promise. I’ll be straight with you, and I’ll always have your back, no matter what.”

She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and pulled me into a hug. I closed my eyes and hugged her hard, thinking how close we’d come to losing a friendship that meant a lot to both of us. I didn’t know where all this would end up, but she’d be okay. I would make sure of it.

“What do you think will happen next?” She glanced in the shop windows as we resumed our walk through the Quarter.

I thought about all the possible scenarios. “Damned if I know.” That was the God’s honest truth. “It depends on what happened with Zrakovi, so I’ve got to talk to Alex and see how he reacted.”

We turned the corner and, as expected, Alex’s SUV was nowhere to be found. “Let’s walk back toward the Monteleone and find a cab.”

The sidewalk was still slushy in the shadows where the sun hadn’t reached, and if it got as cold as predicted tonight, we’d have treacherous layers of ice to walk on.

“What did you think of Collette?” Quince Randolph notwithstanding, Eugenie had pretty good instincts about people, and she’d spent a couple of hours in Collette’s company. “Did you like her?”

Eugenie laughed. “Yeah, I did. She’s crazy about Jake, too. She said something that made me stop and think about my situation a little differently.”

Pregnancy advice from a loup-garou? “And that was?”

“She told me about being turned into a super-wolf and how her life had changed. She used to be a model and had all these plans to go to California and try to make it big-time. Now she has some of the same problems as Jake. You know, keeping everything under control.” Eugenie pointed at a cabbie parked in front of another hotel, and we sped up to make sure we got it before a sneaky tourist slipped in ahead of us.

Score one for the locals. “So, what did she say that made you think?” We settled back in the cab and gave the driver Eugenie’s address. If Alex wasn’t home, I’d get my stuff and have the cabbie drive me right back to the Quarter.

“She said meeting Jake had made her happier about her life, but sad that she couldn’t have kids. That she might even be willing to have a wolf kid if it were possible but it isn’t. Meeting someone made her feel that loss more.” Eugenie looked out the window, although somehow I didn’t think she was looking at the rundown buildings of Central City whizzing past. “I don’t care who this baby’s daddy is, DJ. I don’t care that it will probably be able to do stuff that scares me or I don’t understand. It’s still part of me. It’s still a gift.” She looked at me, and the tension wafted off her. “Is that, I don’t know, irresponsible? Crazy?”

“No.” I wasn’t surprised, and I might have reached the same conclusion if I’d been in her shoes, even knowing more about the ramifications than she did. “It won’t be easy, Eugenie. As much as you don’t like it, and neither do I, Rand’s going to have to be involved. He’s the only one who can tell us if there are special things you need to be doing.”

Or maybe not. I realized with a jolt that there might be one other person who could fill us in on elven pregnancies, and it was a wizard. Only problem was, I didn’t know where Adrian Hoffman had escaped to when the whole courthouse melee went down. Maybe he was still in custody and I could talk to him; Alex would know. Adrian knew a lot about elves. He might have learned it from books and secondhand sources, but he knew it.

I shifted my gaze to the rearview mirror and caught the cab driver watching us. He thought he was hearing juicy gossip, and would probably go home and laugh with his wife or girlfriend or buddies about the Uptown women trying to figure out what to do after getting knocked up. If he only knew the daddy was an elven chief.

“I know you’re right about Rand being involved, but he’s so unpredictable,” Eugenie said in the understatement of the century. “How do you think he’ll react?”

“Maybe he’ll be reasonable.” I didn’t believe it for a nanosecond. At best, my non-husband would react like an entitled jerk. “I think I should be there when you tell him. Maybe Alex needs to be there, too.” Maybe with a gun.