Pirate's Alley (16 page)

Alex poked me in my sore ribcage.

Rand turned his head in my direction, but didn’t open his eyes for another minute or so. When he did, they were the clear, cerulean blue of a tropical sea, but not quite focused. “Hi, Dru. You look beautiful.”

Alex made a low growling sound and poked me in the ribs again.

It was enough to make Rand wake up and realize he wasn’t in friendly territory. He sat up and looked at me, then Alex, and, finally, Eugenie. He started that scary glowing thing. Whenever he was angry, his inner fire started up. Too bad his lack of consciousness hadn’t knocked that out of him.

“You would have let me die out there,” he said to Eugenie.

She raised an eyebrow as if to confirm it.

Oh, good grief. “Let’s start over. Rand, are you okay? What happened out there? Do you want something hot to drink?”

And could you quit glowing?

He wrenched his glare from Eugenie and looked at me. The anger drained quickly. “Elves don’t tolerate cold weather well. Our systems shut down to protect our vital functions.”

I stared at him. “You mean you really do hibernate?” My earlier comment had been a joke, or so I’d thought. “Like a bear?”

“Elves are not like bears. Bears are like elves. It’s a very advanced survival system.” He looked offended at being compared to Yogi and Boo-Boo.

“Right.” I wondered if I had enough elven DNA to blame for my flagging energy on the walk through the snowy French Quarter, and set that aside to ponder later. “Would it help to have something warm to drink?”

Rand smiled. “Tea would be nice, Dru. Thank you.”

“I’ll get it.” Alex sprang off the sofa so fast it was almost preternatural. Unlike vampires, however, shifters couldn’t do that speed-of-light thing. Now that Rand was awake, Alex was just trying to escape a scene that was likely to be messy and emotional. Alex hated messy and emotional.

He wouldn’t be gone long, though. As much as he hated emotional stuff, he’d want to monitor anything with political overtones.

Rand looked down for a moment, seeming to gather his thoughts. Then he climbed to his feet and approached Eugenie slowly, as one might walk toward a skittish puppy. I moved to the edge of my seat and put my left hand in the vicinity of Charlie, just in case I needed reinforcement.

But he knelt in front of her and reached his hand toward her abdomen, still moving cautiously. “May I?”

Eugenie looked at me and I nodded. Rand touching Eugenie was probably the next best thing to a prenatal exam, given the fact she couldn’t see a human doctor and wizard doctors wouldn’t know crap about elven reproduction. Thanks to Adrian, I now knew a lot more than before; I just hadn’t had a chance to tell Eugenie.

“Okay.” Her voice shook. “Don’t do anything to me.”

“I won’t. Promise.” Rand reached out gently and slid his long fingers beneath her sweater, resting his hand on her belly. He closed his eyes and sat perfectly still for what seemed like a week and a half.

“It’s a boy. I have a son.” He opened his eyes and looked up at Eugenie, and then at me, his face lit with genuine joy. I realized I’d never seen him truly happy. Scheming, angry, playful, and petulant, but not happy.

“Only…” He cocked his head at Eugenie. “You had another baby boy, one who died. It still hurts you.”

Eugenie’s eyes widened and she again looked at me. I seemed to have become the referee and interpreter here, whether I wanted the job or not. Again, I nodded. She knew in theory about Rand’s mental magic, sensing moods and reading thoughts, but she hadn’t experienced it. Before we were bonded, he’d used it on me a few times, but it no longer worked. He was being very gentle.

He also could manipulate people’s feelings, which was not acceptable in my book and I was on the lookout for it. So far, he hadn’t tried it.

“Yes, it was a long time ago.” Eugenie blinked away tears. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“No, I can tell that. You loved him.” Rand withdrew his hand and settled on the floor. “My son will have a life worthy of a prince. He will be the heir to the T
â
n chieftain title and powers as my eldest son—unless, of course, Dru and I have one within the next year or two who might rival him for power as a legitimate heir.”

He looked at me, took my gaping mouth as an assent, and nodded. Alex, who’d returned with a cup of steaming something-or-other, poked me again on his way to hand the cup to Rand.

Alex needed to find a new way to express himself; I’d have bruises.

“And of course you’ll have the very best medical care in Elfheim,” Rand continued. “Our clan midwife is excellent, I’m told.”

“Uhhh…” Eugenie gave me a panicked look.

“Rand, would it be possible for your midwife or doctor to see Eugenie either here or at your house across the street? It would be a lot less stressful for her and the baby than traveling to Elfheim.”

I was going to change my name to DJ Kissinger.

Rand frowned a moment as he considered it, then nodded. “I don’t see why not. The midwife probably won’t agree to come until the weather warms up, but that’s okay because I can tell the baby is healthy. He’s strong.”

Good news, then. “What else does Eugenie need to know, in the meantime?” I’d see if Adrian’s book-learning matched reality.

“Yeah.” Eugenie cleared her throat. “Are there things I need to be eating or doing?’

Rand considered this. “Just the usual things, I think, but I’ll find out. Plenty of rest, fresh air, no caffeine, lots of smoked meat.”

Alex coughed and cleared his throat, probably swallowing some inappropriate comment. I moved farther away from him on the sofa lest he decide to poke me again.

I pretended this was a surprise. “Smoked meat?”

“Sure. Protein, cooked on an open fire or smoked. We are the fire clan. She’ll crave it.”

Eugenie put a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God. I ate a whole package of smoked salmon this morning. I thought I was going nuts. I couldn’t get enough of it.”

Great. I saw lots of steakhouse dinners over the next … “Do elven pregnancies last nine months?”

“Oh, right. Forgot about that.” Rand pulled out his phone. “Our gestational period is seven months. I can tell you’re four weeks along, plus averaging out human and elven times…” He punched the screen a few times. “My son should be here in the middle of July, give or take a couple of weeks.”

“No,” Eugenie said, frowning. “Not
your
son. You’ve said that three times now.
Our
son. Yours, but also mine. Ours.”

He studied her with his eyes narrowed, and I sighed. I knew that look of challenge, where his eyes focused like a laser and his mouth curved up just at the edges. He was going to say something horrendous. Something that would undo all the goodwill he’d built up in the last half hour.

In my head, I yelled,
Rand, whatever you’re about to say, don’t!

He flinched, but didn’t look away from Eugenie. “Well, of course you can see him,” said Mr. Reasonable. “I’d like for Dru and myself to raise him in Elfheim, but I know she’ll want to stay here in New Orleans at least part of the time until I can convince her to quit her job and raise our own family. We can have a tutor that travels with us and can—”

Oh holy mother of God. This elf was worse than delusional; he was insane.

Alex growled, sounding an awful lot like his canine entity, a pony-size dog I called Gandalf. Eugenie jumped to her feet and kicked Rand in the kneecap, eliciting a hiss. “You and DJ are not raising my baby. Not there. Not here. Not at all.”

She turned to make a dramatic exit, but Rand snaked out a hand and caught her ankle in his grip. She twisted around, probably to wallop him, but stopped when she saw his face.

Rand’s eyes had narrowed, his frown etching deep grooves between his eyebrows. Not to mention he was glowing again. “I’ll have you restrained.” His voice was low, and vicious. I’d never heard this tone from him before.

“Don’t test me, Eugenie. I won’t allow you to harm this child.” He let go of her ankle and got to his feet, looming over her. Eugenie’s eyes had widened in fear and she scrambled away from him, pressing her back against the living room wall.

He turned from Eugenie to me. “Dru, she’s thinking she’ll kill my child before she lets me raise him, but I warn you all now. My son is elf. He will not be reared by a common human. I won’t allow her to destroy him, no matter what it takes.”

Holy shit, what was Eugenie doing? She couldn’t even
think
crap like that around Rand. I needed to give her some tips on how to shield her thoughts, although her nature was not to be secretive or reserved. I wasn’t sure she’d be able to do it.

“She doesn’t mean it.” I kept my voice even and calm. “You felt how much Eugenie loved the baby she lost, so you can tell she loves this child already. She’s just scared, Rand. You can be overbearing.” And pigheaded, and devious, and did I mention an insensitive boor?

“You’re all talking about me like I’m not here, so I’m leaving.” Eugenie ran from the room, but at least she had the sense to not go outside. She clattered down the hallway and ended her grand exit with a slammed bedroom door.

Well, that had all been just peachy.

Time for damage control. I sympathized with Alex, who was always lamenting the fact that he had to negotiate with pretes rather than just shoot them and be done with it. I could shoot something right now.

“Rand, please go home,” I said. “I guarantee you that Eugenie is not going to do anything to intentionally harm this baby.” Of that much, I was confident. “Give her time to calm down. Remember, this whole world of ours is new to her. She only found out things like wizards and elves existed a couple of weeks ago.”

I was so going to take him to task for that
common human
remark, but now wasn’t the time to push him.

“I’ll go only if you guarantee me access to her whenever I want, and assure me that if any decision is made that impacts my son, you will tell me if he can’t.”

I nodded before I realized what he’d said. “What do you mean if he can’t?” Adrian had said the child would be able to communicate, but how soon?

“If this were a full elven pregnancy, by the fourth month the child would be able to communicate mentally with both parents. Not words, of course, but just general feelings. Happy. Sad. Excited. Stressed. Since he’s half human, I don’t know. It might happen on schedule, or late, or not at all.”

“That is just … freaky.” Alex uttered his first complete sentence since dumping Rand on the floor.

Rand ignored him. “Dru, can you do a transport back to my house so I don’t have to go back out in the snow?”

“Sure. Not a permanent one, though. Eugenie would have to agree to that and now’s not the time to ask.” I retrieved my messenger bag from beside the sofa and took out my portable magic kit, which badly needed replenishing.

Taking a vial of unrefined sea salt, I spread a slapdash interlocking circle and triangle on Eugenie’s living room floor and looked up at Rand. “What’s the name of the transport in your greenhouse?”

“Rivendell,” he said with a crooked smile, and I burst out laughing. So sue me. Every once in a while, he was funny.

After he stepped in the transport, I pulled Charlie from the messenger bag and touched the tip of the staff to the transport. “Fly to Rivendell, Legolas,” I said.

Rand was smiling when he disappeared.

If only I could banish him to Mordor for the next six or seven months.

CHAPTER
13

Waking up with Alex wrapped around me like a big warm blanket should’ve been the perfect morning-after finale to a night—well, make that an early morning—of great makeup sex. As he’d noted, despite our lack of sleep, we had nervous energy to wear off and we’d almost argued, so makeup sex was appropriate.

We’d finally drifted off sometime after four a.m., boneless and satiated and brimming with endorphins. I no longer felt deprived by my first, and I hoped only, vampire bite.

But I awoke with thoughts first of Rand, which was libido-killing enough, followed by thoughts of Jean Lafitte, from whom I tried to keep my libido at a safe distance. It finally occurred to me that since elves found misery in cold weather, a historically undead pirate bent on revenge might see a snowstorm as an opportunity.

I reached for the nightstand, grabbed my phone, and punched speed-dial number four. I’m not sure if it was practical or pathetic that the Elders had dropped off my phone list and my top four programmed numbers were now Alex (cell), Eugenie (cell), Rene (cell), and Jean Lafitte (hotel suite). Maybe I’d get the pirate a cell phone for his 231st birthday. Or not.

“
Bonjour, Jolie.
Where are you?”

Lying in a nice, warm bed with a man who isn’t dead. “At Alex’s. How’d you know it was me?”

Said living man grumbled a couple of four-letter expletives in a bad French accent, turned over, and jammed a pillow over his head.

“The telephone”—Jean still stumbled over the newfangled word a bit—“has a square on it where names of people magically appear when they call me. Did the wizards invent this magical square? It is quite clever.”

The wizards could take credit for many innovations, overnight delivery service via transport from the wizards’ central supply house, for example. Caller ID was not among them, however. Many of the older wizards still thought cell phones were the work of demons. Real demons.

“Nope, that’s a human miracle. When did you get back, and what are your plans for the day?”

“I arrived shortly after sunrise so that I might avail myself of the hotel’s … what odd words do they use … ah. Breakfast buffet. One can eat as much as one wishes, for as long as one wishes, all for the same amount of money. It is a quite interesting experiment, although I do not feel it is practical for the building of wealth.”

I tried to envision Jean Lafitte lining up at the trough of a hotel all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, stuffing down muffins and omelets and pancakes. I failed. “They make up for it by charging more for the rooms. And your plans for today?”

He paused, which raised my warning flags up the mast of life’s sailing ship. “I thought I might explore the city. One does not often see
Nouvelle Orleans
under snowfall. I imagine it is quite beautiful.”