Pirate's Alley (20 page)

Marcus patted me on the shoulder, edging past me and standing next to Etienne’s body double. “Kirk looks so much like Etienne, doesn’t he?”

Damn it, I had been played like the busker’s broken guitar.

My phone buzzed again, and I walked away in disgust. W. ZRAKOVI showed up on caller ID.

“L’Amour Sauvage is going to be a total loss, but at least no one’s hurt,” I said, not bothering with a greeting. “We might need a Blue Congress team, but it’s too early to tell.”

“Damn.” Zrakovi sounded as annoyed as I felt. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself be distracted while Etienne pranced back to Vampyre unchallenged. “Where is Lafitte?”

Good question. I pivoted around and stepped away from the onlookers so I could see more people. Heat from the fire baked one side of my face, while the other was wet with snow and already half frozen now that I’d moved away from the crowd.

“He’s been at the hotel,” I hedged.

I hadn’t intended to lie for him, but I also couldn’t cast blame his way without talking to him. Sending his undead pirates to annoy Etienne wasn’t illegal, and there was some chance the fire started innocently. Not much chance, but some.

“The vampires think it could have been a problem with the heating unit,” I added. A long silence on the other end of the call. “You know, overworked because of the cold snap.”

Finally, Zrakovi asked, “Then why might we need a cleanup team?”

God, I was getting in deep snow here. “There also might have been some undead pirates in the club just before the fire started.” I tried to make my voice sound matter-of-fact and unconcerned. “There’s no way to know if one of them had anything to do with the fire, of course, but a Blue Congress team should be on-site, just in case they dropped a rare doubloon or something.”

“Undead pirates. Oh no, they’d
never
start a fire.” Was it my imagination, or was Zrakovi’s voice more than a tad sarcastic?

“Well, we don’t know yet.” I dug my hole deeper.

“And you say Lafitte was with you?”

Sneaky Elder. “No, I said he was at the hotel. But I did hear about the fire on the TV in his suite, in fact.”

Where I’d been sitting alone, eating andouille.

Since when did I start lying to the Elders to cover for Jean Lafitte? Now, apparently.

“Yes, well, I’ll get a Blue Congress team on its way. And DJ…” Zrakovi paused, and I held my breath, praying I wouldn’t have to lie to him again. “I know you owe Lafitte your life, and that the two of you have gotten … close.”

I thought
close
might be stretching it. Especially after the hibernation incident.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t do my job,” I said, wondering if that, too, had become a lie.

“I hope so, because we need you.”

He couldn’t have made me feel any more guilt-riddled had he trotted out the inevitable comparison to my father.

“I wouldn’t want you to make some of the same mistakes that Gerry made.”

I sighed. “Definitely not, sir.”

“Well, we need to get together after the Interspecies Council meeting to talk about your friend Eugenia and the child.”

I didn’t correct him on Eugenie’s name. The fact that he didn’t know it said a lot. “I look forward to it.”

Lies, lies, and more lies.

There was no more I could do here. The fire seemed to be under control and hadn’t spread to the adjacent buildings. Etienne was gone, at least for the time being. I’d go back to the hotel, order a bottle of wine, and figure out what to do. Only then would I call Alex. Lying to Zrakovi was one thing; lying to Alex—not just neglecting to mention something but outright lying—was another matter.

By the time I found the busker and gave him all the cash I had on me to help pay for a new guitar, the snow fell harder and was piling up fast. My teeth chattered again before I cleared the next block, and the entire lower half of my body was as wet as my boots since I’d done the street dive with the bearded busker.

A block from the hotel, I got the same surreal sensation that had overcome me just before the hibernation, and willed myself to move faster. My feet slipped and slid, but I didn’t slow down. If I fell and broke my neck it would solve a lot of problems.

I crossed over to Royal Street and saw the lights of the hotel shining through the heavy snow like a homing beacon. I walked toward them and almost fell when I pushed open the door and entered the lobby. The doorman gave me a fearful look, but I waved at him. No hibernating bears or fainting goats here.

To my left shone the lights of the Carousel Bar, and I could think of nothing that might warm me up faster than an Irish coffee, or maybe just the Irish without the coffee. As always, the bar pulled me in two directions. It was funky and fun and clever. It also was bizarre and disconcerting. The polished wooden bar in the center was round, with brightly colored stools ringing it on the outside, and a circular, mirrored display of liquor bottles on the inside. The whole thing revolved slowly so that you’d make a full rotation every half hour or so.

Business was brisk; the tourists still in the city had wisely decided to stay inside instead of roaming the French Quarter. But I spotted a couple leaving and somehow propelled my frozen, numb feet to hurry and claim a stool.

“What’s the warmest thing you have?” I asked the dark-suited bartender.

He laughed. “Martini or cocktail?”

Martinis were too small. “Cocktail. Big one.”

“Well, you’re lookin’ kinda pale. We got one called the Corpse Reviver—gin, Cointreau, absinthe, Lillet Blanc.”

Ironic. Too ironic. “Maybe something sweet.” Okay, I’m a wimp.

He studied me, as if my bedraggled appearance might give him the perfect cocktail suggestion. “The French Double-O-Seven: Grey Goose, pomegranate liqueur, and champagne.”

“Now you’re talking.” Because when I saw the Frenchman, I was going all James Bond on his ass.

By the time my drink arrived, the bar had made a quarter turn. I paid the twelve bucks plus tip with my own credit card, since it seemed wrong to make Zrakovi pay for the drink I was consuming to help me forget how much I’d lied to him. Sweet heat filled my mouth and burned its way down my happy throat, settling into my stomach, and I found myself wishing for a bag of smoked beef jerky.

Freakin’ elves.

As the bar turned, I studied the changing view of patrons sitting at the tables that were scattered around the edges. There seemed to be an even mix of tourists and business people. Maybe a few locals who’d come to the Quarter to see the snow and decided to warm up at the bar.

I glanced up at the glittering mirrored display of alcohol in the center of the bar and did a double take. Had that been Truman Capote?

I swiveled and scanned the tables looking for him and, instead, found myself capturing the gaze of a long-haired man with a vaguely familiar pair of green eyes. I couldn’t see who was with him because of a couple of businessmen who’d sat at a table between my perch and his, and I couldn’t quite place him. His eyes looked sort of like those of Christof, the dark-haired faery who’d been at Jean’s house in Barataria, but this guy had shoulder-length brown hair with a lot of red highlights.

He smiled at me and leaned over to say something to a companion. Finally, the businessmen moved to seats at the bar and left me with an unimpeded view. The green-eyed man might not have been Christof the faery, but his companions I recognized.

Truman Capote, a card-carrying member of the historical undead, and his equally undead companion.

I’d found Jean Lafitte.

CHAPTER
16

Call me suspicious, but I had no doubt Truman Capote’s only purpose in being at the Carousel Bar with Jean Lafitte was to serve as his alibi. Probably the other guy, too.

“Well, if it isn’t Cat Woman,” Capote drawled.

“You remember me, then.” Good. Not having to explain who I was made things simpler.

Capote had been part of the William Faulkner dustup after Katrina. A bunch of historically undead New Orleans authors had come across the border and broken into Faulkner House Books near Jackson Square, where the man himself had lived in his human life for a while. They proceeded to get drunk until I’d done a nifty bit of magic, turned them all into cats, rounded them up, and sent them back to the Beyond in boxes. As I recalled, Capote had turned into an oversize Maine coon.

“I’m not likely to forget such an experience.” He took off his dark glasses and signaled the waiter for another drink. The historically undead Capote was middle-aged and cocky, his neck draped in a pastel-striped scarf whose purples and pinks looked unsettling next to his somber black suit and fedora.

I was ignoring Jean Lafitte and his knowing little smile, so I held out a hand to the auburn-haired guy. “DJ Jaco. You look awfully familiar. Have we met?”

“We have.” He took my hand and pressed it to his lips in an old-world, courtly way that reminded me of the pirate I was ignoring. “I am Christof, the Faery Prince of Winter and, I hope, next in line to the monarchy. We’ve met twice, I believe.”

“But…” The eyes were the same, green and slightly almond-shaped. But he’d had dark hair slicked back at the council meeting and tousled at Jean’s—and not nearly this long. His title finally sank in. “You’re the Winter Prince? And why do you look different?”

“Perhaps you should give Drusilla a demonstration, Christof.” Jean stared at me a moment and suppressed a broad smile. What was that about?

“Of course. Excuse me for a moment.” The Prince of Winter got up and made his way out of the bar, disappearing into the lobby. I swear, I needed a vacation. Life had grown too bizarre.

The waiter brought a fizzy drink and set it in front of Capote, who took his little plastic spear, stabbed a cherry, and held it out to me. “Suck it. Let’s see those tongue skills,” he said.

I choked on my French Double-O-Seven. “I beg your pardon?”

Jean’s smile widened into a full-out grin. “One should not wear such clothing if one does not wish to receive such invitations, my pet.”

Huh? I looked down at my sweatshirt for the first time. I’d grabbed the first thing I saw in the gift shop and hadn’t even pulled the price tags off. A line of gold crawfish claws danced across the front, with lines of enormous purple type above and below that said “
SUCK DAT HEAD
” and “
PINCH DAT TAIL
.”

Gah. “It’s talking about crawfish, not sex. If either of you had been alive in the last twenty years, you’d know that.” Damn it. This was almost as humiliating as hibernating in public. I jerked the sweatshirt over my head and tossed it on the floor. The one beneath it was identical, so I pulled it off as well. I was inside now; my black sweater would be fine.

“If someone hadn’t thrown my coat away and then set a fire I had to run outside to investigate, I wouldn’t have been forced to wear suggestive sweatshirts,” I hissed at Jean.

“Ah, yes, this awakens my memory.” He leaned over and reached beneath the table, bringing out a large plastic bag. “Your eyes will look like jewels wearing this,
Jolie
.”

Bribes would get him nowhere, but I opened the bag anyway. Holy crap. I pulled out a coat of buttery soft lambskin dyed to a rich teal. I surreptitiously held it up so I could see the size was a six and should fit. It was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t possibly take it. If he thought giving me a … I glanced at the sales receipt that had fallen out on the table, and almost choked. If he thought giving me a $4,000 coat would get him off the hook for today’s behavior he was not only dead but dead wrong.

“This is beautiful, but I can’t take it, Jean.”

“Bah. I chose it for you, so you must have it.” He looked over my shoulder. “And here is Christof.”

I turned and stared. The green eyes still twinkled with good humor; the stylish dark trousers and white shirt were the same. But nothing else. His face had lengthened, cheekbones grown more pronounced, and his hair was not only stylishly short but a sun-streaked blond. “You’re like a shapeshifter, only you change human appearance?”

Christof sat down and sipped from the glass of wine he’d left behind. “Not a bad analogy, Sentinel Jaco. May I call you DJ?”

That would be a welcome relief, since Jean refused to use my “alphabet letters” and Rand insisted on calling me Dru. “Of course. Is this an ability unique to the Winter Prince or to all of the fae? Can you change gender as well?”

“Every one of us who is of pure faery blood can change our appearance at will,” he said. “Of mixed-species fae, it varies. But no, we do not possess the ability to change genders, although that would be … illuminating. Perhaps then I would understand women.”

Somehow, I doubted it. I really had to find time between fires and babies and political crises to do my faery research. “You and Jean and Mr. Capote are friends?”

“Why, yes, indeed.” Christof looked at both of his companions with a bemused expression, and something that had been niggling at the back of my mind finally came to the fore. Gerry had once told me that faeries couldn’t lie, but were masters of obfuscation.

I needed to be very specific and very literal. “How long have you been friends?”

Christof cocked his head and fixed his bright gaze on me. It was probably my lack of sweatshirts, but the temperature around us seemed to drop. “How does one measure friendship in such mundane things as hours or days or years?”

Exactly what I thought. “Have you known Mr. Capote more than six hours?”

It wasn’t my imagination; the room grew colder. People at the next table looked around for the waiter and tugged on their coats. “No,” Christof said.

“Did you know I was born here at the Monteleone?” Capote asked, pulling his suit coat more snugly around him. “Well, that’s what I always claimed back in the day.”

I’d be polite, but my radar wasn’t getting deflected that easily. “I’d heard that, actually. So it wasn’t true?”

“No,” Capote said, laughing. “I was born down the street at Charity Hospital, or where Charity was before Hurricane Katrina destroyed it. Fine old hospital.” He sipped his cocktail and stared into the ether of time. “My mother lived here while she was pregnant with me, though, and a member of the hotel staff drove her to the hospital when labor started.”