Pirate's Alley (34 page)

“I keep my job. You keep your job, with basically a slap on the wrist for not revealing the true nature of your bond with Rand. Rand keeps his seat on the council.”

It was my turn to slump back in my seat. That all sounded good. Too good. “Drop the other shoe. In return for all this, what is it that Zrakovi wants?”

“It isn’t what Zrakovi wants, but what Mace has demanded in exchange for not tearing the whole goddamned Interspecies Council apart.”

I raised an eyebrow in an unspoken
what
.

“Mace wants Eugenie.”

The other shoe dropped right on my best friend’s head. If Mace had control of Eugenie, and by extension Rand’s unborn son, he controlled Rand. No doubt about it. He’d found the only thing that would bring Rand to heel. Then, once the baby arrived, he’d kill Eugenie. She’d have no further use to him and her potential to bring charges against him would pose a threat.

My rage level had been tamped down for a while, but it took only seconds for it to boil again. “And if we refuse to turn Eugenie over to Mace?”

Alex closed his eyes. “I’m to take you into custody and deliver you to the hearing tonight, pending charges of conspiracy to manipulate the Interspecies Council. If I don’t go along with it, we’ll both be charged.”

Damn it. A week ago, I might have begged for forgiveness and tried to figure out how I could make things right with Zrakovi. A week ago, I’d have sworn I was loyal to the wizards, to my own people.

But this was now, and I felt pure, ice-cold fury.

“So, how do we do this? Do you put me in handcuffs?”

Alex took his seat again and twisted the plastic water bottle between his fingers. “I haven’t agreed to anything. DJ, I don’t know what to do.”

His misery and conflict and indecision wafted over to me and settled on my shoulders like a mountain of lead. “Will Adrian’s testimony make any difference at all? I mean, it proves Mace is manipulating Zrakovi.”

“Maybe. It’s our only hope. Who’s going to deliver it, though? Who would the council believe wasn’t biased in some way? Or wouldn’t face more charges of harboring a fugitive?”

Oh boy. Here was the part I didn’t want to tell him. “The Faery Prince of Winter, Christof, has agreed to present the testimony and verify its authenticity.”

If we weren’t all on the way to hell in one big handbasket, I’d have laughed at Alex’s expression.

“Well, that’s…” He paused as if searching for the right word. “Interesting.”

I laughed. “Yeah, but kind of brilliant. Who’s going to argue with him and risk pissing off the potential future fae monarch?”

There was one more loose cannon we needed to talk about. “What about Rand?”

Alex shrugged. “There’s a subpoena out for him, too, but we haven’t found him yet. Zrakovi is working with Mace Banyan to see if he’s in Elfheim.”

Mace Banyan might not like what he found. I had a feeling everyone sold Quince Randolph short. I had once, when we bonded. Now I knew better.

“Would you get in more trouble if you weren’t able to find me before the council meeting?” The real question is whether he would lie and say he hadn’t been able to reach me.

Alex had been staring out the window, but slowly turned to look at me. “Come to think of it, I don’t think I have been able to find you. You never answered your phone, and I’ve left messages, you careless woman.” He paused. “Go to Old Orleans so you can’t be tracked, just for now. If you don’t show up at the meeting and Mace gets exposed, everything might settle down. Give me time to do some damage control.”

My heart almost broke at that; it felt swollen and heavy in my chest. Alex was going to lie for me. He was going to protect me from the people who should be my allies, but weren’t. Neither of us said it, but it could very well make things bad for him.

“I love you.” I’d never thought the first time I said those words to him I’d be crying.

“Me too.” He smiled to make up for those words guys had such trouble saying, for some reason. “Do you know where Eugenie is?”

I nodded. “Hiding out at the Monteleone, for now. I might have Jean take her to Old Barataria.”

“Good move.” We stood looking at each other, unwilling to take that next step. “You probably shouldn’t use the transport in the living room.” His voice cracked.

“I’ll make a new one.” I kissed him like it was the last time, my own tears tasting of salt and bitterness, my arms trying to memorize the feel of him.

“It’s just for a few hours, until the meeting is over,” he said. “Once Mace is exposed, Zrakovi will listen to reason. We might even be able to get your uncle to side with us.”

I hoped he was right.

“Destroy the new transport as soon as I’m gone,” I told him, pulling a vial of salt out of my bag and forming a slapdash interlocking circle and triangle on his dining room floor.

I stepped inside and powered it with the staff. “Rivendell,” I whispered, trying to smile at Alex as I felt myself sucked into the transport. Rand wasn’t home, so it was my perfect base of operations.

First, I called Rene. “Change of plans,” I told him, explaining what had happened.

He whistled. “Babe, you are in some shit. You wanna come out to Plaquemines and stay with me till the meeting is over?”

I’d been thinking about it on the way to Rand’s and decided I wasn’t letting Alex throw himself on Zrakovi’s mercy by showing up without me as his prisoner. “No, I’m going to that meeting. It’s almost five. Can you pick me up a block behind Rand’s and we can go on to the park to set up the transport?”

“Sure thing. Give me fifteen minutes. I’m still at the pirate’s suite. Need me to bring anything?”

I thought a second. “Get Eugenie out of there—see if Jean will take her to Barataria to keep her safe. Is Adrian still there? If so, see if he’ll come with you to the museum. He can stay hidden, but if something happens to me, he can make the transport and get Jake out.”

Rene’s voice grew muffled as he talked to whoever was still in the Monteleone suite. “He’ll do it. And, DJ. Ain’t just gonna be Jake we’re gettin’ out.” He spoke a few more muffled words, then, “We’re not leaving you there if things go bad.”

I let the tears fall as I ended the call and stuffed the phone back in my pocket. But only for a minute. It had never occurred to me that I might actually be forced to leave for real. When I’d been faced with the loup-garou crisis, Jean had offered me a home in Barataria, where I’d be safe from the wizards and not endanger those around me.

The thought of leaving my house, my job, and, most of all, Alex—those had been the things that made me most desperate. That, and protecting Jake, had been what drove me to agree to Rand’s bonding proposal in the first place.

Rand had done the bonding out of greed and the desire for power. I’d done it out of love—not for him, but for my life and the people in it.

I laughed a little as I picked out another garden-flag babushka scarf for my walk to meet Rene. My house across the street was gone. Within a few hours, my job might be gone. Maybe even my freedom. Alex would do what he could, but I wouldn’t let him throw everything away to save me if it came down to it.

Then my wallow in self-pity took a hard veer to the left. I wasn’t a run-of-the-mill wizard and I needed to stop thinking of myself that way. The Elders could strip away my wizard’s certification. They might even be able to strip away my limited physical magic. But I doubted anyone in Edinburgh’s hallowed wizarding halls had a clue how to get rid of my elven magic. I had skills they didn’t know about, as well as one righteous elven staff.

It made me stronger, and it made me a bigger target.

I rambled around Rand’s greenhouse and pinched off a few herbs, just in case I needed to make a potion on the fly. Then I slipped out the back door and walked as fast as I could back toward Tchoupitoulas Street and the river. I saw Rene’s black pickup waiting and wasted no time climbing inside.

“You okay, babe?” He reached across the front seat and pulled me into a hug.

“Rene, if you don’t stop being nice to me I’m going to cry.”

“Damn, don’t want that.” He pulled carefully onto the road, skidding into an icy U-turn, and drove toward the Quarter. “So shut up and fasten your seat belt, witch.”

I laughed and watched the white world glide slowly by as the snow crunched under the tires of his heavy truck.

“So what’s the next step?” Rene asked. “The pirate took Eugenie to his house, then he’s gonna meet us at the council meeting. What are you gonna do?”

“Get Jake’s escape hatch set up,” I said. “And then get myself arrested by one surprised enforcer.”

CHAPTER
30

The entrance to City Park was barricaded, with a sign announcing that Celebration in the Oaks was canceled this evening due to weather. About half of the sign was already covered in snow. The closure made our job both easier and harder. Easier because there were no humans around; harder because there were no humans around. Rene and I were the only things moving.

It was already growing dark, so Rene killed his headlights and eased the truck past the barricade. Not that there was anyone to see us.

We drove into a darkened Disneyscape. Wires stretched above the narrow drive and through the mature live oaks on either side of us. With the flip of a switch, all those lights would become twinkling animals and holiday scenes and fairy trees—or at least as humans might imagine light-filled fairy trees. I had no idea if the Monarchy of Faery had trees, but since some of their royalty had nature magic, I assumed so.

At the end of the long front drive, we reached the wide, neoclassical marble building that housed NOMA. Rene circled behind it. “How far you wanna go?”

“Not far. You need to be able to get Jake there fast.”

Rene stopped beneath a grove of trees with a small clearing tucked behind it. “This’ll work, but first we need to talk.”

“Rene, I’m talked out.”

“Good, then you can shut up and listen. I wasn’t kidding earlier. You need to get the hell out of here, DJ, at least until things settle down. Zrakovi is setting you up; I talked to my papa this afternoon. Don’t worry—I didn’t tell him nothing. But he said I should warn you. Zrakovi thinks … let me see, how did Papa say it…”

Rene broke into a heavy South Louisiana accent that would’ve made me giggle if the words hadn’t scared me so badly. “You tell dat wizard friend’a yours dat Zrakovi’s gunnin for her, him. He thinks if he makes an example of dat Gerry St. Simon’s girl, it’ll show he’s a hardass.”

I looked out at the snow, or at least what I could see of it in the near darkness. “So if he gets rid of me, he thinks nobody will have the guts to challenge his authority?”

“Somethin’ like that. The way I figure it, you scare the shit out of him because of that elf stuff you can do. Plus he thinks he’ll get Eugenie in the process, sounds like.”

“Right.” Because both Eugenie and I were just so scary.

“I’m serious, DJ. You can do some shit, you think on your feet, and you’re smart. And me and Jean and Christof, we talked about it this afternoon. We ain’t leaving you there tonight. So my question to you is: Are you gonna come with us, or are we gonna have to force you?”

I laughed at the notion of Alex arresting me on one side and my posse of misfits rescuing me on the other. “Jean just wants to add a wizard to his collection of followers.”

He grinned, his teeth shining white in the dark truck cab. “Nope. He’s got Adrian. And I think your old wizard buddy is finally growing a pair.”

I tried to imagine what my life outside New Orleans, outside the only world I knew, might look like. A world where I spent quality time with Adrian Hoffman, vampire at large. I couldn’t quite do it.

“Let’s just see what happens in the council meeting. We have a wild card unaccounted for. Rand is missing; my guess is that he’s gone after Mace Banyan. Calling Rand a wild card is like calling … well, something.” I couldn’t think of a suitably outrageous analogy.

Rene pulled up the hood of his jacket and opened the truck door. “Fill me in while we work. Is this transport gonna get buried by the snow?”

“Yeah, but it won’t matter. We just need to use landmarks as corners, like this bush.” I walked off an irregular interlocking circle and triangle, spreading the salt. It melted the snow beneath it, but quickly filled back in. I should’ve asked Rene to bring charcoal.

When I completed the figure, I placed the beads of mercury at the corner landmarks and touched Charlie to the clearest edge. A ripple of fire in the shape of the transport raced around the clearing, leaving a clearly marked edge.

“Did you know it would do that?” Rene asked.

“Just a guess. Snow transports are a newly acquired skill.”

“As long as we remember this tree is at the head of the triangle, we’re golden.” Rene pulled the white scarf from around his neck and tied it around the tree, high enough to allow for another foot of snow.

Okay, what’s next? “Let’s transport inside and take a look at the layout before the council arrives. You gonna leave your truck back here?”

“Yeah, I’ll move it farther under the trees, but we might need it. You never know.”

That was the God’s honest truth.

“I need to warm up first.” My limbs had gotten that bad old feeling that signaled impending hibernation.

“Come on.” Rene opened the door for me, then hopped in the driver’s seat and turned on the heater full blast.

“How long is Christof going to keep this cold business going? I thought he was about to get rid of it.”

Rene laughed. “He was gonna stop it tonight after the meeting until he met Eugenie. Now, he’s so pissed off at the elves he says he might let it snow until the Fourth of July. Got a soft spot for babies, him.”

I pulled my babushka flag aside far enough to see if Rene was joking. I didn’t think he was. “Christof is … interesting.” That word kept popping up in relation to the faery.

“Ain’t that right.” Rene cracked his window; shifters and elves did not share the same opinion of cold, even aquatic shifters like the mers. “He asked questions about her when you guys came to Barataria couple of days ago. He was glad to see her again, even if she is knocked up with an elf.”