“And a grandfather,” Shauna said.
A goofy smile lit Lucky’s face. He looked at his erstwhile enemy again and pursed his lips to make the smile less obvious. “But how you keep my girl not crazy?”
Clermont said, “Blood-kin, we call dem. Gabe make her blood-kin. She live mebe two hundred years. She have good long life, here wid my son and wid us, and in town wid you and yours.” He held out his hand and said, “Dat a good enough start for me. Dat good start for you?”
Lucky Landry slapped his hand into Clermont’s and the men shook. “Dat a start. But first ting is, dem two been living in sin. Dey gets marry tonight.”
“Done, my brother. How about now and here? Brother Michael can marry dem in eyes of de church and God and dem get license later what for de state.”
Lucky started to speak and stopped, his mouth open. After a long pause he said, “My wife kill me she not here. . Shauna’s sisters too. No. Dem two gets marry tomorrow night, in town at church. Yes?”
“I say yes,” Clermont said, the men’s hands still clasped.
“Don’t I get a say?” Shauna demanded.
“No!” both men stated. And everyone on the porch laughed.
*
Twenty-four hours later, the first vampire-witch marriage in Bayou Oiseau took place in the yard of the Catholic church. A second ceremony followed in the churchyard of the Pentecostal Holiness, One God, King James Church. In both ceremonies, Shauna was wearing her mother’s wedding dress, a creamy satin, full-skirted, hooped gown with puffy sleeves. With it she wore a hat shaped a bit like a satin cowboy hat with a poof of veil on top. She looked stunning, glowing with happiness. Gabe wore a black tuxedo, his long hair in braids and love in his eyes. Just before the start of the first ceremony, he met his bride in the back of church with two dozen roses to carry down the aisle. As he gave them to her he said, “Dese here roses are twelve red and twelve white. Together dem symbol of union between vampire and witch. Every single rose I done clip off its thorn, to symbolize the way I protect you from all harm. Dis for my whole un-dead life.” There wasn’t a dry eye in the church yard.
To finish the night off properly, Leo Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the Southeast, gave his blessing over my cell phone, in the yard of the Pentecostal church. Everyone in Bayou Oiseau heard it, and heard his invitation to Clermont to come to New Orleans and parley as equals once the baby was born.
Clermont looked at me when the phone call was done and said, “You do dis thing? Set up dis parley?”
I shrugged, smiled, and walked away. What I’d done is tell Leo he was an idiot and to get off his butt and fix this stupid situation with Clermont and the Doucette Clan or I would. What the heck. It seemed to work.
*
Once all the official stuff was done, the entire town turned out to eat, drink, and dance the night away. Not that it was perfect. There was a fistfight between a small group of humans and witches against an even smaller group of vampires, but the clan leaders broke it up and made an example of them to the rest. It wasn’t deadly but it wasn’t pretty either. There was another moment of tension when a vampire asked a human woman to dance, but that too got smoothed over, and I didn’t ask how. Most vamps can dance like nobody’s business, and once the human women saw that vamps were willing partners, there wasn’t an empty dance floor for the rest of the party.
I pulled Derek onto the dance floor and kept him there for two numbers. That man can dance!
It was a good night, a better party, with fantastic food and energetic dancing. A great solution to a problem that had been simmering in the Louisiana backwaters for decades. As the locals might say, “Dem coonass clans Doucette and Landry? Dem family now, yeah dey is.” Heck of a lot better than any old Romeo and Juliet–style ending.
And best of all? I got paid.
Read on for a special preview of Death’s Rival,
the next Jane Yellowrock novel,
coming in October 2012 from Roc.
Chapter One
I’m Gonna Need Some Stitches
“Vamps don’t get sick,” I said. “They may go nuts at the least provocation, but they don’t get sick.” Air currents buffeted the small jet; I held on to the phone and the seat arm with white-knuckled grips. Inside me, Beast was purring, enjoying the ride entirely too much for a creature who used to be afraid of flying.
Static fuzzed the connection, but I made out the words “—two of these did. And maybe the third one, don’t know.” If Reach didn’t know something, it was better hidden than the identity of Kennedy’s killer—assuming that there really was a coven of blood-witches on the grassy knoll. Conspiracy theorists have a consensus on that, but there never was any evidence to back it up. “I’m still searching,” Reach said, “but it looks like the masters of the city of Sedona and Seattle are still showing signs of malaise. Boston’s MOC has vanished, and rumor has it the suckhead’s dead.”
Malaise, I thought, unamused, reading the description of their symptoms. It was a heck of a lot more than malaise. In spite of what I’d said, the vampires were sick—maybe dying. “Give me details.”