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.”
I winced. Rene wasn’t the most sensitive guy, but I adored him anyway. The idea of Eugenie getting mixed up with the Faery Prince of Winter made me physically ill, however, so I changed the subject. “How’d your date go the other night?”
He shrugged. “It was okay. I need to find a good mer woman, but I’m related to most of ’em around here. Might have to go on an ex-plo-ra-tory trip over by Lafayette this summer. Need to widen the gene pool … get it? Gene pool?”
“Don’t tell me—an old merman joke.”
“Yeah, you right.” Rene leaned over to get a better look at me. “You don’t look like a corpse anymore. Wanna go?”
“Sure.” Some days, not looking like a corpse was the best one could do, I guess.
Snow blew straight into our faces as we hunkered down and made our way to the NOMA loading dock. “Can you unlock one of these doors?” Rene had to shout to be heard over the howling wind. Christof had outdone himself tonight.
“Yeah.” I half walked and half skidded my way down the dock, and touched the edge of the staff against the lock. Might as well save my native magic in case the staff got taken away from me, although I had a feeling Charlie would always find me eventually. I felt rather than heard the dead bolt sliding open, and pulled the heavy door toward me.
Once we got inside, it took another twenty minutes of wandering the bowels of the building to find our way to a stairwell. When we found the meeting room on the second floor north gallery, the clock on my cell phone read seven p.m. One hour until showtime.
The gallery had been transformed into an art-filled conference room, which we observed from an alcove across the hallway. A couple of Blue Congress wizards were experimenting with different coverings for the conference table: a burled wood, a dark cherry, an oak. They finally settled on mahogany. Lives were at stake tonight, and these twits were debating proper veneer etiquette.
“Sometimes I hate wizards,” I muttered.
Rene grunted. “Me too, babe. I been trying to tell you.”
“There aren’t any rooms off to the back, so reckon where they’ve got Jake?”
“No idea.” He looked up and down the hallway. “This place is bigger than it looks from outside. He could be anywhere.”
“That means you’re gonna have to stage his rescue from the council room, most likely.”
Rene nodded. “I agree. I’m gonna leave you to it and find the shortest route out. Two things first.”
He grabbed my arms and turned me to face him. “We ain’t leaving you, so don’t make one of us get killed trying to find you.”
I nodded; we’d see what happened. “What’s the other thing?”
“Can you take that thing off your head? It has smiling frogs on it, babe. Ain’t nobody gonna take a woman serious when she’s got frogs smiling on her head.”
I snatched off the babushka garden flag. “It’s all I had.”
He grinned and, with another look up and down to make sure things were clear, slipped away.
Next, I had to decide how I’d make my entrance. I was pretty sure Zrakovi expected me either to not show up or come in wearing Alex’s handcuffs. If I walked in with Rand, it would show a certain defiance—or stupidity. I could walk in last, wielding the staff and making a grand entrance.
Or I could walk in and zap Mace Banyan, although the satisfaction would last only as long as my death sentence.
The big question was what Rand had up his sleeve. I was pretty sure he’d gone to Elfheim, probably to make some kind of deal with Mace. I figured he’d protect me if he could, simply because it was in his best interest.
I hoped Rene was right about me thinking on my feet because all I could do tonight was react.
My heart took a nosedive into my ankles when Zrakovi strode by with Lennox St. Simon. I bet he no longer considered me a good role model for my cousin Audrey. No doubt Zrakovi had filled his head with stories about how much like Gerry I’d turned out to be.
Funny thing, that. I’d started sometime in the last twenty-four hours to consider it an asset.
I finally spotted Alex, dressed in black and leaning against the wall near the second-floor landing. A swell of love filled my chest, making it hard to breathe. When pushed to the wall, he’d chosen me. That’s all I needed. It would give me the courage to do what I needed to in order to protect him from whatever happened.
I knew how I needed to make my entrance. I stepped out of the alcove and waved to get his attention, then motioned him toward me. My pulse thumped so hard I could feel it throughout my body.