Pirate's Alley

“But—”

 

“DJ, don’t be na?ve.” He waited for our plates to be whisked away and replaced with another course. The leg of lamb made me think of baby sheep, which made me think of baby elves. I definitely had lost my appetite. “If things get more precarious between the wizards and elves and they find out we hid something like this from them, it could be disastrous. Zrakovi needs to know.”

 

I stabbed the damned lamb with the tines of my fork. “It can be disastrous next week, then. Give Eugenie a few days to think things through.”

 

We left it at that, with him unwilling to promise anything outright and me unwilling to push him to the point of an argument. Maturity, that’s my middle name.

 

“So, what were you doing for the Elders today?” He’d seemed pumped when I talked to him before the baby bombshell hit, so maybe we could recover from an argument that didn’t have a resolution.

 

He smiled, and his whole demeanor relaxed. “Jonas Adamson had escaped back to the Beyond, so I was able to go into Old Orleans and capture him.”

 

Ah, he’d gotten to be an enforcer again, the work he really loved, not the investigative assignments he got stuck doing most days now that the borders had dropped for good.

 

“Did you get to shoot him?”

 

He grinned. “Of course.”

 

“Good. He deserved it.” I knew that sounded harsh, but the unregistered necromancer and fellow Green Congress wizard had done a lot of damage last month.

 

“I agree, and I finally got to try out that new ammo the Elders approved for enforcer use.” Alex chewed enthusiastically. “It doesn’t just enter the body like a normal bullet; it does that, plus releases a magical paralysis potion so they can’t keep running until they find a transport.”

 

“I’ve always liked a good paralysis potion.” I also liked seeing Alex this excited. When I’d met him, he’d been one of the Elders’ most lethal killers. As the prete landscape changed after Katrina, however, his job had changed as well.

 

We used to be border guards. I was the sentinel, the peacekeeper, and he was the muscle called in when talk failed. Now, we worked in a gray zone where it was never clear who could go where or do what. Alex didn’t like gray zones.

 

No gray zone for Jonas Adamson, though. He was one doomed wizard. He’d sold his necromancy skills to the leader of the water elves, had forced the undead Axeman of New Orleans to try and kill me, and tried to have Jean Lafitte do the same. Axeman had killed Rand’s mother and several humans. All for political power and a little bit of money.

 

Except it hadn’t worked. Tomorrow night, Jonas would get his judgment, along with the elves, wizards, and vampires who’d been part of the scheme.

 

“Who all is going to testify?” I sank a spoon into the chocolate pot de crème. I might not be able to eat lamb, but it takes earth-shattering stress to kill my taste for dessert. “And do we know who ended up as council members once things finally got settled?”

 

Alex shook his head, shoved his dessert across the table to me, and slid my untouched glass of port across the table toward himself. Good trade.

 

“Not sure about the council. I heard there will be three or four senior Elders, three reps from the fae, two each from the elves and vampires, and the smaller groups will have one representative. Politically, the fae are the biggest question marks. No one has a clue what side they’d come down on if the groups really start choosing sides.”

 

I pondered what I knew about the fae. They lived in a monarchy, but all I knew of their magic was that much of what the human world attributed to science was their handiwork. Time and tides, gravity and seasons. Next to the wizards, they were the largest group. They also had a reputation for being eccentric and unpredictable.

 

“As for who will be testifying…” Alex finished his port, set his glass aside, and took a sip of mine. “Pretty much everybody you’d expect, including the Axeman himself. Rene Delachaise didn’t get called; guess he was too far removed from the action. Neither did Jake. The big question mark is Jean Lafitte, and whether he’ll be recovered enough to attend. Have you heard from your buddy the pirate?”

 

Alex said Jean’s name without his usual sarcasm. Le Capitaine had earned some respect from the man he called le petit chien, not only because he’d saved me, but because he’d saved Alex’s cousin Jake, a rogue werewolf loup-garou with control issues. He’d been living in the Beyond and working for Jean for almost a month now.

 

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