He might have gained a little respect for Jean, but Alex would never like the man. I, however, liked him a lot. Probably too much for my own good.
“I haven’t heard from Jean since the week after he was killed.” Make that the week after I killed him, and part of my soul died alongside him. I’d never before used my magic to hurt anyone I cared for, and I would never forgive the people who’d forced me to do it. “He was recovering pretty fast.” And was mad as hell, I didn’t add. “I’m pretty sure he’ll be there tomorrow; he’ll want to have his say.”
Alex was quiet for a few moments, and I thought we’d moved past the subject of Jean Lafitte. Until he said, “Well, unfortunately, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to hear his side of it.”
I frowned at him and pushed his half-eaten pot de crème aside. Even I had reached my chocolate limit. “Why is that?”
“I talked to Zrakovi this afternoon after I turned Jonas in,” Alex said, giving me an undecipherable look. “He’s putting me back on sentinel duty for the next few weeks while you handle a special assignment.”
Special assignment had an ominous ring to it. I reached for my water glass, knocking my spoon off the table. It hit the floor with a clatter, even in the noisy restaurant. A waiter was there to whisk it away so quickly I wondered if he were a vampire. Probably not, but one could never be sure these days.
“What kind of special assignment? And why am I hearing it from you instead of Zrakovi?” Elder Z was my boss, not Alex, however Mr. Bossy liked to think otherwise.
Alex pulled out his wallet and laid a credit card on the table. He was picking up the tab without a negotiation, and I let him. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say.
“Zrakovi’s going to talk to you tomorrow after the hearing, but I’m all about the not-keeping-secrets-from-each-other thing.”
Uh-huh. More like, he thought this was such a juicy piece of news he wanted the pleasure of telling me himself, although he didn’t look exactly happy about it.
“Okay, spill it. What’s my special assignment?”
“You’re going to be babysitting Jean Lafitte and making sure he doesn’t try to take revenge on anyone for what happened last month.”
Alex gave me a grim smile and held his glass of port up in salute as the pot de crème congealed into a lump in my stomach. “Good luck with that, Jolie.”
CHAPTER 4
I sat in Arnie’s cab off the corner of Tulane Avenue and Broad Street and tried to figure a way to avoid going into the massive Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Building. Fifty years ago, the behemoth of stone and marble had been a marvel of lavish classical architecture. Today, it was a marvel that anyone survived a visit to it.
The weather sucked, the neighborhood reeked of danger, and the fourth floor was probably already full of pretes behaving badly.
Even before the post-Katrina flooding submerged the first two floors of the courthouse in grimy water, wiping out case files and evidence, the building had suffered from dwindling city budgets, ongoing political corruption, and a rapidly deteriorating, gang-riddled environment.
Criminals were everywhere, so of course it made the perfect spot for the first meeting of the Interspecies Council, held after hours to accommodate the vampires. According to Alex (my hotline to the Elders), a horde of Blue Congress wizards, skilled in creation, re-creation, and illusion, had reconfigured the seldom-used fourth floor. The windowless area had been transformed into a meeting space now reachable only via a single transport drawn in chalk on the building’s front steps.
A shabbily dressed man lounged near the spot where the transport was supposed to be, but I saw bright, sharp eyes beneath the brim of the worn hat tilted over his forehead. Enforcer.
“Miss DJ.” Arnie glanced in his rearview mirror, eyes widened. “You sure you want to be gettin’ out here? It’s almost eight o’clock. Courthouse been closed awhile, and there’s no reason for a woman to be hangin’ around Tulane and Broad after dark. Nosiree.”
Unspoken was the “and I’m not coming back for you when you get your ass in trouble” message.
“It’ll be fine. That’s my friend up there on the steps.” The probable werewolf posing as a vagrant. Alex had been required to make an early appearance to help set up security; thus, my trip with Arnie.
“Ohh-kay, Miss DJ. You be careful, hear?”
Yeah, as careful as I could be heading into a roomful of vipers. As sentinel of this region, I’d be part of every council meeting in a non-voting capacity. New Orleans had become the grand social experiment of the prete world. If things worked out here with our open borders to the Beyond, the reasoning went, other cities might drop their borders as well.