Before the walls fell following the hurricane, I’d been a sort of border guard. Now, my job was part babysitter, part negotiator, part peacekeeper. Prete-related crimes got shunted to Alex and his Division of Domestic Terror investigators, so he’d be at all the meetings as well.
A loud pop from a few blocks east sent my skin crawling as I exited the cab, and probably accounted for Arnie peeling rubber. He raced through a yellow light on Broad and hightailed it back toward the gentrified, safer confines of Uptown.
It probably wasn’t a gunshot, or so I told myself. Early Christmas fireworks, maybe, or a backfiring car. Right.
The faux homeless guy sat up straighter and actually growled when I approached, so I got straight to the point. “Transport?”
He pushed back the brim of his hat, and I felt his buzzy shifter energy from three feet away. “ID?”
Definitely an enforcer. They all had that charming gift of gab, including Alex when he went all Neanderthal on me.
“You’d be doing me a favor if you refused to let me in.” I dug my Green Congress badge from my bag and gave it to him, noting the increased buzz when I touched his hand. Slightly different from what I got off shifters like Alex or my merman friend Rene Delachaise, so I was betting werewolf.
He glanced at the ID and handed it back. “No such luck, sentinel. You’re on the VIP list.”
Yeah, Very Insignificant Peon, at least compared to most of those who’d be here.
Just past him, I spotted the interlocking circle and triangle of a wizard-powered transport etched across several concrete steps in chalk. “Why couldn’t we just transport directly into the courthouse?” I stepped into the transport but waited for Wolfie’s answer before leaving.
“Beats me. My guess is that the wizards wanted to inconvenience everybody as much as possible, maybe hoping half the council members won’t bother to show up.” He paused. “No offense.”
“None taken.” He was probably right. The Elders refused to meet in Old Orleans because most of our magic doesn’t work in the Beyond, plus this had the added bonus of forcing the elves to travel in frigid weather, which they would hate. In my late-night research on the Elders’ secure website, searching in vain for useful information on elven reproduction, I had learned that elves were weakened by cold temperatures. Which explained not only Rand’s reluctance to venture outside these days, but maybe my own. I wasn’t anywhere near half elf, but the cold seemed to bother me more than anyone else I knew and had gotten worse, maybe due to our bonding.
The transport was open and already powered up, so I only had to say the magic words “Interspecies Council” to use it. I knelt and touched a finger to the chalk line, though, to see what kind of wizard had powered it. Definitely Red Congress; the transport was strong. Physical magic was the strength of Red Congress wizards; my specialty was ritual magic, slow but reliable, and not the least bit sexy.
Unlike any other Green Congress wizard, however, I had a righteous staff of elven origin tucked in my messenger bag. I’d picked this particular bag because Charlie (or, as the elves would insist, Mahout) would fit in it with only an inch or two of wood poking out.
After a few unpleasant seconds where it felt as if my head were being sucked through a vacuum cleaner hose, I opened my eyes to the magic-enhanced fourth floor of the Criminal District Court Building. The locals just call it “Tulane and Broad.” I’d been here once before, to beg my way out of jury duty, and knew each level of the real building consisted of one long marble hallway with courtrooms and offices on both sides.
The magical version still had the highly polished gray marble floors, but the transport sat at the edge of a lobby area not much larger than the living room of Gerry’s house. A few benches dotted the edges on three sides; on the fourth wall spread a massive set of double doors in rich mahogany. Beyond, I assumed, was the Interspecies Council’s inner sanctum.
“ID?” A beefy guy wearing a lot of black leather, including a shoulder holster, stood outside the transport. This one’s energy buzzed more shifter than were, and I wondered what he turned into. True shifters like Alex and Rene could change at will, unlike were-animals, who remained tied to the phases of the moon.
I pulled out my badge again. When he handed it back to me, I stuck it in my pocket where it would be easier to get at next time. I’d borrowed a trio of red and white sweaters from Eugenie to wear in layers, refusing to make my first appearance before the world’s most powerful pretes dressed in a thrift store coat of eye-gouging plaid. Wearing jeans—the only pants I owned now—and with my right arm in a tasteful black sling, I hoped I looked sufficiently conservative but not to the point of sucking up.