Pirate's Alley

He studied the menu. “Red beans for one, coming up.”

 

 

I found the TV remote and hit the power button, flipping channels to the local NBC affiliate. Brian Williams was doing a news report on New Orleans’ historic winter storm. “What time is it?”

 

“Little after six,” Rene said. He tossed the menu back on the coffee table after he ordered the food and settled onto the sofa opposite the one I occupied. “I got a date at eight, so the pirate better get his ass back.”

 

Good Lord. I’d hibernated for more than four hours—plenty of time for Jean to cause all kinds of trouble. Zrakovi was going to kill me, too. I wondered if the hibernation angle would earn any sympathy, or just ridicule.

 

“Okay, let’s have it.” I set the remote aside and gave Rene my most intimidating look. He smiled. I needed to work on being more authoritative, although he probably knew me too well for it to ever work. “What is Jean doing?”

 

Rene stretched and propped his feet on the coffee table, crossed at the ankles. “I got no idea.”

 

I threw a sofa pillow at him and he batted it back to me like it was a beach ball at a rock concert. “Don’t give me that crap, Rene. You and Jean are business partners; you know all his dirty little secrets.”

 

I could’ve called a halt to their long-running smuggling operation months ago. They took everything from tobacco to antique furniture to spices in and out of Old Orleans at huge profits. But it wasn’t hurting anybody, so I looked the other way. That could change.

 

Rene busied himself putting his socks and shoes back on. He had changed out of the Saints sweatshirt while I was across the hall and had donned a red sweater that was a good color for him with his short black hair, Vandyke beard, and eyes such a dark liquid brown they almost looked black. His date clothes, I guessed.

 

“Not this time, babe. I told Jean that you and me, we’re friends, and I don’t lie to my friends without a damn good reason. So whatever he’s doing, I told him I don’t wanna know about it. That way, when you yellin’ at me and asking what he’s up to, I can say I don’t know.

 

“So, I don’t know.”

 

Damn it. Rene had never lied to me. Ever. He wasn’t lying now.

 

“Tell me how you got mixed up in this.”

 

“Jean, he called me last night and asked if I’d stay with you today if you, how’d he put it … ‘if Drusilla perhaps is unable to care for herself for a matter of hours.’ Told me to wait in the lobby, and if he didn’t show up by four, to go on home.”

 

Jean knew, damn it. He knew if he couldn’t ditch me, he could drag me around in the cold until I did that whole humiliating hibernation thing. How did he know so much about elves?

 

I closed my eyes. “Go ahead. Tell me the rest.”

 

“So I’m there in the lobby, tryin’ to figure out how big that old grandfather clock is, and here comes Jean about two fifteen, totin’ you in like Sleeping Beauty. Except for that ugly plaid coat.”

 

I looked around. I hadn’t seen my coat.

 

“Jean threw that bad boy away,” Rene said. “I woulda done it if he hadn’t.”

 

Great. Fashion criticism from a man who wore mesh tank tops nine months out of the year. Never mind it was on his commercial fishing boat.

 

“What did he tell the manager?”

 

Rene cackled again. “Bellman, security guy, manager all come rushing over, wantin’ to call an ambulance, but Jean had his story ready.”

 

Yeah, I just bet he did. “Which was?”

 

“You got some kinda fainting-goat disease that makes you fall asleep without warning. Seein’ as how he pays cash for this suite a year in advance, they didn’t question it.”

 

A knock at the door interrupted my latest wave of humiliation, and I went to sign for room service, putting it on my tab. I hated to charge my meal to the man I was going to … well, I didn’t know what I was going to do to the pirate yet, but I’d come up with something. Fainting-goat disease, my ass, although I wasn’t sure hibernating-elf disease would get any more respect.

 

I carried the tray to the coffee table and sat in the floor, sucking down red beans thick with spices and big chunks of andouille. “Anything else? What’s supposed to happen next?”

 

Rene reached over and stole a slice of my French bread. “Jean’s supposed to be back in time for me to go on my date.”

 

“Who’s the lucky girl tonight?” Rene was a bit of an aquatic-shifter playboy. As I’d learned all too well during the time we’d done the power-share and lived in each others’ brains a few days, he had a prodigious appetite for both food and sex. Fortunately for both of us, we’d become good friends and had no desire for benefits. As he often pointed out to me, he didn’t like wizards. I was an exception.

 

“Nice little river nymph that lives over in Belle Chasse,” he said. “But, you know, not too nice.”

 

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