Jean gave a single nod. “Bien s?r.”
“And you’ll set up lessons for me on how to use it?”
Jean looked at me, eyebrows raised.
Oh, hell no.
My go-to-the-devil look must have been enough; Jean turned back to Capote. “My friend Rene will arrange these lessons.”
Guess laptops were the cost of an alibi in the financial realms of the historical undead, and Rene would be making a visit to an electronics store. The Geek Squad probably didn’t make house calls to Old Orleans.
Capote wandered out of the lobby and turned toward the central Quarter. I wasn’t concerned about him being recognized, and he was smart enough to keep his identity hidden. He was just one more eccentric guy in a city full of them.
What concerned me was the man who sat next to me at the table, watching me with cobalt-blue eyes that had seen much and were often far too perceptive.
He held out his hand, and after a pause, I took it. “Shall we, Drusilla?”
God help us, we shall.
CHAPTER 17
Throughout the walk across the hotel lobby and into the elevator, I tried to talk myself out of having this conversation. It wasn’t too late. We could go upstairs, Jean would ask if I really wanted the truth about his involvement in the fire, and I would tell him no. Then he could spin a few lies about his lack of involvement, both of us knowing they were lies. I could then pretend to believe him and pass the lies on to Zrakovi.
Here was the problem: I’d also have to pass the lies on to Alex, because if I told Alex the truth, he’d tell Zrakovi. Never mind that it hurt Rene as well as Jean. Never mind that it hurt me. He’d do the right thing as he saw it; he might feel badly about it, especially if it hurt me, but he’d believe he had no choice.
I admired that about Alex, his sense of moral absolutes. I also hated that about Alex, his inability to acknowledge the gray areas and shadowy corners of life.
Maybe one of the reasons I didn’t want to have this talk with Jean was that it would make me confront my feelings about Alex. Did I love him or did I just desperately want to love him? Did he love me? Even if the love was there and was real, was it enough?
One crisis at a time.
Before following Jean into the elevator, I slipped my mojo bag from around my neck and stuck it in my messenger bag. Normally, my empathic abilities were more crippling than illuminating. The more of other people’s emotions I could filter out, the better, and my daily meditation and my locket of magicked herbs and chips of gemstones helped strengthen those filters.
Tonight, I wanted a read on Jean’s emotions and I was glad that, unlike a lot of pretes whose readings were hard to interpret, I could read the auras of the historical undead just like any other human. I wasn’t sure Jean knew I could filter and absorb emotions. I had never told him and, if he knew, he’d never mentioned it. Advantage: DJ.
So as we walked side by side on our silent way down the hall to Jean’s suite, I knew he was worried. I didn’t know if he was worried about his deal with Christof being exposed, concerned about our pending conversation, or fretting about the value of gold bullion in Europe.
The lack of specifics were empathy’s greatest shortcoming. I knew what he was feeling, but not why. It required a lot of interpretation on my part. For better or worse, I was pretty good at it, and my instincts told me he was as worried about upsetting the status quo between us as I was.
“Would you like to have our talk in the rooms of Eudora Welty or in your accommodations?” Jean asked.
“Your suite.” There was nowhere in my room to sit other than the bed and an armchair, and he had a nice, neutral living room.
When we reached his suite, the edge of a white sheet of paper stuck out from beneath his door. Looking across the hall, an identical sheet stuck out of mine.
I walked over to procure my folded sheet, then followed Jean into his room. The sound of the door closing behind me had an ominous finality to it, as if momentous things would now take place within these walls. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, noted a missed call from Alex, and turned off the ringer.
Jean, meanwhile, had unfolded his paper. “The Interspecies Council will meet once again, on the morrow,” he said. “Where is this meeting place?”
I opened my sheet. I was not a voting member of the council, but as sentinel I’d always be dragged into their meetings because chances were good that anything they had to discuss would somehow involve me. The announcement, handwritten in a florid script, said the meeting would take place at ten a.m. tomorrow morning on the third floor of Hebert Hall on the Tulane campus, which already had closed for the holidays.