Jean nodded. “There is a lovely drinking establishment within the Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street, where I reside in the rooms of Eudora Welty when I am in Nouvelle-Orléans. I have found Le Bar du Carrousel quite an enjoyable means of passing the time of an evening.”
I bit my lip hard enough to draw a bead of salty blood on my tongue. Jean could turn on the flowery bullshit better than anyone I’d ever met, and from the stunned expression on Zrakovi’s face, this was the first time he’d experienced the brunt of it.
“Yes, but Captain Lafitte, were you—”
“When I learned that my dear friend Truman Capote had come to the city of his birth to witness its beauty in this rare snowfall, I was quite pleased to introduce him to the pleasures to be found at the Carrousel.”
Zrakovi blinked again, and Jean settled back in his chair with a smirk much like the one my former cat Sebastian got when he’d cadged part of my dinner from under my very nose.
The acting First Elder cleared his throat. “Yes, well. Mr. Capote, can you confirm that you were with Captain Lafitte during this entire period?”
“Why, of course I can.” Capote leaned forward, his high-pitched voice singsonging into his microphone. “I was telling him about how I used to boast that I was born in the Hotel Monteleone but, really, I was born in Charity Hospital…”
And on and on he went. Zrakovi’s eyebrows got lower and lower until they were in danger of meeting his mouth, bypassing his nose altogether. “Thank you, Mr. Capote,” he finally interrupted during a diatribe about the treachery of Gore Vidal that, as near as I could follow, was apropos to nothing. “You’re free to leave.”
“Not quite yet.”
Everyone sought the source of the interruption, but I’d recognize that silky, suave, evil voice anywhere. Mace Banyan, seated on the other side of Sabine and across the room from Rand, leaned forward. The leader of the Elven Synod hated Jean, and the feeling was mutual. I’d been so sidetracked with the Eugenie situation that Mace’s interference with Jean hadn’t occurred to me.
“I believe we know that, in his human life, Mr. Capote was far from stable, and that he was notorious for telling untruths. Do you deny that, sir?”
Capote reddened. “A bit of embellishment is an author’s privilege. You are a friend of that damnable Gore Vidal—”
“And from your nonsensical ramblings today, it is clear that you’re either still quite unstable or else have been coached in the art of obfuscation by the most eloquent Captain Lafitte.”
Mace was performing the classic exercise of destroying witness credibility. Unfortunately, he had plenty of fodder where Truman was concerned.
“This wizard was there,” the author sputtered, jabbing me in the side with his elbow. “She wore a salacious sweatshirt and sucked the stem off my cherry.”
I closed my eyes and tried to will myself to disappear. It didn’t work. When I opened my eyes, everyone in the room was staring at me except Sabine, who was examining her zebra-patterned nails.
“Really.” Mace turned beady brown eyes on me. “Then perhaps we should hear from our sentinel, who is duty-bound to tell the truth to her own Elders.”
Freaking elf.
CHAPTER 23
The familiar sweep of déjà vu hit me, except at least this time I didn’t have to sit alone at a table in front of an interspecies firing squad. Zrakovi sitting directly across the room from me was bad enough, and I had to drag my gaze away from Alex, standing directly behind him like a big old statue.
I took a second to collect my thoughts. “Of course, I’d be happy to answer your questions,” I told Zrakovi, and mentally prepared myself to spend the next four or five minutes lying through my teeth. I would stick with the story I’d fed Alex. It was safe because it had enough of the truth in it to keep me from tripping up.
As per my assignment, I said, I had followed Jean Lafitte on his stroll through the French Quarter. I had trailed him all the way to Jackson Square, where he looked around a few minutes and then threw a snowball at Andrew Jackson’s head before walking back up Royal Street. As I followed him along his return route toward the hotel, I became overwhelmed with what I later learned was ESS, elven survival syndrome.
Zrakovi interrupted. “And ESS is what, exactly?”
I’d hoped he either already knew, or wouldn’t ask, although I could understand why elves didn’t advertise the fact that cold weather virtually incapacitated them.
“If I get too cold, I go into spontaneous hibernation,” I said through gritted teeth, daring him to comment. I didn’t look at Rand, but I could hear him inside my head, laughing at my embarrassment like it wasn’t his fault. Until I bonded with him, I’d gone twenty-eight years without hibernating. “It’s an elf thing,” I added, just to clarify.
I took Zrakovi’s blank stare as permission to continue, but addressed the rest of my testimony to Mace Banyan.