Finally realizing I was being teased, I tossed another onion ring into my mouth and said as I crunched, “Buried her out back, I’m guessing? Under a full moon? Chants and drums?”
“Under a tree,” the man said, laughing. “Marlene done fount her a nice stone from de funeral home. It say, ‘Here lay fool woman done been messin’ wid my man.’ ” He dried off a hand and held it over the bar. “Antoine.”
“Jane,” I said, wiping grease off my fingers.
“Antoine never forgets a face or a customer,” Rick said. “And he knows everything there is to know about this town.”
“Handy,” I said. I took his hand. It was big, long fingered, and smooth, and when I gripped it, the world seemed to slow down. Like a big bike after a long ride, energies pumping hotly, ready to roll, but puttering down to nearly nothing. Silence when the motor stops, silence almost as loud as the engine, thrumming and cavernous. Antoine stared at me. I stared at him.
His palm tingled with power, prickly and keen, like static electricity running just beneath his skin. Witchy power, like Molly’s, yet different in a way I could immediately discern. His pupils widened, his lips parted. Something passed between us. A moment of . . . something. Crap. What is this? I seldom felt Beast in my thoughts unless I was in danger, but she was suddenly alert, hunkered, belly down, claws pricking my soul with warning.
Antoine’s grip tightened. “Very please’ to meet you, I am, Miss Jane,” he said formally.
The prickly power traveled up my arm, questing. Beast coughed, the sound a warning deep in my mind. Antoine tilted his head in surprise, as if he’d heard her. “Likewise, Mr. Antoine,” I lied, my lips tingly, almost painful, as I resisted the questing power. It slid around my puny attempt to block it. Beast reached out a paw and placed it on the energy that was rising within me. Pressed down on the current. And stopped the sensation.
“Likewise,” I repeated. He released my hand, breaking the . . . whatever it was. The world crashed in, loud, boisterous. I took an onion ring and ate it, but the taste was now unpleasant, metallic, faintly bitter. I gulped beer. The odd taste washed away with the yeasty, peaty ale.
“Come anytime,” Antoine said. I looked back up, meeting his eyes. They seemed to be saying something more than his words. “We have at night de music and dancing, sometime.”
“Spills out in the street,” Rick said. “If you like to dance.”
I liked to dance. But maybe not here.
Except for the moments when he gripped my hand, Antoine had been working while chatting. He placed a bucket, like a gardening bucket, on the bar between Rick and me. Beer-and sea-flavored steam curled up, hot with pepper and spices. Rick reached, drew out a crawfish, its red shell curled. I was pretty sure the crustacean had been tossed alive into boiling beer.
I looked at Antoine, seeing nothing of the power that had tried to search through me. I had never felt anything like that before, and the man’s genial face seemed to imply that nothing had happened. If he could play innocent, I could certainly play stupid. But I wondered what he had picked up about Beast as he held my hand. Thoughtful, I ate another hush puppy. Rick had brought me here. He had wanted Antoine to read me. I tried to decide if that ticked me off.
Rick met my eyes in the dim mirror, holding up a four-inch-long crawfish as if in demonstration. His face held a hint of laughter and a warmth that claimed he was interested in me, if it was real. It had been some time since I’d seen that particular look in a man’s eyes. Maybe since I met Jack when I went into the security business. Not many men wanted to date a girl who could toss them into a corner and stomp them into the dirt. I didn’t need protecting and men seemed to sense that. It bothered a lot of them.
And . . . while I hadn’t been a nun, I hadn’t taken the dating world by storm either. I had friends who juggled several men, in and out of bed, at a time, but I was a one-man kinda woman. So far. And that man had been and gone a long time ago. I decided not to get mad about the reading. Not just yet, anyway.
To get the proper crawfish-eating protocol, I watched Rick as he broke the shell apart across the body, just above the tail, and pulled out the flesh. He ate the mouthful of seafood and then saluted me with the two pieces of mudbug shell. “Suck de head,” he said, like someone else might have said, “Cheers,” and he sucked the head part. I heard a liquid slurping. Rick smacked his lips and took another crawfish. I shrugged and broke apart the shellfish as he had, ate the meat, which turned out to be spicy with hot peppers, garlic, and onion, and beery. Good. Really good. Then I sucked the head as Rick had, and the spices exploded in my mouth.
He laughed at whatever was on my face, and said, “I forgot to tell you. The spices seem to concentrate in the head cavity.”
“No kidding,” I managed, half strangling on the potent stuff. “You forgot.”
Antoine laughed with Rick. “Dis boy been coming here for twenty year. He always done forget.”
CHAPTER 4