Lucky lifted his eyes from his beer bottle and said, distinctly, “No. Not to Rome. I throw it in de swamp for de gator to eat first.” I started to reply, but he spoke over me. “Dat Church in Rome hunt witches all through history. Torture them all. Burn them. Kill them. I a man of forgiveness, but they don’t want no forgive. They still take war to my peoples.”
“I need to talk to Shauna. And to Margaud,” I said.
Lucky’s tats blazed with his reaction. Anger flaming up his arms. Eli pressed a gun to his side and said, simply, “Don’t.”
Lucky cursed in French and his English patois, but his heat faded quickly. He looked down at the muzzle over his kidney. “You really shoot me wid that gun?”
Eli didn’t respond and Lucky raised his gaze to Eli’s eyes. “All dis. Dis because I call you boy?”
“I’m a man of forgiveness,” Eli paraphrased Lucky’s words, “but they don’t want forgiveness. They still take war to my people.”
Lucky snorted, full-nosed and half in his throat. “You right. Troublemaker in my nature. I am ass, I is.” He stuck out his hand. “I ask you forgiveness. You accept? Then you put dat pop gun away?”
“Deal,” Eli said. They shook, and Eli put the gun away. I noticed the safety was still on, and he had never injected a round into the chamber.
“You got Margaud’s contact info?” I asked.
“I do. And You can see my Shauna now. No mo’ customer come in today, not wid all trouble. I close up shop and we go my house.” Lucky kicked his bench back and stood, disappearing into the back of the shop. “Leave all dat,” he said, pointing over the counter to the messy table and greasy paper and plastic products. “I clean it up when I get back.”
? ? ?
Lucky Landry’s house was not what I was expecting. I hadn’t been invited home on my last visit, but I had subconsciously created a vision of a redneck double-wide and cars on cement blocks in the yard. Maybe a toilet planted with petunias, positioned on the front porch. The white tidewater home with centipede lawn and tastefully planted flower beds was a shocker. I did manage to wipe my surprise off my face before I got out of the SUV.
Lucky parked his ancient blue pickup truck behind a half-shed carport, invisible from the road, and we all got out, Alex moving slowly as he gathered all his electronic equipment. Lucky led the way to the front door, speaking over his shoulder to us. “My wife, she make me park where my coonass huntin’ truck can’t be seen by de neighbors. Not for her, I be living in trash, I know.”
The front door opened and the woman standing there was, well, also not what I had expected. Blue eyes, nearly black hair with just the slightest hint of red when the sun hit it, petite and curvy and pretty. And not dressed like a country singer at Mardi Gras, all bling and fringe, but in suit pants, a fitted shirt, and a business jacket. Except for her height, which was far too short for a successful model, she could have walked out of a fashion catalog.
“Lucky, bring your friends right on in. I got cold sweet tea with mint or lemon and some tasty lemon cookies. They’re store-bought, but you’d never know it. You’re that Jane Yellowrock woman, aren’t you?”
“Who?” The word hammered at the air from inside. “If that bitch is here I’ll kill her! This is all her fault!”
Shauna Landry Doucette raced around her mama and out the door, fast as a vamp. Her mama caught her in both arms and held her in place, magics sparking all around them both. Lucky snapped his fingers, and a portable protective ward went up around him. It was too small to hold us too, and I grabbed Eli, pulling him down behind the ward. “Get down!” I shouted to Alex. He hit the dirt behind the bole of an oak. Uncontrolled magics sparked in the air, burning on our skin. Eli jerked and whispered a curse.
“You hurt me,” Mrs. Landry said, holding her daughter tightly, “and I’ll be seriously unhappy with you, young lady. And if you turn your magics on me, I’ll send you to your grandmother in a heartbeat.”
The word grandmother must have been an awful threat because Shauna burst into tears. The painful magics faded.
Her mother shook her hard. “This is no one’s fault but yours and that blood-drinking husband of yours. You don’t think. You don’t plan. Marriage isn’t roses and chocolate and candles and great sex. Most of the time it’s hard work and pain and forgiveness, on both sides. You marry a bloodsucker and you got to plan for a whole lot more forgiveness than most.”
Shauna sobbed on her mother’s shoulder. The girl was gorgeous, even with the twenty extra pounds of baby fat and her pale, anemic skin. Alex, rising from his undignified crouch behind the tree, took a sharp breath at the sight of her before retrieving his gear from the ground. Even Eli, with his dedication to Syl, couldn’t help a spark of interest.