Eli looked at his watch and said, “She showed up thirty-three minutes ago. She and Jane had a four-minute-and-two-second mud wrestle in the backyard and then she took off.”
Jodi laughed. Soul didn’t. I didn’t know a lot about arcenciels, but the fact that an arcenciel stayed around for a battle she didn’t have to fight seemed unusual. That she fought in human form seemed unusual. The fact that she didn’t draw on her ability to alter or bubble time to win the fight seemed unusual. Pretty much everything about the situation seemed unusual, including Angie’s prescient dream and the call to warn me. I had to address that too—soon, but not in front of present company.
I asked, “So, you didn’t know she was in town?”
“I knew. She was spotted by a CI, but I haven’t had time to see her,” Soul said, with subtle emphasis on the words time and see. Soul was an arcenciel too, and when one of her kind bubbled time, she would know it if she was paying attention. More stuff Jodi couldn’t know.
“CI?” I asked.
“Confidential informant, which means she won’t tell either one of us. Who the heck did your CI see?” Jodi asked. “Girl in a rainbow dress? Some kind of code word?”
“No. A distant relative,” Soul said, shoveling a spoonful of boudin onto a sliver of toast made from French bread. “The only one of her generation in the States.”
Which explained how she knew which arcenciel I was talking about. Arcenciels didn’t bear young easily or often, and the presence of a young one would have been noted and observed, at the very least.
“Her name is Opal,” Soul said. “She is . . . young and creative and willful. I understand that she has taken a shine to Jane and has dropped in unexpectedly. Twice now, once on the other side of the Mississippi, once at your house, for a sparring session, yes?”
At which I nodded, realizing that Opal had to be the rainbow dragon who had attacked me in my SUV not that long ago and nearly managed to get me killed. “Sparring match, my butt,” I said.
“I am truly sorry at her intemperance. She is innocence personified, but manages to be a troublemaker.” She took the bite and gave me a look that told me to drop it, and that we could talk later, when a human cop wasn’t present.
I wasn’t exactly sure what intemperance meant, but I shrugged and said, “Nothing I can’t handle.” Maybe. Hopefully. “So fill me in on the city’s security for the Witch Conclave and Eli can fill you in on YS’s part.”
Eli shot me an indecipherable look and asked, “Why can’t you fill them in?”
“If I had intended to talk, I wouldn’t have needed you here. I’m eating.” And I did, all through the boring and tedious discussion of traffic and buses and streetcars and hotel security and stuff I used to have to handle. Having partners had freed up a lot of my time and let me take on bigger and better jobs. The job as security had come through Molly, and thanks to my partners, YS was making a lot of money for the one weekend, freeing me personally to be Leo’s Enforcer at the same event. Couldn’t beat getting paid two times for the same job.
As soon as Jodi finished the debrief, she slid out of the seat and was gone, leaving a twenty on the table to cover her tab and tip. The moment she was gone, Soul said, “Tell me everything that Opal did and said.”
I pulled up my shirt and showed her my bruise, which was starting to turn a bright, spreading red where all the small arterioles and capillaries had been damaged by the elbow. I told her everything that had happened, excluding Angie’s part. In this version, we were sitting on the porch having a beer and enjoying the rain when Opal appeared and started digging around in the backyard. I finished with, “I had hidden a few of Molly’s magical trinkets out there along with a skull Leo gave me, a sabertooth lion skull used by the sabertooth vamp I killed when I first got to town.”
“What do you think she was there for?”
“I’ve had the spelled trinkets in the house for months, and the skull had been buried out back on other occasions, so I can’t say.” I stopped, my tea halfway to my mouth. “But I’ve never had them all in the same place at the same time before. So . . . maybe some kind of magical energy symbiosis? Something that drew her attention?”
Soul sighed and slid from the booth too, tossing down a second twenty. The waiter was going to have a good tip day. “I don’t know,” Soul said. “Keep me in the loop.” And she was gone too.
Eli helped himself to their boudin leftovers. I ate the leftover fries. When Alex’s to-go bag was deposited on the table, we each tossed a few bills on top and went back outside into the drizzle and the unexpected cool from the storm front. Autumn wasn’t far off and the slightly cooler temps of the chilly eighties promised that the frigid seventies were not far behind. Molly would be here soon, and the cooler temps would make her visit more pleasant. Molly hated hot, humid weather.