“Ummm. Yeah. Pleasure and all. Call me Jane.”
He moved behind the counter, beaming at me. “You hongry, Miz Jane? What I can get you for? I got some fried-up gator, fried-up catfish, fried-up boudin balls bigger’n my fist.” He made one to show me. “I got me fried onion, fried squash, and fried mushroom. My own batter, secret recipe it is, and dat oil is fresh and hot for cooking.”
Beast perked up at the description of the food. Gator. Human killed gator? Human man is good hunter! Hungry for gator. And the picture she sent me was a whole gator, snout, teeth, feet, claws, tail, skin, and all, crusty with batter. I chuckled and sent her a more likely mental picture. Inside she huffed with disappointment.
“Fried gator sounds good. Boudin balls and onion rings too. Got beer?”
“I can’t sell you no beer, but I give you one. All my customers, I give one to, I do.” He nudged the tip jar at me, and I understood. He had no license to sell beer, but he could give it away, and his customers could tip him to make it worth his while. I dropped a five into the tip jar, and he grinned widely. “Beer in dat cooler. He’p youself.” I heard the hiss of gas being turned up, and smelled the gas scent and hot oil followed by the smell of raw meat.
There wasn’t a statewide mandate on selling alcohol, and the voters of each parish could decide the issue. Seemed the voters of this parish had decided to keep it dry. At least officially. I wondered about the saloon across the street, and figured that vamps didn’t have to follow the law around here—which might account for all the crosses everywhere.
I shoved a hand into the ice, grabbed a cold bottle from the bottom, pulled a Wynona’s Big Brown Ale out of the cooler, and made a soft cooing sound. I like the taste of beer, from time to time, and Voodoo Brewery made some of the best microbrews in the South. I popped the top and took an exploratory sip. Though the alcohol did nothing for one of my kind—the metabolism of skinwalkers is simply too fast and burns alcohol off in minutes—the taste exploded in my mouth and the icy beer traced a trail down my esophagus. “Oh yeah,” I murmured and took another.
By the time the beer was half-gone, I had a paper plate full of boudin balls and fried onion rings in front of me, grease spreading through the paper with a dull brown stain. My stomach growled and I popped a ring in my mouth while breaking open a boudin ball. I made an ohhh of sound and sucked air over my scalded tongue before I forked in a mouthful of fried boudin. Boudin is miscellaneous pork (though you can get it specially made with special cuts of pork) and white rice and spices, most of which are unique to each butcher or cook, and Lucky’s boudin was excellent. “Dish ish goo’,” I said, and I groaned.
Lucky laughed and brought a second plate with the promised fried gator meat. It was flaky and fishy and just as wonderful as the boudin, so perfect I didn’t need seasoning salt from the big carved stone bowl on the table. Inside Beast let out a satisfied chuff. I tossed a ten on the table and it disappeared into Lucky’s pocket. Ten minutes later I put down the fork and said, “You are a genius with this stuff. Do you ship your boudin?”
“Everywhere dey a post office, for sure.”
“I’ll be placing an order. Now, about the Tassin Bros?”
“Dis gator-huntin’ season. Dey close dat shop for thirty day. Open back on first day nex’ month.”
“Well, crap.” I had really hoped to make it back to New Orleans and my own bed tonight. “Guess I’ll be making do with the tools I have on hand. Anyplace I can work in the shade?”
“You bes’ be getting youself to Miz Onie’s bed-and-breakfast before dark, and work on dat motorbike in da morning. We gots trouble in dis town after dark.” He frowned. “Suckhead trouble wid dey witches, we always have, but dis time dey suckheads gone done too much.”
I flashed on the crosses everywhere in the middle of town, on every window and door, crosses that had been there, in the open, for many more decades than vamps had been out of the coffin and a part of American life. I had a feeling this town had known about vamps for a lot longer than the rest of the world, and I had a moment to imagine—to remember—all the horrible things vamps could do to a town if they decided not to follow the Vampira Carta, the legal document that reined in the predatory and murderous instincts of all vamps.