Frenchman Street_A Novel of The Sentinels of New Orleans Read online

  You will not tell your news to me last, Dru. I should always come first. Certainly before that pirate.

  Etienne hadn’t drained me of blood, but his sudden appearance had drained me of energy. I was too spent to argue.

  Fine. Come downstairs and I’ll talk to you before I call Jean.

  I disconnected my brain and drove the van back to Chez Rand on autopilot. At the corner, I stopped and stared at Eugenie’s house. The FOR SALE sign had been covered with a placard that read OFFER PENDING. Was that my offer? Or had someone beaten me to it?

  I glanced in the garage door before going inside the house. The front left fender of the Rolls had been bashed in, and there was a new assortment of bullet holes.

  Rand met me at the back door. “You reek of vampire. What happened?”

  I always reeked of something. The faeries thought I reeked of dogs. Vampires thought my blood reeked of elf. Now the elf thought I reeked of vampire.

  “Let me give you the short version so I can go ahead and call Jean,” I said, going through it as quickly as possible. “I told him I thought you would agree since he supports not outing everyone to humans.”

  Rand nodded. “He’s actually easier to deal with than Garrett Melnick. I doubt the wizards will have a problem either. Lafitte? Good luck with that.”

  “When are the others coming? Rene will probably be here earlier if you want to go ahead and tell him.

  “In an hour. Why is he coming?”

  Said Mr. Petulant, Jealous Elf. “Because it freaked him out when I disappeared, and I promised to tell him what happened.”

  I left him to stew in his jealousy, which was unfounded, sort of, maybe. Probably. Climbing the stairs, I flung myself across my bed and was joined by Gruff. We played a few minutes with his tug-rope before the inevitable happened.

  Why does The Dru smell like vampires? I do not like vampires.

  I assured him that however much he disliked vampires, The Dru disliked them even more and would be showering as soon as possible.

  I pulled out my phone and called Jean. He didn’t answer. In fact, his automated voice mail came on so quickly I knew he’d declined my call. So I called him again. And again.

  On the seventh call in the span of a minute, he finally answered, although not with a hello. “Drusilla, would it not be common courtesy among friends that if one friend does not respond to his cellaphone, the other friend should realize he did not wish to speak?”

  I’d given up on getting Jean to fully distinguish between a telephone and a cell phone, and finally decided it didn’t matter.

  I went through the story quickly, then made my pitch. “Jean, I know Etienne betrayed you and it’s asking a lot, but I’m asking. Please let that betrayal go. I am not asking you to be his friend again, or to trust him, or to do business with him, or even speak to him if you both end up back on a reformed Interspecies Council.” I thought it clever to dangle that in front of him, not that I had any authority to choose council members. “All I’m asking is that you don’t kill him or injure him, and you let him reopen L’Amour Sauvage and run it in peace.”

  “This is not the request of a man, Drusilla. This is the request of a coward.”

  Oh, brother. Yeah, yeah, play the man card. “No, it’s the request made to a man of honor. It is a request to a man who puts the needs of the greater community above his own desires.” I got out my mental boots, because the shit was getting deep. “It is a request to a hero, a man who will command everyone’s respect.”

  I heard tittering from the corner and shot Rand and Rene an evil look. Even the dragons looked amused, but Pentewyn did have a pink rat tail hanging from his mouth.

  When I heard Jean’s put-upon sigh, I knew I’d won, at least for now. “You realize, Jolie, that with the large sum of cash I delivered to Rene’s cousine today for you to purchase dear Mademoiselle Eugenie’s home, plus this new request you ask of me, you will owe me many, many favors.”

  “Yes, I will owe you more favors than I could ever repay in one lifetime,” I said, doing an inner dance that the pending offer on the house was mine. “I have no doubt you will think up appropriate ways in which I can repay your generosity.”

  Oh boy, would he ever.

  “Why weren’t you answering the phone, by the way?” I asked.

  “Mademoiselle Linda and I were…er…discussing mayor business.”

  Jean was such an adept liar that anything getting him this tongue-tied must involve sex, about which he was oddly old-fashioned.

  “Do you mean you were having sex with the mayor’s tourism director?”

  “A gentleman does not discuss such things with a lady, Drusilla.”

  I’d take that as a yes, and he seemed very relieved to end the call.

  “Jean agreed? Babe, he’ll hold that over your head for years,” Rene said. “And was he really banging that Linda chick?”

  I laughed. “I think so. It’ll be good for him.” Actually, it would be good for me, as long as he didn’t feel the need for any pillow talk that involved revealing his true identity. It would postpone him thinking up ways to collect debts from me.

  The others arrived within a half-hour, and the rest of the meeting went smoothly. As expected, Elder Sato and Uncle Lennox hesitated about half a second before agreeing to Etienne’s terms.

  “As long as you believe him, DJ,” Lennox said. “Do you?”

  I thought about it. “I do. He was making a fortune at L’Amour Sauvage before it burned down back in December, and I’ve heard him say before he didn’t want humans knowing about the vampire world. They take any infraction of their revelation rules seriously, and they deal with them quickly. So yes, I do believe him. Melnick was another matter, but he’s dead.”

  Lennox frowned. “Did Mr. Boulard say how his predecessor as Regent died?”

  “No.” I kept my eyes away from Rand and Rene. “But I can’t say I’m sorry to hear the news.”

  They pulled out leftovers from our lunch meeting and began eating. They could have it. There were twelve more parades before Mardi Gras Day even arrived. I, for one, was going to bed.

  I gave everybody a wave and went upstairs, took a shower, made a new supply of healing charms, and crawled into bed with Gruff, who said The DJ no longer smelled of vampires.

  Chapter 36

  The next afternoon, I called Etienne Boulard at sundown, as promised, and gave him the good news. “Even Jean agreed, although he was the hardest to convince,” I said.

  “He has a weakness for you, although for the death of me I can’t understand why,” said the new Regent of Vampyre. “Your blood tastes like elf, you’re short, you don’t know how to dress properly, and your attitude is poor at best.”

  “I can easily convince him to kill you instead,” I reminded him.

  “Tell your Interspecies Council that the deal is set, and the Realm of Vampyre will not support Florian. I will also offer asylum to your friend Adrian Hoffman.”

  “Thank you, although calling him my friend is a bit of a stretch.”

  “Then I like him more already. Good evening, Ms. Jaco. And here’s a bonus for you. As of an hour ago, Willem Zrakovi was in the Beyond and Back bar in Old Orleans, getting hammered.”

  Well, I could watch the parades, or I could head to Old Orleans for a showdown with Zrakovi. His magic wouldn’t work in the lawless border town between modern New Orleans and the Beyond, but my elven staff would.

  I went into the kitchen, unhooked Gruff from his leash, and hung it on a hook by the window.

  Rand looked up from his never-ending task of replacing elastic bands on the dragon-cams. “You aren’t taking him to the parades?”

  “I’m skipping the parades,” I said. “Or at least Hermes, the first one. I have a lead on Zrakovi in Old Orleans.”

  Rand frowned, pushed his chair away from the table, and stood. “I forbid you to go.”

  Had he learned nothing about me? The quickest way to get me to do anything was to forbid it. “So
rry to say, you don’t have that power. It isn’t in our contract.”

  “Fine. If you get yourself killed, you’ll have no one else to blame.”

  “If I get myself killed, you’ll never find out where Michael is.”

  My conversations with Rand were starting to sound a lot like my former conversations with Alex. Sarcastic, with a thin vein of indifference.

  I went into the bedroom and changed into a nondescript black sweater and pants, black boots to accommodate the extra wrap around my foot, and a black New Orleans Saints cap. When I got to the stairs, Rene was on his way up.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Nice to see you too, babe. I’ve been asked by the King of all Elfkind to take over command central while he goes with you to Old Orleans.”

  “Since when have you and Rand been in cahoots?”

  Rand walked up behind me, checking the clip in a pistol. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him with a gun. “Since now,” he said.

  “Where’d you get a gun?”

  “I got it for him,” Rene replied. “Does he know how to shoot?”

  We both looked at the elf. “I have more talents than you’ve begun to discover, Dru.”

  Oh, brother. “Fine. Let’s go. Traffic will be horrible, and it’s almost time for Hermes to roll.”

  Rand and I walked downstairs and entered the Rivendell transport. “Let’s go to Louis Armstrong’s apartment—we’re less likely to be spotted there than at the St. Louis Cathedral transport.”

  I’d set up a transport for Louis, a member of the historical undead who’d done me favors in the past, to be able to visit New Orleans when he wanted. He still played occasional gigs posing as an impersonator of himself.

  Rand and I landed outside Louis’s apartment just as Jean Lafitte was leaving.

  He smiled and kissed my hand in his courtly way. “Bonsoir, Jolie. Monsieur Randolph. I was preparing to attend the parading on the street of canals. Are you not doing the same?”

  “No, we had a tip that Zrakovi has been hanging around Beyond and Back,” I said, knowing it was one of Jean’s favorite Old Orleans watering holes. Have you ever seen him there?

  He frowned. “Non, but he would not long survive a visit with me. He has not only attempted to kill my dearest Drusilla, but has forced me to forfeit revenge on that scoundrel Etienne Boulard.”

  Glad my life was rated right up there in importance with revenge on the vampire.

  “Call me if you see anything unusual,” I said. I expected tonight’s parades—Hermes, Krewe D’Etat, and Morpheus—to be quiet leading into the megakrewe parades coming on the weekend, drawing unholy crowds even when the headliners included Lady GayGay with the (Un)Real Housewives of Beverly Hills singing backup.

  Our visit to Beyond and Back proved fruitless, however. We saw no signs of Zrakovi, so we decided to make a quick transport to Elfheim to make sure Florian hadn’t set up camp in Rand’s house.

  Salat met us at the door with a bow. “All has been quiet here, sir. If you’ll be staying, I can summon the staff from the village.”

  “No need,” Rand said, looking around at the shambles of his beautiful house. “If all goes well the next few days, I’ll come back and supervise the renovations.” He looked at me and smiled. “And add a nursery.”

  I tried to imagine baby Michael learning to walk and talk here. At the rate he was going, that should happen within six months. But he also would spend part of his time with me, in the home where his mother had lived. Eugenie had loved that big old house, and I would love it too.

  “We might as well go back,” I said. “I always enjoy watching Krewe D’Etat—their theme is always political, and I think they’re skewering DeFazo this year.”

  Although to give the mayor props, he’d given Jean everything we’d asked for and, as far as I knew, hadn’t told anyone about preternaturals living in New Orleans. Not that anyone would believe him.

  We sent ourselves closest to the parade route by transporting to St. Louis Cathedral, and walked to Canal Street in time to catch part of D’Etat. I followed in Rand’s wake as he weaseled his way to the front of the crowd. After all, this was his first Mardi Gras, and he’d missed everything so far because of having to hide. Now that Florian had no allies beyond his own part of Faerie, we had fewer enemies to watch for. Even if the elves pulled out of the politics and went home with their toys, Faerie would not have the numbers to win.

  “What is that?” Rand leaned forward to get a better view of a walking club near the beginning of the third parade, Morpheus. “Some kind of flambeaux carriers?”

  We both leaned in far enough to get a sharp warning from a local cop trying to keep the parade route clear.

  “Oh my God, it’s Florian,” I said.

  “No, it’s ten Florians,” he said. “Do you have your dog locket to tell us which one’s real?”

  I dug in my messenger bag for the Gruff-hair locket. I should just keep the damned thing on all the time. I slipped it over my head and studied the formation of marching Florians. They all wore white, glittery Elvis suits and juggled fire balls as they walked.

  “None of them,” I said. “Not a real Florian among them.”

  The lead fake-Florian spotted us, turned to march backward and juggle, and then turned to hurl a fireball straight at Rand’s head. The guy behind him threw one at me, and then another.

  The people around us screamed in fright, then burst into laughter and applause as the fireballs hit us with explosions of glitter and tiny LED blinking lights.

  “C’mon.” I hooked my fingers through Rand’s and pulled him back into the crowd, which immediately flowed in to fill our spots.

  We ducked in a café and ordered hot tea for Rand and a Swedish polar bear for me—vodka, blue Curacao and lemon-lime soda.

  “I think we should take the Hunters and go to Faerie,” I said. “We need to flush Florian out instead of waiting for him. Proact, not react.”

  Rand looked at my cocktail. Make that my second cocktail. “What’s in that thing? Because it’s clearly destroying brain cells. Faerie is huge, almost as large as Elfheim but with three times the people, and we don’t know where to look. Even Faulkner Hearne says it’s pointless to look unless we are willing to take casualties up to a hundred percent. We have him outnumbered now. We just have to wait to get a shot at him. Think about how to do that.”

  “Fine, then.” I stood up, wavering slightly. “I’ll think about that.”

  Actually, I did think about it the rest of Friday night, and all the way through the uneventful parades from the krewes of Iris and Tucks on Sunday afternoon. There had been gunfire during Tucks, but Rene, who was manning the radios, said NOPD had confirmed it was gang-related. Human gang members were as numerous as malevolent faeries in New Orleans.

  Meanwhile, Rand roamed the parade route wearing sunglasses and his hair tucked up inside one of my Saints caps.

  I ran into him just as a faery Don Ho rode by on the King of Tucks throne—a giant, papier-mâché toilet—lip-syncing to “Tiny Bubbles.” No one seemed to care that Mr. Ho was deceased. I knew it was a faery and not the historically undead Don Ho because, for once, I wore my locket, newly replenished with a snip from Gruff’s fur.

  “Let’s get to the Endymion route,” I shouted at Rand.

  Talk to me inside my mind, he responded. It’s too noisy out here.

  Let’s get to the Endymion route, I repeated. It’s one of the megaparades, with huge crowds.

  He nodded, and I led the way to the Plantasy Island van, driving it through neighborhood back streets until I was as close to Carrollton Avenue as I could get.

  People in New Orleans tended to fall into two camps with the final Mardi Gras weekend superkrewes. Some favored Endymion, which stubbornly paraded through Mid-City on Saturday afternoon and was the largest of the parades. Others favored Bacchus, another huge krewe, which paraded on the St. Charles route on Sunday night. For a few years after Katrina, with Mid-City in ruins, En
dymion was forced to parade on St. Charles and I had boycotted it, being a Bacchus person.

  So despite spending most of my life in New Orleans, this was only the second time I’d been to Endymion. It was rowdier, drunker, bigger, and louder than the other parades. Florian might have found his human followers.

  We had to walk a while before finding an opening to slither in to the side of the street where the parade had just begun. Down the block, I could see the Poppa Joe float, fifty-six feet long and shaped like a riverboat.

  Next came some marching bands and a two-unit float carrying more than a hundred riders throwing beads and cups.

  I’d been stricken with the fever, and was jumping furiously, trying to land a new supply of plastic cups, when Rand poked me.

  Stop jumping like a kangaroo and look. Are those unicorns?

  At first I saw nothing but a large high school marching band, its young musicians in purple and gold uniforms fast-stepping down Carrollton Avenue with rounded eyes and a frantic attempt to up-tempo “When the Saints Come Marching In” to match their pace. I’d never heard it played so fast.

  Then I saw the reason.

  Prancing behind them was a small herd of unicorns. Not horses with fake horns. Not a float with unicorns created in bright papier-mâché on the sides. Unicorns with great hooves, razor-sharp horns, and madness in their huge black eyes. I’d seen the one in front before—a mottled shade of grayish-white, ridden by a man that might look like George Clooney wearing a feathered hat to the rest of the word, but to me, had the unruly blond hair and mad green eyes of Florian.

  He rode up before me and Rand, turned his unicorn to face us, and had it bow. Its razor-sharp horn was inches from my face and there were too many people behind me to back up.

  “Hail, the royalty from the Land of Elfheim,” said the self-proclaimed King of Faerie. “Enjoy your last few days of freedom.”

  And with a flourish of his hat, George Clooney drew a deafening round of applause and continued down the avenue, leading his parade of killer beasts.