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  If I hadn’t been so worried about Eugenie, I’d have laughed at Alex’s expression. Despite my daily grounding ritual and the small “mojo bag” of protective herbs and stones around my neck, my empathic abilities echoed his fear.

  He picked up the box with two fingers, carefully, as if it might contain radioactive materials. For all I knew, it might. Who knew what was in those tests?

  “We need to talk about this, DJ.” His voice came out in a froglike croak.

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “It’s not—”

  “We’re still trying to figure things out between us.” He paced around the counter and put his hands on my shoulders. “I’m not ready to be a father. You’re sure as hell not ready to be…”

  Too late, he realized he’d stuck a big old size thirteen boot in his mouth. It would serve him right if I’d let him go on thinking the pregnancy scare was mine, just to see how big a hole he’d dig himself into. Except I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to keep secrets from Alex. At least not major ones. I was going to be mature enough to give this relationship a fighting chance, even if it killed me—or him.

  Plus, I couldn’t deny that he was right. I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I was well aware that my grumpy, unaffectionate cat, Sebastian, had become fat, happy, and docile since my house burned down and he’d moved in with Alex, a canine shapeshifter. He preferred a dog to me, proving I wasn’t even a decent cat mother.

  “It’s not mine, Alex.” I kept my voice low. “The test is for Eugenie.”

  I tried not to be offended at the relief that washed across both his face and his aura. His wonky shapeshifter energy, which had been crawling across my skin like invisible ants, settled down to its usual buzz.

  Then it began rising again. “You mean…” He looked toward the living room, then out the window, where the front of Plantasy Island sat in plain view. Rand stood framed in the doorway, looking our way. “Holy shit.”

  I followed the direction of his gaze with my own and nodded. “Exactly.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I paced back and forth behind the sofa; Alex stood in the entry hall, looking out the window at Plantasy Island as if he could will Quince Randolph to permanently disappear. We’d been waiting longer than the five minutes Eugenie needed to get the results of the test, but she hadn’t made a sound and the bathroom door remained firmly shut.

  It wasn’t a good sign.

  Alex and I had agreed not to discuss anything this close to Rand, in case he turned his sneaky elven antennae in my direction and found me distressed enough for him to get suspicious and investigate. He needed to be nowhere within ten feet of Eugenie, and especially not within touching distance. Touching her would ramp up his power and he’d know in an instant. Since the child she carried had his DNA, he might be able to communicate with it if he got close enough—or even if he didn’t. Who the hell knew?

  “It’s sleeting.” Alex came back into the living room. “Ground’s still too warm to stick, but we might have an icy drive to the council meeting tomorrow night if it doesn’t get above freezing tomorrow.”

  “Great. It’ll make the evening even more special.” At least the baby crisis had temporarily taken my mind off the coming Interspecies Council meeting, which promised to be a debacle. The prospect of testifying had kept me awake most of the last two weeks, ever since they’d decided to meet before the holidays instead of waiting until January. Not that pretes in general hung mistletoe and stockings, but because the current political atmosphere was so contentious.

  This would be the group’s first official gathering as a governing body, and it scared the hell out of me. What could be worse than a roomful of pompous, self-important preternatural bureaucrats, each trying to prove himself more badass than the prete in the next chair?

  Judgments would be passed. Examples would be made. I didn’t want to be one of them.

  The sound of an opening door wafted down the hallway, and the squeaky hinges were followed by a slow cadence of boot heels on hardwood. These were not the footfalls of a happy woman.

  Eugenie’s eyes had puffed almost closed and her nose had reddened to the color of a Santa suit. Her expression lay somewhere between stunned and catatonic. “Congratulate me, guys. I’m having a baby elf.” She sat heavily on the sofa next to me. “What in the hell am I gonna do?”

  I took Eugenie’s hand, and Alex sat on the coffee table facing us, his knees touching mine. He cleared his throat, and I had a sinking feeling that he was about to say something awful. Not intentionally awful, but cluelessly awful.

  “Is there any chance it isn’t his? I mean, have you … did you…?”

  Eugenie narrowed her eyes and I leaned back to watch the fireworks.

  “Well, let’s see, the only person I’ve even fooled around with since Rand was … hmm … I believe that was with you, Alexander Warin. Could it be yours?”

  What? I gave Alex my own version of a narrow-eyed look and he had the worst possible reaction under the circumstances: He blushed and stammered. The dog.

  “It was, uh, when we thought you really had bonded with Randolph and we were both pissed off at you and, uh, nothing happened.” His words tumbled out in a rush. “Really. Eugenie, tell her. Nothing happened.”

  Eugenie looked at me and shrugged. “Nothing happened. We had one half-hearted kiss, which I started, and then I went home. Point being”—she turned back to Alex—“no, this can’t be anyone else’s baby.”

  He closed his eyes. “Sorry, it’s just that it would be easier if it weren’t his.”

  Which gave me an idea. “As long as we keep Rand from getting anywhere near you, Eugenie, he never has to even know about it. If…” I’d been about to say “If you decide to have it,” but I’d been having that conversation with myself all the way to the drugstore and back. I would not advise Eugenie on whether or not to continue this pregnancy. Even if she asked my opinion, I wasn’t sure what I’d tell her because I didn’t know what I’d do in her situation. It had to be her decision.

  “… If we can just keep him away,” I finished.

  I slumped down in my seat. Nothing was easy here, because the decision not to tell Rand felt wrong, too. Quince Randolph was a cretin, but for all the underhanded things he’d done to me—including kidnapping and political manipulation—he also had saved my life more than once. In a way, by offering me a way to avoid turning loup-garou after I was infected, he’d saved Jake Warin’s life, too.

  He had a right to know he had a child on the way, and we needed credible information on human-elven pregnancies. I couldn’t exactly Google “elf spawn.” Well, I could, and I had—while we waited for Eugenie to take the pregnancy test. More than a million results popped up, which was downright scary. A quick scroll turned up a lot of World of Warcraft sites, which I figured would be less than helpful.

  Rand might be our only reliable source of information. And once he knew Eugenie was pregnant, he’d be insufferable.

  The longer we could keep this baby a secret, the better for everyone, especially Eugenie. She needed time to adjust to the idea, and I needed to find a reliable, discreet source of information on human-elven reproduction.

  “Have you considered an abortion?” Alex looked perfectly and sincerely clueless. He had the tact of a baboon, and his words hung heavy through a long, tense silence.

  “Go the hell home. I hate men. I don’t ever want to see another man in this house, human or otherwise.” Eugenie pushed herself off the sofa and slapped Alex upside the head on her way past. “DJ, get that dog out of here. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  I kicked Alex’s ankle. “Nice job, Fido.”

  “What?” The sad thing was, Alex looked truly perplexed. “It was a reasonable question, all things considered.”

  “Let’s go to dinner.” I couldn’t get mad at him about the question since I’d pondered the same thing, plus he didn’t know about the baby Eugenie had lost. He was also a guy and had no common sense when it came to two thin
gs women did not want to hear about from men—reproduction and hip circumference.

  I grabbed my messenger bag on the way out, but took Eugenie’s house key and left my overnighter. As much as I liked the idea of snuggling up next to my big, warm shifter tonight while the sleet pelted away outside, Eugenie needed me more, even if it was to fetch juice and figure out what one did with agave nectar.

  A half hour later, Alex and I piled into his black Range Rover and headed across town to Café Degas, the spot he’d chosen for dinner. Left to my own devices, I’d always go to Commander’s Palace, but Alex reasoned that Degas was en route to City Park, where we planned to catch the annual holiday light show before heading back to his place. Then I’d have to fulfill my promise and call Rand. Joy.

  Reveillon was a two-week period of prime eating in a city that relished good food—local restaurants offered special fixed-price, four-course holiday meals in December. Tourism always fell off before the holidays, so Reveillon had become a clever gimmick to entice locals onto the restaurant circuit.

  We made our way through the airy interior of the café, which tonight promised an array of fried oysters, crawfish ravioli, rack of lamb, and chocolate. I could almost forget the upcoming meeting and the baby crisis.

  Almost.

  “Does Eugenie’s reaction mean she’s really going to keep this baby?” Alex had at least noticed Eugenie didn’t take the abortion question well.

  I filled him in on the child she’d lost, but only after he’d promised not to bring it up in front of her.

  “What if it were you?” Alex dug into his fried oyster and rémoulade salad, but was so intent on my answer he probably didn’t even taste it.

  “I honestly don’t know.” I poked at my own salad, picking out the oysters to eat and avoiding the greens. “I mean, normally, no, I wouldn’t consider ending a pregnancy. If it were your baby, for example, of course not. You’d just have to get over it, whether you thought we were ready to be parents or not.”

  I shook my head. “But if it were Quince Randolph’s? I honestly don’t know what I’d do in that situation. Eugenie doesn’t truly understand what kind of power the elves have, or how politically strong Rand has grown now that he’s become chief of the fire clan and has a seat on the Interspecies Council. Don’t forget how new all of this is to her.”

  Rand had ascended to clan chief when his mother, Vervain, the previous ruler, died at the hands of the undead serial killer who’d been trying to get at me. Chalk up one more death on the Typhoid DJ scorecard. It was a miracle anyone would come within a mile of me.

  Alex waited as the waiter replaced our salad dishes with dinner plates artfully arranged with crawfish ravioli. Then he leaned across the table. “Don’t let Eugenie wait too long to figure out what she wants, DJ. Zrakovi will want a say in how we proceed.”

  I chewed my ravioli and rested my fork across the edge of the plate with deceptive calm. Then I leaned across the table myself. “You are not to tell Zrakovi. You are not to tell anyone. This is not your news to share without Eugenie’s permission. However she proceeds has to be her choice, not the Elders’.” Or ours, for that matter.

  Alex put his own fork down. “Eugenie isn’t in a position to decide who does and doesn’t know—not about this. There’ll need to be damage control.” He gave me a hard look. “You said it yourself—she doesn’t understand the ramifications.”

  “Alex, seriously. Don’t tell Zrakovi. Not yet. Give it a few days at least.”

  Willem Zrakovi was a member of the Congress of Elders, the wizards’ ruling body. He represented North American interests and I’d always found him fair and less stuffy than others I’d met among the wizarding elite. But he would stir the cauldron in whatever fashion best suited the Elders, not Eugenie.

  Alex pushed his plate toward the middle of the table. I wasn’t feeling too hungry anymore either.

  I took a deep breath. “Well?” He’d never answered, and I wanted his promise.

  “I’ll keep quiet for now, but I reserve the right to change my mind after the Interspecies Council meeting. It depends on how things go tomorrow night. If the wizards take a hit and negotiations with the elves look shaky, I might have to tell him. We can’t let him be blindsided or have the elves find out some other way and accuse us of hiding it.”

  “But—”

  “DJ, don’t be naïve.” He waited for our plates to be whisked away and replaced with another course. The leg of lamb made me think of baby sheep, which made me think of baby elves. I definitely had lost my appetite. “If things get more precarious between the wizards and elves and they find out we hid something like this from them, it could be disastrous. Zrakovi needs to know.”

  I stabbed the damned lamb with the tines of my fork. “It can be disastrous next week, then. Give Eugenie a few days to think things through.”

  We left it at that, with him unwilling to promise anything outright and me unwilling to push him to the point of an argument. Maturity, that’s my middle name.

  “So, what were you doing for the Elders today?” He’d seemed pumped when I talked to him before the baby bombshell hit, so maybe we could recover from an argument that didn’t have a resolution.

  He smiled, and his whole demeanor relaxed. “Jonas Adamson had escaped back to the Beyond, so I was able to go into Old Orleans and capture him.”

  Ah, he’d gotten to be an enforcer again, the work he really loved, not the investigative assignments he got stuck doing most days now that the borders had dropped for good.

  “Did you get to shoot him?”

  He grinned. “Of course.”

  “Good. He deserved it.” I knew that sounded harsh, but the unregistered necromancer and fellow Green Congress wizard had done a lot of damage last month.

  “I agree, and I finally got to try out that new ammo the Elders approved for enforcer use.” Alex chewed enthusiastically. “It doesn’t just enter the body like a normal bullet; it does that, plus releases a magical paralysis potion so they can’t keep running until they find a transport.”

  “I’ve always liked a good paralysis potion.” I also liked seeing Alex this excited. When I’d met him, he’d been one of the Elders’ most lethal killers. As the prete landscape changed after Katrina, however, his job had changed as well.

  We used to be border guards. I was the sentinel, the peacekeeper, and he was the muscle called in when talk failed. Now, we worked in a gray zone where it was never clear who could go where or do what. Alex didn’t like gray zones.

  No gray zone for Jonas Adamson, though. He was one doomed wizard. He’d sold his necromancy skills to the leader of the water elves, had forced the undead Axeman of New Orleans to try and kill me, and tried to have Jean Lafitte do the same. Axeman had killed Rand’s mother and several humans. All for political power and a little bit of money.

  Except it hadn’t worked. Tomorrow night, Jonas would get his judgment, along with the elves, wizards, and vampires who’d been part of the scheme.

  “Who all is going to testify?” I sank a spoon into the chocolate pot de crème. I might not be able to eat lamb, but it takes earth-shattering stress to kill my taste for dessert. “And do we know who ended up as council members once things finally got settled?”

  Alex shook his head, shoved his dessert across the table to me, and slid my untouched glass of port across the table toward himself. Good trade.

  “Not sure about the council. I heard there will be three or four senior Elders, three reps from the fae, two each from the elves and vampires, and the smaller groups will have one representative. Politically, the fae are the biggest question marks. No one has a clue what side they’d come down on if the groups really start choosing sides.”

  I pondered what I knew about the fae. They lived in a monarchy, but all I knew of their magic was that much of what the human world attributed to science was their handiwork. Time and tides, gravity and seasons. Next to the wizards, they were the largest group. They also had a reputation for bei
ng eccentric and unpredictable.

  “As for who will be testifying…” Alex finished his port, set his glass aside, and took a sip of mine. “Pretty much everybody you’d expect, including the Axeman himself. Rene Delachaise didn’t get called; guess he was too far removed from the action. Neither did Jake. The big question mark is Jean Lafitte, and whether he’ll be recovered enough to attend. Have you heard from your buddy the pirate?”

  Alex said Jean’s name without his usual sarcasm. Le Capitaine had earned some respect from the man he called le petit chien, not only because he’d saved me, but because he’d saved Alex’s cousin Jake, a rogue werewolf loup-garou with control issues. He’d been living in the Beyond and working for Jean for almost a month now.

  He might have gained a little respect for Jean, but Alex would never like the man. I, however, liked him a lot. Probably too much for my own good.

  “I haven’t heard from Jean since the week after he was killed.” Make that the week after I killed him, and part of my soul died alongside him. I’d never before used my magic to hurt anyone I cared for, and I would never forgive the people who’d forced me to do it. “He was recovering pretty fast.” And was mad as hell, I didn’t add. “I’m pretty sure he’ll be there tomorrow; he’ll want to have his say.”

  Alex was quiet for a few moments, and I thought we’d moved past the subject of Jean Lafitte. Until he said, “Well, unfortunately, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to hear his side of it.”

  I frowned at him and pushed his half-eaten pot de crème aside. Even I had reached my chocolate limit. “Why is that?”

  “I talked to Zrakovi this afternoon after I turned Jonas in,” Alex said, giving me an undecipherable look. “He’s putting me back on sentinel duty for the next few weeks while you handle a special assignment.”

  Special assignment had an ominous ring to it. I reached for my water glass, knocking my spoon off the table. It hit the floor with a clatter, even in the noisy restaurant. A waiter was there to whisk it away so quickly I wondered if he were a vampire. Probably not, but one could never be sure these days.