Garden of Bone: Book 6, page 19
Eleri had frowned at the obvious alcohol. It was so unlike her great-grandmother.
"Trade," Grandmere said in answer to the unasked question. “Payment from a client."
Beer? Eleri wondered. She didn't think she'd ever seen Grandmere drink beer, but she put nothing past the old woman.
"Pear cider,” Grandmere said, and Eleri caught a hint of the smell coming from the open neck of the bottle. Donovan surely had known what it was as soon as the lids had come off. Sometimes, she envied him that ability.
She was halfway through the bowl, watching cars go by on the street for something to distract her. She was working to not pay attention to the pings on her computer as emails and information and records came in.
Her hand shot out suddenly, grasping onto Donovan’s upper arm. "That's the third time I think I've seen that car go by.”
Her spoon clacked down into the bowl as she strained to see where the car went without standing up and giving herself away. On the other side of her, Grandmere went very still as she looked out the window at the white sedan. Having spent some of her morning in the kitchen at the back of the house, Grandmere had not been sitting in this position, looking out onto the street.
"Third time, you say?" Grandmere asked and Eleri only nodded in response. "He should not be able to do that."
Pushing her bowl aside, Eleri scooted over, lining herself up once again with her laptop. A few key strokes and she pulled up state IDs. Those pictures were easy to differentiate. Looking into the car through the slightly tinted windows made it harder to distinguish individual features. Still, he’d turned and looked at the house, and she suspected she could identify him.
"Well,” she concluded, "it looks like either Cabot or Cameron." One of the Salzani brothers was casing the house. Donovan peeked over at her computer, his own bowl still warming his hands, his spoon still moving back and forth to his mouth despite this new development.
"Looks like," he said between bites.
Grandmere, too, spooned the last several bites of her smaller serving and stood to walk away from the table. "You two stay here. I have more work to do on this house. He shouldn't have been able to pass that many times."
When Donovan had finished the last of his food, he turned to Eleri. "I think we need to go sniff out some Lobomau.”
38
Donovan drove his rental car this time. One, he wanted to turn the engine over and let it run a little bit. Two, he didn’t want to let it sit in the heat and the sun for too long—although he had to admit he regretted his decision to drive the moment he sat in the driver's seat.
The steering wheel burned his hands and, despite the fact that he was wearing pants, his legs tried to fry like eggs on the seat. The car didn’t even have leather, just rental car fabric, but it was black. In New Orleans, the combination left him with what he suspected might be burn marks.
He had adopted Eleri's aim at casual clothing. Lord knew, they'd tried on a variety of different looks over the last handful of months. He’d sported every outfit from obvious federal agent, wearing his suit and earpiece, to decked out like a SWAT member, to trying to blend in with small town Texas. Now, they weren’t trying to blend in or protect themselves from anything but the humidity, the heat, and the sun.
Now Donovan, too, was wearing lightweight pants he'd picked up and a tee shirt he hoped would reflect the heat as much as possible. None of this was anything he could expense to the FBI, but that was okay. As he’d reminded himself earlier, he'd be able to get another job as a medical examiner if this one didn't pan out. He could make do; he’d saved and saved for years. It hadn't yielded much, but it had been his only security when he started.
Now he had friends. He truly didn't doubt that, if his money ran out, Eleri would offer him FoxHaven for however long he wanted to run out on the beach, or Bell Point Farm, where he could run in the forest. He'd be okay, he told himself. He had friends. The thought almost made him smile, even as the backs of his legs sizzled while he waited for the air conditioning to kick in.
He watched as Eleri scooted her own car out of the way and parked on the grass before climbing in with him. She held a paper map in front of her on which she'd drawn out the area where she wanted to go.
They’d both taken to turning their phones off and having them on only if they needed them. It wasn't as if Grandmere was going to reach out. And if Westerfield did, Donovan wasn't sure he wanted to hear it. He was on leave, after all. Having his phone turned off was an excellent excuse. Walter, maybe Wade, maybe GJ—those were the only ones he wanted to hear from, and he would turn his cell on and check periodically. This way, if the phones were ever stolen, they wouldn’t let anyone know where he and Eleri had been. With them off, any hackerware added would not be able to track them as they headed around the city. Like today, when they were heading out to see the area Cabot had kept visiting.
Eleri held up the map toward Donovan. “Do you see where you need to go?”
He’d paid enough attention the last time she was driving to not worry about it too much, and he backed out of the driveway only using his fingertips on the steering wheel. Gingerly, he made turns for the first few blocks until the entire car cooled down.
"It isn't just that he goes here," Eleri commented. “It's that he goes here and stays for long enough to get parking tickets."
"Or he parked illegally in the first place," Donovan pointed out.
Eleri nodded. Both were possibilities, he’d thought. They hadn't been able to tell without driving and looking for themselves what the parking meters looked like or how they were run. She'd brought coins and a disposable credit card, as they wanted to be able to pay the meters when they got there and not incur any of the charges that Cabot was known for.
Had the meters been changed over to credit card readers? Or were they old enough to still take coins, where you could hear them clinking into the box inside? As they drove closer, Eleri rattled the change in her pockets, a sound Donovan could hear, though probably she couldn’t. He recognized the kind of area they were heading into before she did.
This was an older area, full of graveyards and houses made from marble and granite. The houses were bigger, but also older and rundown. Black had creeped into the cracks and run with rain, identifying each original seam and any new ones that were unintended. All the places the water had seeped were now highlighted in stark relief against the old, cold buildings.
Yet another cemetery created an anchor amid the houses. They turned right to curve around it. Every neighborhood had a graveyard, it seemed, in New Orleans. It was the age and care that interested him. This one had a look similar to the houses. The old money had left the area a good while ago, leaving the current residents to fall on harder times. Maybe it had happened when Katrina had come through.
They parked several blocks away and walked in. The only area they could find for reasonable parking was a lot in front of a strip mall. Once again, they headed inside a convenience store for drinks. Donovan thought it was nearly impossible to stay hydrated enough in Louisiana. He felt his only hope of doing so was to absorb the humidity like a frog. He poured himself a fountain coke, trying to stay light on the ice, thinking it would melt and water down his drink far too quickly. Unfortunately, given the heat and the pressure of the air, he would still drink it.
He looked at Eleri with her Gatorade bottle. "You know you don't need that right? Water is just as good."
She raised an eyebrow at him. It was always fun to know something Eleri didn't.
He added, "You don't need that many electrolytes unless you're an athlete playing a game or participating in an actual competition."
"Hm," she said, but she didn't put the bottle down. "Water doesn't taste like winning." She said it with a grin, and he laughed at her.
They were walking down the street already guzzling their drinks when they made it to the corner and the first point where Cabot had gotten a ticket. Looking around, they checked the paper, almost like they were tourists with maps—which, in a way, they were.
Eleri had marked each of the points to be checked. Cabot had only gotten a ticket here once, and Donovan guessed this was slightly farther away from wherever the man had been visiting. When nothing in the neighborhood popped as someplace Cabot might frequent, they continued along.
They hit a second of the spots, and then a third, before finally coming to a very close cluster of tickets over a number of nearby parking spaces. Eleri pointed to the meters, and Donovan saw that they were the old kind that took coins, just as they predicted.
"Perhaps that was why Cabot got tickets," he told Eleri. "So that makes sense.”
“But he comes here all the time. How many times does he have to come here and get a forty- or seventy-dollar ticket before he remembers to bring coins?"
Donovan shrugged. He didn't know the answer to that. He wanted to say Cabot was smarter than that, but that wasn't anything he knew, either. Eleri seemed to think so, but he shrugged again.
They headed to the next spot and the next, chucking their empty cups in a street-side trashcan, the two drinks having disappeared just as quickly as he predicted.
"This is probably the easiest one to get to next." Eleri pointed to a spot on the map. In fact, it wasn't very easy at all. In order to catch all of them, and to catch this anomaly that still managed to statistically make the cluster, it was fastest to cut through a side neighborhood than to head directly toward the location of the bulk of the tickets.
They quickly found themselves in an area that had more little strip malls and shops than homes. A graveyard was behind them once again. The walls around it were high, and as the edges of the houses and apartments crept in, the streets got narrower. The spot where Cabot had his ticket was best reached by heading down an alley, and Donovan and Eleri turned right as Donovan smelled it.
Shit.
Without stopping the momentum of his stride, he thought on his feet. It was probably more dangerous to go back. He reached out and tapped Eleri on the hand several times. It wasn't a prearranged signal, but it was one she immediately understood.
Turning, she looked up at him, concern in her eyes, and he only mouthed the word "Lobomau."
He could tell that she changed the pattern of her steps and made her footfalls slightly softer so that she could listen to what was behind them. But he could hear it well. He wished he could change his skull just enough to flick his ears back and better capture the sounds behind them.
He heard at least three of them. They stayed at their current pace, and Donovan worked his hand toward his hip, closer to the gun he’d slid into the large pocket of his pants. It was a dumb place to carry a weapon—but with the heat, it was the only place the gun could go to be ready if he needed it.
Eleri had kept hers in her purse, and she now slowly slid the zipper back so her hand could reach in. He knew she would have no problem aiming and squeezing the trigger without pulling the gun out. That, at least, might surprise someone. But Donovan's gun would be obvious if he pulled it.
The footsteps were getting closer, and Donovan heard the sounds behind them change rhythm. The followers were gaining on purpose, stepping a little bit heavier. There was no mistaking that the three behind them were not moving randomly, but were trying to catch up.
"Hey, witch!" one of them called, and he knew it was time.
39
Eleri felt her muscles tighten even as she fought to relax them. The best way to go into a fight was to go in loose. The best way to go into a fight was actually not to go into one at all. And she wondered if she and Donovan could talk her way out of this, though the words "Hey, witch" made her think that wouldn’t be possible.
She didn't wait for a second invitation. She didn't want to look cowardly or like she was fleeing. Donovan seemed to have the same idea. So she spun around and looked at the first of the men who’d been following them.
It was not Cabot. None of the others was anyone she was supposed to know, either, though she recognized him from the driver’s licenses they’d pulled up earlier. So she asked, "Do I know you?"
"You should, witch," he growled, the emphasis on the last word as though it were some kind of slur.
"Nah," she said, as relaxed as she could possibly make it sound. "I don't know you at all. You must not be anybody important."
She was goading him, she knew. Beside her, she watched as Donovan tensed. Apparently, he didn’t quite approve of her methods. Honestly, neither did she, but the jab had just come out of her mouth. She wanted to ask this man what he called his witch friends if it was such a horrible thing to say, but she held her tongue on that one.
"My name is Carson Salzani.” He spoke clearly and cleanly, although there was definitely an implied threat in the tone. Eleri stared at him, blank-eyed. She did know that name, but he was going to have to follow some of her micro expressions to get it out of her.
She looked up into the corner of space over his shoulder and then shrugged her shoulders again. "No," she said, "It doesn't ring a bell."
"It will.”
"Why?" she asked. "Are you going to do something dumb?"
Again, she pulled the corners of her lips up a little, making just the tiniest of smiles. And again, she thought, Don't poke the wolves. But it was too late. She had already poked.
"Not dumb," he said, "but you need to stay out of what you've been sticking your hands into—or you might wind up with no hands at all."
"Interesting," she said. "Are you threatening to cut off my hands? You might not want to threaten me.”
"You think you're that powerful of a witch?" he asked. "You think your friend here, the wolf, is going to protect you? Maybe you don't know what I am."
This time, she threw her head back and laughed, exposing her throat and doing her very best to demonstrate absolutely no fear. "I don't think I'm that powerful a witch," she said, "but I do think you might be that much of an idiot."
She wanted to tell him that he'd just threatened bodily harm to a federal agent and expand on what classification of crime that was. But she bit her tongue; she was still holding that card for later. "And yes, I do know what you are. My friend here can smell you. Unfortunately, he said you guys smelled even before you came down the block." She wrinkled her nose in distaste. It was impossible to abandon this tactic now, not once she'd started it.
Donovan stayed silent beside her. He knew what she was doing, and he was deciding to stand back, though he was perfectly ready, should things turn south.
Carson came closer, one slow step, then another, and another … until his face was inches from hers. Behind him, another wolf—one she didn't recognize—curled his lip, revealing a long canine tooth and offered up a growl, as though after all this, that might stop her. Donovan stepped in closer. None of it stopped Carson.
Eleri stood her ground. "What is it that you want, little boy?"
He didn't flinch at the insult, which was a shame. He only told her his list of demands. "You need to stay away from Mystic Vudu. You need to stay away from Darcelle Dauphine.”
"Ooh," she asked, "because she and I are such good friends? Does that mean I need to stay away from the other Dauphine sisters too?" She prattled on purpose, her hands sneaking into her purse, and she wondered if he noticed. "Did she ever find her other sister? What was her name? I think she was missing …"
Carson was having none of it. He growled, too, this time. "Stay away."
"Sorry, dude," she said. "You can't tell me where to go in a U.S. city."
"It's my city," he said.
She laughed again, despite his closeness, despite the lightning speed at which she knew his claws could emerge and the fact that he could slash her throat if he so decided. He was close enough. There was nothing she could do, and probably nothing Donovan could do, either. But still, she laughed. "Oh, honey, it's not your city. If anything, it's the Dauphine sisters' city."
His open hand came out with lightning speed and smacked against her shoulder, shoving her back a couple of steps. Eleri stumbled. Her right shoulder blade struck Donovan in the side. She hadn't realized he was quite so close. Carson’s hit had almost made her spin, but she managed to stay on her feet.
Still, it wasn't graceful, and it was an affront. Carson had made the first move. Eleri was going for the second. Lifting up both of her hands, even as she stumbled back, it looked like she might be trying to protect herself. But she was angry. Carson was going to learn that she might be a witch, but she had no control over this shit yet.
She shoved her hands forward. Even though she made no connection with his skin, he too went stumbling back, colliding into his friends. They jostled into each other, almost like bowling pins. Unfortunately, that was enough. It was now a real fight.
The three of them rushed toward her, coming in one unit, seeming to forget that Donovan was there. Before she could react, Carson's hands were on her throat. But she had her fingers wrapped around the butt of her gun, aiming it up toward his chest and smacking her purse into him.
"There's a Glock in here," she managed to gasp through his grip, "and it's loaded. It's right on your chest. You can squeeze my throat, but it takes approximately three-and-a-half minutes for a human to die that way." That was actually a little long, but she was going for it. "Guess how long it takes a man to die from a bullet directly to his heart?" She pushed forward with the gun hoping he would get the message, but he didn't move.
