Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

Jake opened the massive green hurricane shutters on the outside of the front window to let in some light. He stopped at the bar on his way back to the table where I was spreading out our food. “You want a drink?”

I’d kill for coffee, but didn’t want to wait for it to brew. “Soda’s okay. Whatever’s easiest and caffeinated.”

I opened the first Styrofoam container and grimaced. The steak part of Jake’s steak and eggs had barely left the cow. The red slab of beef looked way too much like the crime scene we’d just left.

My “lost bread,” on the other hand, was perfect. French bread grilled, then deep- fried, floating in butter and syrup. I’d be in such a sugar coma my sore ribs wouldn’t prevent me from sleeping like they’d done most of the last three weeks.

“Learn anything at the crime scene?” Jake took the seat opposite me at the table, setting a soda in front of me and a glass of amber liquid over ice next to his tartare and eggs. It smelled like bourbon.

I focused on my breakfast and bit my tongue so hard I was surprised I didn’t swallow a piece of it. I wasn’t Jake’s mother; I wasn’t even his girlfriend, although we’d tried to make that work. I sure wasn’t his keeper. If he wanted bloody beef and bourbon for breakfast, it was none of my business.

Unfortunately, the crime scene we’d just left was my business.

“I felt an energy signature that made me suspect Axeman Deux could be the real guy,” I said. “You know—the real Axeman from 1918, one of the historical undead.”

Jake dug into his steak. “Well, sunshine, I know just the guy to fill you in on the comings and goings of famous dead guys.”

I sighed. “Jean Lafitte’s still got his suite at the Hotel Monteleone and I could call him—he’s learned to use a telephone very well.” I knew this because he’d developed the bad habit of calling me at ridiculous hours with grand business ideas such as charging pretes admission to go in and out of Old Orleans— with him taking the pirate’s share of the profits. The man needed a hobby.

There were other members of the historical undead I could contact for gossip and information, however, so I might find another source.

“I’ll handle it later,” I said. “What did you make of the crime scene? Anything different from what the cops found?”

Jake nodded and took a sip of his drink. “I scented something the police didn’t catch, and I think it supports your theory. At least my goddamned sense of smell came in handy for something.”

He reached in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. After punching a few keys, he held the phone out to me. “Scroll through the photos of the shirt. I found it stuck way down under a sofa cushion but couldn’t figure out how to get it past Ken. He took it as evidence.”

I scrolled from photo to photo while Jake went back to the bar for napkins. The images weren’t very good quality but were clear enough to show a white shirt stained red over much of its front, presumably from heavy blood splatters. In one shot, the shirt had been spread out.

“It looks huge,” I said when Jake rejoined me at the table.

“Belonged to a big man, for sure. Which Ken says the victim wasn’t.”

The sound of liquid over ice drew my attention away from the photos. I frowned as Jake refilled his glass. He’d brought a half-empty bottle of Four Roses to the table, his favorite bourbon for as long as I’d known him. He’d leaned on alcohol too hard after coming home from Afghani stan but, again, I went through the litany of reasons for keeping my mouth shut.

Jake was oblivious. “Notice the collar? There’s a couple of close-ups.”

I scrolled through two more shots and looked at the bloodsoaked band collar. The shirt also had a bib front, which wasn’t a style one often saw in men’s clothing these days. “Looks vintage.” I glanced up at Jake. “So, what, the Axeman comes over from the Beyond, hacks this shipping guy to death, then either trots back across the border half naked or brings along a handy change of clothes?”

Jake shrugged. “Hell if I know. When you were reading up on the Axeman, did you see anything about clothes?”

“No, but I’ll have to take another look now that there’s a possibility it’s the real Axeman.” I tried to will my tight shoulder muscles to relax. “Damn it. I really wanted to have a few quiet days until Thanksgiving.”

Since the borders with the Beyond dropped last month, life’s chaos factor had gone viral, and my body ached from both fatigue and stress. Now we had the new DDT office, for which Jake and Alex were the only agents so far, and I’d been promoted to sole sentinel of South Louisiana. The Congress of Elders, grand poobahs of the wizarding world, were in hot negotiations with the major prete leaders about the balance of power as the Interspecies Council was solidified. God only knew what further chaos was in store.

My last case, involving a sociopathic killer nymph and a horde of territorial mermen, paled beside the prospect of a serial murderer from among the historical undead. “The thing that sucks about this, if it is the real Axeman, is that he’s immortal.” I used my fork to submerge the last bite of my pain perdu under a tsunami of syrup. “If I kill him, he just fades into the Beyond, rebuilds his strength, and pops right back over the border.” Kind of like a psychotic jack- in-the-box.

Jake pointed at me with his fork. “Arrest him and have him banned from re-entering modern New Orleans. Case closed.”

“Yeah, eventually.” Visions of red tape danced in my head. The Elders wanted something as mundane as a business lunch justified in triplicate. “Banning a member of the historical undead from New Orleans will take a ream of paperwork and an act of the Interspecies Council, which isn’t fully formed yet. All the Elders and species representatives will have to meet, and they’ll all have to sign off on the warrant. The Axeman could chop up half of the city by then.”

Personally, I thought any of the historical undead with a criminal record should have been automatically banned from the modern world as soon as the borders dropped. But since New Orleans’ most famous undead citizen was a certain French pirate with a list of crimes a fathom deep, that wasn’t likely to happen.

“How about we make it too painful for the Axeman to stay?” Jake tilted in his chair, balancing it on its back legs. “I’ll go to the scene and track him, then let my wolf take over and kill him. The historical undead can’t turn loup-garou, but it’ll hurt like hell while his system rejects the virus, or so I hear. If I kill him every time he comes back, pretty soon he’ll quit coming.”

What a bad idea, on so many levels. We didn’t need a loup- garou vigilante. “You’re forgetting one thing. He could kill you. He’s immortal. You aren’t.”

Jake stared out the window for a few seconds before turning back to me with a cold smile. “Yeah, it’s easy to kill me, isn’t it?” He sipped half-finished drink number three. “One silver bullet and I’m dog food.”

A pang shot through my chest that had less to do with my cracked ribs than with pure heartache at hearing such despair and anger in his voice. I desperately wanted to help Jake, but I didn’t know how to breach the walls he’d put up around himself.

“How much did the blood at the crime scene bother you?” I watched as he chewed enthusiastically on a bite of steak, and hoped the question would open the door to a real talk.

“It made me hungry.” He speared the last chunk of rare meat and held it up, giving me a steady, pissed-off look. “Did it make you hungry?”

I swallowed hard. Was Jake’s control unraveling or was he just trying to push me away? “Did Ken seem curious as to how you knew the shirt was there when the cops missed it?”