Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

Alex hugged me again. “He’s okay. I found him hiding in the bushes behind my house about twelve hours after the fire. I should’ve known you were with Lafitte, but I was afraid the elves had you, especially with Randolph missing too.”

“He’s—”

Alex stepped back and placed a finger across my lips. “It’s gonna be complicated. It’s gonna give me a headache. Probably acid reflux too. And I’ll end up doing something illegal. So don’t tell me. Not yet.” He leaned down and kissed me, then traced his fingers across the cuts on my face, following his fingers with his lips.

This was a bad idea. We had too much unresolved. We had too much . . . damn . He slipped his hands inside the robe.

His voice was low and husky against my ear. “Were you wearing that lace- up thing I found on the floor out there?”

I struggled to breathe as he worked his way down my neck. “Corset. Yeah. Wearing.”

He growled against that sensitive spot where neck meets shoulder and nudged the robe aside till it slipped off and puddled at my feet. “Take it home with you. I want to see you in it.”

Uh-huh. I could do that. As soon as I finished unbuttoning his stupid shirt. How many buttons did one shirt need?

By some stroke of divine providence, I opened my eyes while Alex’s back was to the door to the outer suite and I was camouflaged by his body. So my “holy crap” was muffled by my dive for the floor and the abandoned robe.

Jean lounged in the doorway, grinning. “Do not mind me, Jolie . I would enjoy the sight more without le petit chien in the way, but”—he shrugged— “Je prends du plaisir où je peux en trouver.”

I think that translated roughly as taking pleasure where one found it, and I hoped he wasn’t suggesting a threesome because as intriguing as that sounded in theory, it was a horrible idea.

I’d like to say I was woman enough, but I really, really wasn’t.

The Eudora Welty Suite was beginning to feel like home, which was pathetic since it was much nicer than anyplace I’d ever lived or probably ever would.

After a nap, a shower, and a couple of good meals, I’d bought emergency magical supplies using my own credit card. Alex had miraculously found my abandoned purse in my driveway beside the slightly baked rental car. With the supplies, I cooked up a couple of simple potions on a hot plate I’d bought and set up in the suite’s abbreviated kitchen.

After going through my grounding ritual and making up a new mojo bag, I wrapped my sore ribs in athletic tape, strapped a lightweight Kevlar vest over a t-shirt, then pulled my enormous new white Hotel Monteleone sweatshirt over that. I looked like the Michelin Man.

The elven staff, sturdy and straight as it could be inside its coating of duct tape, fit into a sleeve I’d stitched to the thigh of my new jeans, using a portable sewing kit from the gift shop and the denim I’d trimmed off the bottom where they were too long. Made a great camouflaged holster. I tucked a silver knife into a boot and clipped a small grenade to my belt loop within easy reach; Alex had retrieved it from my mantel. He thought the Axeman had found the grenade I’d left on my worktable and triggered it after setting my house on fire. Thus, the explosion.

I’d pulled my hair into a ponytail, then braided it and wrapped it in a low knot at my neck, minimizing its effectiveness as a handle with which to haul me around. Lesson learned.

Everything I wore except the knife and grenade were the products of a quick shopping trip in the Quarter. They were also the only clothing I now owned besides a robe stolen from Jean Lafitte and some underwear from an overpriced Quarter boutique. Alex had broken the news that little from the upstairs of my house would be salvageable except for Gerry’s black grimoires, which appeared to have been protected with some kind of spell. The downstairs of the house was iffy because of smoke and water damage from the firefighters.

In theory, I knew it was all gone, that a big chunk of my life had disappeared in smoke and flame. I hadn’t seen it, though, so it didn’t seem real. Not seeing it helped me tuck it away in the back of my mind, where it waited like a coiled rattlesnake, waiting to spring up and sink its poison into me. I knew it would strike, but not when.

My watch had been crushed when Rand tackled me on Magazine Street and dragged me away from the fire, so I paced the suite, watching the minutes crawl past on the digital bedside clock. Jean was late, and I wasn’t sure whether to be worried or annoyed.

He’d gone to L’Amour Sauvage to see Etienne and let slip the details of my plans for the eve ning. I thought it was risky for him to go alone and had urged him to take Alex or Ken or Rene—or even pull Dom or one of his other men out of the Beyond. Jean was convinced his vampire buddy had no role in the Axeman business.

I thought his trust was misplaced. Sadistic Lily had been in Etienne’s office on my first visit, which gave him a connection to the elves. And the snippet of the phone call I’d overheard the last time I saw him kept replaying in my head. Etienne Boulard was up to something, and now Jean was an hour behind schedule.

I jumped when my new cell phone rang, its preset ringtone sounding like something from a Martian disco. My nerves were shot.

“Where are you?” Alex spoke in a stage whisper. He and Ken were waiting at my house, where I should have been twenty minutes ago.

“Jean still isn’t back. I’m afraid he’s been compromised. Etienne might be our guy.”

Alex chuffed into the phone. “You want to change the plan?”

I did a quick mental run-through of different scenarios. “I’ll come without him and hope he got the message delivered. If the vampire’s taken control of Jean and is sending him to kill me, I don’t want to be trapped at the hotel with all these people nearby.”

One thing about the Jean-as- necromancer-bait plan worried me. I didn’t know if I could kill him, even knowing he was trying to kill me, even knowing he’d come back to life in the Beyond and heal as good as new. Last time we’d tried to hurt each other was early in our relationship, and even then I wasn’t sure either of us was serious about it. I sure as hell couldn’t blow him up with a grenade.

But we both knew the risks and had agreed that, if this worked, it was the best chance to catch the necromancer. If it didn’t work, nothing lost.

Jean, Alex, Ken, and I had gone through every scenario we could think of to keep Jean from falling under the necromancer’s true control. Mostly, it consisted of him interpreting the necromancer’s commands very literally. Kill DJ could be interpreted as Kill DJ someday . Or Stab the girl could mean any girl, or a stab wound to the toe.

Rand had made a quick, tense trip to New Orleans before returning to Elf heim—he’d taught me an elven spell that might help me track the line of magic from my attacker back to the necromancer, regardless of whether it was the Axeman or Jean being controlled. He was convinced one of the elves was behind this whole mess, and had gone back to Elf heim to spread the word that I’d be at my house tonight, digging through what was left after the fire.

I’d called Adrian and told him the same thing, explaining why I needed a few days off from my elf lessons. He actually asked if I needed help, which surprised me.

And just to cover my bases, I’d called the necromancer Jonas Adamson and set up a phony meeting with him next week to talk about new potions regulations, slipping in the information about my eve ning plans.

If Etienne, Adrian, Jonas, or a Synod member was either our leak to the necromancer or the necromancer himself, we should be in business.