Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

Eugenie had a few hours before her flight to Shreveport, but needed to go on a mystery errand she’d asked me to help her with. She had invited me to spend Thanksgiving with her family, but sitting with someone else’s relatives at Thanksgiving seemed even more pathetic than sitting alone. I’d called my grandmother, finally, to let her know my house had burned. After a few short minutes of conversation about how I should move to Alabama, get married to a nice, steady man, and give up magic, I realized I’d rather spend Thanksgiving alone than with my own family too.

Pathetic.

“You about ready to go?” Eugenie retrieved her small, tapestry- covered suitcase from the corner and shoved a heavy tote bag into my usable hand. I hefted it onto the table and looked inside. “What is this?”

“It’s that good andouille and crawfish boudin we got in LaPlace yesterday, and the caramel doberge I picked up at Gambino’s.”

“They won’t let you take this on the plane.” Besides, I had plans for that doberge. Seven thin layers of cake, caramel frosting, and at least ten pounds on my hips overnight. And here I thought she’d dragged me all over the river parishes yesterday to keep me from wallowing in self-pity. “At least leave the cake. It’ll get crushed. I’ll take it to the hotel with me.”

Eugenie eyed me with way too much wisdom and not an ounce of pity. “You aren’t going to sit in that dead pirate’s hotel room and eat caramel cake by yourself all day, girl.”

No, if she took the cake, I’d sit there and eat Cheetos and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups by myself all day. I’d already stocked up.

“Alex gone up to Picayune to spend Thanksgiving with his folks?”

I shrugged, then winced at the pain that shot through my shoulder. I needed to pick up some different body language to indicate my cluelessness. “Dunno. Probably.” I wondered if Jake would make a holiday appearance before heading back to Jean Lafitte’s fight club.

I hadn’t talked to Alex all week. He’d been called off on another enforcer assignment that Ken had been kind of vague about. Something involving gremlins.

I wanted to phone him, but hadn’t worked up the nerve— plus, phones did work both ways. I wanted us to try again, even if it meant decluttering my life of its natural chaos. But I worried that this last episode might have scared him away for good. I thought he might be avoiding me and using gremlins as an excuse.

I followed Eugenie to her car, and climbed in with my bag of sausage and cake.

“Ken tells me there’s a big meeting going on with your . . . people. Are wizards people? I’ve always thought of you as a person.”

I sighed and shifted the bag away from my immobilized arm. “Yeah, we’re people. Well, some of us more than others.” Ken needed a muzzle.

No way Eugenie needed to know about the troubles in preteville. The Elven Synod, Vampire Regents’ Council, and entire Congress of Elders were planning a big sit-down after Christmas to figure out what to do about Lily, Terri, Etienne, and the newest baby vampire, Adrian. The only reason for waiting so long: the Elders had their own housecleaning to do, which might or might not involve removing Geoffrey Hoffman as First Elder, depending on what he knew, when he knew it, and how far he was willing to go to protect Adrian. The final formation of the Interspecies Council was on hold.

I’d been ordered to testify before both the Elders and the bigger prete council, along with Rand, Jean Lafitte, the nowincarcerated Jonas Adamson, who’d been found hiding in a barroom in Old Orleans and been reported by none other than Louis Armstrong, and the Axeman, who’d be brought back by another registered necromancer.

Just shoot me now.

Eugenie hadn’t mentioned Rand since the great unveiling, and neither had I.

He’d come back to town yesterday, which I only knew because he’d been knocking at my mental door, trying to communicate. I was growing adept at ignoring him mentally, and planned to ignore him physically when he tracked me down at the Monteleone. Because he would. He was persis tent, if nothing else. I didn’t know how I felt about my non-husband— it waffled between outright hatred, reluctant tolerance, and morbid fascination. Until I figured it out, I didn’t want to talk to him.

Eugenie bounced the car through Mid-City on potholepocked streets that were mostly deserted. Everyone had something to do on Thanksgiving Day. “Where is it we’re going exactly?” She was supposed to drop me back at the hotel before heading to the airport.

“Just something I want you to see.” Eugenie looked smug, turning right on Carrollton and heading north.

“And you’re going to have time to take me back to the Quarter and then get to the airport? I could drop you off and keep your car if you aren’t afraid for me to drive lefthanded.” I couldn’t believe I was in my late twenties and didn’t have a car, a house, or a stick of furniture to my name. What I did have was a staff and a pile of black grimoires, protected by such a complex of spells I doubt they could ever be destroyed. Alex had boxed them and taken them to his house till I had a place for them.

I needed a serious self-pity party, with cake. I eyed the tote, wondering how I could get the cake carrier out from underneath the sausages without Eugenie noticing.

The fact we were headed into Lakeview didn’t hit me until the car nosed onto Marconi Drive and sped north through City Park. “Where in the world are we going?”

She grinned and didn’t answer, turning left on Harrison and driving toward the Seventeenth Street Canal, whose levee breach had been the major culprit in the post-Katrina flooding of New Orleans.

The only place of interest in this neighborhood—and when she turned right on Bellaire Drive I knew it’s where we were headed—was my childhood home. I’d grown up with Gerry only a few blocks from the levee breach. After the flood, I’d had his ruined house gutted and the interior reframed, but nothing more. I couldn’t bear to do it.

“Euge, I don’t want to go to Gerry’s house. I really, really don’t.” Especially on Thanksgiving. It still hurt too much. Eventually, maybe my good memories would outweigh the horrific sights I’d seen here after Katrina, but not yet. If I closed my eyes, I could still smell the mold, visualize the jumble of Gerry’s belongings, feel the squish of inky sludge beneath my feet as I walked through.

Half the houses in Lakeview had been torn down after the Katrina flooding had left them unfixable, and empty lots took their places. Others had been rebuilt, higher and stronger. Quite a few, like Gerry’s house, were gutted and ready to be filled in like outlined photos in a coloring book. Empty shells.

Eugenie pulled in the driveway to the house on Bellaire— two stories with a balcony on the front of the second floor. All the original doors and windows had been blown out by floodwater, and the new panes still had stickers on them. The spray-painted X from the National Guard units searching house-to- house for bodies had long since disappeared thanks to new siding.

“Why are we here?” Was this some warped attempt to make me thankful that I had not one but two uninhabitable houses? Because it wasn’t working. I had my heart set on self- pity with snacks. “This is a bad idea.”

“You got your key?” She opened her car door, and had to walk around and open mine since my right arm was immobilized and my left was full of food. I struggled out, and she gave me a little shove toward the house. “I need to get something out of the trunk. Go on and let yourself in.”

“What is wrong with you? Did you spike your coffee this morning?” I glared at her a moment while she rummaged in her trunk. “Oh, good grief. Fine.”