[Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine (15 page)

Marguerite made a show of nonchalance. “Why would I? It’s not that big a deal.”

“Maybe not to you, but it sure is unusual.”

Marguerite shrugged, purposely ignoring the avid interest in her friend’s eyes. “I didn’t know much about what he did until there was a scandal. He was just a regular father like anyone else.”

“Al said you’d be embarrassed about it,” Lavonia said, narrowing her eyes, “and he was right.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” Marguerite retorted. “My father was a wonderful man and a great filmmaker. I just don’t get off on explaining over and over again that he was not a pedophile and getting pitying or disgusted looks in return, because no one ever believes me.” Familiar fury simmered within her. “See? You’re doing it right now.”

“You were just a kid, so how could you know? It wouldn’t be surprising if a man in his forties wanted to have sex with a sixteen-year-old girl.”

“No, it wouldn’t, but he didn’t.” Enough of that subject. She’d alienated people before by insisting on what she knew and couldn’t prove. She’d learned the hard way to shut up and keep her distance.

Which she hadn’t managed to do with Constantine. Maybe being bombarded with his images of ripping off her clothes had stripped away her customary restraint as well. Enough of that, too. “And no, my dream wasn’t prophetic. I’m not going to sleep with Constantine. One thing’s for sure, though. I’d much rather dream about sex than about being run over by a humongous van.”

After that, Lavonia tried to persuade her to spend the rest of the day making positive affirmations about a long life stretching into the future, with or without sex, but instead Marguerite went through Pauline’s entire room and grew more and more frustrated. Even if something was missing, how would she know? These weren’t her belongings. Not only that, half her mind was taken up with thinking about Constantine, so it was with great relief that she finally opened the door for Tony Karaplis.

She’d first met Tony soon after moving to Bayou Gavotte. She’d gone with a date to Blood and Velvet, the premier vampire club in town. Clubs like this usually had a few real vampires in attendance, but mostly it was random partiers and vampire wannabees, many of them in costumes. The idiot with whom she had gone out that night—not that she’d realized what a dummy he was at first, because he’d been a reputedly brilliant graduate student in chemical engineering, introduced to her by Al Bonnard—had been okay for the first part of the evening, not coming on too strong. The luscious costumes made her long for a sketch pad, but since she was carrying only a teeny black purse on a string, she settled for soaking in and memorizing the costumes and scribbling on a couple of napkins. Her date accepted a hit of Ecstasy from one of a group of ravers and became far too happy and hot to trot. She put up with it, fending him off as best she could, until he stuck in some fake fangs and tried to bite her.

She slugged him and was eyeing the crying, cowering result of her handiwork without the slightest sympathy, when Tony appeared through a doorway at the back. The crowd parted to accommodate his approach. He was fiftyish and
not exactly good-looking, with his battered ex-bruiser’s face and substantial mustache. “Tony Karaplis,” he said, offering a large hand and a stunner of a grin. He shoved the remains of her date into the arms of a gothed-up partier and slid onto the stool opposite Marguerite.

“Are you the owner of this place?” she asked him dubiously. What a hellish struggle not to respond to that grin, but she knew a hereditary vampire when she saw one. Her dad had always had one or more in his movies. They were ideal for porn, because they had amazing libidos and were immune to STDs, which made it safer for all concerned. Responding to a vampire’s smile might get her very quickly into a situation like the one she’d just tried to avoid. Well, not quite. Sex with a real vampire was likely to be physically satisfying, but that didn’t make it worthwhile.

Tony shook with laughter. “Not a chance. I run a pizza parlor, Tony’s Greek and Italian.” She’d seen the place, not far from the Impractical Cat, but she’d never eaten there.

She introduced herself. “Nice to meet you,” she added politely, “but you may as well know right now that I’m not interested in being bitten, even by a real vampire. Been there, done that, not my thing.”

“McHugh,” Tony mused. “Any relation to—?”

She laughed at his pause. Most people in the vampire community had known her dad as Porno McHugh and had no idea of his first name. “He was my father.”

“Well, well,” Tony said. “What can I do for the great man’s daughter?” He had the most endearing twinkle.

“Get me some paper to sketch the costumes on?”

“Your wish is my command,” Tony said grandly and ordered her a fresh iced tea and paper and pencil. The waiter
showed up with a clipboard and eraser as well. “Sketch to your heart’s content, and when you’re done I’ll take you home or someplace with even better costumes. Nobody’ll bother you while you’re with me.”

She spent a good hour sketching and watching in amusement as Tony received one indecent proposal after another. Women slithered up to the table in a continuous stream, sometimes in pairs and even one threesome, young girls and middle-aged partiers, and even one much older lady who turned out to be a writer doing research. One and all made it clear what they needed—desperately—from Tony, and one and all he turned away with a smile, kind words, sometimes a caress. He gently directed the sidetracked writer to another club called the Oubliette, where more serious vampire types could be found. A select few were invited to drop by his restaurant.

“I’m good,” Tony said during an all-too-brief lull, “but I can’t fuck them all.” Since that night, he and Marguerite had gone clubbing now and then, when she wanted to sketch and he wanted to dance with a woman who didn’t crawl all over him.

Now, she’d just finished showering and hadn’t tidied the living room, so the sketch pad still lay on the couch. He sauntered in, looking tough, cool, and sexy in a typical vampire way. He gave her a hug and took possession of the couch and the remote before noticing the sketch pad. He broke into whoops and guffaws. “What have you done to Constantine? That’s quite some dick.”

She snatched the drawing away, clutching it to her chest. She didn’t need this kind of embarrassment. When he
stopped laughing enough to listen, Marguerite asked, “Do you know Constantine personally?”

“Known him since he was eight years old. I was a sort of father figure to him when he and his mom moved to New Orleans.”

“What about his own father?”

“Died when he was a kid, back in Arizona. Or New Mexico, maybe.” Gently, he removed the sketch pad from her clasp. “What made you give him a dick like that?”

“I drew it from a sex dream I had this afternoon.” After a second’s hesitation, she risked saying, “I think Constantine sent the dream to me.” At the worst, Tony would scoff, and she could hardly blame him.

“Could be,” Tony said, as if sending dreams were an everyday occurrence. Perhaps vampires accepted the unusual as a matter of course because they were unusual themselves. He scratched Lawless’s spine. “He’s certainly hot for you and extremely possessive.”

“You spoke to him about me? Why?”

“I wanted the other side of the tabloid story.” Tony chuckled. “Had a bit of fun, too. He’s one jealous guy.”

“About me? No way. We’re not
really
in a relationship.” Tony rolled his eyes, and she added, “He’s crazy. I want nothing to do with him.”

“Uh-huh,” Tony said. “That explains why you’re recording your sex dreams about him.” Lawless flopped onto the floor, exposing his belly for Tony’s caress. “Move out of the way. I can’t see the TV.”

“I had to get it out of my system somehow.” She paced back and forth. “Sure, I find him attractive, but I wasn’t even looking for a boyfriend. I do much better without one. I’m
not the one going around totally horny and pretending to be cool.” She stopped, hands on hips, breathing irritably down her nose. “What is the
matter
with him?”

Tony shifted to see around her. “The way I figure it, this dream is his attempt to compensate for not fucking you.”

“Oh, how charming.” Marguerite began pacing again. “I don’t hop into bed with a guy the day we meet, and usually not at all. I was having a nice, peaceful life until he came along. Well, apart from my roommate dying, and me being drugged and left on the mound, but that seems to be connected with him, too.”

“If I recall correctly from what I read on the Internet,” Tony said, “you’re the one who announced you were having sex with him.” He kicked off his loafers and stuck his feet under Lawless’s warm belly.

“To protect him from the reporter,” she said.

Tony guffawed. “No ulterior motive, baby?”

“None! You’re as bad as he is. It drives me
nuts
not to be believed when I’m telling the simple truth.” Thanks to being able to read auras, this was the story of her life. She should be used to it by now, but apparently she never would be. “This morning, he tried to freak me out by saying he’s been watching me from the bayou.”

“He’s been stalking you? That’s a new twist. Do you mind?”

She felt herself blushing. “No, not really.”

“So everything’s cool. He wants you, and you want him.” When she glared, he added, “It’s not that he doesn’t want to screw you, baby. He hasn’t had sex for quite a while, and as far as I could tell between threats and growls, this is the first time it’s really mattered to him.”

Marguerite halted, frowning, then moved aside to get out of Tony’s line of sight.

The vampire flipped channels. “He’s always been particular, except when it came to Jonetta. Nobody who knows him understands why he married her.” He shrugged. “I haven’t seen him with a woman for a good long time. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.”

“When I got pissed off and threatened to come on to him,” Marguerite said, “he acted as if I really were attacking him.”

Tony made an incredulous face. “That boy is so screwed up.”

“He said it would be dangerous for us to have sex.”

Tony considered. “And yet he wants to keep you. Hence the long lasso of a prick that can haul you in, bind you, and fuck you all at once.”

Marguerite felt herself flush from head to toe.

“But only in your dreams, unless he sorts himself out.” He decided on a channel and set down the remote. “Go put on some clothes, baby. I promised him I wouldn’t come on to you, but visualizing you naked under that robe isn’t helping.”

Marguerite went away to get dressed. He was watching soccer on ESPN when she came out of the bedroom fifteen minutes later in a skimpy red number that matched a new pair of garnet earrings. He turned off the TV and stood.

“Very sexy,” he said contentedly, licking his fangs. “Color of blood. Constantine will be jealous as hell.”

Oh, crap. “He’s not going to follow us around, is he? Or send one of his bodyguards to shadow us? I have private business to take care of.”

“Looking for that young dude he wants to talk to, you mean? No problem. He says you’re wasting your time, but he’ll give you till tomorrow morning.”

“He has so much gall!” Worse than that, he’d guessed exactly what she was planning. He would do exactly as he pleased, whenever he chose. She was no match for him, none at all. She
had
to find Zeb tonight.

On the way out, she grabbed her backpack, which contained a smaller sketch pad. “It’ll give me an excuse for scrutinizing people. Let’s try the Chamber first. They have decent food.” They drove the few miles into downtown Bayou Gavotte, and after a quick meal and no sign of Zeb, they toured several other clubs. Marguerite took her time, focusing, peering across rooms and into dark corners.

“Why are we taking so long?” Tony griped. “Either you see him or you don’t. He’s not invisible.”

“No, but if he’s painted, he might be difficult to identify, and if he’s hiding…” She shrugged. She wasn’t about to explain this to anyone, but Zeb was good at making himself inconspicuous. If he didn’t want to talk to her, he might well succeed.

At last there were only two more likely possibilities. One was the Threshold, which had the worst reputation in town for violent sexual activities and breaking the rules about minors.

“We’re not going there,” Tony said. “Constantine’s handling that one.”

“What?” She gritted her teeth. She hated the Threshold, but Zeb was the sort of attractive, well-built kid who could get hired there. “What if he finds Zeb there?”

“Didn’t I tell you he’s giving you till tomorrow?” Tony sounded as offended as if she’d dissed him personally. “He’s going there to check into rule infractions, maybe punish someone who needs it. If he finds Zeb, he’ll just get him the hell out.”

So they went to the Merkin, with its baroque decor and focus on historical debauchery. It was owned by several professors at Hellebore University, and the obscene poetry and murals probably provided more of an education than a semester’s worth of lectures. Inside, they found Nathan Bone holding forth from a gilded chaise in the bar, the focus of a group of avid listeners, one of whom was Janie. The witch waggled her fingers and grinned.

Nathan did a nasty little double take and sprang up, whipping out a camera. “Rocker’s girl steps out with playboy restaurateur. Does Constantine know who you’re with tonight, love?”

“Of course he knows, you walking, talking cesspool.” She clutched Tony’s arm and grimaced for the camera. She should have expected this, but she’d been too caught up with worrying about Zeb.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” said Nathan. “Constantine’s going to look like such a loser when pics of you and this dude are all over the Internet.”

“Who
is
this asshole?” Tony pried Marguerite’s clutching fingers off his forearm. He jabbed a large fist at Nathan’s chest, jabbed again, backing him up to the bar. “Want me to take him down?”

Yes!
“No, if Constantine wants him punished, he’ll take care of it himself.” She slipped her hand through the
vampire’s arm again. “Cool it, Tony darling. We came here to dance, remember?”