Bewitched on Bourbon Street (13 page)

Leaning against the wall because I was certain I couldn’t sit down, I gritted my teeth against the pain and asked, “You all right, man?”

Ezra wiped the sweat from his forehead. “If I can survive a demon attack, I can sure as hell manage getting you to the phone.”

“Fair enough. Do me a favor, will you? Dial this number for me?” The phone was on the other side of the desk. I’d never reach it without inflicting more damage on my slaughtered abdomen.

Ezra picked up the phone and dialed as I rattled off the number.

It went straight to voicemail. I bit back a curse and left her a vague message about how I was okay and I’d get in touch the next day.

Ezra hung up the phone and raised a curious eyebrow.

“There’s no need for her to worry. I’ll survive.”

He gave me a dubious look and then helped me back to my room. By the time I collapsed in the hospital bed, I was sweating and more than a little pissed off.

“Looks like you could use an hour or so with a sex witch,” Ezra said, his tone snide.

I fixed him with a hard stare.

“What? Isn’t that how you get your power? You’re an incubus, right? And a sex witch would likely fix that shit going on with your gut. I mean, dude, the fact that you were walking at all is hardcore. But it obviously hurts like a bitch.”

“Drop it.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

“I said drop it,” I all but growled. The last thing I wanted to do was think about being with anyone other than Jade. And thinking about her, well, I’d give just about anything to be curled up next to her while my body healed itself.

“Sorry.” Ezra slumped back in the chair, watching me.

I wanted to throw his ass out. Call the doctor and ask for more pain meds. Because this was bullshit. If Bea had been here, she’d have me on some special pain-reducing herb, and I’d likely be walking out of here in the morning. Or maybe I was giving her too much credit. I had been thoroughly gutted.

But as annoying a presence as Ezra was, he had questions to answer.

“Tell me about your mother. Why do you think we need to take her down?”

His brown eyes flashed with fury as he stood and paced the room. “She’s a traitor. Has demon connections. If she had her way, you and your wife would be locked away in Hell right now.”

I frowned. Chessandra was no saint, but his statement felt off. For Christ’s sake, she’d even tried to close portals in the past. “I’ve never gotten that impression.”

He stopped his incessant stalking. “She’s nothing like who she pretends to be.”

“Enlighten me, then.” I propped myself up on the pillows, ignoring the ever-increasing sharp stabs in my gut. Whatever drugs I’d been on must’ve been wearing off. Fuck, if I hurt this much medicated, what would it be like completely sober? I shuddered thinking about it.

He moved slowly back to the chair beside my bed and sat, his elbows resting on his knees as he leaned forward. “Do you know what it does to a kid who’s told he isn’t wanted?”

“I might know something about that.” My parents had never been cut out for child rearing. They never pretended they were, either. In fact, I’d heard more than once from my selfish mother that I’d been a mistake. That did something to a kid. Something almost beyond repair.

“I doubt it,” Ezra said.

“That’s your choice.” I saw no reason to participate in his indulgence. If he wanted to believe he was the only kid with fucked-up parents, he could. I wasn’t his freakin’ therapist. I only wanted to learn what he had to say about his mother.

Ezra cast me a nasty look.

I ignored that too and did my best to keep him talking. “Did you grow up in the angel realm?”

“No.” He bit the word off.

That made sense. If he had, it was likely everyone would know about him. “Boarding school?”

He shook his head, his anger getting more and more pronounced by the second. “Foster care. In the fucking system if you can believe that.”

Now that was a surprise and completely opposite of my earlier assessment. Sometime in the near past, he’d been exposed to privilege, though, and perhaps that was where most of his anger came from. Knowing what he missed out on as a kid. “Where was your dad?”

He shrugged. “Don’t have one.”

“Don’t have one, or you don’t know who he is?”

“Both.” Ezra rubbed his left temple as if to ease a headache.

I couldn’t get past the foster care remark. “So you’re saying your mom, the most powerful and certainly well-to-do angel in the angel realm, put you in the system instead of raising you herself?”

“That’s what I said, Rouquette. Keep up.”

My irritation was growing by the second. I’d had enough. I’d saved his ass from certain death. I didn’t need this crap. “So you had a shitty childhood and your mother is a piece of work. Welcome to the club. Get over it. Get a therapist. Find a girl to lose yourself in. Do something other than whining about it.”

His light-brown eyes narrowed, and his lips formed a tight line. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

There it was. The cold hatred I knew was lurking under his tough-guy attitude. The kind that if tapped would show someone’s true colors. “I’m listening.”

“My mother didn’t just not want me, she threw me away, sent me to live with mundanes who had no idea I was an angel. They weren’t equipped to deal with anything magic related. When I was six and learned I could control birds just by talking to them, that was cool. But later, in school, when I could sense things about people, see their auras and know when they were suffering, do you know what that does to a kid? I had no idea what any of that meant. No idea how to handle it.”

My irritation with him eased. His experience sounded similar to Jade’s when she was a kid, learning to deal with her empath gift. At least in her formative years, she’d had her mother around to help her through it. How tough must it have been to be a kid and be subject to the massive amounts of suffering in the world without any coping skills?

“And if that wasn’t enough,” he continued, “I was constantly being shuffled around. Corruption, divorce, drugs. You name it, I’ve been subjected to it. I’ve lived on my own since I was sixteen, and the day I turned eighteen, I went looking for her.”

“How did you find her?” That seemed difficult at best. Chessandra lived most of her life in the angel realm. Getting to her was almost impossible.

“I tracked down her sister.”

“Mati?” That would do it. Chessandra’s family lived across the river.

“Yeah.” He let out a humorless laugh. “Imagine my surprise to find out my family was less than ten miles away living an upper-class lifestyle while I was scraping by in the slums most of the time.”

“It’s bullshit, man.”

“Tell me about it.” He snorted and winced when he jerked his head, stretching his new stitches.

“What happened after you tracked Chessandra down?”

His expression clouded with cold fury. “She gave me money.”

That in and of itself wasn’t a terrible thing. But I could only imagine the way the exchange had gone down. “A payoff?”

He nodded once. “She doesn’t want anyone to know I exist. I’m her dirty little secret.”

Ouch. I’d never liked the high angel, but this wasn’t something I’d have expected from her. She was righteous and the height of propriety. Maybe that was the problem. She couldn’t afford to have anyone questioning her judgment. So fucked up. “And now you want to expose her? Is that what you’re saying?”

He nodded. “And I want you to help me.”

I frowned. As unsettling as it was that Chessandra had forsaken her own child, it wasn’t for me to second-guess her choices. Judging by his age, she must’ve been pretty young when she’d had him. A teen, really. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that she’d thought she was doing what was best for him. “I’m not sure what exactly you’re trying to achieve. To humiliate her? Revenge? Is it worth that?”

A deadly calm washed over him as he pierced me with a cold stare. “This isn’t some childish scheme to get back at a shitty mom. I want to claim my birthright. I should be one of the players in the realm. But more than that, she’s dangerous to everyone. The angels. The witches. The mundanes. The things I’ve learned in the last six months… They’re unconscionable.”

He had my attention now. We already suspected Chessandra had dirty dealings. Did this kid have the answers? “You’re saying she’s corrupt?”

“Yes.” He sat back in the plastic chair, gripping the armrests. “And I’m going to bring her down one way or another. What she’s done to me pales in comparison. You in?”

I mulled his words over, then asked, “Do you have any proof?”

A slow, self-satisfied smile claimed his lips as he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “How does a signed contract with a demon sound?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Contract for what?”

He handed me the paper. “Read it.”

A strange mix of apprehension and excitement slammed into me. Whatever that paper said, I was certain this was the catalyst that would change everything. A battle would be waged and, good or bad, nothing would be the same. The only question was, could we survive it?

Ezra sat back, watching me.

Scanning the document, I noted it was dated five years ago. I glanced up at Ezra. He nodded, indicating I should read on.

I lowered my gaze, skimmed all the legalese of the contract until I got to the meat of the document.

I, Chessandra Ballintine, high angel of the angel realm, hereby formally grant a full pardon to the demon Wes Lancaster in exchange for his silence regarding the incident in question. He shall be cleared of all wrongdoing with the understanding that neither party shall ever speak of said incident again.

Running a finger over the two signatures, I felt the faint trace of magic. This was indeed a magically binding contract.

“What incident?” I asked Ezra.

He shrugged. “It’s only referred to as a case number. I have to guess it’s in the files in good ol’ Mom’s office. But I’ve been told it was an attack on a human who died and that this demon, Wes Lancaster, has something on Chessandra she doesn’t want to get out. What I’ve heard is that he had a safeguard in place so that if he died, someone else would expose the secret. So she bribed him for his silence in exchange for his life.”

I narrowed my eyes. The only entities that should have those kinds of records were the angels, the Brotherhood, and Hell itself. One would need high clearance to get their hands on it. “And you know this how?”

His smile vanished. “I had an interesting visitor last year.”

“Someone who knows Chessandra’s secret?”

“You could say that.” He blinked once and then stared me in the eye. “The demon Wes Lancaster.”

Chapter 14

Jade

Jasper let out a long sigh of relief. And I couldn’t blame him. Avery had been missing for months without any real help from anyone to find her. Now he had the New Orleans coven leader and an angel on his side.

When looking at things from his point of view, I couldn’t even blame him for the binding spell. I didn’t like it, but at least I understood the desperation behind it. Even the seemingly crazy conspiracy theory evidence covering his walls seemed reasonable. What else was he going to do?

I took my time studying the various photos and facts he’d assembled. There were a few photos of Chessandra speaking with other council members—something she did on a regular basis—a phone bill with a number circled and a question mark beside it, a couple snippets of conversation he’d had with her that seemed meaningless, and a timeline of dates. All of it was minor, and when you added it all up, there was nothing substantial to go on.

All of it except one thing. I pointed to a piece of paper that read
Last location: Lakeshore.
“What’s this?”

Lailah glanced at the paper, and then we both turned and looked at Jasper expectantly.

His brow pinched in confusion. “Exactly what it says. Avery’s last known location before she went missing.”

“Is that the information Chessandra gave you?” I asked Lailah.

She shook her head. “No. I was told she went into the shadows and never returned.”

“Me too.”

Jasper pulled the knitted beanie off his head and ran a frustrated hand through his wild hair as he muttered something about evil bitch angels. “Of course that’s what she told you. She didn’t want anyone to know what she was doing. Couldn’t let you in on her dirty dealings, now could she?”

“You’re saying Avery was actually in Lakeshore when she went missing? Not the shadows?” I asked for clarity.

“Yes.” His voice was clipped. “She was meeting a demon.”

Lailah and I both let out a gasp.

“You can’t be serious?” Lailah said, her eyes wide.

“Oh, I’m serious. It’s not the first time, either. For the past year, Chessandra has been sending Avery out to the same spot once a month to deliver communications. Avery would take a package to the same spot, wait in her car for the demon to pick it up, and then drive off after she was sure he got it.”

Holy crickets on a cracker. Chessandra had dealings with a demon, and she’d sent her assistant to do the dirty work. I opened my mouth to speak, shook my head, and then met Lailah’s gaze, not sure what to say. This couldn’t be real.

“Are you one hundred percent positive the contact was a demon?” Lailah asked, getting down to brass tacks.

Jasper shoved his hands in his pockets, making the chain clipped to his belt loop clatter. “Yes. Avery broke down and told me about it. She was scared because strange things were happening. But she felt like she couldn’t say no to Chessandra.”

“Why?” I said, forcing the word out. If everything he was saying was true, there was no excuse on the planet that would justify Chessandra sending an angel to meet a demon. There just wasn’t. Even if she was waiting in her car. It was too dangerous.

“Because Chessandra threatened to fire her if she didn’t do it. She said running errands was standard, and if Avery couldn’t handle it, she was welcome to leave.”

“So she chose to deal with a demon rather than just quit?” I asked. That would’ve been a no brainer for me.