River Road (6 page)

Rene Delachaise had a husky voice and a South Louisiana accent thicker than bayou mud. Alex had told me many of the Cajuns—descendants of the Acadians driven from Canada by the English in the 1700s—were mers working in the fishing industry. Rene shook my hand, then gave me a brazen head-to-toe appraisal that set off the alarm on my internal sexist-pig detector.

“Where’s the head of the Villere clan?” I asked.

“Ain’t here yet,” Rene said. “Disrespectin’ you already, wizard. You remember that.”

“Aw, he’ll be here, bro. Chill out.” Robert joined us and introduced himself to everyone. Rene might be the head of the family, but he should hire his twin brother to handle public relations. Robert was more laid-back, friendlier. If he hated wizards, and his energy blast said he did, at least he had the decency not to say it to my face.

Once introductions had been made, we decided to wait for Denis in the Black Velvet. A motorcycle turned in the lot as I trailed the others inside. The restaurant had just opened and it was early for a lunch crowd to start arriving, so I figured our other mer had arrived.

“You guys go in. I want to meet him alone,” I said over my shoulder, ignoring Alex’s frown as the door closed behind him. The prickling of energy as I approached the biker was very similar to Robert’s and Rene’s. I waited for Denis Villere to turn off his bike and remove his helmet, and tried not to indulge the temptation to make a “fish on a bicycle” joke.

He was thinner, tanner, and considerably older than Rene, with a rough scar down one cheek, hard brown eyes, and silvering hair pulled tight in back and braided into a long plait that almost reached his waist. Several earrings curved along the cartilage of one ear. I wondered what happened to those when he shifted into a fish—fin piercings?

“Wizards be getting prettier.” His sandpaper voice had an even heavier accent than Rene’s—part French, part Southern, part swamp. “At least you got dat that goin’ for you.”

“Why don’t you give me your side of the story before we go in,” I said. Denis Villere seemed more neutral than his rival clan leader and, besides, much of the burden for making my treaty proposal work was going to fall on him.

Denis nodded. “Moved my family from over round Bayou Teche,” he said. “Now da borders opened up, too many weregators settlin’ there. Dey up around St. Bernard too, so we come here.”

I swallowed hard, wondering if the Elders knew weregators were taking over the Atchafalaya Basin and St. Bernard Parish. I didn’t blame the Villeres. I’d move away too.

“You settled in Tidewater?”

He gave a slow nod, and his long, snakelike braid slid around his shoulder. “We been usin’ da eastern mouth of the river as our huntin’ and swimmin’ areas. The Delachaises got no claim to run us out, and dey poisoned the water. Even took a couple of shots at us when we was hunting at night. Next time, we gonna shoot back.”

Curiosity burned to find out what mers hunted for, and whether it fell within the human hunting guidelines of Louisiana Fisheries & Wildlife. But first I had to set him straight—and hoped he wasn’t armed.

“Look, I understand you wanting to get away from the weregators.” I made a mental note to look weregators up in the Elders’ online database. “But here’s the deal. By the terms of the Accords following the Wizards’ War of 1976, at least part of that land
has
been granted to the Delachaise clan, including Pass a Loutre.”

Denis cursed in a French patois even Jean Lafitte wouldn’t understand, but the word
sorciere
—wizard—popped up several times. “Rene and his people don’t need so much space and dey made my son T-Jacques sick as a damn dog. He ain’t been able to keep up wit’ da fishin’. If that don’t get cleared up right now”—he paused for a breath, then kept going—“and I mean
right now,
you hear? Then somebody’s gonna pay. They gonna find out they messin’ with the wrong clan.”

What an ornery species mers were turning out to be. I stared past him at the high earthen levee that separated the highway from the river. I wanted to see what the water problem was, but I didn’t buy the idea that the Delachaises would poison their own territory. That would be foolish, and whatever else he might be, I didn’t think Rene Delachaise was a fool.

“Here is what the Congress of Elders is willing to do.” I prayed he’d accept the idea I’d hammered out last night with my boss, Willem Zrakovi, head of the Elders for North America. “There have been no promises made concerning the marshland around the South Pass, near Burrwood. The wizards will add a section to the treaty assigning that territory to the Villere family. But there has to be a signed peace agreement between you and Rene. No poisoning. No shooting—by either of you.”

Denis narrowed his eyes and I fingered the mojo bag again, almost sighing in relief as the magic-infused herbs blocked out his anger. I knew the fishing and gator hunting wouldn’t be as plentiful in the southern end of the territory, away from the federally protected delta, and so did he. But the Delachaise claim was valid. They’d been here first. It was my best offer.

He jerked his head toward the Black Velvet. “Rene, he agree to dis?”

“You gonna have to talk to him to find that out—she ain’t qualified to speak for Rene.” Robert Delachaise had slipped up on both of us, and I wondered how long he’d been listening.

“You checkin’ up on us, tadpole?” Denis bristled toward Robert, and Robert stepped forward till they were practically doing a chest-bump.

“You wanna fight, old man? I’ll fight.” Robert wrapped Denis’s long braid around his hand and pulled hard enough to make the older man’s head jerk, which got him a hefty shove in return.

Holy crap. We couldn’t have a fish-fight in the middle of the Black Velvet parking lot. Heart pounding, I reached out with both hands and released a sharp burst of magical energy into each man’s arm. Just enough to get their attention, and about all I could muster without the staff. Hopefully, they didn’t know that.

They both fixed dark, angry eyes on me.

These oversized fish were pissing me off. “Do you really want me to have to settle this?” I pulled the elven staff from my backpack. As if on cue, it began to glow from within, a warm, golden light that practically dared them to mess with it.

The mers’ disgruntled looks bled into uncertainty, and they each took a step backward.

Robert broke first. “I’m outta here—I got to pick up a car in Happy Jack.” He wheeled and stomped toward his truck. “Old man there needs to talk to Rene. Decision’s up to him. Tell Rene I’ll see him later.”

I nodded. “Denis and I are going inside to talk now.” I looked at Denis. “Aren’t we.” It really wasn’t a question.

He shot Robert another killer look and stalked toward the door of the Black Velvet. I lowered the staff and sighed. This was going well.

CHAPTER
6

It took almost two hours of name-calling to negotiate exactly where each clan’s territory would start and end. Alex and Jean had to separate the mers when Denis threw a fried frog leg in Rene’s face—after dousing it in ranch dressing.

In the end, Rene and Denis reached an agreement contingent on the water problem, whatever it was, being solved to their mutual satisfaction. Rene insisted the contamination was Villere-induced, and vice-versa. It would be my job to either find the problem or convince them there was no problem. Something made T-Jacques and one of Rene’s cousins sick. God forbid I should suggest they ate bad oysters.

The Black Velvet staff had been round-eyed and jittery around the volatile tableful of alpha males and one lone, frustrated woman clutching a two-foot-long stick of wood in her left hand while she ate with her right. They trotted out plates of seafood kickers and crawfish pies, catfish and oysters and shrimp, and stayed out of our vicinity except to refill tea and water glasses.

Mers, I learned, didn’t eat red meat but they could pack away prodigious amounts of seafood, especially when the wizards were picking up the tab. That had been my idea and I hadn’t gotten prior approval from the Elders. If I didn’t get reimbursed, I’d be eating ramen noodles until payday. But I wanted to try to negate some of this hatred of wizardkind, whatever had caused it, and if the price was a few platters of food, so be it.

Finally, everyone left except Alex and me. In an hour, Rene would meet us at the Venice Marina for the trip to Pass a Loutre on his boat. He and Jean had tossed me aside like an empty oyster shell and gone off in search of Robert after carefully writing down the location of the Corvette.

I was already exhausted from the stress of being polite and patient for so long—neither of which I’m very skilled at—and keeping everyone’s overwrought emotions out of my head. My muscles ached and my head pounded and I wanted a nap. Instead, I propped my elbows on the table, watching Alex scrape the remaining mountain of grilled stuffed crab claws onto his plate. The man ate like a plow horse but he managed to turn it all to those pretty muscles bunching and flexing beneath his shirt.

Hey. If it’s in front of me, I’m going to look.

“How’d you think it went?” I asked, watching as he squeezed lemon on his crab.

“I don’t trust either of those guys to hold to his word—especially if you can’t figure out the water problem. If there is a water problem.” He guzzled the rest of his iced tea and handed me the check with an evil smile before he resumed eating. “Hope your credit card’s got a big limit on it.”

That made two of us. If one man is sitting at a restaurant table with a hundred women, the waiter will always give the bill to the guy. It’s a proven fact. Wouldn’t have killed Alex to pay it—he made more money than me, a situation the Elders were soon going to be addressing, although they didn’t know it.

Alex handed me the keys and I drove the rest of the way down Highway 23 into Venice. We parked near the marina just before two p.m., and spotted Jean leaning against the wall of the main building, smoking a slender cigar. Surrounded by boats and guys in shrimp boots, he didn’t look nearly as out of place as Alex and I.

“Robert had automobile business to attend to, but Rene waits for us onboard the vessel,” he said, tossing the cigar aside and rummaging in my backseat for his pistol. I hadn’t let him take it into the restaurant. The Black Velvet staff really would have been alarmed had the muzzle-loader made an appearance. And I’d wager a case of ramen noodles that Robert’s automobile business involved filing off VIN numbers and removing license plates.

To me, the
Dieu de la Mer
looked little different from the other fishing boats docked at the marina. Its hull was black, its name painted in white. All of the boats looked relatively new—probably because Katrina had swept their predecessors into a Mount Everest of nautical rubble. A windowed wheelhouse separated the short, raised foredeck from the long aft deck, and a complex arrangement of white rigging and netting stretched skyward.

Rene watched us from the aft deck. “You ready? Gettin’ dark earlier now—we need to go.”

Jean leapt aboard like Sebastian going after his favorite perch atop the fridge—all sleek and graceful. Alex was right behind him, throwing his shrimp boots onboard first. He and Jean headed immediately to the wheelhouse to look at their new toy. Guys. Didn’t matter if they were alive or undead; show them something with an engine and they turned into ten-year-olds.

I stood on the pier, forlorn and abandoned, measuring the distance between me and the deck. I was five-four on a good day. I would not be graceful or sleek. There was a good chance I would end up in the water.

Rene stood with a wide stance and his fists propped on his hips like some sort of Cajun pirate, smirking. “Thought witches could fly, babe.”

I gritted my teeth. “I am not a witch.” Witches were to wizards as a common black bass was to a merman. It was an insult, and he knew it.

Chuckling, he leaned over the side with his arm outstretched. I grasped his tattooed forearm and he jerked me aboard with no obvious effort, if you didn’t count my near-dislocated shoulder. Note to remember: mers might not be the biggest fish in the wetlands, but they were werecreature-strong.

I’d been on a boat only twice. My grandfather had tucked me into a bright orange life jacket and took me fishing one time on Smith Lake in north Alabama. I’d kept my eyes closed the whole time. Later, Gerry, who’d raised me since school age, had let me ride the swan boats at New Orleans’ City Park. Of course, both of those boat rides took place before I was ten. I was a true wizard, meaning my swimming skills were theoretical. I understood the principle, but the execution left something to be desired.

As we set out hugging the western shore, I joined Rene, Alex, and Jean in the boat’s small, windowed wheelhouse. I was clearly the fourth wheel—the fifth, if you counted the boat’s navigational system. The guys hunkered over maps and asked Rene questions about the river, the bayous, the boat, the normal size of a redfish haul, the best time of night to shrimp, and the tricks of navigating the wetland marshes that had begun to spread around us as we left the world of automotive travel behind. I had nothing to contribute.

I spotted a single life jacket dangling from a hook over a long bench in back of the wheelhouse. If we went down, it was mine. Jean couldn’t die, at least not permanently. He might drown, but he’d show up again in the Beyond, regain his strength, and eventually come back good as new. Rene could shapeshift into a fish, so death by drowning wasn’t likely. Alex liked the water, so he had to be a better swimmer than me.

When Alex asked Rene how the hunting season for wild boar was going this year, I decided I’d find more scintillating conversation talking to myself. I walked to the side of the aft deck nearest the bank and watched the vegetation change from trees to tall reeds to flat marsh grass.

“It is beautiful, is it not,
Jolie
?” Jean joined me at the portside rail, watching as the tree line rose and fell, occasionally allowing a glimpse of the patchwork of land and serpentine canals and bayous around us.

“You spent a lot of time in these waters, didn’t you?” I tried to imagine Jean in a small pirogue, smuggling contraband to and from New Orleans in this maze of waterways that made up just a small part of his empire. How strange it must be to view the world over more than two centuries, seeing what people had done right and what we’d screwed up.