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
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
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