Free Royal Street by Suzanne Johnson Page A

with the witch wisecrack.
    “What’s this partner business? What file? Who sent you?”
    “I hear you’re an empath. Can’t you tell?”
    Body of an Adonis, brain of an anchovy. “I’m an empath, not a psychic or telepath. I can tell what an arrogant letch you are but I can’t read your flipping mind.”

    For some reason, I also couldn’t read his emotions very well, a little detail he didn’t need to know. Either he was a soulless freak or my mojo bag had kicked into overdrive.
    He jerked his head at the leather case on the floor, turned his back, and unclipped what looked like a small cell phone from his belt. As he strolled around the parlor and stuck his head in the kitchen and office, he held it out in front of him.
    Whatever else he might be, Alexander Warin was insufferable.
    I snatched the case off the floor and flipped it open. It had two sections. The first held a badge, much like mine from the Green Congress, only this one said CONGRESS OF ELDERS. I stared at the interloper’s broad back, frowning.
    I sent out my empathic senses, trying to feel any buzz of magic coming from him. There was still a tingle in the air that wasn’t wizard’s magic, but it was probably left over from Jean Lafitte. So he wasn’t a wizard, and he didn’t look old enough to be an Elder. I studied the badge, flipping it over. The back of mine identified me as a licensed sentinel. His read, simply, ENFORCER.
    Good Lord, he was a terminator.
    The second compartment of the case held a badge identifying Alexander Warin as a field agent with the FBI office in Jackson, Mississippi. The woodpecker in my head began a frantic cadence.
    I threw the badge on the coffee table and scrambled to remember anything I’d heard about enforcers, because I’d certainly never met one. They did the Elders’ dirty work, took out the preternatural trash, made problems disappear. If an enforcer showed up at your door, you might disappear, too. Enforcers didn’t have partners.
    By the time I looked back at him, he had finished his inspection of my downstairs and stood with his arms crossed,
watching me. I think he’d grown a couple of inches while I wasn’t looking.
    “Why are you here? What’s an enforcer doing in New Orleans?”
    He gave me a predatory smile, even more carnivorous than the one I’d seen on the face of Jean Lafitte. “Congratulations, DJ. You’re the new sentinel of the New Orleans region, and I’m your partner—at least through the probationary period. You can call me Alex.”

CHAPTER 10
    I really wanted to hit something.
    “Why would the Elders send you? We don’t need an enforcer in this region. Do you have any magical skills, or do you just shoot people? How are you going to be a sentinel if you can’t do magic?”
    He cocked his head. “If you don’t understand why you need an enforcer, you should replay that little scene with your pirate buddy. You might have gotten the upper hand temporarily, but he was going to win that fight. You were about thirty seconds away from getting to know Jean Lafitte really well.”
    His jaw clenched. “In fact, you owe me some serious gratitude—unless you wanted him.”
    God help me. I fought the urge to pick up a heavy vase and chunk it at his head. It had worked on Lafitte, but something told me this guy would probably catch it and bean me with it. “The fight wasn’t over,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’d have won it.” Probably.
    “Right,” he said. “And something just flew past your window. It was oinking.”

    Words failed me, so he kept talking. “Look, the Elders want an enforcer here because of the breaches caused by the hurricane. They don’t know what to expect from the Beyond, and I have ties to both local law enforcement and the were community.”
    Alex slipped out of his shoulder holster. “Did Jean Lafitte get summoned, or did he just show up?”
    If the Elders thought New Orleans needed an enforcer with police and werewolf ties more than a Red