Free Royal Street by Suzanne Johnson Page B

Congress sentinel, the breaches must be serious. Blunt force might be trumping preternatural diplomacy. Gerry said the Elders always talked first and fought as a last resort. Well, the last resort had just unsnapped a knife sheath from his belt and laid it on my sofa table next to his guns.
    I tried to remember the exact words the pirate had used when I found him in my La-Z-Boy. “Lafitte came on his own, but he also hinted about having new business partners. He’d tried to work smuggling deals with Gerry and me in the past.”
    I squinted at Alex. “Of course we can’t ask him any specifics because you shot him. It will take a while for him to be strong enough to come back.”
    “The Elders don’t know who or what is going to come across,” he said, ignoring the Lafitte situation. “You’re the first line of defense with your”—he waved a hand in the air—“magic tricks. If that doesn’t work, I finish the job.”
    I had a few magic tricks I’d like to show him. “So you’re the backup plan.”
    He retrieved his badge from the table and stuck it in his back pocket, then picked up Lafitte’s gun again. “Let’s just say the Elders don’t want the borders to break down either because we’re outnumbered or some of us are too inexperienced.”
    Ouch. That hurt. I might not be the world’s most experienced wizard but at least I was a wizard and not just a bundle of testosterone with legs and opposable thumbs.

    One part of his argument made sense, though. If too many pretes flocked across the border at a faster rate than we could send them back, the system would collapse. Some of the more organized and ambitious groups, such as the vampires and the fae, resented the wizards’ control of the borders.
    “You said you have ties to the were community,” I said. “Does that mean they’re already out of the Beyond?”
    He didn’t look up from his examination of Lafitte’s pistol. “Most are mainstreamed, except a few like the loup-garou—rogue werewolves who live in the Beyond. A lot of enforcers are lycanthropes.”
    Holy cow. I didn’t know that, and I should have. Did Gerry not know, or did Gerry not tell me?
    “Are you a werewolf?” I studied his dark shaggy hair and powerful build, wondering how that big body could be condensed into a four-legged canine.
    “I’m not a were-anything,” he said. “Next full moon, I’ll look the same as now.”
    Too bad. A werewolf partner might have been interesting.
    “So, who reports to whom?” I asked. “And how exactly do you see this partnership thing working? I’ll tell you right now—my first priority is finding Gerry St. Simon, at which point you can go back to Jackson or wherever you came from.”
    “We both report to the Elders, and we’ll both be looking for Gerry. Day to day, we’ll play it by ear. If a prete comes across, we’ll try it your way, with your little spells and potions. As you said, I’m backup if your magic doesn’t work or if we get too many things to handle at once. I’m already working on a potential case.”
    “What kind of case? Finding Gerry is our case.”
    He strode to the front door, crunching over my broken stained glass and grabbing a briefcase from the porch. He’d shown up at my door with a shotgun and a freaking briefcase. In what universe was that normal?

    He set the case on the coffee table and opened it, pulling out a file.
    I craned my neck to see what an enforcer might carry in his briefcase. I couldn’t help myself.
    He handed me a sheet of paper containing a rough sketch of a decorated cross atop two wide, shallow rectangles. Two boxes shaped like sarcophagi sat to either side of it. Stars and squiggles came off the figures at different points.
    I’d seen that symbol before, on TV. “There was a murder right after Katrina hit. Wasn’t this drawn on a building at the murder scene?”
    “Good memory. Do you know what it means?”
    I looked at it again and shook my head. “No idea.”
    “Me