Free [Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine by Barbara Monajem Page A

guitar. No way was he going to apologize to Lutsky or to anyone else. Fortunately, Constantine didn’t seem to expect him to. He motioned Zeb forward with a flick of the chin and jogged ahead of him toward the stairs and on down. Zeb tried to explain about the guitar, saying he’d left it on the mound because his dad would confiscate it if he brought it home, so he had to find a friend to take care of it for him—which was true. Dad would say a guitar would distract him from his schoolwork, which was bullshit. He didn’t do his schoolwork now, so what difference would it make?
    He’d meant to retrieve the guitar while on his morning run, and instead he’d bumped into Marguerite and all that shit up on the mound. Finding that had been pureluck—something he was short on lately—and he’d gotten away with the knife, the only thing that really mattered.
    Constantine not only didn’t respond to his explanation about the guitar, but he didn’t speak the whole way into downtown. No, you didn’t argue with him, but what about lying? Once the questions started coming, Zeb would have no choice. He needed to fold his aura tight and get into the safety of what he called the Zone, because there nothing fazed him. No matter how bad things were, once in the Zone he could make himself sound polite and cooperative and with luck be uninteresting enough that he could slip away.
    Zeb followed Constantine through a wrought iron gate into the courtyard behind the Impractical Cat and suffered a pang at the sight of the concrete benches beside the fountain. Marguerite had done the faux finish, and Zeb had delivered them himself a few weeks earlier, when his father had finally let him get his driver’s permit.
    Zeb liked Marguerite. She never tried to tell him what to do. Never tried to make him talk about his mom. Not only that, she understood stuff about him that no one else did. He’d never even realized he was manipulating his aura until she explained it to him. But asking if she was okay was tantamount to admitting he’d been up there on the mound, and if Constantine had seen him take the knife… Life was hell, and it was getting worse by the minute.
    They were greeted by soft Caribbean music and two wilted and sulky girls sitting on the only bench still shaded by the wall of the neighboring building. The girls straightened, widening their eyes and giggling at the sight of Constantine.
    “Here for the waitress jobs?” He sounded bored.
    They nodded and giggled again, and he unlocked the back door and motioned them through. “Help yourselves at the soda fountain. Sooner or later somebody will show up to interview you.”
    The girls cast longing glances at Constantine as he led Zeb into the kitchen. Leopard—drummer, restaurateur, and head of the underworld that kept the clubs in Bayou Gavotte safe—glanced up blearily from his coffee, grunted at Constantine’s brief intro, and flicked a hand toward the coffee urn.
    Constantine filled two glasses with ice water and passed one to Zeb. “Drink Lep’s pigwash if you like,” he said, “or have one of my cappuccinos.”
    Zeb flicked a glance from Constantine to the indifferent Leopard. “Um… both?”
    Expressionless, Constantine shoved a coffee mug toward him. Zeb set the guitar against the wall, served himself, added sugar from a bowl on the table, and huddled around the mug.
    He wasn’t a kid anymore. He’d gotten away with decking a pervert in a bar a few days earlier because the guy couldn’t risk bringing himself to the attention of the cops, but Lutsky might well charge him with assault. Dad would already be plenty pissed off when Myra called to rant about him running on the mounds. Zeb didn’t much like Lavonia, who thought fucking the old man gave her the right to act like she was Zeb’s mom, but she would probably tell Dad that Lutsky had gotten physical first. For what it was worth.
    He tried to get into the Zone, but it didn’t work. He’d let himself get