The other man frowned and gazed up at the ceiling, calculating. "About two hundred," he said at last.
Griffen's head began to spin.
"How many?"
"Well, that's just the krewe and their spouses, 'cause sometimes only one of 'em wants to participate. Fafnir is open to men and women, though you got to be sixteen or older 'cause of the insurance. And then there's special guests, like the mayor and the governor. And if you have friends you'd like to have, dat's the party you can invite them to. It's a big honor. Unless people belong to a big krewe, they never see the inside of most of de parties or balls. They's all private. Have been since the beginnin'."
Griffen steeled himself and turned away from the gorgeous faces. "Sorry. Maybe next year. I'm still paying damages from the Halloween ball."
"Mr. Griffen, this is the year," Etienne said earnestly. "The committee know you'll say yes. They been countin' on you. You can't let 'em down."
"But there isn't time for me to organize a whole krewe and parade," Griffen said, feeling more and more desperate.
Etienne threw back his head and laughed. The hearty peals echoed off the high, beamed ceiling. People stopped working and turned to look at them. "Mr. Griffen, you are the most fun! You don't have to organize nothin'! You just the king. Dat's all. You got no special duties 'cept bein' on that float, where we need your power. And de king's party. That ought to be no big deal to you, considerin' what you already run."
Griffen gawked at the small man. "That's all?"
"'That's all?' Dose two are important, man! The first, 'specially."
"Oh. I thought I had to take over and chair this."
"No, Mr. Griffen," Etienne said, straightening himself up. From being a skinny, nerdy-looking male, he suddenly looked as if he could command a regiment. Griffen was abashed. "I'm the captain. Authority's all mine. So's the responsibility. You come along to the meetin's, you can see how it all works. In fact, I hope you will. What do you say?"
Griffen looked away from his eager face and scanned the warehouse. So many people, engaged upon the mysterious business of Mardi Gras.
"You did all this assuming I'd be in on it? Why?"
"Man," Etienne said, with a sharp-toothed grin. "I know you will. I been dreamin' 'bout you since I was ten."
Griffen was about to scoff out loud with disbelief, but stopped. He had heard stories of the gift of foresight but had never met anyone who had it. Oh, he'd had intuition strike in the past, saving his life once in a while, but it was a passing thing he put down to chance, or deja vu. Since he had learned about his dragon heritage, he could not afford to deride anything about the supernatural. After all, someone who had been given beads by a long-dead voodoo queen and hung out with shape-shifters did not have a stone to throw at anyone else's glass house.
"But I could just walk away, say no."
"You won't," Etienne said confidently. "Everybody's countin' on you. I invested everything I had, called in every favor, to make sure Fafnir was revived for dis year. And I counted on you from the moment I seen you. I knew you was de one all dis has been set up for."
Griffen hated to be the object of a prophecy. It made him as uncomfortable as being the center of attention. He hadn't earned his college nickname of "Grifter" by attracting a lot of attention. He preferred to work outside the spotlight.
"So why approach me now, not when I arrived in the Quarter?"
Etienne wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably. "Because you didn' really know who you was den. And you had some workin' out to do. Still do, but you gettin' you feet under you. People respect you, but now you respect youself. No king should stand on a Mardi Gras float who don't respect himself."
"I did have self-respect!" Griffen protested.
"Not from what I seen," Etienne said, with a knowing shake of his head. "You put on a good show, but you didn't think you deserved what you got. Maybe now you see you do."
"I bet you got beaten up a lot at school," Griffen said, wryly.
"Never mentioned the gift but the once," Etienne said. "I had to test it out to show that I believe in myself, too. Foreknowledge ain't worth a damn if the user is dead. How about it? You can't say no, Mr. Griffen. Destiny's waiting for you."
"Not my destiny," Griffen protested. "Just because you dreamed something doesn't mean it's going to come true. I don't have to follow what you think you know. The future's malleable."
"Not so much as you tink it is," Etienne replied with an assurance that roused ire in Griffen.
"Why should I do it?" he demanded.
"To stop Fate," the werewolf said simply. "The bad things that will come if you don't. You a good man. You wouldn't let anyting happen to this city. You've made youself at home here. N'awlins has welcomed you, son. You bring people together in a good way. You gotta keep on doin' it, and the Krewe of Fafnir's part of it." He grasped Griffen's forearm and looked into his eyes as if searching for something. "C'mon along on Tuesday evenin'. Meet the department heads. Don't say no now. What do you think?"
Griffen gave one more good look at the roaring dragon's head in the corner. Its eyes seemed to glitter at him.
"I'll think about it," he said.
He had to get out of there before he agreed to the offer. It was too tempting. If there was anything he had learned in the last few months, it was to go over the details and ask questions, and more questions, before saying yes. He'd been guilty of rash behavior that had hurt him and the people who loved or trusted him--or both. He turned to leave.
In the wide doorway, a broad silhouette stood between him and the outside. Griffen recognized the shape of a man who might have been mistaken for a big-boned, muscular, and somewhat overweight biker. His heart sank as the figure swaggered toward him.
"You thinking of running a krewe, on top of everything?" Detective Harrison asked, his broad face skeptical.
Matters were still not perfect between Griffen and Harrison, not since the masquerade ball at the end of the conclave in October. The New Orleans detective had learned about Griffen's secret in the course of his investigation of a crime. They'd gotten along so well before that. Griffen had thought they had formed a cooperative bond that would do them both good, but he had left out one little detail--that he was a dragon. He had believed that he could keep the truth about his heritage hidden, but it had all come out in a completely disastrous way.
Most humans were going to be freaked out about learning that heretofore mythical creatures existed, let alone lived anonymously side by side with them. Especially when someone trusted you, and you didn't let the person in on the little secret, "Oh, by the way, I'm a hereditary dragon, and so is my sister. There's a bunch of us around town. We're generally not a problem, but you have to look out for the vampires, werewolves, fairies, shape-shifters, selkies, and others who are here, too." To the man who is trying to enforce law and order with no more than his wits, some martial-arts training, and standard police-issue weaponry, the world is going to seem like a much scarier place. Griffen had pulled the figurative rug out from under him and rendered him less effective at his job. Harrison was finding it hard to forgive the omission. Griffen did not blame him; he blamed himself. He had been avoiding Harrison until he could figure out a way to make it up to him. Simple explanations were out of the question. A full disclosure, over a really good meal and drinks, with time for as lengthy a Q&A session as Harrison chose, plus the acknowledgment that Griffen owed him a favor, a big one, might do the trick, but Griffen had not yet felt ready to do it.
"Uh," Griffen said, lamely. "I've been asked to be king."
"Good idea," Harrison said, with a nod. "Make you fit in better, especially if you are reviving a dormant krewe. Tradition means a lot around here. We've got more of it than you folks from up North."
"I'm considering it," Griffen said, determined to be honest with Harrison. "I'm not sure I have the manpower to cover the responsibilities I would have. I was spread too thin . . ." He had started to mention the convention. Harrison stiffened, but Griffen didn't have a choice except to continue in that painful vein, "over Halloween, and I don't want to screw up something as important as Mardi Gras."
"Good that you're taking the time to think something through," Harrison said grimly. "You got all the permits?"
"Yes, sir," Etienne said.
"You have a theme worked up yet?" Harrison scanned the room, taking in the half-finished floats with an experienced eye.
"It's a secret, Detective," the werewolf said, with a grin that was almost a leer. "But you invited to the tableau ball. C'mon around and see."
Harrison echoed the grin, which looked no less feral than Etienne's. "I'll do that, if only to look at this guy in his king costume."
Griffen was alarmed. "Uh, no. I'm not even sure I'm going to do it."
Harrison's face changed from grim to shrewd skepticism. "Oh, you'll do it, McCandles. I know you--or I thought I did."
He turned and marched out into the sun. Griffen couldn't help but gawk after him. I deserved that, he thought. That's a bridge I have to rebuild, and soon.
A deck of red-backed Bicycle cards flicked neatly out into a double fan. Each half arched like stretching cats, then flew at one another until they formed a single neat rectangular cube. The white French cuffs surrounding the spare wrists of the man folding the cards in and out between one another were bedecked with warm gold cuff links, each containing a single green, cabochon-cut stone. To the casual onlooker, they looked like smooth pieces of glass or perhaps plastic, almost translucent. To anyone who knew their stones, they were flawless Imperial jade, worth more per carat than diamonds. The suit was equally expensive and understated: pure, fine wool in a cool gray just a shade under charcoal, a cut between Armani and Bond Street, but clearly bespoke tailoring. The man wearing it, Jordan Ma, had a narrow face, an inverted triangle with broad temples, a straight nose, sharply etched cheekbones, long brown eyes with epicanthic folds that helped conceal his expressions--if he wore any--and thin lips outlined at the corners with tiny, deep-cut parentheses. He dealt cards to the three people sitting at the table with him.
Rebecca Tan, the youngest of the three, picked up her cards as they came to her. Her face was small and round, with black eyes, a flattened bridge to her broad nose, and an exaggerated cupid's bow to her mouth. Her chin-length hair was brown and frizzy, an obvious affectation since she could easily have taken control of it. She favored scarlet silk dresses, tailored devastatingly tightly around her slender, small-breasted figure, but the style was a dare, not an invitation, and not a dare that invited casual onlookers. She did not look dangerous, but Jordan knew her to be an evilly dirty fighter both at and away from the poker table. She was not his protegee, but that of the man to her left. She looked to Winston Long occasionally for approval. If Long showed it, it was in some subtle fashion that Jordan missed.