Who the hell are they?
Val stared at him. Those strange intrusions were his thoughts.
"Who the hell are you?" she asked.
"Just a visitor," he said, trying to keep an expression of innocence, but it no longer rang true. The two local men came in, still staring at Dale.
She's going to be angry.
Val suddenly figured out who "she" was. She glared at Dale.
"Drink up and get out of here," she said.
"Oh, come on, babe," he said, leaning forward persuasively. He lowered his eyelashes again. It was evidently the move that worked on women the most. "I apologize if I was pushing too hard. We could still have a little date later on," he added. He looked hopeful.
"No fucking way. Tell Melinda that she can shove it up her wide ass, sending a pretty boy to seduce me. Go."
Shit! They didn't tell me she was telepathic!
Val seized the blackjack. "There's a lot of things they didn't tell you about me," she said. "I was captain of my gymnastics team." Setting one hand on the bar, she vaulted over it. Dale jumped backward in surprise. "Now, get out before you're sorry you came in."
"Hey, I don't know anyone named Me--"
His thoughts said otherwise. Val swung a wide arc with the blackjack and slapped him in the temple. He staggered sideways, clutching his head. Val followed up with a kick in the stomach that sent him backward over a chair. He fell on the floor. Val stood over him, brandishing the sack of lead shot.
"You go and tell her to leave me alone! The next person that bothers me won't get a warning. All they will find is pieces of the body! Everywhere! Get out of here!"
She raised the blackjack over her head. Dale scuttled backward on his hands and feet like a crab. When he was safely in between the tables, he got to his feet. Keeping his eyes on her, he edged out the door.
Gotta warn her, was the last thought Val picked up. Can't tell her about . . .
No, he wouldn't admit to Melinda that Val had figured he was a fraud or that she had hit him. Twice.
She turned a sour face to the two men near the door. "I suppose my brother sent you?" They nodded. "Weren't you going to help me?"
"Mr. Griffen said that you'd get mad if we helped before you asked," the shorter one said. "Besides, we could tell you could handle him."
"We listened to his thoughts all the way here," said the taller one, in a fluty alto. "He was countin' on you fallin' for his looks. He couldn't take you nowhere. We heard everythin' he thought he would do."
"Then why didn't you send him somewhere else?"
"It's not the way our talents work, ma'am. We just listen."
"Oh," Val said. "It doesn't work both ways?"
"Thank God, no! It ain't a curse, just a talent!"
"Don't want to have no one hear our thoughts. It's none of anyone's damned business what we think."
"Nope," agreed the taller one.
"Nope," confirmed the shorter one.
Val studied them. "I think I saw you the other night."
"Yes, ma'am, near the diner. Manuel near the door thinks you're gorgeous and wishes you'd go out with him instead of Gris-gris, but he afraid."
"Of me?"
"More of Gris-gris," said the alto. "You should hear what he thinks!"
Val blushed. "It's probably better if I don't. But you stop reading my thoughts, or you're next for some of this!" She hefted the cosh.
"Yes, ma'am," the alto said, grinning. "We know you mean it. Y'all have yourself a nice day, now, Ms. Val."
They slipped out the door. Val wondered where they went, then decided as long as they gave her a heads-up on trouble, she didn't need them hanging around.
She walked around the bar and got her cell phone out of her purse. Griffen needed to know about Melinda's latest attempt to trick her.
While the phone rang, she put the blackjack away in its hiding place. When she straightened up, she saw gouges on the inside lip of the bar. Five round holes had been drilled through the wood. She must have transformed, at least a little, when she jumped over it. Her claws had punched them, and she had not even noticed.
"Now, how am I going to explain those to Todd?" she asked.
"All in favor, den?" Etienne said, looking around at the membership jammed into the increasingly crowded workshop. Dragon's heads, in every stage of completion, loomed over their heads. The captain counted the raised hands. "Ain't no point in countin' dose against."
"Do it anyhow," Callum Fenway said, with an exasperated shake of his head.
Etienne smiled at him placidly. "Whatevah. Dose against? Easy. King Griffen's proposal passes. All jobs open equally to all adult members from here on out. 'Cept mine." He smiled, showing his sharp canines.
Griffen heaved a sigh of pleasure. Several of the members came up to slap him on the back.
"Glad you did that," Louis, one of the department heads said, coming up with a clipboard. Nearly as tall as Griffen, he had an aquiline profile and sharp cheekbones. "My wife's been doing all the work all along anyhow. I'm not as organized as she is. This is my last day on the job. After today, I am just one of her Indians, and she is my chief." The petite woman at his side took the clipboard from his hand.
"Thank you, Griffen," Carmen said.
Griffen smiled. "My pleasure."
The switch to a gender-neutral committee was just the first change he hoped to make. Since the Ritual of the Four Elements, the krewe deferred to him even more than they had after the first meeting at the Fenways'. He figured there was no better time to try to push through his suggestions. Val had been pleased when he had told her what he wanted to do. They discussed joining the krewe on a permanent basis after the season was over, but only if there were no barriers in Val's way.
"Well, we've got loads of work to do," Carmen said. "You forgot to order that small-gauge chicken wire. Excuse us, Griffen." They headed for one of the tables against the wall. Griffen himself went to join Lucinda's papier-mache squad. They were plastering a figure of an embattled St. George that day, an irony that Griffen enjoyed, having faced off against the ancient hero's modern equivalent twice already.
Once Twelfth Night had passed, New Orleans shifted into Mardi Gras mode and hit the gas. The stores selling throws in Jackson Square and in the stalls at the French Market filled to overflowing with glittering, glowing, flashing stock. Stores put out racks of ready-made costumes and formal wear. Announcements for parties and tableaux that the public could attend were listed in the newspapers and on posters stuck on walls and displayed in windows everywhere in the French Quarter. Everyone pored over the annual guide to decide which parades they were going to watch and discuss the best places from which to watch them. Griffen added a new envelope almost every day to his stack of invitations to masquerade balls and parties. He would have to ask Etienne or one of the other lieutenants which ones he could honorably decline with thanks. The ones he had to accept cut severely into the remaining balance in his bank account. He was finding it hard to keep up on his salary and his poker winnings.
And the crowds started to pour into town. Some visitors would come in waves to enjoy a few days of the run-up or the festival itself; others intended to stay through until Ash Wednesday.
But the party was not and had never been aimed at visitors. It was for New Orleans itself. The tradition of celebrating the period before Lent dated back to 1768. The colors of Mardi Gras were always there in the background, but stores and houses began to dress themselves up with the theme. Harlequins in purple, gold, and green popped up as mannequins clinging to lampposts, toys for children, or wall decorations of all kinds. Griffen noticed the white-faced carnival masks peering blank-eyed at him from window displays and advertisements. People were already wearing masks. He bought groceries from a girl in a fan-shaped yellow-feathered mask, and had coffee served to him by a man in a red-sequined domino and matching derby hat.