A group of men and women shaking tambourines and maracas passed between us, breaking our eye contact. There were nearly twenty of them, dancers with plastic coins sewed to their bodysuits, feathers braided into their hair. And when they finally cleared the block, he was gone.
I turned in a circle, scanning the street and crowd for him, half annoyed to find him gone, half relieved. He apparently hadn’t been watching me. But he had been . . . interesting. Hard edges, serious eyes, beautiful body. I wouldn’t have minded if he’d ambled toward me, asked my name. And I didn’t say that very often.
“Did you hear what I said?”
I blinked at the sound of Tadji’s voice. “Sorry. What?”
“You were staring again.”
It was a bad habit. Like the man with blue eyes, I was a watcher of the world.
“Guilty as charged,” I said, putting a smile on my face, rolling the sudden tension from my shoulders. “What were you saying?”
“I was asking if you were ready to get back out there.”
“Absolutely.” I put an arm through hers. “Let’s get back to the parade.”
? ? ?
Three hours later, we stood in front of the Cabildo, where the parade had turned into a party.
The Cabildo had been a city council building, a court, a museum. After the storm, the Louisiana State Police set up there. Now it was the headquarters for the Devil’s Isle Commandant—and Gunnar’s tidy desk sat outside his office. Its former buildings-at-arms, St. Louis Cathedral and the Presbytère, had been destroyed in the war, leaving the Cabildo as the lone sentinel in front of Jackson Square.
Magic had mostly skipped over the Square itself. The plants had survived the war, providing a gorgeous spot of green among the gray of the Quarter. But the statue of Andrew Jackson, the hero of the first Battle of New Orleans in 1815, hadn’t made it through the second one. Jackson could beat back the British. He wasn’t as good with Paranormals.
Around the Square and inside its gates, War Nighters abandoned paper flowers and costumes in the heat, switched from booze to bottled water shipped in by a snack food company outside the Zone that had apparently been feeling charitable—or wanted to market its goods to the folks who came into the Zone for a good party.
We’d danced so long I was almost deliriously tired. But it was the right kind of tired—the kind of exhaustion that made troubles seem far away. War Night was about unity and debauchery, and we were taking full advantage, like hedonism on this one night could make up for a lot of want the rest of the year.
Tadji and I sat in front of the fence that surrounded the Square, our feet stretched in front of us.
“I am starving,” Gunnar said, hand on his stomach as he leaned against the fence. Bodies and sweat had smeared the paint on his arms, blurring the figures and landscapes into hazy stripes.
He glanced speculatively at a pushcart on the corner selling unidentified meat chunks on skewers. The grill filled the air with the slightly gamey scent of swamp critters.
“No,” I said.
“What if I dared you?” Gunnar asked, poking me with the toe of a boot.
“I’ve had my share of questionable meat,” I said. “And I don’t need to relive it.” Times had been even leaner during the war, when even FEMA had trouble finding food in New Orleans. Dealing with wars on American soil was politically complicated, and it had taken nearly a week for the feds to mount a response to the invading Paranormals. In the interim, before FEMA brought in the trucks, we did what we had to survive. If that meant nutria for dinner, so be it.
“Our little scavenger,” Tadji said, patting my arm. “You know what would do us all some good right now?”
“A bottle of very old Scotch?” Gunnar suggested.
“That, too,” Tadji asserted. “But I was thinking good, old-fashioned yaka mein.”
Yaka mein was another New Orleans specialty that took off during the war, but tasted a helluva lot better than gamey swamp critter. It was supposed to be hot broth over noodles with hard-boiled egg and green onions. Nowadays, it was bouillon cubes and dried, reconstituted eggs. Not exactly the same, but it still hit the spot, when you could find it.
We probably could have wandered into one of the more residential neighborhoods, found someone selling bowls from the back of a truck. But I was running out of energy to find anything.
I yawned hugely.
“Lightweight,” Gunnar teased.
“Guilty as charged. I think it’s time for me to head home. Who wants to carry me back to the store?”
“I’ve got a little party left in me yet,” Tadji said. “But even if I didn’t, I’m not carrying you anywhere.”
I looked at Gunnar, who shook his head. “You’re not a helpless damsel. Rescue your own damn self.”
I couldn’t really argue with that. “In that case, my friends, this is where I leave you. I’ll drag my tired, old bones back to the store.” I held out a hand to Gunnar. “If you’ll at least help me up.”
Tadji clucked her tongue. “She always gets so dramatic when she’s tired.”
“I know. She’s twenty-four, acts like she’s eighty-four.”