[Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine Read online

  Nathan’s take on the incident was that Constantine had planted the idea of suicide in the woman’s head, reinforced it, and caused her to die only for his own amusement. He’d been accused of doing just that to a Baton Rouge police officer several years earlier, not for amusement but because he’d sworn revenge against the cop for beating up his friend Leopard. He’d been young, arrogant, and newly famous. If he’d listened to his spirit guide’s advice, he wouldn’t have boasted of supernatural powers but instead used them secretly. Either way, the cop would have died, which was all that mattered.

  Now, and probably forever, he had to deal with the repercussions. Nathan would say—and his superstitious, trash-hungry public would relish believing—that he was thumbing his nose at the cops while he preyed on Marguerite. No matter how horny he might be, he could never risk sex with her now.

  He ignored the bird’s exasperated huff and smiled down at Marguerite, saying in his supposedly sexy rocker voice, “I’ll make it up to you, darlin’. I promise.”

  “Fine,” Nathan said, pouting. He’d been sending impatient glances in the direction from which he’d come. He must be expecting someone else to show. “I’ll make it a nervous wreck story instead, just like his wife: ‘Before and After Sleeping with Dufray.’ Better make sure you get away before he kills you, too.”

  Marguerite rolled her eyes. “What is wrong with you? That stuff is all hype.” She picked up the blanket she’d been lying on, shook off the bits of grass sticking to it, and folded it. “Constantine’s a honey.”

  Now the crow was totally cracking up, cawing raucously both high in a pine tree and inside Constantine’s head. “Don’t ruin my image, girl,” he said, grabbing the recorder and stomping on it, then going for the photographer, who froze midprotest and meekly handed over the camera.

  “You know I’ll tell the story anyway,” Nathan whined. “If you don’t erase the pics, I won’t accuse you of destroying my property.”

  “Uh-huh.” Constantine scrolled through the photos, deleting those of Marguerite, and telepathed a threatening message to both men to keep their cell phones in their pockets. “Who sent you up here this morning?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Nathan pulled out his phone anyway. He never did respond well to telepathic suggestions.

  “Your source eluded you again, did he? Better tread carefully, Nathan.”

  Nathan grinned. “Is that a threat?”

  “A friendly warning. Whoever this guy is, he doesn’t want to be found out. He’s using you to get at me, and if you learn too much about him in the process…” Constantine ran his index finger across his throat. “Let’s start over, shall we?” Might as well get the inevitable pics over with; the girl wasn’t playing befuddled or frightened anymore. Rather, she frowned from him to Nathan as if she disapproved of them both.

  She wasn’t playing, said the crow.

  She is now, Constantine told the bird. Calling me a honey, talking about tantric sex. He returned the camera to the photographer and strolled over to the weird little spread on the lawn, which he’d just begun to examine when Nathan had shown up. A ring of stones enclosed four pieces of scrap lumber, two logs, and the broken leg of a chair. Underneath the wood lay a small pile of kindling and pine straw, and to the left were a mason jar three-quarters full of a dark liquid, a metal cup enameled with a red-and-yellow Celtic knot design, a white plastic bowl decorated with Chinese characters, and a tall copper mask in the shape of a bird of prey, with decorative feathers and turquoise ceramic beads strung along the sides and hanging from the bottom edge. To the right a soft chamois cloth was spread on the grass. In the chamois was the clear imprint of a knife.

  “I hate to admit it, Nathan, but I didn’t do this.” Constantine pulled his bowie knife from the sheath on his belt and knelt to compare it to the imprint. “Nope. Too bad, because it would have made great promo.” He raised a brow at Marguerite, who was taking in the paraphernalia with a little scowl. Come on, he told the bird. She must have been putting on an act. For a woman who’d supposedly been drugged, who might have been raped, she was way too self-possessed.

  What if playing it cool is her act? the crow said. Constantine experienced a second of foolish longing to go ahead and believe whatever the spirit guide suggested about Marguerite. Only a second, though; longings, like yearnings, were a no-no. “Any idea who this stuff belongs to, babe?”

  Marguerite pursed her lips, reminding him of one of his profs from years ago. Not so strange, perhaps, since Marguerite taught linguistics part-time at Hellebore University. “No, it must have been put here while I was asleep.”

  A good answer, but he still didn’t know whether to believe her. Two weeks ago, there had been nothing to connect him with the death of Marguerite’s roommate. There was now.

  “I’m not an anthropologist, but it’s clear that whoever brought this stuff up here has confused his traditions,” Marguerite said in a scholarly tone. “He chose several different kinds of wood for his fire. That broken chair leg is oak, for example, while the boards are ash and maple, and one of the logs is birch—all of which tie in with various sacred woods used by the eastern tribes.”

  Again—way too self-possessed, and, judging by Nathan’s eager and genuine interest, this meant she wasn’t working for him. Possibility number two yawned sickeningly. Constantine grinned at Nathan. “Isn’t she something, dude?”

  “The headdress is a reproduction of one in the museum here.” Marguerite pointed to the building on the far side of the road below. “We don’t know exactly what the original was like, because it’s so corroded. I believe it came from someplace north of here. I’m no authority on this stuff, though. The museum won’t be open this early in the morning, but—” Her eyes widened. “Oh, crap. What time is it? I have to go home.”

  “Six thirty-three,” Nathan said, glancing toward the road again. “The day is young. Tell me more.”

  “There’s not much more to say.” She tucked a strand of long, honey-colored hair behind her ear; maybe she really was more unnerved than she let on. “It’s obvious whoever set this up doesn’t care about verisimilitude. He brought his black drink in a mason jar and was going to drink it from a Celtic cup.”

  “Black drink?” Nathan dove for the jar, but Constantine got there first. To Marguerite, he telepathed a message: Get the cup and bowl.

  “An emetic, to induce vomiting for purification.” Marguerite picked up the cup and bowl. Did she realize he’d told her to do so? Most people didn’t even realize he was planting ideas in their heads, but her earlier questions had made him wonder if she did. “They used something with a lot of caffeine.”

  Constantine unscrewed the cap and sniffed. “Smells like coffee to me.” He gave Nathan a whiff. “Want to try some?”

  “Don’t,” Marguerite said. “He may have added ipecac if he wanted to be sure to vomit.”

  “Spoilsport.” Constantine poured the contents onto the lawn and screwed the cap on again. He tossed the empty jar to Nathan, who might enjoy having the remnants analyzed, picked up the mask, and posed with it for the photographer.

  Marguerite turned the bowl slowly in her fingers. “The Chinese characters on here have meanings like peace and love.”

  “You read Chinese?” Nathan asked.

  “I wish. No, I recognized them from some candle holders I have at home, which is where I need to be right now.” Marguerite frowned up at Constantine. “It’s a drag, but we won’t even have time for a quickie this morning.”

  “Sure we will.” Constantine scooped up the chamois and the blanket and hurried her toward the stairs at the end of the mound. In his other hand he had the mask, and Marguerite still held the cup and bowl.

  “And home would be where?” Nathan’s voice pursued them. “What’s your name, love?”

  “Don’t tell him.” Constantine nudged her along. “You’ve already made it too easy. Make him work for the rest.”

  “What’s he like in bed?” Nathan asked. �
�How many orgasms do you get from a quickie?”

  Marguerite let out an annoyed “tsk” and started down the stairs.

  Nathan called, “What do you suppose happened to the knife?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Marguerite was pretty sure she knew the answer to Nathan’s question, but hopefully Constantine didn’t include mind reading in his unusual skills. She might be able to stop herself from blurting out Zeb’s name, but it would be difficult not to think it. What was Zeb doing on the mounds at dawn? What was his part in all of this, and why had he taken the knife?

  Another question: If Constantine hadn’t drugged her and left her on the mound—and she couldn’t bring herself to believe that after what his aura had told her—who had? She was reasonably certain she hadn’t been raped; wouldn’t one feel violated or, at the very least, sore? Not only that, if this was a setup to trap Constantine—which seemed likely, given the exchange between him and Nathan—raping her would make no sense. Still, it would be foolish not to get checked out. She needed to get to her car and see Lavonia right away. Lavonia would be able to examine her, maybe even do a test for semen. Although what they would do if it was positive…

  It wouldn’t be, and she should keep to easier questions for now. “Why isn’t he following us?”

  “He knows I’ll hurt him if he does,” Constantine said. “Nathan and I go way back. We had a profitable symbiotic relationship for a while.”

  “He got the cool stories and you got the bad-boy promo?”

  Constantine’s well-known grin appeared briefly. Close to him like this, walking along in conversation, her ordinary senses tended to take over, but he felt more or less safe to her in spite of the violence of his words.

  “It sounds to me as if he’d be happy to destroy you,” Marguerite said.

  “That would be an even cooler story, but he’d have to be alive to tell it. Nathan should know by now that no good comes of tangling with me.” A brief vision of another kind of tangling flashed into her mind and was gone.

  She hadn’t been thinking about sex just now, not at all. Generally, she didn’t. She’d lost interest in sex years ago, almost before she’d tried it.

  She’d been hoping to meet Constantine for ages, to decide for herself whether his telepathic abilities were real. One of the perks of taking a job in Bayou Gavotte was the increased likelihood of meeting him. She’d chosen to room with Pauline, whose property bordered his, for the same reason. But none of that had anything to do with sex.

  Constantine wasn’t the only reason she’d moved here, though. Bayou Gavotte, with its kinky clubs, was ideal for people with unusual abilities. It had probably started with hereditary vampires, who sprouted fangs at puberty and had a powerful sexual allure. The New Orleans area had been home to them for centuries. They still kept their identities more or less a secret—many people didn’t even believe they existed—but they could mingle more freely in a town with vampire wannabees and various kinds of sex clubs. But some of the clubs had grown dangerous, recruiting underage or unwilling participants, and the underworld had come into being to keep the town safe in ways the police couldn’t. Not that the entire populace approved, but most people accepted the situation because it profited them. Since the underworld had taken control of the dark side of town, tourist traffic had flourished, as had Hellebore University.

  Marguerite hadn’t told many people about her ability to read auras, because it generally caused more trouble than it was worth. Even so, the fact that many of her colleagues at Hellebore were deep into psychic studies made her feel at home. It was a good town for someone who didn’t quite fit in the normal world.

  “Did you see the guy who knocked you over?”

  Surprise deprived her of speech. How much had Constantine seen? After a struggle, she managed, “Is that what happened? I was trying to wake up, but I was so out of it. I was still caught in a dream.” Pause. “I heard a man cursing, but I couldn’t get my eyes to open, and then he left.”

  “With the knife.”

  “I guess,” Marguerite said. “Unless it was already gone.”

  “I saw him pick something up,” Constantine said.

  “Why would he take some random knife? He couldn’t have known I was there or he wouldn’t have bumped into me, so maybe he didn’t know about the paraphernalia either.”

  “Interesting, isn’t it?” Constantine’s interest sounded deadly. Marguerite wouldn’t want to be the focus of it. “There’s a guy who comes to the mounds at night from time to time to sing and pray, which makes me wonder if this stuff is his, but what does the kid have to do with it?”

  “Kid?” Her voice wavered.

  “The guy who took the knife is young—in high school, maybe, or a freshman in college. He ran right past me on Mama Mound, and I recognized him from last night’s concert. He took off, and by the time I got there, Nathan had arrived. I’ll find the kid soon enough. He’ll tell me what he knows.”

  At the implacable note in his voice, a panicky little chill struck Marguerite. Thank God she hadn’t told him Zeb’s name. “What if he doesn’t want to? He must be hiding something.”

  “He’ll tell me,” Constantine said. “I won’t give him a choice.”

  “You’ll hurt him?”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “That’s awful!” Marguerite cried. Not surprising, considering his reputation, but she hadn’t expected his attitude to make her feel ill.

  “It works,” Constantine said. “The kid’s a runner.”

  How much more did he know? She hurried ahead down the last few stairs, needing to get away. Maybe if she found Zeb first, she could ask the questions, and Zeb wouldn’t get hurt. Zeb was six feet tall, in good shape, and not afraid of a fight, but against Constantine and the vigilantes of the Bayou Gavotte underworld—headed by Constantine’s drummer, Leopard—he didn’t stand much of a chance.

  “Here come Nathan’s reinforcements,” Constantine said at the sound of another vehicle. He hustled her willy-nilly across the field.

  “My car’s in the far parking lot,” Marguerite said.

  “Through the woods, then.” They changed course, and shouts pursued them as they made it to the trees.

  At one strident female voice, Marguerite shot a glance over her shoulder. “That’s Myra, one of the museum’s curators.”

  “Looks like Nathan planned on having her there this morning as a witness to the twisted story he hoped to tell,” Constantine said. “She tried to stop us from having a concert here last night. She was spitting mad, and the cops had to all but carry her away.”

  “I saw that, poor thing.”

  “You were at the concert.” Almost like an accusation.

  “Purely by luck,” Marguerite said, feeling defensive, which made no sense. Why shouldn’t she be excited—no, overjoyed—that he was singing again? “I heard about it at the coffee shop and came right over. I couldn’t resist. You haven’t performed in months.”

  He didn’t reply, and for a while they continued in silence, their footsteps soft on the pine straw. He brushed hanging vines away to let her pass. A squirrel scampered along a fallen ironwood, and a medley of crows called from above.

  “Myra was just being protective of the mounds.” Marguerite felt obliged to explain further. “She didn’t want people climbing up the sides to get a better view because that leads to erosion. And she was afraid they would leave trash everywhere. Under the cover of darkness, nobody bothers with the rules. But your people seemed to have everything under control.”

  “Apparently not, if someone drugged you.” At the same instant, he shot her a telepathic message infused with warning: Did someone really drug you?

  What? “Of course someone drugged me! Do you think I willingly participated in that crappy scene up there?”

  He shrugged. “Why not, if you needed the money? Let’s say you didn’t, then. Were you by yourself at the concert?”

  For a hero, he sure was acting like a jerk. �
��Yes, I was by myself, more or less. I met a few of my students and saw a couple of other people I know, but I spread my blanket at the back so I could leave before the rush.” Pause. “I’ll have to think about it, try to remember who was nearby, which song I heard last…”

  “You must have had a drink with you.”

  “A bottle of water,” she said. “I always carry water in the car. God, I’m so thirsty.”

  He had a water bottle clipped to his belt. He uncapped it and offered it to her.

  She hesitated, suddenly unnerved. His colors swirled alarmingly, and a flush of shame washed over her. He wasn’t a rapist. He didn’t go around drugging women. As a Bayou Gavotte vigilante, he saved the endangered and protected the innocent. She knew all this, and she’d never believed the horrible stories about him, but he was beginning to frighten her. This whole morning scared her. She thanked him, took a sip, and handed the bottle back to him.

  Sharp little flares daggered his aura. He took a huge swig, and shame crawled through her again. Why? He was the one behaving like a jerk. With a chilly twist of the lips, he offered it to her a second time. “Want some more?”

  Damn it, what right had he to be offended? He’d assumed the worst of her at first, he didn’t believe what she said now, and regardless, some jerk had drugged her. She glared at him and took a substantial swallow. “Thanks.”

  His mouth twitched, and for once his aura and physical body were in sync. He downed the remaining water, the masculine column of his throat glorious in the morning light.