Dragons Deal Read online

  The tone turned pleading. "You'll need help. I can give it. Have you got an obstetrician?"

  "That is also none of your business," Val said.

  "That means you don't," Melinda deduced, with devastating clarity. Val winced. "You need a dragon physician. A human won't know the signs of a healthy dragon fetus. Are you more comfortable with a male or female doctor? I know the names of the best in the clans. I can get any of them to take you as a patient. Valerie, I want to have contact with my grandchild. Let me meet you. We can discuss the future."

  "My future is not your concern," Val said, wanting desperately to hang up. "I've got to go now."

  "Valerie, this is not the end of our conversation," Melinda said. Now she sounded like a mother. "I am in town, taking care of my daughter. I will call you again to arrange a meeting."

  "I'll think about it," Val said, feeling as if she had already lost the battle.

  The voice continued on as though she had not spoken. "Have a place in mind by the time I call you again. You can have your brother present to protect you, or any number of people you wish, if you don't mind having your personal life discussed in front of them."

  "I don't need anyone to protect me," Val said. Her cheeks were hot with anger. She felt something brush her head. She looked up and realized she had grown tall enough to touch the ceiling. For the last few months, since she had learned her heritage, she had grown in size when she was under stress, the way that Griffen broke out in scales on his skin. She had to get her feelings under control.

  There was a wry smile in the voice. "My daughter's present condition tells me that you are probably right, but I want you to feel secure in my presence. We will meet. You may choose the time and place. Just don't wait too long."

  The line went dead. Val found herself staring at the old-fashioned handset.

  "Are you all right?" Mai demanded. Val looked down. Mai seemed even more tiny than usual. Val forced herself to breathe deeply. With each calming breath, the excess size receded. She shrank from ten feet down to six. "Your face is beet red. What did that nasty bitch want?"

  "She wants to meet me," Val said. She sank onto the bed, feeling helpless.

  "Don't go," Mai said, sitting beside her. "You could find yourself tied up in magical bonds and spirited away to a cave in South Africa until you have that baby."

  Val was horrified. "She would do that?"

  "To get a child of those two bloodlines, there isn't much she would stop at. It's the future of the clans you are talking about. But she can't get her hands on you if you don't let her. Stay away from her."

  "I plan to," Val said, "but it sounds like she's leaving me no choice. She wants to see me. She's here in New Orleans, somewhere. With Lizzy."

  "That is bad news," Mai said. "You need protection, no matter what you just told her. Tell Griffen, immediately. He can call in some favors, have people be on the lookout for her goons." She offered Val her cell phone.

  Val gawked at the gesture. "You didn't want me to let him know last time!"

  Mai shook her head. "I know I told you when you first learned you were pregnant not to burden him because he had so many other problems to deal with, but this is a peril he needs to see coming, from as far away as possible. No more surprises like the last time. Melinda is dangerous. If she wants to be involved in your pregnancy, she will find a way."

  "I doubt she is coming to throw me a baby shower," Valerie said dryly.

  "I wouldn't put it past her to put on the trappings of a grandmother, but there will be strings attached to any gift she makes you. There always are. If you do not feel fit to negotiate with her, refuse to see her until you are, or have someone with you whom you trust."

  "I trust you."

  "Melinda hates me. And I represent the Eastern dragons. She will see me as a rival who might assume influence over this baby."

  Val was alarmed. She knew little about the politics going on among the other dragon clans, and didn't want to know. She was young. She wanted to enjoy her life! Could Mai, in whom she had confided so much, be interested in stealing her child for her own purposes?

  Mai must have read Val's mind. She pursed her lips, producing minute indentations next to her perfect rosebud mouth. "I would never hurt you," she said. "I would remove myself from the scene if it came to a choice between your family and my clan."

  Mai didn't mention the plans she had made, sowing seeds throughout the French Quarter, or what her clan wanted her to do with regard to the McCandles siblings. That would only frighten Val into doing something rash. That was not her intention. Not yet, anyhow. Val was too preoccupied to notice the hesitation.

  "What about Griffen?" Val asked. "Is he the right one to keep Melinda away from me?"

  "I think he is the right choice but also the most perilous one you can make. Melinda is the head of a powerful clan. He will be in danger if he tries to keep her from laying claim to a child of her blood. It is not only a possibility, but a probability. All dragons have heard the prophecy of a powerful dragon coming to unite the clans. Undoubtedly, Melinda believes she is the one, though if she is, why has she not united them already? I know that all of the dragons who live here believe it is Griffen himself. That is why they are aligning themselves to be close to him when he does. But you must inform Griffen of all that has passed today." Mai smiled, hoping to elevate the mood. "Except the vomiting part. Too much information. Few men want all the details about pregnancy, particularly brothers."

  Val nodded. "I promise. I'll tell him as soon as he comes back."

  "Where did he go?"

  "I don't know. I hope it's not more trouble."

  Mai laughed, a tinkling sound that Val might once have associated with Disney fairies. "Trouble comes in many guises in this city. Either it is the kind he must fight, the kind from which he must run, or the kind to which he must say no. He is prone to the third more often than the first two."

  Two

  Griffen looked up at the massive, colorful sculptures, astonished by their variety and artistry. These would have stood out like a sore thumb in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he and his sister had been raised, but looked completely at home here in New Orleans. Around the walls of the huge warehouse, kings and queens, gods and goddesses, jesters, leering demons, angels, cats, tigers, wolves, and dragons all stared at him from eyes the size of his head. The faces were incredibly lifelike. Some of them grinned at him. Some smirked. Others looked threatening. They were Mardi Gras floats.

  He had only seen floats before on television, in the inevitable annual footage taken by the national news services of the parades at Carnival time and run during the feature segment of the news, filled with people in colorful costumes throwing things to the cheering, laughing, dancing crowds that lined the streets, to the accompaniment of loud jazz music, heavy on the horns. Since he had moved to New Orleans, he knew now that the street down which the parades progressed was almost always St. Charles Avenue, not in the French Quarter that had become his home, that the costumed people were members of societies called "krewes," and that what they were flinging to their audiences were known, appropriately enough, as "throws." Beyond that, he knew nothing.

  He had not been in town long enough to see the festival yet. It was still months away. He was looking forward to Mardi Gras, but not with the enthusiasm of the people around him, who were working on building floats. Men and women in protective eye and ear gear, aprons, and gloves leaned over spinning, howling lathes, carving out the framework of the giant heads that would be attached to the fronts or rears of the theme floats. Others slid tools over pieces of timber, flicking curls of orange wood to the floor, where they became lost in the heaps of shavings already there. When those carvings were finished, they joined heaped pieces of frame at the side of the several unfinished floats, which looked like stripped-down flatbed trucks. Busy crews--or should Griffen say krewes?--hoisted the pieces into place to form the sterns of galleons, or regal, high-backed thrones, or demicastles. After them came men i
n dusty coveralls and breather masks, spraying fiberglass or papier-mache to fill in the spaces in between and give shape to the design. Expert decorators worked at putting the huge faces into place, painting, varnishing, and gilding. The acrid fumes made his eyes water. The colors were every hue in the rainbow, but gold, green, and purple predominated. Griffen was fascinated.

  "It woul' mean a lot to plenty of people if you woul' say yes," the scruffy-haired man at his side said, patting the nose of a roaring lion taller than he as if it were a friendly dog. Etienne de la Fee was a few inches shorter than Griffen and much thinner, with a dusky skin that an artist might have called olive, attesting to a heritage mixed from several different lines. His tightly curled hair, cut fairly short, spoke of African descent, but the color, dirty blond, attested to at least one European ancestor. His wide, light brown eyes had a wild look in them, but he spoke in the calm, loping cadence of a lifelong Louisianan. Though the morning weather was relatively cool, about the middle fifties, he wore olive khakis and a bronze-colored polo shirt. "Been decades since the Krewe of Fafnir was last active, but it was time to get it goin'. Seems as though you the man to help make it all happen again. Been nothin' to it, gettin' it all together again, like it never stopped. Mardi Gras is big business in N'awlins, Mr. McCandles. Everybody's excited to see it back up and going. Already started, a lot of it. You can see the lead float over dere, just about done." Etienne pointed to a corner. Griffen almost jumped out of his skin to see an enormous gold dragon with a curling purple tongue jutting out between lips lined with fire-engine red and rows of pointed white teeth longer than his hand. Smaller dragons jutted out around it as if they were its young riding on its shoulders. A young woman with a long black ponytail and clad in a paint-stained denim shirt outlined the dragons' scales with brilliant green. "Dat'd be the float you'd be ridin', right behind me and the committee. We'd be on horseback, of course."

  "Wow!" Griffen said, admiring the dragon. "That looks real!"

  "You know anybody like dat?" Etienne asked, curiously.

  "No, I mean, it looks like it could get up and fly around," Griffen said hastily.

  Etienne smiled with understandable pride. "These artists here are some o' de best o' de best workin', Mr. McCandles." His manner of speaking came from the deepest reaches of the Cajun backcountry, so that he tended to drop or soften consonants.

  "Griffen, please," Griffen said.

  "Thank you, Griffen," Etienne said, formally. "Y'know, everyone is excited to get Fafnir roarin' again. Been a hole in the festivities, you might say, since it stop rollin' wit' the others. A lot of people have put a lot of effor' into bringin' it back, countin' on you to agree to be dis year's king. Even arrange for the permits and everything. You have no idea how tough that was, pullin' off a permit wit' only half the details in place. But it went like . . . magic." Etienne grinned.

  Griffen grimaced. To him, "magic" was more than just a metaphor. But his companion wasn't throwing the word around as part of a lame metaphor. In spite of Etienne de la Fee's delicate-sounding name, he was a werewolf. He had a small amount of dragon blood, but the rest of him was lycanthrope. Griffen had recently run a conclave at a local hotel that had been attended by a number of shape-shifters, werewolves included. They were mostly decent people, even including the loup garou. The part of the conclave he had enjoyed the most was meeting beings that he had only read about in books of fiction. The reality was a lot different than the stories. Werewolves weren't the scary menaces that the movies loved to depict though they weren't tame or predictable creatures, either.

  "Taking on the kingship sounds like a lot of work," Griffen said, considering the proposal that Etienne had made, talking it up all the way to a nondescript yellow stucco building on Napoleon Avenue. It was hard to keep perspective in mind when he was faced with the glorious concept of riding at the head of what was going to be a pretty spectacular parade, but he had promised Jerome that he was going to pay much closer attention to the business he was supposed to be running. "I'm pretty busy, you know."

  "Bring in more business to ya," Etienne said, promptly. "Folks woul' take it well that you support Mardi Gras. They'd feel real generous. Gettin' de Fafnir parade back on track's been a special dream of mine. 'Course I couldn' do nothin' about it alone, not bein' a pure-blood dragon myself. But once word got around I was goin' after you for king, people from the best families jumped on in."

  Griffen frowned. "I haven't said yes yet."

  "Yes, sir," Etienne said, dreamily, spreading his hands out as if plastering a vision on the air. "I can just see it now: parade windin' along St. Charles Avenue, jazz bands, dance troupes, clowns, fire-eaters, stilt-walkers, pretty ladies, and handsome gentlemen in traditional scaled costumes tossin' out t'rows to the crowd, the gold gleamin' on the floats . . ." Griffen found himself caught up in Etienne's vivid description. He started to picture himself standing on the lead float behind that massive dragon with a gold crown on his head, waving and smiling as confetti peppered him from the sky. He shook himself fiercely, refusing to fall into a reverie.

  "When did you get all this started?" Griffen asked. "It sounds like it's a lot of work.

  "Well, you gotta build all the floats by hand," Etienne said, rocking back on his heels with his thumbs hooked into his belt. "Magic's allowed, of course, or money--you can pay to have 'em built, but Fafnir always made deir own. Matter of pride. A little magic helps 'em hold together better. They can take months. Den dere's they costumes. A fancy beaded one might take a year. People like to make deir own. The permits take a long time, even if Fafnir's a historical krewe. The city government want to make sure it's a legitimate society. We really started in on it full force about two years ago."

  "Wow," Griffen said. He watched a young woman standing on a skid-loader platform raised to eight feet above the ground, threading small lights onto the framework of a float that looked finished, to his untrained eye. "This all looks pretty expensive. How does the krewe pay for all this?"

  "Oh, well, the membership pays in its dues," Etienne said. "We also hold fund-raisers. Den dere's rider fees. I been part of other krewes and marchin' societies before, and sometimes on big parades the riders about pay for the whole thing. But the parade's not all dere is, Mr. Griffen. We hold a ball during Carnival season, plus a few other parties. Den there's selectin' the court. Dat'll help to cover the cost of the ball, which is food, invitations, clothes, favors, and doubloons. And don't forget t'rows. I know the best suppliers. You could count on me and my family to help you find anytin' you need. We got connections. And then there's the king's party. You have a tuxedo? If you want to hold it in a good place, you better get off the mark, son, 'cause most of the krewes have got deir reservations in for the last fifty years. Only a few hotels and restaurants got any space open. I got four of the best places holdin' rooms waiting to hear from you 'cause you Griffen McCandles. I have menus for you to take a look at. It'd help if you make the choice right away. Most of 'em is about sixty a plate, give or take ten."

  Griffen was aghast. "Sixty a plate! Sixty dollars?"

  Etienne shrugged. "If you don't like any of 'em, there's some other restaurants that'll give you a room they been holdin' for someone else."

  "How many people will I be expected to invite to the party?"

  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.