A Taste of Love and Evil by Barbara Monajem Read Free Book Online

errand.” A pigeon bobbed toward Jack, picking up this crumb and that, headed for the bonanza of half a hot-dog bun on the pavement next to his shoe. “Violet Du-pree called in that favor I owed her.”
    “You and your favors. Hey, you’re calling from Cindy’s number. Is she okay?”
    “She’s fine. My phone’s broken.” There was no way to sugarcoat today’s fiasco. “Somebody shot at me this morning and stole my Jeep.” Jack shifted, breaking into Gil’s exclamations, and the pigeon skittered a couple of yards to the right. “I’m fine. I’ve hitched a ride, and I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I’ll take care of the calls then. I need you to find somewhere for a sixteen-year-old girl to stay.”
    “What sixteen-year-old girl?”
    “A runaway named Juma, likely from Mississippi or Louisiana. See if you can ID her. She’s scrawny, olive-skinned white, five foot six, black hair—”
    “We don’t do runaways.”
    “We do when they were handcuffed to the steering wheel by their abductors.”
    Gil sighed. Understandably, some bad experiences with runaways had left him wary. “No choice, then.”
    “Try for a place in Bayou Gavotte, but if necessary I’ll bring her to New Orleans.” Jack repeated the physical description, and Gil resumed clicking on the keys. “Her grandmother owns a hairdresser’s shop. Some guy from her hometown named Stevie works at the Threshold, and he’s friendly with an underworld thug called Biff.”
    The keyboarding stopped dead. “What does this girl have to do with the underworld?”
    “Enough that I don’t want them to find out I’ve got her.”
    “Perfect,” Gil grumped. “I thought we came to Bayou Gavotte to get the underworld’s help. Not that I ever believed it would work. This town is full of weirdos.”
    “Which is why you and I fit right in,” Jack said, hoping he knew what he was talking about. He and Gil were anomalies, just as vamps were, as was the town’s local rocker, Constantine Dufray. For some unknown reason, Bayou Gavotte attracted people with strange abilities. Most of the inhabitants, though, were garden-variety screwups like everywhere else.
    “I’ll never fit in. I don’t like the feel of the place at all.”
    “You’ll get used to it.” A fat woman and a small boy went into the building. An eighteen-wheeler rolled ponderously out of the parking lot. Diesel fumes tickled Jack’s nose, and the pigeon headed for the hot-dog bun again. “I’ll approach the underworld when Constantine Dufray comes back from his tour, but first I have to know who’s pissed at me, and why.”
    “Isn’t it obvious? You rescued somebody they didn’t want rescued. Maybe somebody paid for her.” Jack felt his friend’s shudder through the phone lines. The occasional sale of some hapless virgin to the worst of the clubs was one of the issues Jack intended to bring to the underworld’s attention. “Maybe that somebody wants revenge.”
    “No, the rescue didn’t happen until after they shot me.”
    “Great, so they’re after you for two reasons now.”
    Jack held himself still and gray, nowhere near invisible but mostly unnoticeable against the bare wall, wondering if, with practice, he could blend his voice with the rumble of engines, with footsteps and toilets flushing and the opening and closing of doors. “If the underworld is what it’s cracked up to be, Stevie and Biff will be in big trouble, which gives me more of an edge when I contact Dufray.”
    “What makes you think he’ll care about your rescues? He has a reputation for violence, he’s rumored to have driven people to suicide, and he probably poisoned his wife. Why would he even remember you? You knew him ages ago.”
    He’ll remember me.
    But he couldn’t explain that to Gil without revealing secrets that weren’t his own. “That’s why it’s useful to have an edge. I’ve been interfering in the clubs. It was warranted, but this girl’s problem helps tip the balance