Alex nodded and swallowed hard.
“Now, I must repeat my question of you, monsieur. What is it you request of me?”
“Captain Lafitte, I have laid down my weapons for you and am willing to take them up again in your service, if you see fit to grant me asylum and accept my pledge of loyalty.”
The tears built behind my eyes again. Only I knew how much that speech had cost Alex Warin. He had been taken under the Elders’ wings when he was sixteen, trained in the ways of the enforcer, taught how to survive as a shapeshifter in a human family and in a human world, and promised to always protect his mentors.
It had taken losing Jake to open his eyes. It had taken incredible inner strength for him to come here and humble himself before a man he’d fought against for so long.
But he had done it.
Jean hadn’t answered, and I wanted nothing more than to rush in there and shake him. Alex would be an asset for us when this war finally started. The sides wouldn’t sit around plotting and planning forever, and we as a group would have to decide who we’d support.
Jean took Alex’s pistol and held it up to the light. “This is a finely made weapon, Monsieur Warin. I quite admire it.” Then he turned it around and handed it back to Alex, butt first.
“I accept your oath of fealty. It took a man of much courage and strength of character to come here as you have.”
Alex’s face relaxed a smidgeon. “Thank you.”
Jean smiled. Not the friendly smile he reserved for strangers, or the sexy smile he reserved for me, but the devilish smile he saved for those he planned to torment. “You will be willing to begin … how do you modern folk say it … at the bottom, of course?”
Oh God, he was going to make Alex cook and clean and empty chamber pots.
The muscle under Alex’s eye twitched a couple of times, and he began thrumming his fingers against his thigh. “Of course.”
Jean raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question.
Alex swallowed hard and choked out, “Of course, sir.”
I collapsed in a heap, leaning against the door, not sure whether I should laugh or cry, or both.
“What’s wrong?” Audrey, who’d been looking out the front window, rushed toward me. Rene leaned down and offered a hand to pull me to my feet.
“Alex is joining the cause, and Jean’s going to make his life miserable for a while,” Rene told Audrey, earning a look of shock from me. “I knew he would. Only question was how long it would take Alex to suck it up and ask.”
“How did you know?” I stared at him. I’d envisioned any future with Alex not here fighting alongside the Lafitians but on the run in some semi-romantic comedy of escapades which, quite frankly, I would enjoy and Alex would hate. “Oh, right. Because you could hear them without listening through the keyhole.”
“I didn’t hear a word they said.”
“Then how did you know this was going to happen?”
Rene leaned over to whisper in my ear, and I waited for some pearl of Cajun wisdom that would make sense of Alex Warin and his new boss, Jean Lafitte. “’Cause I’m just that good, babe.”
THE SENTINELS OF NEW ORLEANS
Royal Street
River Road
Pirate’s Alley
Belle Chasse
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Suzanne Johnson lives in Auburn, Alabama. A veteran journalist with more than fifty national awards for writing and editing nonfiction to her credit, she is the author of the Sentinels of New Orleans series, which began with Royal Street. Elysian Fields, another title in the series, appeared on the Los Angeles Times Summer Reading Guide. Johnson also writes novels as Susannah Sandlin, for which she has won two HOLT Medallion Awards (for paranormal romance and romantic suspense) and been a two-time finalist for the RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 36
The Sentinels of New Orleans
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BELLE CHASSE
Copyright © 2016 by Suzanne Johnson
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Cliff Nielsen
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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ISBN 978-0-7653-7699-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-5285-3 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466852853
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First Edition: November 2016