1
Cordelia
If there was one thing Cordelia Canton understood, it was hair-soaking, ass-cheeks-sticking-to-the-upholstery heat and humidity. Even to her sturdy Floridian sensibilities, southern Louisiana was freaking ridiculous.
She lifted her heavy, umber-colored hair off of her neck and twisted it into a bun with the practiced efficiency of someone who had wintered in the relentlessly tropical Sunshine State. She secured the bun with an extra elastic from her purse, then peeled off the cotton gloves that were essential to her any time she left her apartment. She felt like she was suffocating, one body part at a time.
Steam curled up from the sidewalk after that afternoon’s waterfall of a rainstorm, making her sensible travel clothes stick to her like a second skin. She scanned the lineup of vehicles that seemed to cycle in and out of the lanes in a chaotic automotive ballet. None of them was the white van she was told to expect. She was starting to feel like a child left after school by a forgetful parent.
This was supposed to be her reward for years of competent service to the International League for Interspecies Cooperation—fieldwork. She despised fieldwork, loathed it. She hated the crowded airports, the never-ending cycle of gloves she needed to protect herself, the hotels that were never clean enough—
Stopping herself mid-mental rant, she shook her head, muttering, “No, you’re not going to do that to yourself. You will see this as a positive. You’re here because you’re the best analyst in your department. This is an opportunity. That’s what they said in the letter—an opportunity. It’s a good thing you were sent here. Just stop trying to turn this into a pity party.”
The last line sounded like Bernadette Canton, shockingly so, and it made Cordelia seal her lips against further “affirmations.”
Sitting on her well-worn luggage and talking to herself in her mother’s voice on the sidewalk outside the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport was not how she expected to begin this assignment. She’d traveled for the League before when artifacts couldn’t be moved safely to her office; to Hong Kong and Rome and a very strange convenience store in Parsippany, New Jersey. Each time she’d been treated with the same efficient consideration she received as an in-house psychic evaluator in the League’s Washington DC headquarters. She’d been picked up on time, in a nice air-conditioned town car with a translator/guide—which had been particularly helpful in New Jersey. She definitely hadn’t been left to sweat her ass off at the arrivals gate, amongst tourists who were already three-quarters drunk—she paused and checked her watch—for thirty minutes.
She pulled her pale blue linen blouse away from her neck and fanned herself. She understood the League’s need for subtlety and secrecy, especially with this particular assignment—an assignment so top secret that she didn’t know anything about the artifact she’d be examining, its origins or exact location. She did not understand why her supervisors insisted on all personnel for Mystic Bayou arriving separately and meeting up at the ride-share lane like a bunch of tourists. She also failed to grasp why the League would hire someone who clearly didn’t understand punctuality or the limits of a woman’s ability to tolerate boob sweat. It was October for goodness’ sake.
Of course, it wasn’t unusual for her to be brought into a work situation blind, so to speak. Her supervisors didn’t want to influence her evaluations. She’d worked in the League’s DC research offices for the better part of ten years. Day in, day out, she’d been comfortably enclosed in her little climate-controlled office, examining artifacts, determining their value and power, and cataloging them for the archives. Then the League whisked those items away and stored them in deep underground vaults in undisclosed locations. Not all of them were supernaturally powerful objects; some were just old. She’d seen some of history’s greatest events, living them as if she were there. And on occasion, she saw nothing. She loved those days. She slept better.
She opened her small travel pill organizer and dry-swallowed two Extra Strength Tylenol, a calcium supplement, and a prescription multi-vitamin. Traveling always left her feeling like a wet paper sack in a windstorm, even when she’d been on the road with her mother. The effort of keeping up her shield leeched away the nutrients from her relatively healthy diet, leaving her more susceptible to anemia, fatigue, bone fractures, and a host of other health issues. She had a box of supplements in her suitcase that would put a hypochondriac to shame, but this little travel kit should keep her covered until she got to her assigned League housing in Mystic Bayou.
Of course, if she didn’t get inside an air-conditioned space soon, she was going to toss those supplements and several bottles worth of water onto the shoes of her tardy driver. Even if that driver showed up in the next minute, she considered throwing up anyway out of spite.
She stared off into the hazy heat of the horizon, imagining that she was somewhere more pleasant— skipping a show to watch the sun sinking into the ocean off the coast of Oregon, or in that freak September snowstorm that had trapped the whole caravan in Wyoming. It had been the first time Cordelia had ever seen snow. For all her power, watching those little tufts of untouched ice fall out of the sky had been the most magical thing she’d ever witnessed.
Cold, lashing pain spiked through her temples, and suddenly she remembered how angry her mother had been when she’d skipped that show in Oregon, and the punishment that had followed. She shook off the memory and was suddenly aware of a white van pulling up to the curb. The side of the van read, “Crazy Jock’s Self-Storage” in bright orange block letters, just over what she realized was a rather offensive caricature of a Cajun.
“What fresh hell is this?” Cordelia said.
The driver put the van in park and stepped out. He was tall, lean, and pale, almost unnaturally so, and he wasn’t sweating even in this heat. Was he a vampire? She’d never actually met one, but after working for the League she’d come to realize that everything else existed, so why not vampires? Then again, it was broad daylight. She was pretty sure that was still a rule for vampires, right?
Ugh, the heat was making her all dull-witted.
She supposed it was his cheekbones that made her think of vampires. They gave him the haunted air of a Byronic hero, all hollows and edges and sharp-eyed misery. His hair was black, not just dark brown, but so black that it seemed to absorb the light around it. All he was missing was some heavy collared coat flipped around his ears and he would look very mysterious indeed.
This is what she got for traveling to New Orleans. She had vampires and all manner of nonsense on the brain and she hadn’t even left the airport.
Bottom line, he was gorgeous, even in jeans and a plain black dress shirt. But she was just too sweaty to care or concern herself with the very limp and sad first impression she was surely making on one of the most attractive people she’d met in a very long time.
This lack of confidence was temporary, not a chronic condition. She knew she was delicately pretty with a slim build and wide blue eyes. She’d made a career out of those guileless looks when she was younger. After all, Bernadette would insist, what audience wouldn’t believe pretty lies when they came from such an angelic little face? When Cordelia was feeling more like herself, she might have to put her wiles to her best advantage. Right now, she just wanted to scrape herself off the sidewalk and get out of this heat.