“It can be, but there’s some serious bulk in this group,” I said. “I mean, not me and you, obviously, but we have the Rock and the Hulk as personal bodyguards.”
“I do not turn green.” Kaleb shook his head. “Ever.”
“Just when any guy looks at Lily for longer than five seconds,” Dune said. “Which is a lot.”
I sensed I’d be doing some jealous kissing later.
“Okay,” Kaleb admitted. “I’ve totally considered going ‘Hulk smash!’ More than once.”
Dune nodded as he took my hand. “I know the feeling, man.”
Lily winked at me, and I decided to do some thank-you kissing now.
“Head that way. We’ll be right behind you.” I pointed Lily and Kaleb toward Saints & Sinners. Then I pushed Dune into an alley.
“What are you—”
I steered him where I wanted him to go, until his back was against a brick wall. “I wish we still had the room at the Bourbon Orleans.”
“I’m glad, but I’m confused. Where is this coming from?”
“Your friends are sweet to me.” I tucked two fingers in his waistband. “You’re sweet to me. You make me feel like a completely normal girl.”
“If making you feel normal gets this kind of response, remind me to do it more often.”
I slid my hands up his stomach to his chest, and then around his neck. His hands went down, over my waist and hips and stopping on my backside. I was beyond pleased when a low groan sounded in his throat.
“We are in an alley.” His mouth was on my cheek, my neck, and going lower. “In the very, very public French Quarter.”
“That doesn’t seem to be stopping you.” I leaned my head back to give him easy access.
“I can’t. I want to touch you all the time.” Lifting me up, he turned the tables and put my back against the wall. “I want to be with you all the time. Talk to you all the time.”
“Talking is good. Not that I’m interested in conversation right now.” I wrapped my legs around his waist, and his hands moved to the backs of my thighs. His weight against me was mind-blowing. “Did I mention how much I wished we still had a room? I’m hanging on you like a tick.”
“I’m holding you like a life vest.”
“We’re not good at sexy imagery.”
He started laughing. “Do you want me to put you down?”
“No. I want to stay in this exact moment. Well, maybe where we’d end up in thirty minutes if this progressed the way I wanted, but we have work to do, and I just sent your friends to a celebrity bar, and I think I see a hobo coming, so we better go.”
One more kiss, and then I slid down his body slowly. I laughed when his eyes rolled back in his head. After I was sure we were both presentable and tucked in, I took his hand and stepped out of the alley.
Mardi Gras had come to New Orleans. On a Saturday.
Three months early.
Twenty years too late.
Dune
“Dune, wait.” Hallie stopped at the alley entryway. “Something isn’t right.”
The number of people on Bourbon Street had tripled. There were way more plastic beads and masks with feathers than usual for this time of year. Music blared, the crowds were raucous, and alcohol permeated.
Utter chaos.
Hallie took my hand and pulled me in the direction she’d indicated to Kaleb and Lily. We found them on the sidewalk, looking confused.
“It isn’t there.” Kaleb’s voice barely carried over the noise of the revelers on the sidewalk as he pointed to where Saints & Sinners used to be. “We saw the sign, and then we didn’t.”
I turned to Hallie and tried to pitch my voice over the heavy sound around us. “Do you recognize anything?”
She wrinkled her nose as she scanned the crowd. “Beer and sweat with a top note of vomit is how it usually smells here, but I’m guessing from the costumes, this is Mardi Gras. Parades on Bourbon were rerouted in the seventies. Oh, look. Love beads and Birkenstocks.”
“Great,” I replied. “The sixties. Booze and free love. Way to keep it classy, space time continuum.”
Kaleb took stock of the throng of people around us. “Look around. It’s not just the sixties.”
“I don’t see any eighties bangs. I don’t think it goes beyond the seventies, just back in time. And … the buildings have changed. Kaleb.” Lily grabbed his arm. “This is a rip world.”
My blood turned to stone. “It’s sucked us in.”
“How do we get out?” Hallie’s voice was frantic as she focused on the people around us. Not people, rips.
They stopped to stare at Hallie.
And then they started toward her, moving as one.
Chapter 17
Hallie
I could feel them coming.
“You can see them?” I asked Dune, squeezing his hand.
“I can.”
“They know what I am.” Panic made my heart race as my joints went loose. “They know, and they want me.”
Dune kept his voice as low as he could in the middle of the crowd, speaking into my ear. “I won’t leave you, Hal, I swear.”
My shirt was soaked with sweat. “Get me away from them.”
Dune didn’t wait for me to finish. He jerked me toward the alley we’d just left, running hard, pulling on my hand. Lily and Kaleb followed.
We were close, approaching the corner of the alley, almost there. So very close.
But the rips were closer.
Images rushed around me like water swirling down a drain. It happened so much faster than before, maybe because we were trapped in the rips’ world, instead of them being trapped in ours.
My body became a revolving door for rips. The blood in my veins pumped double time, triple time, as my cells regenerated and tried to give me enough energy to handle what was coming.
The mask is more than a Mardi Gras favor; it’s my chance to find Jean Claude, to make him mine.
I approach the entryway where he’s agreed to meet me, finally, and his arm reaches out to sweep me into the darkness. He says not a word, but his hands ravage my body. They grip my waist, my hips, linger on the curve of my breasts above the corset. Air kisses my skin as he pulls down my sleeves and his lips find my shoulder.
“Take off the mask,” I command. “I’ve waited so long for you.”
Heat rolls off his body, and tension keeps his muscles tight. “Here, in the dark?” he asks, tracing the neckline of my gown. “Instead of a bed?”
“Now.” He reaches for my mask, mindful of the feathers. He knows I must go back to my husband tonight. His mouth claims mine before I can tell him to mind the lipstick, and I decide I don’t care.
New world, new players.
“I don’t want to show you anything,” the girl yells back at me. I laugh and drop the beads for her, anyway.
I feel generous here. New Orleans is good to me. The beer is cold, and no one ever asks for my name. No one cares. About anything. Not if I drink, not if I squat, not if I steal. At the right parties, they don’t even care if I crawl into bed with them. If I get that far, they don’t care what I do next.
I stick my hand in my pocket. Wince when I catch a hangnail. Two rings, a wallet, cash. A set of car keys, a checkbook, and my favorite, a tiny knife with a pearl handle. A knife that sliced my cheek open before dinnertime, but belonged to me by sunset.
I can steal bigger things with a knife. I can hurt someone with a knife.
Will anyone care about that?