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I think the guy had expected his friends to rally to his aid, but instead they all backed up a half-dozen paces.
And that’s when I saw him.
The man stood apart from the rest of the growing crowd, and more importantly he stood out. He was rigid, barely moving as passersby nudged and jostled him. The suit he wore was too crisp, too tidy, like he hadn’t moved enough to wrinkle it. His skin was pale, almost waxen, and his eyes looked dead and empty.
“I’m sorry. Lady, I’m sorry, can you let me go? Tell your god I didn’t mean it, okay. Here.” He rifled through his pockets and shoved a wad of wrinkled twenties into my hand where it was pressed against his chest.
I looked down at the money, confused, still distracted by the man down the block. The frat guy took the opportunity and wriggled away from me, continuing to shout, “Sorry, seriously. I’ll never say that shit again. Tell your god. Shit.”
Because it would matter to Seth what some idiot boy had said to me in the streets? Unlikely.
I pocketed the money anyway, my gaze drifting back down the narrow, crowded street. People were traveling en masse towards Bourbon Street, where the music and merriment were loud and constant, and bad decisions flowed as freely as the booze.
The man showed no signs of going in the same direction as the crowd. He seemed perfectly content to stand in place and stare at me.
Dead men didn’t party, I guess.
“We need to go,” I said to Leo, rejoining him near the lip of the sidewalk. He hadn’t tried to help me and was looking at me now like I was a totally different person.
“Did that guy just pay you not to hit him?”
“Yes.”
“Damn, girl.”
“Let that be a lesson to you. You should listen to me when I tell you to do things.” I glanced over my shoulder, and the dead man was still standing in the middle of the street. He hadn’t moved any closer, but the pit of worry in my belly was growing larger by the second. “And right now I’m strongly suggesting we get out of here.”
Nudging him with both hands, I pushed Leo in the opposite direction to where the man was waiting. No power on earth could compel me to run towards death. I was foolhardy, not a fucking idiot.
I used Leo as something of a shield to navigate us through the burgeoning crowd. Was it my imagination or were there more people out now than there had been only fifteen minutes ago? I could write part of it off as our proximity to Bourbon Street, but the sheer volume of pedestrian traffic had doubled or tripled in a short window of time.
With both hands planted firmly on his back, I followed him through the crowd, pushing him so he’d understand my urgency wasn’t mere bluster. I’d have taken the lead, but he was a much more natural force to part the crowds, and I also wasn’t exactly sure which way we were going. I’d noted Leo’s address for Cade, but finding my way back without Leo
’s assistance would have taken twice as long.
I didn’t spend a lot of time in New Orleans, and I was starting to remember why. Something happens to you when you spend most of your days alone, with only you and the road beneath your tires. People start to feel threatening and suffocating. The more people I was around at any given time, the more uneasy it made me.
So add a crowd of hundreds to my existing dread about being stalked by one—or more—of Manea’s henchmen, and my anxiety was through the roof.
“Maybe if you told me what you were running from, I could help,” Leo suggested, speaking over his shoulder to me.
“I already told you death was coming for you, and you didn’t believe me at the time.” I had to shout for him to hear me, but the absurdity of my comments didn’t seem to bother anyone else around us.
“You have to admit that’s a pretty hard threat to believe.”
“I don’t care if you believe it or not, I only care that you move.”
Leo jostled someone out of our way, and I spotted his hand darting out, undoing the guy’s watch even as his other hand was patting him on the shoulder apologetically. We were gone before the stranger had a chance to notice what had happened. He was so drunk it would probably be hours before he realized his Rolex was missing.
Unreal. I was trying to keep us alive, and Leo was using the opportunity to skim low-hanging fruit from the crowd.
“Seriously, man? Right now?” I poked him hard between the shoulders. How had I not noticed the extra wallets in his back pockets?
The guy was good, I’d give him that.
He handed me the watch, dropping it over his shoulder so I had no choice but to catch it, otherwise it would fall to the ground. “Hold on to this,” he said, his words half vanishing in the din.
Around me beads were being hurled from upper balconies, and my shoes felt sticky against the cobblestone street. Every time someone near us would reach up to catch the plastic necklaces, shiny flashes of green, gold, and purple raining from the sky, Leo’s hand would move in, and he’d find another unsuspecting victim. Sometimes he took the whole wallet, other times it was jewelry, watches, loose cards in front pockets.
