Page 2 of Truth in the Treme

He reached for her hand without thinking about it. He noticed the reaching only after their fingers had already laced, and the noticing stopped him for half a step. A century in this city, and he had crossed these same stones a thousand times alone, careful of being seen, careful of being known. Now he held a woman's hand on Dauphine in plain daylight and no part of him wanted to let go. He had never done this with Delia. The conventions of her day would not have allowed it, and he had told himself for decades that he did not mind. He had been wrong about that. He had been wrong about a great many comforts he never let himself want.

“You added milk to the grocery list,” Delphine said. “On your phone. By yourself.”

“I did.”

“I am proud of you. Last week you sent me a photograph of the list instead of opening the list.”

“The application is not intuitive.”

“It is a list, Bastien. It has one job.”

“Then we agree it is beneath my attention.” He held the office door for her, and she walked under his arm into the front room that still smelled of old paper and the cedar he kept in the drawers.

Tib arrived within the hour to collect the pendant. The alpha filled the doorway, gray threading his beard now, a man who looked more comfortable in a feed-store cap than in the suit some other city's packs would have demanded of their leader. He took the silver piece, turned it once in his palm, and grunted his approval.

“Boy is grounded till he is forty,” Tib said. “Roxy wanted to make it sixty.”

“Teach him to fish instead,” Bastien said. “He was bored and angry. Bored and angry boys dig holes.”

“You would know.” Tib pocketed the pendant. He nodded at Delphine with the rough courtesy he gave the few humans he trusted. “Ma'am. You keeping him decent?”

“Trying. He still cannot work his phone.”

“None of us can. That is the natural order.”

Bastien walked him to the door. He expected the visit to end there. Most of his work ended that way now, with a recovered object, a handshake, and no one dead. Tib paused on the threshold, though, and rubbed the back of his neck.

“There is one more thing. Probably nothing.”

“Go on.”

“Fire in the Tremé overnight. Old shotgun double off North Villere, empty for years.” Tib worked his jaw while he chose his words. “Couple of folks on the block are spooked. Say the flames moved wrong. One of them swears she saw a woman standing inside the burn before the roof went, just standing there in the middle of it, and then gone.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I believe she believes it. Smoke does things to people. But you know how it goes. Anything they cannot explain, they figure it lands on your desk eventually.” Tib shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Figured I would say it before somebody else did.”

“I appreciate it.”

Tib left. Bastien stood a moment with his hand on the doorframe and turned the report over without much weight behind it. A woman in the fire was the kind of thing fear built out of nothing. He had walked through a hundred haunted houses that turned out to be bad wiring and guilty consciences.

His phone rang before he had decided whether to care.

The number belonged to Maya Ortiz. He had her saved because their paths had crossed often enough over the years to make it worth the trouble. She ran fire investigation for the city, and she had the rare good sense to call him when a scene refused to add up and the rarer good sense to let him handle the part of it she did not want to understand.

“Durand,” she said, no warmth wasted. “You hear about the Tremé fire?”

“Word reached me a few minutes ago.”

“I have got three witnesses telling me the same impossible story and a burn pattern I do not love. I do not think it is your kind of thing. I want you to tell me it is not your kind of thing so I can stop wondering and put my people where they are useful.”

“You want me to rule it out.”

“I want you to do what you do and let me get back to work. Can you come?”

He looked across the room. Delphine had already pulled her bag onto her shoulder, eyebrows raised, plainly listening and plainly intending to come whether he invited her or not.

“I can come,” he said. “Give me twenty minutes.”