Hot, Hard & Howling - OpenDrive

Hot, Hard & Howling
This is stupid, she thought. The Council wouldn’t give a crap about Trent even if she
could get in. All they’d want was the box and once they had it, Trent would be on his
own. It was up to her to find him. Boy, he’d love that.
She exited the cemetery the way she and Trent had entered, over the wall, just in
case there was someone back at the front gate waiting for her.
* * * * *
Sweat was running down the back of Nell’s shirt as she sat at an iron table outside a
closed café. The place was deep in an alley off the major streets of the Quarter, giving
her some sense of safety. She fumbled with getting minutes on the pay-as-you-go phone
she’d purchased from a corner grocery. She’d bought the phone, a bottle of water, some
Cheetos and a soggy turkey sandwich wrapped in cellophane.
She ate half the sandwich and all the Cheetos. The oppressive feel of the dark magic
was wearing on her, making her stomach queasy. She wiped sweat and dirt from her
face with the Wet-Nap she’d gotten from the deli counter then changed her clothes so
she didn’t look like a street urchin.
She wondered about Trent as she combined the contents of both packs into one.
Sorry she let the thought in, Nell imagined the worst—Trent dead and at the bottom of
the Mississippi river. Closing her eyes and picturing him angry and chastising was
much better. She needed to fix this. It was all her fault. She tossed the dirty shirt and
damaged shorts in a trash bin on her way out of the alley. Time to move. And who she
needed to find would be in a quieter part of the Quarter.
It had been years since she’d been here. She’d visited the city with a wicked-fun
Sorcerer named Avery who had known the area and all its nonhuman inhabitants. That
trip had been a party. Drinking and dancing with his coven, jazz music all night long in
a back-alley courtyard. Waking up to cool breezes on the banks of the Mississippi river.
Nell trusted her instincts and let her internal compass lead her toward the river for
a few blocks. The well-kept house fronts gave way to homes with bent, rusted wrought
iron and broken boards. The smell of the dirty part of the city was getting thicker. The
Quarter always held the most curious stench of rotting food and body odor.
Nell stopped under a streetlight. Soft jazz music filled the night air. It stopped and
she heard voices and laughter and then the music picked up again. Late-night party in
one of the courtyards.
She rounded the corner and saw what she was searching for. A small, black sign
hung from the bottom of a very tilted balcony, its words long since worn away. The
faint image of sticks and stones painted in dingy white on the bottom of the sign was
enough to tell Nell she had found the right place.
The door was open, the shop itself deeply shadowed. A heavy drum rhythm drifted
into the street from inside. A fat gray and white tabby lounged on the sidewalk, leaning
on the bottom step leading inside the shop. The dirty furball didn’t flinch as Nell
stepped through the door.
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