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He wished she'd get a look already and hurry up. She looked at his palm.
"Oh, good! I see that you vill soon fall for a mys-
terious and beautiful lady." She winked at him knowingly.
Gabriel smiled politely.
"And you have the possibility of great fortune ahead!" she breathed. She
seemed particularly excited about that. "Great fortune or ..." She paused.
Gabriel waited.
But Madame Lorelei did not say anything. His hand remained clasped firmly in
hers. He looked at her, waiting for her to go on. Her head was bent. She did
not move. He leaned forward to see her face.
Her skin had drained of color. Sweat was beaded on her cheeks and above her
lips, which were turning blue. She stared down at his hand, unblinking.
"Christ! Are you all right?"
She looked up at him slowly, her eyes wide and strangely blank.
"There are ... forces." The words came from her mouth, but the voice was
neither Hungarian nor
Brooklyn, nor female, nor even human. The snake that was wrapped around her
shoulders awoke suddenly, tensed, and hissed.
Gabriel wrenched his hand from her grasp, knocking his chair over as he jumped
back to get away from her and her snake.
But she was on her feet, too, and swaying. Her hands went up to cover her
face.
"Oh, God," she sobbed, in her own choked voice. "Beware! Beware!"
She took off running across the lawn and had disappeared within seconds, snake
and all.
"I'm back," he said rather unnecessarily to
Grace as he hung up his coat.
"Didn't know you were gone," she muttered
with great disinterest, not looking up from her ledgers. At the moment,
Gabriel found great com-
fort in her cool sarcasm. It beat the hell out of hys-
terical belly dancers.
He went back to his studio and pulled out the phone-book page Grace had given
him. There were five listings. Two of them included street addresses, but his
instinct told him Madame would not be one of those. He started dialing.
His approach was the same for each number.
He used his most effluent Southern lilt. He always found it amazing that
hamming up the drawl made other Southerners intuitively respond like blood
relatives.
"Hello. I'm callin' from the Dixieland Drug-
store? About your order?"
The first number was answered by a young woman who told him politely that he
had the wrong person, she'd never heard of the place, and hung up. The second
and third numbers drew similar responses. He crossed them off. There went his
two addresses.
On the fourth try, the first sound he heard was that of a small dog barking.
Yap, yap, yap. An old woman's gravelly voice answered. "Hello?"
Bingo.
"Hi. I'm calling from the Dixieland Drugstore?
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We have an order for you?"
"Who is this?" The woman was immediately suspicious.
"I do deliveries for Mr. Wa/ker, ma'am? I got out in my truck this mornin' and
forgot the addresses? Could you just tell me ..."
Yap, yap, yap. The dog must be psychic. It wanted to rip his face off.
"Hush, Castro!" the old woman warned the dog. "I already have my order, young
man, and you tell Mr. Walker that I don't appreciate his delivery boys calling
this number!"
The phone went dead in his hands.
Gabriel put down the receiver thoughtfully.
He'd found Madame, and that was good, but he didn't have an address, and that
was bad. He drummed his fingers in thought. Then he spied something else on
the phone-book page. It was worth a shot.
"Cajun Critters Animal Clinic, this is Melissa."
The veterinarian's receptionist sounded young, friendly, and busy, all of
which were in his favor.
She was the sixth one he'd tried.
"Hi. I'm calling about a Madame Cazaunoux?
She z's a client of yours, isn't she?"
"Uh-huh. Or, rather, her dog is." The girl giggled.
"Of course. Hey, you're Melissa, right?" He oozed boyish charm.
"Yeah," the girl said, obviously pleased. Duh.
"Yeah, my aunt mentioned you. I'm Madame
Cazaunoux's nephew?"
"Uh-huh. Hold on," the girl said distractedly.
In the background, Gabriel could hear that there was someone with her who
needed heart worm medicine. Gabriel suppressed a shiver of disgust.
She came back on in a minute. "What can I do for you, Mr. .. ."
"Cazaunoux," he lied smoothly. "Hey, is my aunt there, by any chance,
Melissa?"
"No," the girl said, confused. "She doesn't have an appointment today."
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