Read Online Skinwalker by Faith Hunter - Free Book Online Page B

boisterous. I took an onion ring and ate it, but the taste was now unpleasant, metallic, faintly bitter. I gulped beer. The odd taste washed away with the yeasty, peaty ale.
    â€œCome anytime,” Antoine said. I looked back up, meeting his eyes. They seemed to be saying something more than his words. “We have at night de music and dancing, sometime.”
    â€œSpills out in the street,” Rick said. “If you like to dance.”
    I liked to dance. But maybe not here.
    Except for the moments when he gripped my hand, Antoine had been working while chatting. He placed a bucket, like a gardening bucket, on the bar between Rick and me. Beer- and sea-flavored steam curled up, hot with pepper and spices. Rick reached, drew out a crawfish, its red shell curled. I was pretty sure the crustacean had been tossed alive into boiling beer.
    I looked at Antoine, seeing nothing of the power that had tried to search through me. I had never felt anything like that before, and the man’s genial face seemed to imply that nothing had happened. If he could play innocent, I could certainly play stupid. But I wondered what he had picked up about Beast as he held my hand. Thoughtful, I ate another hush puppy. Rick had brought me here. He had wanted Antoine to read me. I tried to decide if that ticked me off.
    Rick met my eyes in the dim mirror, holding up a four-inch-long crawfish as if in demonstration. His face held a hint of laughter and a warmth that claimed he was interested in me, if it was real. It had been some time since I’d seen that particular look in a man’s eyes. Maybe since I met Jack when I went into the security business. Not many men wanted to date a girl who could toss them into a corner and stomp them into the dirt. I didn’t need protecting and men seemed to sense that. It bothered a lot of them.
    And . . . while I hadn’t been a nun, I hadn’t taken the dating world by storm either. I had friends who juggled several men, in and out of bed, at a time, but I was a one-man kinda woman. So far. And that man had been and gone a long time ago. I decided not to get mad about the reading. Not just yet, anyway.
    To get the proper crawfish-eating protocol, I watched Rick as he broke the shell apart across the body, just above the tail, and pulled out the flesh. He ate the mouthful of seafood and then saluted me with the two pieces of mudbug shell. “Suck de head,” he said, like someone else might have said, “Cheers,” and he sucked the head part. I heard a liquid slurping. Rick smacked his lips and took another crawfish. I shrugged and broke apart the shellfish as he had, ate the meat, which turned out to be spicy with hot peppers, garlic, and onion, and beery. Good. Really good. Then I sucked the head as Rick had, and the spices exploded in my mouth.
    He laughed at whatever was on my face, and said, “I forgot to tell you. The spices seem to concentrate in the head cavity.”
    â€œNo kidding,” I managed, half strangling on the potent stuff. “You forgot.”
    Antoine laughed with Rick. “Dis boy been coming here for twenty year. He always done forget.”

CHAPTER 4
    You scare the pants offa me
    After lunch, my belly distended and my instincts about Antoine squashed beneath gourmand satisfaction, Rick and I walked along the river on a concrete boardwalk. A musician, sweating in the heat, swayed slowly in a patch of shade, playing a baritone saxophone. The jazz notes were low and rolling as the nearby Mississippi, the tune soulful and plaintive. I tossed a five in the open sax case at his feet and we stood to listen. After the melody, we moved on, the musician offering us a nod and starting another tune, the deep notes following us down the walk.
    The air was hot and wet and my shirt stuck to my skin like it was glued on, my jeans damp with heat; yet it was an oddly comforting feeling, like a pelt after a swim and a lazy hour in the sun. I wasn’t