Definitely Dead

trying to think light thoughts, I balanced on the tiger’s back and managed to pull myself, finally, to the top of the wall. I looked down, and it seemed like a very long way to the sidewalk.
    After all I’d faced this evening, it seemed stupid to balk at falling a few feet. But I sat on the wall, telling myself I was an idiot, for several long moments. Then I managed to flip over onto my stomach, let myself down as far as I could reach, and said out loud, “One, two, three!” Then I fell.
    For a couple of minutes I just lay there, stunned at how the evening had turned out.
    Here I was, lying on a sidewalk in historical New Orleans, with my boobs hanging out of my dress, my hair coming down, my sandals on my arm, and a large tiger licking my face. Quinn had bounded over with relative ease.
    “Do you think it would be better to walk back as a tiger, or as a large naked man?” I asked the tiger. “Because either way, you might attract some attention. I think you stand a better chance of getting shot if you’re a tiger, myself.”
    “That will not be necessary,” said a voice, and Andre loomed above me. “I am here with the queen in her car, and we will take you where you need to go.”
    “That’s mighty nice of you,” I said, as Quinn began to change back.
    “Her Majesty feels that she owes you,” Andre said.
    “I don’t see it that way,” I said. Why was I being so frank, now? Couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut? “After all, if I hadn’t found the bracelet and given it back, the king would have . . .”
    “Started the war tonight anyway,” Andre said, helping me to my feet. He reached out and quite impersonally pushed my right breast under the scanty lime-green fabric. “He would have accused the queen of breaking her side of the contract, which held that all gifts must be held in honor as tokens of the marriage. He would have brought suit against the queen, and she would have lost almost everything and been dishonored. He was ready to go either way, but when the queen was wearing the second bracelet, he had to go with violence. Ra Shawn set it off by beheading Wybert for bumping against him.” Ra Shawn had been Dreadlock’s name, I assumed.
    I wasn’t sure I got all that, but I was equally sure Quinn could explain it to me at a time when I had more brain cells to spare for the information.
    “He was so disappointed when he saw she had the bracelet! And it was the right one!” Andre said merrily. He was turning into a babbling brook, that Andre. He helped me into the car. “Where was it?” asked the queen, who was stretched across one of the seats. Her bleeding had stopped, and only the way she was holding her lips indicated what pain she was in.
    “It was in the can of coffee that looked sealed,” I said. “Hadley was real good with arts and crafts, and she’d opened the can real carefully, popped the bracelet inside, and resealed it with a glue gun.” There was a lot more to explain, about Mr. Cataliades and Gladiola and Jade Flower, but I was too tired to volunteer information.
    “How’d you get it past the search?” the queen asked. “I’m sure the searchers were checking for it.”
    “I had the bracelet part on under my bandage,” I said. “The diamond stood out too far, though, so I had to prize it out. I put it in a tampon holder. The vampire who did the searching didn’t think of pulling out the tampon, and she didn’t really know how it was supposed to look, since she hadn’t had a period in centuries.”
    “But it was put together,” the queen said.
    “Oh, I went into the ladies room after I’d had my purse searched. I had a little tube of superglue in my purse, too.”
    The queen didn’t seem to know what to say. “Thank you,” she told me, after a long pause. Quinn had climbed into the back with us, quite bare, and I leaned against him. Andre got into the driver’s seat, and we glided off.
    He dropped us off in the courtyard. Amelia was sitting on the pavement in her lawn chair, a glass of wine in her hand.
    When we emerged, she set the glass down very carefully on the ground and then looked us over from head to toe.
    “Okay, don’t know how to react,” she said, finally. The big car glided out of the courtyard as Andre took the queen to some safe hideaway. I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want to know.
    “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” I said. “The moving truck will be here tomorrow afternoon, and the queen promised me people to load it and