Val nodded. "I promise. I'll tell him as soon as he comes back."
"Where did he go?"
"I don't know. I hope it's not more trouble."
Mai laughed, a tinkling sound that Val might once have associated with Disney fairies. "Trouble comes in many guises in this city. Either it is the kind he must fight, the kind from which he must run, or the kind to which he must say no. He is prone to the third more often than the first two."
Two
Griffen looked up at the massive, colorful sculptures, astonished by their variety and artistry. These would have stood out like a sore thumb in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he and his sister had been raised, but looked completely at home here in New Orleans. Around the walls of the huge warehouse, kings and queens, gods and goddesses, jesters, leering demons, angels, cats, tigers, wolves, and dragons all stared at him from eyes the size of his head. The faces were incredibly lifelike. Some of them grinned at him. Some smirked. Others looked threatening. They were Mardi Gras floats.
He had only seen floats before on television, in the inevitable annual footage taken by the national news services of the parades at Carnival time and run during the feature segment of the news, filled with people in colorful costumes throwing things to the cheering, laughing, dancing crowds that lined the streets, to the accompaniment of loud jazz music, heavy on the horns.