Was she honestly going to end her drought with an example of walking attitude like
Roy Chopin
? Especially when she was hiding things from him? When she was turning down a perfectly nice, gentle Greg Boulanger?
And hadn’t she just told Greg she didn’t date people from work?
Faith took the coward’s way out. She called Roy at the station and left a message.
Can’t make it. Thanks anyway. Faith.
Afterward, for the rest of the afternoon, she felt lonely. But she was used to feeling lonely.
Feeling like a freak of nature, though…when had that begun to matter? Either way, she didn’t want to go through it just now. Not this soon after Krystal’s funeral. The week had been hard enough.
After hanging up with the station, she phoned the apartment and suggested they all go to the movies to forget their troubles.
The movie wasn’t great, but it proved a decent enough distraction. When Faith and her roommates got back to the apartment, Evan said he’d come upstairs after he grabbed a smoke.
The apartment was a steal, for what they paid in rent. It had a second-story entrance off a cobblestone courtyard, French doors, plantation shutters and wrought-iron railings. Faith sometimes imagined that the rooms held memories, trapped energy and emotions from its previous tenants—a mother who had taken on surprising responsibilities, a son whose morality could have gone either way. Rumor had it the owner had a soft spot for the magical community, which was why he’d initially rented it to Krystal. He’d been at the funeral, a solemn Englishman with a dusky-skinned Creole wife, and Faith hadn’t sensed anything in particular off him, but she hadn’t gotten that close, either. Whatever his reasons for renting, Faith was glad for it. She loved the place. Inside was just as nice—marble floors, ornate moldings. There were two bedrooms and an office, which they used as a third bedroom, Evan’s. Absinthe and Krystal had shared a room. Moonsong and Faith had the other.
Like a boarding school. Like a dorm room at college—which Faith had never had, having commuted to school from her mother’s house.
Now Moonsong had decided to move in with Absinthe, where Krystal had stayed, and Faith wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It really had been an awful week, and as she fell back into the overstuffed sofa in their living room, she was aware of a dull ache deep in her chest. Was it guilt, for canceling her date? Was it maybe disgust at her cowardice?
Or maybe it was just disappointment for losing a chance at something so normal.
But you’re not normal, so how could the date have been?
It didn’t help when Moonsong pressed the play button on their blinking answering machine.
“So here’s the thing,” announced Chopin’s deep voice, and Faith sat up. “You say no, I gotta take no—I mean, I’m not a stalker or anything. But could I maybe ask why? Is this a let’s-reschedule can’t make it or a leave-me-alone can’t make it? Call me. Unless it’s the second one. Then, I guess, don’t. I’ll try your other number.”
But if he meant her last, lost cell phone, he would be out of luck. He recited what must be his cell phone number.
Then he said, “Oh. Uh, this is for Corbett.”
The machine beeped, and Faith was conscious of both Absinthe and Moonsong’s intrigued stares. What a difference there was between the two women—Absinthe’s eyes darkly lined and cryptic, Moonsong’s large and lustrous and hopeful despite wearing no makeup.
Before she could say, or even
think
to say “I can explain that,” the next message came on.
“Faith? Faith, baby, are you there? Pick up.”
It was Faith’s mother, Tamara. Her voice shook. She was crying.
Faith stood and moved dumbly closer to the machine, as if she couldn’t already hear every stuttering gasp in her mother’s breathing, every crackle on the recorder’s old tape.
“We need to talk, baby,” said Tamara. “Please.”
Faith had snatched up and was dialing the telephone before the machine beeped to indicate the end of messages.
“She sounded awful,” marveled Absinthe.
“Something’s wrong,” whispered Moonsong, thankfully not claiming that bit of blinding obviousness as a psychic impression.
“Shhh,” hissed Faith. She’d gotten her mother’s machine. It wasn’t her mother’s voice but that of her employer, Mr. Manning, but Faith already knew about that. Her super cautious mother had read somewhere that it was better to have a man’s voice on the answering machine.
“Mom?” she said, as soon as the message ended. “It’s Faith. Pick up. What’s wrong?”
The line clicked and Tamara said, “Faith?”
Taking a deep, openmouthed breath, Faith leaned back against the wall. Her friends exchanged thankful looks as well, at this obvious sign of Faith’s relief.
“Yes, Mom. That’s why I said ‘It’s Faith.’
What’s wrong?
”
“Everything,” whispered Tamara. “Everything’s wrong. First the e-mails. Now phone calls. I need to talk to you, baby. I need to talk to you before they do.”
“What do you mean? Is someone harassing you?”
“We need to talk, Faith.”
“Mom, I’m right here. We’re talking.”
“No…alone. Face-to-face.” Faith was accustomed to her mother’s occasional hysterics, but this seemed legitimate. Probably. Maybe.
“Okay. I’m on my way.”
“Take a cab, baby.”
“I’ll take the streetcar, Mom. It runs twenty-four hours.”
“I wish you wouldn’t risk yourself like that….”
“See you soon,” said Faith, and hung up. She was twenty-two, for heaven’s sake. Her mother didn’t want her living away from home, and now she wanted to dictate Faith’s transportation choices? The streetcar was eminently safe. New Orleans couldn’t risk its tourist business by letting it be otherwise.
She didn’t realize she was scowling until Moonsong said, “You weren’t very nice.”
“Sometimes my mom drives me crazy.”
“As opposed to everyone else’s mom,” scoffed Absinthe, while Faith grabbed a lightweight rain jacket, just in case.
Chances were, Tamara had been frightened by shadows. A wrong number on the telephone. Misdirected mail. Someone watching her at the supermarket. She’d once quit a job and moved herself and Faith across the country because of some man who’d been staring intently at them every time they went to the supermarket. But there was still the chance that her fears, whatever they were, were legitimate this time.
Just as important, there was the chance Tamara was ready to confess whatever guilty secret Faith had begun to sense more and more over these past few years.
We need to talk,
Tamara had said.
Face-to-face.
Faith felt a sickening dread at whatever her mother might confess. But she also felt a certain excitement. Maybe now, finally, she’d know the answer. Maybe she’d understand.
“Don’t wait up for me,” she instructed her roommates, heading out.
“Don’t get killed,” countered Moonsong, her dark eyes big. “Couldn’t someone go with you? Evan maybe?”
“I’ll ask.” Faith shut the door behind her, turned on the stoop—
She realized they were there—heard them, smelled them—even before she saw who waited downstairs in the courtyard.
Evan was there, yes.
He was also surrounded by five menacing young men.
H
ad someone mentioned gang activity in Storyville?
Several of the men looked up at the sound of Faith shutting the door. Their smiles gleamed into the night.
Evan looked up, too. To judge by the whites of his eyes as well as the rush of adrenaline she smelled, he was frightened.
“Go back in,” he pleaded quickly, loudly. “Call the—”
His words ended in a grunt as one of the boys drove a fist into his gut. Evan doubled over with a cry, crumpled to his knees.
Before she’d considered what she was doing, Faith vaulted the railing and landed into a crouch on the cobblestones of the courtyard, maybe ten feet below.
“You don’t want to do this,” she warned the intruders as she straightened. Now…how was she going to persuade them without touching anyone? “Get out while you can.”
The boys grinned. They seemed to be teens, but big teens with facial hair. A couple of them actually laughed. One swore in that way boys do, trying to sound tough. They were all wearing something green, like some desecration of St. Patrick’s Day, and they were a surprising mixture of races, like an old Benetton advertisement gone violently bad.
“Now her,” said a scraggly, tattooed white boy, the one who’d punched Evan. “Her, I could like.”
She could smell lust off him and several others, an ugly, dominating smell. They weren’t about to get out while they could. In fact, she sensed violent promise in the tightening of their muscles, the faint increase in their temperatures, the quick inhalations as they made the decision to attack.
Chances were, they would do more than touch her.
So Faith attacked first. She leaped and kicked the scraggly bastard right in the solar plexus. Between the sole of her shoe and his shirt there was no real contact—well, none except the blunt impact that shot up her leg, but that she could handle. She felt something give under her heel as the boy staggered backward.
He looked almost as surprised as she felt. Wow!
She’d taken kickboxing for one of her P.E. credits at Tulane, but only for one semester. She’d taken archery the semester before that, but that hadn’t made her Robin Hood either. How had she…?
Two others surged at her. She felt their heat behind her, heard their heartbeats. She knew where to strike and gave up wondering how. She drove the hard angle of her elbow into someone’s shirted gut. She barely felt it. Following through on that spin, she struck out again with a closed fist—
Right into someone’s nose. Skin to skin.
He was scared of looking weak, scared of being embarrassed by a girl. He thought Evan was strangely attractive, and for that Evan would have to die. He’d done something, crack maybe, not half an hour ago—
Luckily, the contact was brief. It hurt her hand, the pain in her wrist mingling with the backlash of his pain. Amazingly, the sensations somehow canceled each other out. The cracking sensation beneath her knuckles, his bellow—they washed away the unwanted images she’d gotten from that moment of touch.
It felt…freeing.
One of the intruders was backing away, eyes wide as if staring at a ghost. One stumbled with a cry. Evan, who’d tripped him while still on his knees, gasping for breath, said, “Hah!”
The other three fell on Faith.
Arms circled her from behind. Hands grabbed at her waist. A face thrust into her bare neck, too close, too intimate. Three at once. Contact everywhere. For a moment she was dizzy, overwhelmed.
One had been molested as a child. One had recently forced himself on his little sister’s friend and her crying had pissed him off. One had already decided to kill her and Evan rather than leave witnesses—
Oh, God!
But when she struck out, as randomly as a blindfolded child swinging for a piñata, the images stopped.
The momentary overload stopped.
Suddenly she could focus on where they stood in relation to her, on what they were doing, on how they were moving—and how best to defeat them.
As if following a choreographed routine, Faith moved. The face pressed against her neck gave her an ear to bite into. She did that, hard, and felt her teeth break through skin. She tasted blood.
The boy reared back, screaming. Even as she spat out his blood she was already leaning forward, away from someone else’s bear hug. Her captor bent with her. When she quickly straightened and snapped her head back, her skull impacted his face with a crack that reverberated through her. It made her see stars—but he slumped.
Especially since she’d swung her fist down and backward too, at hip level. He’d been hard—she couldn’t think about that. But the way she drove his privates up into his groin, he wouldn’t be for long.
The Asian boy in front of her had the collar of her shirt and a handful of her hair. Now that Bear Hug had let go, she clasped her hands above this one’s arms and drew all her weight down, inside his bent elbows. As he was jerked forward by her weight, she head-butted his face.
Again, she saw stars. She didn’t care. It was as exhilarating as hurricane-force winds. Wild. Stupid. Wonderful.
Someone else came at her from the side—she heard his footsteps, his breathing, his heart, and knew exactly where he was. She spun and clapped her hands against both of his ears at the same time. A self-defense instructor had once said the move could break eardrums.
She thought she heard a muffled
pop.
She didn’t imagine his scream, or the wet smear on her palm. He was the one she’d already bitten.
She spat again at the memory, and looked for her next victim.
They were backing away from her now. At least one was crawling.
Evan rose to an unsteady crouch, then to his feet, so that the two of them could stand shoulder to shoulder and present a united front.
Most of the teenagers were muttering profane insults, which didn’t carry as much weight when someone backed away while saying them. But one guy, the Latino who hadn’t fought, just breathed out three stunned words.
“What
are
you?”
His words shuddered through Faith, more powerfully even than her own gasps for breath. Because she really didn’t know.
She didn’t know how she’d managed to fight like that. Not from just a semester of kickboxing, she didn’t. Not from an evening workshop on self-defense for women. And she sure as hell hadn’t inherited the skill from her mother.
Then the boys turned and ran, helping the one she’d hit in the balls and the one she’d kicked in the kneecap. Then the courtyard was empty again except for her, Evan…
And the sound of approaching sirens.
“You aren’t coming?” repeated Tamara Corbett, outrage in every shaking word. Her voice got softer, accusing. “You said you were coming, baby.”
From the sofa, Absinthe was saying, “They’re targeting us. First Krystal, now Evan and Faith.”
From the doorway, Evan was telling one of the patrolmen, “They said they were playing a new game. Bag the fag. If Faith hadn’t come out when she did—”
The second officer, a black woman, was asking Moonsong, “And that’s when you called 9-1-1?”
“I kind of got delayed,” said Faith into the phone.
“What could be more important than your mother?”
She went with the truth. “Some guys jumped Evan. I helped fight them off.”
And I was really good at it!
“We have to make official reports. Tomorrow we get to go look at mug shots.”
“Oh my God,” breathed Tamara.
“I’m fine,” Faith hurried to assure her. And she was. Sort of. Her head hurt from where she’d butted into people. Her hands were swelling, especially on the knuckles and the edge where she’d whacked that guy’s neck. One of her ankles felt sore, and one of her wrists throbbed. And yet…
She barely noticed. It was a clean pain.
Normal.
“You’re moving home,” announced Tamara. “Now. I’m calling a cab, right now, so you pack up your things—”
“No.”
“I won’t take no for an answer,” warned her mother.
“You’ll have to.”
Even the cops looked at Faith when she said that. She smiled, shrugged, turned her back and lowered her voice. “I’m not moving home with you, Mom. I’m perfectly safe here.”
“Your roommate’s dead and you were attacked in your own courtyard!”
“I doubt they’re related.” No matter what Absinthe said. “The MOs are completely different.”
“Don’t talk as if you’re some expert on law enforcement. You’re a desk clerk!”
“Don’t minimize what I do.” Maybe it wasn’t what Faith hoped to be doing in five years, but it was a start. “And don’t pretend I’m a child anymore. I’m staying here, and that’s final. The two attacks aren’t related. Really. And the police said they’ll make more frequent patrols near us. We’re locking the courtyard gate when they leave. Anyway, that’s why I’m running late and why I wanted to know how important it is that we talk tonight. If it’s really that immediate, I’ll take a cab.”
Tamara snapped at the chance. “Bring a suitcase.”
“And once we’ve talked I’ll come right back, no matter how late it is. But if it
will
wait until tomorrow, why don’t I come over after work? In the daylight?”
For a long time her mother was silent. “Tomorrow will be fine.”
Faith wasn’t that surprised. Tamara had her faults, but not caring about Faith’s safety was hardly one of them. “You sure?”
“Yes, you come tomorrow evening, while it’s light. I’ll make pork chops.”
“Thanks.” Faith turned to see another man and woman appear in their doorway. These were NOPD detectives—she could tell by the world-weary looks and plain clothes. Not Roy or Butch. This was their night off. “I should probably go.”
“Wait. I won’t keep you, baby, I promise,” Tamara insisted.
“But…do you think there’s even a chance someone could have
hired
these men to attack you?”
The question came from so far out in left field, Faith had trouble processing it. “They attacked Evan. I just got in the way.”
“Never mind,” said Tamara quickly. “We’ll talk tomorrow night, then. You take care of yourself, promise?”
“Yes.”
“You
promise.
”
“Cross my heart,” Faith insisted. Then, after the requisite I-love-you’s, she turned to the detectives.
Roy’s presence hit the office like a storm front. As soon as he pushed through the doors, Faith’s head came up from where she’d been reading a poorly written form—some cops had handwriting second only to doctors. She was almost surprised that the other papers weren’t blowing off her desk.
“So I go by the department gym to lift some weights before shift,” announced Detective Chopin to her, as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation. He grabbed someone’s desk chair as he stalked by, whirled it in a circle, planted it in front of Faith’s desk and straddled it from behind. He braced his forearms across the chair back, leaned over them and fixed Faith with that deep gaze of his. “This beat cop from third shift’s working off his night. He says, ‘Wait till you hear this one. This little blond number, she takes down five gangbangers.’ He describes the whole thing. We’re both laughing, ha ha, at the idea of some cutie wiping the floor with these delinquents.”
Faith knew he was describing her, but she waited for the punch line, watching those eyes. And those wrists. And those fresh-from-the-gym arms. He’d showered after his workout; she could smell his fresh deodorant soap along with the coffee. His hair was still damp. She felt an internal fluttering again, half-push, half-pull. He made her uncomfortable, and she still wasn’t sure what to do with that.
Roy’s fake expression of amusement sobered, just like that. “Then he tells me the address,” he growled.
She shrugged.
“I say, ‘Hey, I think she’s the one who stood me up last night.’ He says, ‘That should be a relief.’”
“I didn’t stand you up,” Faith pointed out. “I called first.”
“Yeah, that makes it all better. You took down five gangbangers?”
“No, I took down three gangbangers. One of them wasn’t fighting us, and Evan knocked another one over.”
“Oh.” His taut nod radiated sarcasm. “Well, that’s different.”
“Why are you angry at me?”
“’Cause the way I read the report, you could’ve just stepped back inside and called 9-1-1.”
“And left Evan alone with them? That’s no alternative at all. He’s the one they were after.”
“I’m thinking not for long they weren’t.”
“You’re interrupting my work,” Faith announced, and turned back to her data entry.
“Bernie.” By thigh power alone, ignoring her rolled eyes at the strange nickname, Roy propelled the chair he straddled, a chair without wheels, against her desk. A metallic clang sounded, and a pen rolled off from the impact. “Appearance is everything to those guys. They aren’t going to like it that a girl beat them up.”
“Not my problem.”
“It will be when they try to even the score.”
She looked up at that. “Are you trying to scare me?”
He widened his eyes, like,
duh.
“Is it working?”
“No. Go away now.”
“I’m here to see Boulanger.”
“I could tell.” She gestured to her desk, the only thing separating her from his intensity and the corded arms under his T-shirt. “He doesn’t seem to be on my desk right now. Maybe you should try his office.”
“You’re cute when you’re a smart-ass, but I’m not sure I need the agony of dating someone who’s gonna end up on that slab back there.”
“Then it’s a good thing I stood you up, isn’t it?”
“You still haven’t told me why.” He spread his arms. “What’s not to like?” His mix of arrogance and self-deprecation made her smile, despite herself.
“Maybe you’re too pushy. Maybe you scare me.”
She’d meant the second comment to be teasing, but the truth of it struck her uncomfortably. The way Roy scowled, it didn’t strike him so well either. She remembered how she’d acted when he’d grabbed her in the rain.
Damn.
“I don’t know what to do about that,” he said, leaning back in the chair, studying her. “It’s not like you can’t take me, right?”