Black Dust Mambo (24 page)

Jean-Julien jumped to his feet, heart hammering against his ribs, and scanned the crowd, the hall, from end to end. Feeling heat against his foot and smelling smoke, he glanced down. The poppet burned merrily as though it’d been doused in lighter fluid. He stomped out the flames, then scattered the poppet’s ashes across the scorched bit of carpet with the toe of his loafer. He used leftover napkins from his sandwich to fan away the smoke.

Imbécile.
Gabi
isn’t
here, and more’s the pity,
oui?

Raking his fingers through his hair, he slumped into his chair, pondering his next move. It looked like he wouldn’t be able to spare Belladonna after all. But given that Gabrielle had chosen not to spare Babette even after he’d spent a lifetime in the hell known as Angola . . .

As Rosette had said, “
We’re fighting a war, Papa. One we didn’t start.”

But one they
would
finish.

He’d use a more direct approach with Belladonna than he had with Kallie, and eliminate any possibility that she’d be able to refuse his control. And if, for whatever reason, his spells didn’t work, he still had his knife.

The waiter shuffled out of the crowd and over to Jean-Julien’s table, a dirty spoon clutched in his hand. He stopped in front of the table, his expression lax, his brown eyes empty. The spoon clattered onto the table.

“Ah, well done. Good boy,” Jean-Julien said, vaguely wishing for a treat to give the waiter.

Jean-Julien unstitched the waiter poppet and plucked out the piece of cloth tucked inside. He slipped the cloth into the waiter’s jacket pocket, then ordered him to leave the convention hall and find a nice, quiet spot to sleep off the black dust.

After the waiter had toddled away, Jean-Julien busied himself with transforming the waiter poppet into a guard poppet. He worked the pudding-smeared spoon inside, then stitched the poppet shut once again, murmuring, “I command you, I compel you. My bidding you desire, no will of your own, my word holy fire.”

Finished, Jean-Julien rose to his feet and stuffed the guard poppet into his jeans pocket. He left the dealers’ room, walking from the conference hall to the elevators in quick, long-legged strides. He pulled the vial of black dust from his jeans and tapped a healthy dose of powder into his palm. Then he punched the button for the sixth floor.

Time to find the lovely Belladonna Brown.

T
HIRTY
C
AUGHT IN
B
LOOD

Murmuring an incantation under his breath, Layne-Augustine trailed a finger around the door’s seams, unsealing it. The white light rimming the door winked out. He slid the keycard into the handle’s slot, swung the door open, then stepped aside so Kallie could enter.

Two black-uniformed guards in sunglasses, one guy and one gal, stood in the hall on either side of the door.

Kallie paused in the doorway and looked over her shoulder at the Brit. “I need you to wait out here. This is a tricky spell and I—”

“Don’t wish for any distractions,” Layne-Augustine finished. “A shame, since I am more than a little curious, but I understand. How long should I give it before deciding you’re in dire need of assistance?”

Kallie felt a smile brush across her lips. “Ain’t dangerous, so I won’t be needing assistance. Just wait until I come out again.”

Layne-Augustine nodded. “Very good, then. I shall wait here.”

Kallie walked inside, then turned and closed the door, making sure it was locked. The coppery stink of blood thickened the air, and her thoughts whirled back to Gage.

He lies on his belly, his face turned to the side. Blood masks his fine features, glitters in his black curls.

She touched the saint and coffin pendants hanging at her throat, the metal cool against her fingers, and tried to resist the image of his fine features and black curls ablaze with white-hot flame once his body was fed to the crematorium’s fire.

She pushed the image away, chest tight and aching. One killer sat in custody awaiting nomad justice. Kallie would do everything she could to make sure that the one who had created the hex that had killed Gage and who had slashed Dallas’s throat joined Rosette in her cell—and in death.

Kallie turned back around. Bloody shoe and gurney-wheel prints streaked the tiles leading from the bed to the door. She skirted them as best she could. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the pool of blood stretching from the bed to the bureau—all of it belonging to Dallas.

Plastic wrappers, bloodstained towels and pads, a comforter marked with bloody fingerprints, a pair of binoculars, and other medical remnants dotted the blood pool like lake floats.

She couldn’t believe Dallas was still alive.

Imagining Dallas’s desperate fight against his knife-wielding assailant, she dug her nails into her palms.

I ain’t giving up on you, Brûler. Don’t you give up either.

Kallie knelt beside the blood pool, hoping she wasn’t too late. The blood looked thick and tacky already. She didn’t know how much time could elapse before blood became silent, inert, as dead as the person from whose veins it had spilled. And she didn’t know if the divination would work on the blood of a person who still breathed.

Did the blood of the living cry up from the ground too as it soaked into the soil? Dallas was as close to murdered as a person could get without dying. And if he didn’t make it, they’d never know who had killed him until the
fi’ de garce
showed up again, a hex on his lips and a bloodstained knife in his hand.

No. Dallas
is
gonna make it, and we’re gonna stop this bastard. Stop him cold.

Kallie closed her eyes and tried to still her racing thoughts. The blood stench soaked in through her pores, filling her lungs with each breath she drew. She wished she could open the French windows and let in fresh air, but that would mean she’d have to step into the blood pool, and that thought didn’t appeal to her. It would feel like walking on Dallas’s body.

She lifted her hands, then remembered that she needed to consecrate herself for the divination. She dug through Belladonna’s black bag full of goodies, rummaging through the bottles and tins for something appropriate for the work at hand.

The voice of her
ti-tante
—or whoever the hell she was—sounded loud and clear in her memory.

“Usually we use a Green Blood o’ de Earth potion to consecrate de shells before we do a serious reading. To consecrate our bodies too.”

“Green Blood of the Earth?”

“Fresh-picked ragweed and bloodweed and pigweed, althea and vervain, child, ain’t you been paying attention? I oughta thump yo’ head, girl. Dis be important.”

“I’m listening, dammit,
Ti-tante.
You just ain’t called it Green Blood before.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Kalindra Sophia Rivière, I’m gonna be as tricky as life and twice as hard to make sure you continue to survive whatever comes your way. So you better pay close heed. If you ever find yo’self in a dark place where you can’t mix up a batch of Green Blood, dere be other ways to consecrate de shells.”

“So what are these other ways?”

“One of ’em is yo’ own blood, girl. Each of us is a holy fount.”

No Green Blood of the Earth, but she found a small vial marked holy oil in Belladonna’s neat printing. Good enough. At least now she wouldn’t have to open a vein.

Kallie unstoppered the vial. Centering herself with a deep breath, she drizzled the oil over her hands and fingers, releasing the sharp scents of cinnamon and cassia, myrrh and calamus into the air. She rubbed the fragrant oil into her skin.

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,” Kallie recited, her voice low but steady. “I seek the truth buried in an evil crime. I seek the truth in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Baron Samedi,
loa
of the crossroads, god of the cemeteries, please open the way for me.”

A cold breath blew against the back of Kallie’s neck as though a tomb had opened behind her, stone scraping against stone. Power surged through her, prickling and electric. Despite the ice trailing the length of her spine, she felt sweat pop up on her forehead.

Leaning forward, Kallie placed her oil-anointed palms in the cold, thickening puddle of Dallas’s blood. “I’m asking the same question
bon Dieu
once put to Cain: ‘What have you done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.’”

Kallie watched the blood, listening to the steady rhythm of her own heart, wondering if it would happen the same way as it had with Gabrielle that night in the bayou—
if
it happened at all.

But no flash of purple enveloped her fingers. No voice whispered like it had that night, a thin and girlish sound intertwined with the wind and the thunder and the rain, the words disbelieving and sad.

Words Kallie would carry forever.
“I didn’t know him. He said he was visiting relatives and asked if I would guide him to the Llewellyn place. Said his name was Scott. He hurt me. I begged him and begged him to stop . . .”

Nothing happened. Maybe nothing would. Maybe the blood was too cold, too thick, too long dead. But she god-damned wasn’t going to give up—not yet.

“A man’s blood shed by another who wished him dead,” she chanted. “Cold steel and a cold heart. Help me dig up the truth before someone else dies.”

Deep gold light flashed out from her fingertips, flared from her palms, and her heart leaped into her throat.

It was working!

The light suddenly dimmed, guttering like a spent candle, and Kallie corralled her wandering thoughts and focused on the task at hand.

“I’m asking the same question
bon Dieu
once put to Cain: ‘What have you done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.’”

Power curled into the air like steam above a kettle on full boil. Her skin goosebumped, and sweat trickled between her breasts. Heat kindled at her core, white-hot, a newborn sun. She burned. The blood beneath her hands bubbled.

“Dallas,
cher,
show me who did this awful thing to you.”

More power steamed into the air, white and vaporous. A scorched-blood reek pinched Kallie’s nostrils, but she couldn’t wrench her gaze away from the form shaping itself from the white mist/steam: a heron with a flopping fish held in its long beak.

Doctor Heron. Rosette’s hoodoo papa.

Her heart pogoed into her throat. She’d seen the same heron image from the guy who’d spoken to her at the carnival, the tall, middle-aged man with café-au-lait skin and striking pale-green eyes.

The man Dallas had confronted, and she’d broken his nose for the effort; the man whose friendly smile had left her cold.

“Ah, goddammit, Dal,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry. You were right all along.”

The heron faded, replaced by a mist-shaped image of a slender woman with long, straightened hair and deep-set eyes. She stood in front of a house with a wide front porch bracketed by tall palm trees.

Kallie frowned. What the . . . ? Who is
that
?

The image wisped away as if breeze-blown, and Kallie looked down. She stared at the thin layer of heat-seared black blood now etched into the slate tiles, her pulse roaring in her ears. The pool was gone. She lifted her hands. Dried blood flaked from her skin.

“Shit,” she whispered. She didn’t know what had just happened or what it meant, but she’d have to worry about that later.

Kallie jumped to her feet and rushed to the door. She yanked it open. Layne-Augustine swiveled around to meet her gaze, his dreads once more knotted behind him. A question lingered in his eyes.

She nodded. “It worked, and it
was
goddamned Doctor Heron,” she said. “And it turns out that me and Bell had a run-in with him at carnival, but Dallas shooed him off.”

Layne-Augustine’s expression turned grim. “I find it chilling that you and Ms. Brown have already had an unknowing encounter with Jean-Julien St. Cyr.”

“I owe Dallas big-time for that one,” Kallie said, pushing her hair behind her shoulders. A fresh round of guilt nudged at her. “Especially since I broke his nose.”

Layne-Augustine shook his head. “You really must stop punching people. Have you considered anger management, or a twelve-step program for quick-fisted pugilists?”

“You made that last one up.”

“Perhaps.”

“That’s not all,” Kallie said, the mist-woman’s face flaring in her mind. Familiar. “There’s another woman involved as well.”

“Another?” Layne-Augustine’s blond brows knitted together. “Do you know who?”

“No. But I have some ideas that I need to research online.”

“I’ll have the guards go with you to my office while I stop by my suite,” the Brit said. “I seem to be a tad wet.”

Kallie smiled. “I think you had fun getting wet tonight, you big show-off.”

“I enjoyed myself, yes,” Layne-Augustine said. “I’ve never done anything remotely like that before. Now I can go into the afterlife secure in the knowledge that I’ve stripped for a horde of screaming, frothing women and won a wet-boxers contest.”

“Well, you
would’ve
won if you’d remained onstage,” Kallie reminded him.

“Yes. So the judges selected Number Four in my place, and the audience chose Number Three,” the Brit grumbled. “But
I
was the true winner on both counts.”

“You mean
Layne
was the true winner.”

“Allow me my delusions. I
am
about to pass on or whatever, after all.”

Kallie sighed. “Okay. Fine. You were the true winner on both counts.”

“Thank you,” Layne-Augustine said. “I’ll join you in the office after I change clothes.”

Kallie looked him up and down, then murmured, “That’s a goddamned shame.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing, Basil. I’ll see you in a few.” She started down the hall for the elevators.

“Fine, and it’s
Lord
Basil.”

“Even in the bedroom?”

“
Especially
in the bedroom.” Layne-Augustine replied, straight-faced, shoving his hands into his damp trouser pockets and strolling after her.

Augustine strode into his bedroom, unbuttoning his shirt and draping it over the back of a chair. He trailed a hand over his chest. The feel of the hard muscles underneath thrilled him, but also reminded him that the flesh beneath his fingers wasn’t his own.

Reminded him that the clock had nearly run out.
Ghost
. The word skittered across Augustine’s soul like a rat on ice. He didn’t feel like a ghost. He didn’t feel dead—however that was supposed to feel. Was one
supposed

to feel dead? Weren’t the dead
beyond
feeling, period?

And after he vacated the comfortable and natural solidity and warmth of Valin’s body, what then? Did he wisp away like a stray patch of fog caught in a breeze? Would light shaft down from the heavens, a celestial escalator into the afterlife?

He’d find out soon enough.

Just as he peeled off his damp trousers, the rumbling roar of a motorcycle reverberated through his skull, vibrated in his ears. Valin’s signal that he wished to switch places. The last time they had juggled past one another, he had accidentally snagged one of the nomad’s memories and relived it.

He finds himself standing in front of a trailer door. . . .

The squatter answers the door with his right-hand fingers clenched around the grip of what looks like a Colt .38, a sweating can of Michelob Light gripped in his left hand. His brows are squeezed together in what he probably imagines as a menacing glare as he peers into the darkness, but it looks more like a baby’s scrunched-up diaper-shitting expression.

“Glad you’re home,” Layne says. “What the fuck you want, ass-wipe?”

A quick flick of both wrists, and a blade slides down into each hand. Layne’s fingers curl around the grips. “Does the name Poesy mean anything to you?”

“Poesy?” The squatter laughs, voice cigarette-smoke rough. “Should it? That you, sweetheart?”

“Nah, ain’t me, and, yeah, the name should mean
everything
to you.” Layne shoves forward, knocking the squatter off balance and sending him reeling into the beer-and-bean-burrito-scented front room of his double-wide. His can of Michelob Light goes flying, showering the room with beer. Layne smashes the hilt of one blade against the fucker’s forehead.