Hoodoo Woman (Roxie Mathis Book 3) (19 page)

“What the hell are you doing here, Stack?” I peered at the spirit over Ray’s shoulder.

“Somebody’s working a spell against me,” said the shimmering image. “Somebody powerful.”

Ray rolled off of me, retrieving both of our shirts from the floor. “God damn it,” he hissed as he shrugged back into his shirt. I couldn’t tell if he was swearing about being interrupted or about my spirit familiar being under some sort of attack. “What do you need?”

I hurried into my shirt. “I don’t know. Stack, what.” The sight of him brought me up short. He appeared as insubstantial as the palest of watercolors and getting dimmer fast. “What is this?”

“It’ll reach you if I don’t go. Hurt you.” He flashed out and back into view. “Find a counter spell. I’ll wait at the juke for your call.” He said more but it was lost as he faded quickly, disappearing. By juke he meant the piece of land where he’d been created, my land where a juke joint had been decades ago.

A full minute passed as we waited for Stack to return but he didn’t. Ray said, “What the hell just happened?”

I reached for my glasses. “Somebody wants me weak.”

“Can running off your familiar have that much effect on you?”

“Somebody thinks so.” I left the bed and headed for the door. My first priority had to be a counter spell, then to find out who attacked my familiar.

Ray reached for me, his fingertips grazing my arm. “Roxie, about what happened just now.”

His touch still lit me on fire. Standing on tiptoe, I pulled him down with my hands on either side of his face to kiss him. “I don’t know. One thing at a time, okay?” I released him with more reluctance than I wanted to admit.

“Yeah.” He ran his hands down my arms. “I know. Just promise me when this is over with we’ll talk. Don’t take off for Nashville without talking to me.”

“I won’t.” I took his hand. “No more leaving unfinished business. I promise.”

The weight of his gaze and the warmth of his hand grounded me, chasing away the fear that was slowly replacing the shock. How could someone be attacking Stack? How would a spell like that work and what did I need to do to stop it? I had no ideas about either question but I was going to have to figure something out sooner rather than later. He would be safe on the land where he was created but for how long? I didn’t have a sense of what I could do without him anymore, so I had no idea if putting him on the bench, so to speak, would weaken me. The past months of working with him had been spent developing my abilities, but I was untested. Somebody wanted to weaken me, or see what I could do on my own, or both.

The doorbell split the quiet open with a shock, making both of us startle. With a grim look he released my hand and strode to the nightstand, withdrawing a handgun nestled in a belt holster from the drawer. It was his personal gun, a Taurus nine millimeter he’d owned for years. He clipped it to his belt, covered it with his shirt tail, and left the room.

I hovered out of sight at the top of the landing. Mackie Parker’s booming voice reached me but I couldn’t make out the words. Ray returned after a few minutes of what sounded like a terse argument. “Andrew Parker wants to see you.” He kept his voice low so we wouldn’t be heard downstairs.

“So I’ve been summoned. We figured this would happen.”

“I’m not letting you walk into that lion’s den alone. Think it’s sexist all you want, I’m not leaving you with no back up.”

“I would do the same for you so how can it be sexist?” I bit my lip, thinking. “I just wish I knew more about what I’m gonna be walking into. If Mackie’s warning about power was about magic and that stuff in the last pages from Britney’s diary are talking about what I think they’re talking about, Andrew’s a practitioner. Question is, how good?”

“He’s in his seventies. And he’s not some frail old man either, not the last time I saw him. Still being physically strong, with all that time to get more and more powerful.” Ray left the thought hanging.

“Whatever’s working on Stack is likely from Andrew Parker.” I liked that better than the alternative consideration. “When did he want to meet?”

“Right now.”

“Presumptuous old bastard. Look, I think I need to go with Mackie alone.”

“But you just said I could go.”

“I know what I just said, and I meant it. But this is a delicate situation and it needs to be handled a certain way. If Andrew is a practitioner, that’s how I need to meet him. As his equal. Not somebody so scared they need to bring back up. It’s got nothing to do with gender. He wants to show me who I’m dealing with. Well, I need to show him the same.”

Ray hit me with the full force of his Grumpy Teddy Bear look. “I don’t like it.”

“I’m not exactly fond of it myself. I’d much prefer to go in there with you and Daniel and a flamethrower and possibly a tank as back up. A tank with mounted flamethrowers. I could totally do without the stupid dick measuring crap like this, but it was bound to happen.”

“You would think the old man would be happy someone was trying to find his granddaughter’s killer. Help set her soul at peace.”

“That’s another reason I need to meet with him alone. He’s more likely to show any vulnerability to a woman in a private conversation than in front of another man.”

“So much for it not being about gender.”

“I won’t know what this is about until I get there. Either he does want justice for his granddaughter and that’s what this meeting is about, or he doesn’t.” This time I was the one who left the implied meaning hang in the air between us.

“If he’s the one who killed Martin Holt with some kind of death spell, it’s not justice he’s after.” Ray stepped closer, putting a hand on my waist. “Roxie, be careful.”

“Always am. Promise me you’ll keep your mojo hand on you at all times.”

“I always do.” He kissed me, quick and fierce and possessive.

I turned to leave, then thought of something and hurried back to his side. “But if you don’t hear from me in an hour or so, go find Daniel and tell him to take himself off the leash he keeps himself on. He’ll understand.” There was brave and then there was stupid. I might find the bravery or just plain necessity to have a meeting with a practitioner of dubious intentions but there was no sense in leaving my ace permanently hidden up my sleeve in a game where the stakes were so high.

Mackie drove some kind of curvy sports car that screamed mid-life crisis. He seemed reasonably sober and thankfully didn’t try to carry on much conversation on the drive, so it was actually not too bad at first. We were almost there when he laughed.

“He’s not even bothering to hide it.”

I said, “What are you talking about?”

“Take a look in the rearview mirror.”

I did. Ray’s truck was visible behind us, recognizable under the street lights now that we were in town. I said nothing.

The Parker family home was a massive red brick Italianate structure built in the twenties by a railroad family and bought by Andrew’s father sometime after World War Two. It dominated the cul-de-sac that had been built around it, overshadowing the lesser homes arrayed on either side in both size and architectural glory. Mackie parked in the circular drive and I stepped out of the car. A wave of nausea hit, lightning fast and gone almost as quick. I grabbed the hood for support.

Mackie came around the side. “You okay there?” An ugly tinge of pleasure tinged his voice.

I nodded, already feeling better. “No problem.”

We went up the walkway side by side. The closer we got to the house itself, the stronger a sense of foreboding seeped into my bones. Thick like cold molasses, sticky and rot-sweet, the sensation curled itself around every nerve ending. The house was definitely warded, and powerfully so.

Mackie said, “Can you feel that?”

“It’s just a warding spell.”

“I always wondered what it felt like to outsiders. Does it make you afraid? Nervous?”

“Is that what it’s meant to do? Rattle anybody visiting, make them even more intimidated than just the Parker family name?”

That seemed like a decent analysis of both the warding spell and the person behind it. To non-magical types it might have felt unsettling, just another part of being close to the Parkers, their power and mystique. To someone like me it was a warning. As soon as we crossed the threshold we’d be stepping off the map. The space the house filled might as well have been labeled “here be dark magic.”

Mackie’s only answer was a laugh. He unlocked the door and held it open for me. “He’s in a right contentious mood tonight. Best mind your manners.”

“I’ll mind my manners as long as he does the same.” I braced myself and stepped across the entry. The ward became a curtain of wasp stings attacking all over, mercifully only lasting as long as it took to cross the threshold. I couldn’t suppress a gasp, hating myself for reacting and Mackie for the obscene twist of pleasure on his face. How could I ever have thought him remotely charming, or harmless? He was just as much a viper in his own way as the rest of the snakes in his family.

“You have no idea, girl.” He gestured expansively at the dark hallway, indicating a door at the end on the left. “Daddy’s waiting for you in his study.”

Leaving Mackie behind, I headed into the darkness. Halfway to the study was an ornate curving staircase. A woman stood on the third stair from the bottom. Long silver hair and an unlined face were at odds, her age impossible to guess. She wore a tea length pale blue dress with three quarter length sleeves, a smudge of dirt near the hem. Her feet were bare and dirty and she carried a bundle of dried lavender in one hand. With the other she snapped her fingers in an odd rhythm. Her twilight eyes stared back from the far side of nowhere, as if what existence she experienced was so far removed from everyone else’s that reality barely registered with her. Every inch of her pulsed with magic, her aura sending out a Halloween tangle of orange and black. I gave her a wide berth as I passed.

Not wide enough. With no warning and speed that would have impressed Daniel, she grabbed a handful of my hair as I got just ahead of her. Yanking me backward, she leaned against my shoulder. The smell of rotting strawberries, sickly sweet and choking, filled my nostrils. Her breath in my ear, she whispered, “That he is mad, ‘tis true. ‘Tis true ‘tis pity, and pity ‘tis ‘tis true.”

The talons of her fingers twisted tighter in my hair, pulling on my scalp. I scrambled for an answer, hoping someone who quoted Polonius would accept Hamlet as a suitable shibboleth. “I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

She released me, patting me on the head. “Good girl.” She broke off a piece of the lavender and held it out.

Figuring I should probably accept the offering from the crazy Shakespeare quoting witch and get the hell away from her, I took it and nodded thanks. She walked up the stairs backward, never blinking as her dark gaze drilled a hole of fear in me.

Turning around and not stopping until I hit the Nashville city limits looked like a damn fine idea. Smart, too. This was getting too weird even for me and that was saying a lot.

The door of the study opened seemingly of its own volition. The push of magic that made it happen was low in energy expended but heavy with power, a fist barely touching a jaw. Saving itself for the knockout punch.

I took a breath and stepped into the study. As soon as I cleared the door it slammed shut.

Somewhere in the room Andrew Parker waited for me.

The scratch and hiss of an old record player sounded, followed by guitar and the confident voice of Memphis Minnie.
Hoodoo Lady
, recorded in the thirties, filled the room. The walls were covered with book shelves, massive heavy wood that looked hand crafted and was stained a dark red. Antique Tiffany lamps provided low illumination. A large leather chair sat on an oval rug in front of the fireplace, a severe masculine throne. The center of the room was split by a long glass curio cabinet, more like something one saw at an antique store than in a home. Functional, the items unlabeled, this was the storage space for a working practitioner, everything in easy reach. Either no one else entered this room or Andrew didn’t much care who knew about his practice. At the far end of the room were French doors that opened on to what might have been a veranda. It was hard to tell in the dark.

Mason jars full of herbs and roots filled one end of the cabinet. Most I recognized, some not. More jars of various sizes and shapes stretched through the middle, filled with coffin nails, iron filings, straight pins, brick dust, shiny dimes, and dirt. At the far end were makings for poppets, both the wax kind and the doll kind. One completed doll figure had a small red fabric heart on its chest with a straight pin stabbed through it. Set slightly apart from the rest was one dressed in rough blue clothing and a gold star.

Meant to catch my eye, no doubt. No, I didn’t think it was justice for his granddaughter that Andrew Parker wanted.

The song ended with an abrupt scratch as the needle was dragged from the record. The French doors opened, Parker framed in the center. The man knew how to make an entrance, I’d give him that. Tall and slender with thick, slightly shaggy white hair, a close beard with a few hints of the dark hair he’d been born with, and cheekbones that suggested there might have been some Native American in the family tree, he cut a commanding figure in the dim light. He wore a tailored gray suit and a wide red tie over a crisp white dress shirt, shined black shoes and a walking cane in his right hand. His two most arresting features were vivid blue eyes that burned from decades of the use of dark magic and the power that rolled off him in a sickening wave.

“Find anything of interest?” His voice was cultured, unhurried, a Southern gentleman stepped out of time from another era.

“I’d say more educational than interesting.” I had to be careful and not show any disrespect. Or at least, not show too much too soon.

Parker stepped into the room, the doors closing gently behind him with a push of his will he didn’t bother hiding from me. After letting me in here there was no reason for him to hide much of anything. For the first time, a little bit of worry began to creep into my thoughts. “What did you learn? I’d be delighted to hear.”

“I learned you’re not scared of people knowing you’re a practicing witch. And you’re not scared of anyone who can understand what any of this is just what kind of witchcraft you practice.”

“Why should I be scared? Isn’t the point of acquiring power so others will fear you instead of you being the one who’s afraid?” The cane made a slow tap-tap-tap on the hardwood floor as he approached.

“I never thought of witchcraft as acquiring power.” The urge to back up was enormous but I held my ground, hands loose in the pockets of my hoodie.

“Then why bother?” He reached the opposite side of the cabinet, bringing the full bore of his intense gaze on me. “What do you want from magic, if not to use it for power?”

“I generally use it to help people.” I wanted a look at his aura but didn’t dare, not yet. If he was sensitive enough to tell what I was doing, it was too early to risk it.

He said nothing, the derision evident enough in his face without words. “Rozella Kent had an unfortunate streak of that in her. Never could disabuse her of the notion.”

My mentor’s old warnings to stay away from the Parker family and Andrew in particular made more sense in light of the contents of this cabinet. Still, though, the idea they’d had some interaction both intrigued and frightened me. “I can’t imagine you having any influence on Miss Rozella.”

He didn’t like that, not one little bit. A brief spark of flame lit his eyes as the air hummed with energy. To me, magic always had the taste and feel of nature, of earth and air, fire and water. Both what I practiced and others. It might be dark. It might be a tangled twist of elements and intentions. But there would always be something in there I could recognize, make sense of. For the first time I could make no sense of magic. What curled upward and outward from Andrew Parker was an eldritch, murky thing, tainted and sulfurous.

To hell with looking like a tough girl. I took a step back.

“She had an unfortunate stubbornness about her. I didn’t care for that. You won’t like hearing this, being so young, but things were much more organized and orderly when everyone knew their place.”

I was unsure if he was referring to Rozella having been a woman, black, or both. “If you derive your place at the top of the food chain from an accident of birth, maybe, and not ability. Personally I’ve never had much respect for anyone who tried to tell me my place.”

Parker beat the cane on the floor once. The sulfur tentacles of his magic wrapped themselves around my throat, squeezing the breath from me. Half closing my eyes, I switched my focus to inward, tasting rain and whiskey as I pushed back. The spell broke with a suddenness that surprised him as much as it did me. I gulped in air. He stared, one hand tight on his cane, the other on the glass cabinet, fingers spread like spider legs.

“I had you marked, girl,” he hissed. “You could have had the chance to learn from me, here at my side like one of my own kin, but she got to you first.”

“I met her first. I wouldn’t have had anything to do with you, anyway.”

Parker grinned, his teeth giving him a skull-like appearance. “She sought you out. Both of us sensed you in bloom. She went directly to you. I did what I thought was the right way. Engaged with your momma for your services as a companion for my daughter Peg. You met her on your way in.” He paused, giving me a curious look. “Every day after school you were to come here. Sit with her for a while, up in her room or in the garden. Then you were to come here.” He gestured at the study around us. “Spend time with me.” He took slow, careful steps around the cabinet. “Can you imagine what that would have been like? I can, little girl. The things I would have taught you.”

I shuddered, as much as the thought of being companion to the wraith on the stairs as being student to her psycho father.

He stopped three feet away. “You would be a very different witch now, Roxanne. A very different person altogether.”

Hearing him say my name disgusted me almost as much as everything else he’d said. “I don’t know whether to believe you or not. My mother never said a word about any job in this house.” Nadine would have forced me to do it, too, had the offer been real.

Parker chuckled. “Oh, believe it. I had that bitch Nadine eatin’ out of my hand, ready to do whatever I said. I do believe she would have turned you over even if she’d known the truth, she was so desperate to curry favor with me.”

I grimaced. Yeah, that sounded like my mother. So what happened?

The old man answered my unspoken question. “But the Kent woman, she refused to stay on her side of town. Went meddling where she had no business.” He stepped closer, the cane thunking on the hardwood.

I steeled myself for attack but none came. “What did she do?” At this point keeping him talking seemed like the best plan. I still didn’t know exactly what he wanted.

“She worked her will on your momma, made her change her mind. Then she went looking for you, I suppose. I don’t know exactly how you became her student. That part matters little to me. What mattered then and now is that she took something I wanted for myself.”

“People aren’t toys to be bought and sold. Not even by you.”

“I could have anything I wanted from you, anything at all. Right this minute.” He raised the cane, pointing it at the poppet wearing a gold star. “You just have to know a person’s pressure point, Roxanne. The thing that will make them sell themselves and everything they hold dear. I believe I know your pressure point, young lady. I’ve known it all along. Seen it in the cards and the bones and my own dreams. I know how to own you and I intend to do just that.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind, old man.” The time for manners and fake respect was past.

“Everyone has something they want. In this life and the next.”

The next life? What the hell was this about? “What did you do?”

“My sons are useless to me, always have been. The magic came from my mother and her people so I suppose it made some sort of sense it passed to my daughter and my granddaughter. Would have marked my great-granddaughter too but Britney thought she and her little bastard child could change things.” Contempt twisted the word
change
into more of an expletive than bastard.

Parker was between me and the door. My spirit familiar was temporarily out of commission, my vampire was off getting drunk somewhere, and Ray couldn’t legally get into the house without probable cause. I needed to be careful what I said and how I said it. “Did you have your granddaughter killed because she wouldn’t follow orders anymore?”

Or I could just blurt out the most outrageous accusation guaranteed to piss off the old sorcerer.

“She got herself killed, thinking she was special. Thinking she could do whatever she wanted. She never understood that if you don’t take power for yourself, you’re giving it to someone else.”

“Did you have Britney killed?”

“She thought she could get away with anything, because of her name. Because she was young and beautiful. She’d play witch like it was a game but she never fully embraced it. You know what that’s like, don’t you?” He waved the cane at me. I flinched, stepping back. Laughing, he said, “Yes, that’s right! I know about you. Saw it in the cards and the bones both. You played a game for a long time, a little girl with jacks and hopscotch and all the silly games children play. Then you needed it for real and found out what was really in you. Isn’t that right?”

“Did you kill Britney?”

Parker advanced, the heavy tap of the cane on the floor an ominous announcement with his every step. “You answer my question, I’ll answer yours. You’re not a child anymore and this isn’t a game. You get no quarter from me.”

“All right, yes. You want to know, I’ll tell you. I treated it like a game for years. Worse than that, like something to hide away. Hide from.” I thought of the flood, water rushing into my house and over my head. Conjuring help from any and every source of energy my magic could touch in that moment saved my life and created Stack. “Then I didn’t.” I met his gaze, blazing with a fierce insanity, with a look that called forth a touch of the storm that stayed with me all the time now. “And I’ll never go back.”

Parker cocked his head, examining my eyes and stance. The hard line of his mouth quavered for a half second and he stepped back. I knew then he’d seen it, seen the storm and the power that lay curled and sleeping inside me. Perhaps he even saw it better than I did myself. Whatever he made of my magic, it made him take that step backward.

I pressed my unexpected advantage. “Mr. Parker, did you have Britney killed?”

Defeat drained his features of vitality. “No.” His voice choked. “But I have bound her spirit and I’ll keep her here until I get what I want.”

What the hell? “Why would you do that to her? She’s haunting the entire town! You have to let her go.”

“I don’t have to do a damn thing.” The old man rallied, pulling himself straighter, tapping his damn cane again. “She can tear up the whole county for all I care. I’ll keep her bound until I get what I want and if that’s not enough to do it, I’ll add another to the altar.” He picked up the poppet meant to represent Ray and held it in front of me.

“You sure you want to threaten him? You sure you want to bring that hell down on your head, old man? You think what Britney’s doing to this town is bad? It’s nothing compared to what I will do to you if you hurt him.” I snatched the poppet from his hand and shoved it in my pocket.

A grin like a snake gliding over cracked earth spread across his face. “I don’t need that. You keep it as a souvenir. A promise.” He stepped around me, giving me a shot at the door for the first time. “He’s a good man, Ray Travis. A good deputy. Good citizen.” Parker eased into the chair by the fireplace. “Always opens doors for ladies. Helps children and the elderly. Has Sunday dinner with his momma and daddy every week he can and makes sure to donate blood.”

A chill hit my gut, a knife made of ice working itself into me.

Parker said, “It’s a hell of a thing, what you can do with blood.”

I took a step toward him, a storm at the edge of my senses despite Stack’s absence.

“It’s a hell of a thing, too, what folks will do for enough money, without asking any questions at all. Like slip a little blood in the beer of a new but very friendly customer.”

The knife split me open and filled me with a terror so cold it burned.

Parker grinned. “How long before your vampire starts to think of your deputy as supper?”

“God damn you!” Energy crackled in every cell of my body, begging to be turned loose.