Blood on the Bayou

by Stacey Jay

  I nod. “I wonder what happened to the car we heard coming?” I make a mental note to text Cane the second I get the chance. I have to warn him to stay out of the bayou.

  “Hopefully it turned around and made it back to town.” Hitch turns away from the fairy dying in front of us.

  Or the dying . . . whatever he is.

  “Hitch,” I call, unable to take my eyes off the creature as it pulls in its strained final breaths. “What if they’re not fairies?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if they’re something else? What if there are other things out there? Things that are only now mutating that we have no idea how to protect ourselves from?”

  “Remember what I said about thinking too much?” He appears at my side again.

  I think about his words in the truck, and the kiss he gave me after. “I don’t think too much. I don’t think enough.”

  “That’s part of the cycle. You think too much, until you drive yourself crazy with anxiety. Then you shut thought down and go on a bender until you’re too messed up or hungover to think any more.”

  Hm. Well. Apparently he does know me fairly well, even after the years apart.

  “I’ve been drinking less.” I avoid comment on the validity of his theory.

  “I’ve noticed. I’m proud of you.” He grins his Hitch grin, the one that always makes me feel like one of the people who gets the joke. “I bet that makes you want to drink more, doesn’t it?”

  One side of my mouth crooks. “Already thinking about whether I’ve got margarita mix in the freezer.”

  Hitch laughs. Actually laughs. But then, what else is there to do? We’ve both done our share of crying the past couple of days.

  I glance back at the blue-chinned fairy, but he’s not breathing anymore. I’ll have to come back and collect a few of the bodies for the FCC before we leave. Lance and his partner will have something I can use to carry the dead fairies in. Some Tupperware, an empty sour cream container, something. Assuming Lance and Friend aren’t dead.

  Hitch is right. It’s strange that no one’s come to check on us. The garage door made a significant amount of noise, and then there’s the swarm that continues to roar outside.

  “Come on,” Hitch says. “Let’s go.”

  I stand to follow him and nearly jump out of my skin as my phone buzzes in my pocket again.

  God. Deedee. She’s driving me nuts. I fish the phone out with a sigh, intending to send Cane a quick text and then turn my ringer to silent, but my latest messages stop me cold.

  The first unread text is from Theresa, warning me that she had to take my cat to the vet, but that everything will be fine and to give her a call at Swallows when I get the chance. The second is from Deedee. It’s a picture of a sickly looking Gimpy, and beneath it Deedee’s written, “Me and Gimpy r at vet w/Miss Theresa. I’m staying w/him today. He got his stomach sucked, but he still mite die. And u don’t care. I mite live w/Miss Theresa. She says I’m a good head in a crysis.”

  Theresa already has two children she can barely afford and doesn’t see as much of as she’d like because she works so much. But maybe she will take Deedee in. Theresa’s a good mom and no doubt better for Deedee than I could ever be. Hell, Sweet Haven is probably better for her.

  Despite the fact that my cat has nearly died—yet again—it’s good that Deedee’s getting over her fixation with living with me. So I don’t understand why the screen looks blurry as I text Theresa a quick thank-you and a promise to call as soon as I can, then Cane a warning not to come into the bayou because of a code-red threat I’m about to call into the FCC.

  It’s probably the smell of the weird fairy bodies stinging my eyes. They have a noxious odor—sulfur and rancid lemon juice, mixed with freshly chopped green onions. By the time I shove my phone back in my pants pocket, tears are rolling down my face. I swipe them away with the back of my hand and start toward Hitch through a cloud of stink so powerful it feels like I’m swimming in it.

  “Guess we know why we’ve never found any corpses,” Hitch says as I climb the steps to join him.

  I follow his nod, scanning the garage where the weird fairies’ bodies are turning to greenish-blue mush that burns a fist-sized hole in the floor beneath them. I lift my imaginary pen and make an X in the air.

  “Blessing the dead?” Hitch asks.

  “Marking collecting samples off my list.”

  “That makes more sense.”

  “You know I’ll never find religion.”

  “Godless heathen.” Hitch pulls his gun from its holster, and pushes through the heavy white door.

  Inside the building, the hallway with the red tile floor is weirdly quiet. It was quiet yesterday, too, but that was a different kind of quiet, a quiet that hinted at people breathing air in other rooms, of meals recently prepared and toilets recently flushed and other recent happenings that accompany the living of lives.

  Today, there’s nothing but an eerie stillness, underlined by the hum of the fairies gathered outside.

  As Hitch and I climb the stairs to the office, we get another look at our attackers through the glass walls of the stairwell. The swarm is massive—a biblical plague that fills the sky and blocks out what sun peeks through the gathering storm clouds. I swear it looks nearly as big as it did on the other side of the river.

  “You’re sure you saw some of them falling on the bridge?” I whisper, not wanting to draw the fairies’ attention to the fact that we’re no longer inside the garage. If they can’t make it through the garage door, they probably couldn’t force their way through thick, industrial grade glass, either, but I’d rather not test that hypothesis.

  “I think I did,” Hitch whispers back. “But it doesn’t look like iron affects them the way it does other fairies. Good thing that garage door is thick.”

  “Good thing.” I swallow and keep climbing the stairs, trying not to imagine the Donaldsonville gates falling and this swarm spraying skin-melting bile over everyone I care about.

  “I wonder why they’re gathered in a swarm like that?” Hitch steps off the top step and we move down another red tile hallway, away from the glass. “It was almost like they were waiting to attack whoever came down that road.”

  I stop halfway down the hall. Attack. Waiting to attack.

  “What’s wrong?” Hitch asks, stopping beside me.

  “Did you see me making the fairies fall? With . . . my mind?”

  His brow wrinkles. “When? In the garage?” I nod, and his brow smoothes. “No, but I was wondering how you took down so many of them. Guess your superpowers are working again?”

  I cross my arms and shoot him a narrow look. “Are you making fun of me?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Honestly, Annabelle, you think I have time to—”

  “So you believe me, now?”

  “I thought we established that on the drive over.”

  We did? Maybe I should have turned down the Johnny Cash and focused on the conversation. “Well, yeah. Okay. So I figured out yesterday that inanimate objects aren’t the only things I can move. I mean, I knew I could work with living tissue because of what happened with Stephanie in the basement, but—”

  “Thanks for that,” he says. “By the way.”

  I wave his thanks away. “You don’t have to thank me.” I hurry on before I lose my nerve or Hitch tells me we don’t have time for chitchat. “And I want you to know I don’t plan on doing anything to get between you and Stephanie. Even if you want me to.” Now that I know what’s going on with Stephanie and the baby, it’s even harder to imagine the tension between Hitch and me leading to a good place. It’s time to cut the cord. Once and for all.

  Hitch’s eyes drop to the tile as he gives a single nod. “Okay.”

  “So no more love or lips or . . .” I clear my throat, surprised by how tight it feels. “Other stuff.”

  “All right.”

  “I mean it.”

  Hitch looks up, sadness in his eyes, but a hint
of that unsinkable smile curving his lips. “Message received.”

  “I know this isn’t the time,” I say, seemingly unable to quit babbling. “I just . . . I . . . I needed to—”

  “I understand. You’re right. I’m not in any place to—”

  “And also, I can control the fairies. Make them do what I want.”

  Hitch blinks.

  “And kill them by thinking about wanting them dead. And it works on normal fairies and the new fairies and I’m probably going to get better at killing them once I get another shot. My first shot is wearing off early because I drank too much whiskey last night.”

  It takes Hitch a second to adjust to the change in gears, but when he does I see the implications of what I’ve said rise in his eyes, popping up like targets in the interactive shooting range he liked to visit when we were in college. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re trying to kill you before you can kill them.”

  I nod. “Though how the new fairies found out about what I can do is anybody’s guess,” I say, mind spinning. “Maybe they saw what happened? When I killed the other fairies? Maybe that’s why they were waiting for me here, since this is the route I took yesterday?”

  “They’re intelligent,” he says with a numb shake of his head. “And they’ve been fucking hiding it, those fucking, sneaky little—”

  “They are sneaky bastards.” I’m trying to think of the best way to break the whole “they can also talk and I can talk to them, and I made a deal with one to find the cave, but he lied and tried to get us killed, and now I’m pretty sure that he’s going to keep trying to kill me, while venting his spleen on the people I care about in the meantime” news, when we hear the first non-fairy-buzzing sound since we entered the building.

  A faint metallic crash, like a cookie sheet dropped on tile, echoes through the hall.

  “That wasn’t on this floor.” Hitch turns back to the stairs. I grab his arm and point down the hall toward the office.

  “There’s a back staircase. It comes out in the kitchen.”

  Hitch nods, following at a trot as I jog down the hall. I peek into the office and the break room as we pass by, but both are empty. Lance and Jose must have seen the fairies outside and decided to take cover in the kitchen. From what I saw of their sprawling bachelor pad yesterday, it’s the only room without glass on at least one full side.

  We hurry down the stairs, my sneakers virtually silent and Hitch’s booties making only the slightest skinking sound. It’s possible that Lance and Jose won’t hear us coming, and I don’t want to surprise them. I stop on the last landing, and turn back to Hitch.

  I’m going to tell him I think we should announce our presence, but I don’t get the chance.

  “Come down the stairs. Slow,” a voice announces from the other room. “With your hands on top of your head.”

  “Cane?” I stumble off the landing and would have ended up surfing the stairs, but Hitch grabs my arm and pulls me back beside him.

  “Annabelle?” Cane’s voice is noticeably softer, but when he steps through the archway, his gun is raised. Raised and propped up with his left hand and aimed uncomfortably close to my heart.

  For a split second, I’m afraid. Not afraid of being seen with Hitch or caught lying to Cane or any of the normal things I’d usually be afraid of in a situation like this. I’m afraid that Cane is going to shoot me; that the man who told me he loved me last night is going to pull the trigger and end my life this morning.

  And he knows it. I see the second he recognizes my fear. It hits him hard, making his next breath come out ragged and his breastbone sag. His jaw clenches and his elbows bend with a rusty-looking jerk, pointing the gun toward the ceiling. “What are you doing here?” he asks in a hurt whisper that makes me feel rotten.

  I should never have been afraid.

  But then again, he shouldn’t have given me reason to be.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be out this way until noon.”

  He pales. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a black man do that, but Cane manages to pull it off. The golden flush in his cheeks vanishes, leaving him gray, drawn and washed out. His eyes shift between me and Hitch. I see him wondering how much we know about his illegal errand. It has to be illegal. He’s not in uniform, he’s carrying a gun I’ve never seen before, and he looks. So. Fucking. Guilty.

  “My meet time got moved up,” Cane says. “Currents weren’t strong today.”

  On the off chance that he hasn’t already dug himself so far into a hole that there will be no climbing out, I say, “I haven’t told Hitch anything. Watch what you say.”

  Hitch stiffens and his hand slides from my arm. “What?”

  “I’ll explain later. Maybe.” I wonder how far I can take this bluff. Can I trick Cane into telling me what he’s doing out here? If I can get him alone, maybe I—

  “I don’t give a shit what you tell Hitch.” The venom in Cane’s voice makes me flinch. “I’m not leaving my sister in that camp. She doesn’t deserve that. No person does. I’m bringing her to a place where she’ll be taken care of by good people, which I should have been able to do from the beginning.”

  Comprehension dawns, loosening the knot of suspicion in my chest. Amity. He’s paying someone to smuggle Amity out of the infected camp at Keesler. He’s committing a crime, but he’s doing it out of love for his sister and his family. I should have guessed it was something like this. Cane’s weakness has always been loving people too much. He can’t let go. Even when the law tells him he has no choice.

  “I’m sorry.” I wish I could go to him and wrap my arms around his waist and rest my cheek on his big barrel chest. But I can’t. He’s angry. And I am, too. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You . . . I . . .” His voice trails off and his gun drifts to his side as he realizes I’ve tricked him. I expect him to get angrier, but instead he shakes his head and motions over his shoulder. “We’ve got two men down in the kitchen. I’m not sure what killed them.”

  “What?” Hitch’s hip knocks against mine as he hurries down the stairs, but he doesn’t acknowledge the contact. Guess he’s angry, too.

  Good. He might as well get angry and stay that way. He’s only going to get angrier when I ditch him to go find Marcy. I can’t leave her out in the bayou with no protection from the megaswarm, and I can’t risk bringing Hitch or Cane along until I know what’s going on. If Lance is one of the dead men, I’ll have to search his office until I find out where I was supposed to meet Marcy, and then find some way to get away from the men in my life and past the swarm.

  But first. The bodies. The dead bodies.

  “The first guy was dead when I got here.” Cane leads the way back into the kitchen. I follow, but stop in the doorway to cover my mouth and nose. The smell is awful, an acidic rotten stench that makes the dead fairies upstairs smell almost pleasant.

  It’s the bodies. It has to be. Except for the two men on the floor, the kitchen is immaculate, and no greasy stove or trash basket could smell this bad.

  My eyes flit from the closer body—Jose, I’m guessing, though I’ve never seen his face—to the form huddled in a fetal position by the oven. It’s Lance, looking even more ferretlike in death. His wide, empty eyes emphasize the sharp angle of his nose and his mouth hangs open, exposing the tips of his rodent teeth. I try to make myself go to him, to close his eyes and give the poor bastard some small bit of dignity, but I’m afraid I’ll lose control of my stomach if I take another step into the room.

  Turns out dead bodies still make me want to puke, even the dead bodies of people I didn’t like that much when they were alive.

  Cane crosses the expanse from the door to the double oven in a few large steps. “This guy was rolling around a little. At first I couldn’t tell if he was in pain or . . . something else,” he says, an odd note in his voice.

  “Then he started choking. I tried the Heimlich, but it didn
’t help.” Cane squats beside the body. Hitch joins him, crouching down on Lance’s other side, peering into his lifeless face. “There wasn’t anything stuck in his throat.”

  “Was he foaming at the mouth?” Hitch asks. “It looks like there’s something here, around the lips.”

  He gestures to Lance’s mouth with two fingers, but doesn’t touch him. He’s in professional investigation mode. So is Cane. Both of them are in their element, focused on the body, ignoring the fact that Cane confessed his intention to commit a federal offense and that it’s completely awkward for the three of us to be in the same room after the Captured on Police Camera Kiss Fiasco.

  Not to mention that Cane knows I’ve been sneaking around with Hitch behind his back. At this point he may think it’s purely professional sneaking, but then again, maybe not. He’s already suspicious or he wouldn’t have come to spy on me last night.

  Remembering my other reasons for being angry with Cane makes me feel better. And worse. Better, because our lack of trust is mutual. Worse . . . for the same damned reason.

  Cane cocks his head, considering Hitch’s question. “Yeah. You know, now that I think about it, he was. A little. You thinking poison?”

  Hitch nods. “But I’m not sure what would take them both out so quickly.”

  “Were they eating or drinking anything?” I finally manage to take a step into the room, but keep my eyes on the countertops.

  The kitchen is an oversized galley-style, with a double oven and refrigerator on one side, sink and dishwasher on the other, and massive granite countertops between each appliance. The counters on my right, close to where Hitch and Cane are inspecting the body, are bare, but there are a few plates by the sink. I pad over to get a better look, but there’s nothing to see but a few crumbs, a greasy butter knife, and a wadded up napkin.

  “Anything?” Hitch asks.

  “Looks like some kind of pastry.” I lift the plate on top to peek at the one beneath. “Only crumbs left so it’s hard to tell.”

  “Tough to get a significant amount of poison in a pastry,” Hitch muses aloud. “Especially something that wouldn’t start affecting the body until the person had eaten the whole thing.”