Black Dust Mambo

by Adrian Phoenix

  “You were right about Kallie’s eyes, bro,” Layne murmured. “Just like you said—hyacinths in sunlight. You were right about a few of her other attributes too.” He laughed, the sound just a little rough. “Woman don’t take shit, and, bro, those curves. Man.” He shook his head, the weight of his tied-back dreads sweeping against his back. Filling the bathroom cup with warm water, he rinsed the shampoo from Gage’s hair.

  But if she’s a murderer . . .

  He used soft white towels to dry the last of the water from Gage’s body; then he dried his clan-brother’s hair with the bathroom’s built-in blow-dryer, finger-combing the blue-black curls as he went. But even clean and groomed, the usual lustrous gleam in Gage’s hair was missing—drained away with his blood and his life. And his soul.

  Layne pushed the gurney and its burden out of the bathroom and back into the room proper. He walked over to the dresser, his gaze falling on the brochure for the French Quarter ghost tour that Gage had picked up a day or so ago.

  “Come with, bro?”

  “Sure, what the hell. When in Rome or wherever . . .”

  Layne’s throat closed. A muscle flexed in his jaw. He yanked open the top drawer and dug through the clothes inside.

  “When my time comes, I wanna be cremated. Spread my ashes on the dawn, bro.”

  “Poetic. But you’re talking like I’m gonna outlive you, man. Hello, Vessel here.”

  “Good point, bro. So how do you wanna be sent off?”

  “Hmmm. How about firing me into the night sky from a catapult?”

  “You wanna be wearing anything during that catapult flight?”

  “Buck naked. Fireworks up my ass.”

  “You got it, bro. I wanna be wearing my TOLDJA! T-shirt and my greasiest jeans. Should make me burn like a fucking torch.”

  “You got it, man. Wan’ another beer?”

  Layne tossed shirt after shirt onto the floor until he’d emptied the drawer. Gage hadn’t packed his TOLDJA! shirt, or maybe he’d already worn it. Layne went to the dirty-clothes trash bag and dumped out the contents. Crouching, he pawed through wrinkled tees, jeans, boxers, and smelly socks. Not there.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. Rubbing his jaw with one hand as though he could coax an idea from deep within the bone, he looked around the room. Gage’s sketch pad and several Sharpies lay on the table beside Layne’s laptop.

  Arm braced against his ribs, he stood, and returned to the dresser. Fetching a white tee from his drawer, he took it over to the table and scrawled TOLDJA! on it with a black Sharpie. Good enough.

  And as for a pair of greasy jeans, Layne scooped up from the dirty-clothes pile the ones that Gage had been wearing when they’d ridden in from Florida. Again, good enough.

  Dressing Gage—black boxers, socks, jeans, and new TOLDJA! tee—took the better part of an hour and left Layne drenched in sweat. Pain sawed at his sternum like a broken-toothed chainsaw. Exhaustion burned through his muscles. A part of him was tempted to call it a morning and crawl back into bed. But just part. And only tempted.

  Layne leaned over Gage and kissed his cold forehead, stroking his thumb along Gage’s clean curls. Then, straightening, he went to the bed and yanked off the bedspread. He draped it over Gage’s body.

  Layne stripped and hit the shower, scrubbing his exhaustion and sweat away with the hotel’s tiny bar of perfumed soap, shaving his face, the hot water doing little to ease the kinks from his muscles. Once he was dressed again in jeans and a black Inferno tee, he sat at the table and strapped on his scuffed and flame-painted scooter boots.

  Hopefully, Mc Kenna had learned where Kallie Rivière had gone or where she’d been taken if Augustine had caught and detained her. If not, Layne’s course of action would be straight-forward—he planned to ask Basil Augustine for her whereabouts. His gut told him that Kallie was innocent of Gage’s murder. But someone wanted her dead—more than dead—and if he could figure out why, then he’d have Gage’s killer.

  Boots on, Layne rose and walked to the closet. He slipped his leather jacket free of its hanger and eased it on, wincing at the pain the movement jabbed through his broken ribs. Kinda warm for leather, but he wanted the Glock and the knives concealed in its pockets and attached to its lining. The knives, most of all.

  Once he’d found the bastard who’d killed Gage, he’d finish things like he had in Mississippi after he’d healed enough from his beating to walk out of the hospital. He’d hunted, pounding the pavement and turning over every moss- and lichen-furred stone, until he’d found the shit-kicking mouth-breathing squatters. Every last fucking one of them.

  Each had died hard and slow and messy, drenched in their own steaming blood and weeping for mercy from a man who had none to give. That part of Layne had died with Poesy.

  After checking the magazine in his Glock and chambering a round, Layne flipped on the safety, then tucked the gun into the front of his jeans near the left hip and underneath his Inferno tee. He’d meet up with Mc Kenna and find out how her talk with Frost had gone; then he’d start his search for Gage’s killer and the hoodoo beauty’s would-be killer. First stop—Basil Augustine’s office.

  On his way to the door, Layne paused beside the gurney and squeezed Gage’s comforter-draped shoulder. “Be seeing you, man,” he whispered, knowing he wouldn’t—his best friend was well and truly gone.

  Layne reached inside his jacket, the well-worn leather creaking, and drew a finger along the smooth hilt of one of the knives buckled against the lining. He felt a measure of razor-edged calm steal in through his fingertip. A promise to himself.

  For Gage.

  Layne strode from the room.

  ELEVEN

  A SHOWER OF WHITE SPARKS

  “What the hell do you mean ‘what am I’?” Blowing hair out of her face, Kallie glared at Augustine, wishing she could slap his perplexed but oh-so-curious expression from his goddamned aristocratic face. “At least I know what you are—a goddamned lying sonuvabitch. Let. Me. Go.”

  “That’s what I’m endeavoring to do. But I need you to calm down and hold still.”

  “You calm down and hold still.”

  Augustine rolled his eyes. “Really, Ms. Rivière, that’s not helping the situation.”

  “Meaning I’m making too big of a fuss for your taste, you lying bastard?”

  Augustine pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Fuss away, then. When you’ve tired of it, then perhaps we can work to get you free.”

  Stupid Brit. He sounded almost reasonable. Of course, he could afford to sound reasonable. He wasn’t trapped in a goddamned chair, now was he?

  Kallie squirmed and twisted and strained, but remained right where she was. The electric prickling had shifted into a deep-bone thrumming. Pain pounded at her temples like fists against shutters. White light flared through her mind.

  She stands beside the bayou’s cypress-shadowed waters, a gleaming knife clenched in one hand, a red candle cupped in the other. The mingled scents of roses and cinnamon curl into the air as the anointed wax melts, trickling hot over her fingers. In the darkness behind her, the rhythmic and steady throb of palm-slapped drums echoes through the night.

  Ripples arrow along the bayou’s green surface as a gator glides toward the bank. But her gaze seeks the shadow flitting among the live oaks and cypress on the bayou’s other side, a man-shaped shadow that drops from upright to all fours. A shadow that lopes in easy, four-pawed grace across the sawgrass, moonlight pooled in its gleaming silver eyes.

  The vision vanished in a shower of white sparks. Blinking, pulse racing, Kallie looked down at her hands, half expecting to see red wax hardening on her fingers.

  Cold fear corkscrewed around Kallie’s heart. What the hell was that?

  “Ms. Rivière? Did you hear me?”

  Kallie shifted her gaze to Augustine. “What?”

  The illusionist folded his arms over his chest and arched an eyebrow. “I asked if you were wearing any charms or talismans. Any magically inked ta
ttoos?”

  “Oh.” Kallie quit struggling long enough to look down at her bathrobe-covered chest and realized that, even though her pendants were still in place, her red flannel mojo bag was missing—most likely it had fallen off during all the enthusiastic getting-to-know-you tumbling she and Gage had done the night before. She also noticed that she’d managed to flail around enough in her attempts to wrench free of the chair to loosen up and part her bathrobe. At the moment, Augustine was not only getting an eyeful of her thighs and the vee of red lace panties between them, but of her red lace bra and the pushed-up cleavage it created.

  Kallie tried to pull her hands free of the chair arms so she could close her robe, but nada. Still stuck. “Stupid robe,” she muttered. “Maybe my pendants are the problem. They’re for protection—gifts from my aunt.”

  “Well, that would qualify as magicked, but mild magic,” Augustine murmured, studying the chair. “Let’s remove them, shall we?”

  “Okay.” Kallie bowed her head to give Augustine better access to the clasps. He leaned over her, brushed her hair aside, and then unhooked and removed her pendants.

  “Try to get up now,” he said, stepping back.

  But the thrumming still vibrated through Kallie’s bones and veins, buzzed her thoughts. She attempted to lift her hands. Nothing. She blew her breath out in frustration. “Goddammit.”

  “Very intriguing. You should be able to get up,” Augustine said, eyeing the chair.

  Kallie realized that the Brit actually was perplexed, and that unnerved her. “You really don’t have anything to do with this, do you?” she asked.

  “Ah, the light finally dawns,” he replied, gray eyes glinting. “Have you finished with your tantrum?”

  “I can always start another just for you, asshole,” Kallie said, wishing she could flip him off and/or knuckle another right hook into his jaw.

  A smirk angled across Augustine’s lips. “I have no doubt of that, Ms. Rivière. But it won’t be necessary.” One arm braced against the other, he stroked his chin thoughtfully as he studied her or the chair or both.

  “Okay, so now what? How are you going to get me out of this chair?”

  “I’m going to search you to make certain you don’t have any other charms. Well, you do possess ample charms, Ms. Rivière—physical ones, at least, and certain to delight most males—but I’m referring to—”

  Most males? Hmmm. “The magical ones, yeah, yeah.”

  “I’m hoping you won’t force me to muzzle you à la Hannibal Lecter?”

  Kallie rolled her eyes. “Just search me already. Christ.” Augustine’s hands slid along her bathrobe-blanketed sides, his fingers probing the material. She caught a whiff of vanilla and frankincense from his oil-anointed cigarettes. His hand dipped into her left hip pocket, then into her right. “Aha.”

  He pulled a blue chamois bag from the pocket’s depths. A gris-gris bag. He held it up for Kallie to see. “Intriguing sigil, but not one I’m familiar with.”

  “It’s a vévé,” Kallie said. Stitched into the bag was a heart framed by coiled snakes on either side and decorated with various symbols of the loa. “Marie Laveau’s talisman for protection.” And one of Belladonna’s favorites.

  She must’ve slipped it into the pocket when she handed me my robe.

  Kallie tried to stand, hoping against hope that, despite the still-present thrumming, the gris-gris bag had been the problem. But she remained right where she was—stuck in the goddamned fricking chair. She looked at Augustine. “Now what?”

  “We resort to desperate experimentation.”

  Augustine leaned forward and grasped Kallie’s upper arms with strong fingers. The deep-bone thrumming quieted, returned to a skin-prickling tingle. The Brit murmured a phrase in what sounded like Latin or Greek.

  “What are you say—” Her words trailed off as another shower of white sparks filled her vision; then the invisible straps binding her fell away, vanishing along with the electric prickling against her skin. She bolted to her feet and practically teleported across the room.

  Augustine stepped back from the now-empty chair and turned around. He regarded Kallie with a speculative expression. “Why is it, I wonder, that my spell to release magicked items from the nullifying power of the sigils released you?”

  “Because you trapped me there and only fooled me into thinking you hadn’t,” Kallie said, rearranging and rebelting her robe. She smoothed the pink terry cloth into place. “Or maybe it took a moment for the gris-gris mojo to wear off.”

  Augustine looked unconvinced. “Must be quite a powerful talisman to have kept you in that chair. Normally, the chair would’ve rendered the bag useless, not trapped its wearer.”

  Kallie shrugged. “Belladonna knows her shit.”

  “I have no doubt, but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if you sat down in the chair again without the bag.”

  White-hot pain pounded at Kallie’s temples and uneasiness twisted through her guts. Damned hangover. “Wonder all you want. I’m still not convinced you ain’t playing games.” She held out her hand for her pendants.

  “I assure you that I’m not, Ms. Rivière.” Augustine gave her back the gris-gris bag, then coiled the pendants and their chains into the palm of her hand. “Perhaps you might indulge me? For curiosity’s sake?”

  “If you’re so goddamned curious, plant your own ass in that chair. I’m not going anywhere near it again.” Kallie put her pendants back on, fastening the clasps with practiced ease.

  “Excuse me? Are you saying you won’t go anywhere near my ass again?”

  “No! The goddamned chair.”

  An amused smile quirked up the corners of Augustine’s mouth. “Ah.”

  A polite knock sounded at the door. “Room service.”

  “My bruschetta and coffee,” Kallie said, pleased with the interruption. She tucked the gris-gris bag back into her pocket.

  Augustine looked at her for a moment, as if he was considering tossing her into the chair again; then he nodded. “Indeed. Let’s get you fed and settled then, shall we?”

  “Let’s.”

  Augustine strode to the door, unlocked it, and swung it open. A young woman with café-au-lait skin and platinum-blonde curls walked into the room, a plastic dome-covered tray in her hands. She looked familiar and Kallie figured she’d probably delivered food to her and Gage the night before; the fruit, cheese, and bread platter that had turned out to be his final meal. Kallie blinked, eyes burning.

  Still holding the doorknob, Augustine looked at the woman from over his shoulder. “Rosette,” he said, his voice mystified. “You also work in the kitchens?”

  “Only today, m’sieu,” she—Rosette—replied. She stopped beside Kallie and placed the tray on the table. She grasped the dome’s knob.

  Kallie’s nose wrinkled. Beneath the garlic and tomato and fresh coffee scents, she caught a faint whiff of something off—rotten eggs—maybe from the hall, maybe from Rosette’s pockets. Something that smelled like sulfur.

  Alarm prickling along her nerves, Kallie glanced out the partially open door into the hall and spotted boot soles. Her heart springboarded into her throat. Someone was down. Sprawled on the carpet. Her gaze whipped back to Rosette.

  Black dust. The HA guards. And facing her—the bitch who’d laid the deadly trick in her bed and killed Gage.

  Memory clicked into place and Kallie knew where she’d seen Rosette before: the maid from upstairs, the one holding a vacuum’s handle and staring wide-eyed as she and Belladonna had raced down the hall to Dallas’s prone body.

  “Shit! Augustine!”

  Rosette tossed aside the plastic dome and scooped up the gun lying beside the plate of bruschetta—a gun Kallie suspected the maid had lifted from one of the drugged and fallen guards. Lips thinned with determination, face pale and beaded with sweat, the maid aimed the gun at Kallie’s forehead with locked and trembling hands.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, “but an eye for an eye is never
enough.”

  Mama turns and faces her, aims the gun carefully between her shaking hands. Her hands shake, but her face is still, resigned.

  “Sorry, baby. I ain’t got a choice.”

  Blood roaring in her ears, Kallie hooked a hard left into the maid’s nose. Bone crunched beneath her fist.

  Blood slicked her knuckles. The maid staggered, the gun wavering in the air, then quickly leveling. Her finger flexed against the trigger.

  Time pulsed to a stop.

  Rough hands latched onto Kallie’s shoulders, and spun her away. Augustine’s suit jacket whispered against her robe as he twisted his body past hers. Thunder cracked through the room, spiking pain through Kallie’s ears.

  Mama pulls the gun’s trigger and the side of Papa’s head explodes in a spray of blood and bone. He slumps down in his chair, a bottle of Abita still in his hand.

  “No!” the woman cried.

  Augustine grunted. He stumbled against Kallie, slamming her into the wall as he toppled into a boneless heap on the slate floor. The back of Kallie’s skull thumped against the plaster and into it. A kaleidoscopic burst of fireworks detonated behind her eyes in a dazzling and dizzying array of color.

  Kallie blinked the nauseating sparkles from her vision in time to see the murdering bitch again aim the gun at her forehead.

  Mama pulls the trigger again.

  Kallie moved without thinking, shoving away from the wall, her adrenaline-amped muscles straining forward with everything she had. She tackled Rosette, and they both hit the floor with a bone-rattling thud. The maid’s breath whoofed out of her lungs. A second round of fireworks dazzled Kallie’s vision. Then another ear-piercing peal of thunder exploded through the room.

  Mc Kenna slapped the button for the fifteenth floor, the three-inch-long pile of silver bracelets encircling her wrist clinking musically. Muzak—a fast-paced zydeco that sounded like a kissing cousin to an Irish reel—spilled from ceiling speakers as the elevator doors schunked shut.

  “So the whole clan is coming to see Gage off?” Layne asked. He leaned against the mirrored back wall, hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket. A button she’d given him reading raised by wolves was pinned to its right lapel, and a button underneath it asked: NO STRAITJACKETS?? WHAT KIND OF PLACE IS THIS??