Black Dust Mambo

by Adrian Phoenix

  So that had bothered her, at least. Small comfort. Gage had been more than murdered; he’d been destroyed. And maybe that was why she’d come with a gun this time instead of waiting for Kallie in a magic-allowed zone with another soul-shredding hex.

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” the maid said. “How did you know?”

  “That doesn’t matter. What does matter is why.”

  Rosette lifted her gaze, sunlight shimmering in her cropped platinum-blonde curls. The vulnerability Kallie had seen before was gone. Now a cold, hard light glinted in her eyes. “Your fate comes compliments of Gabrielle LaRue, and you can thank her for it,” she said. “You want answers? Ask her.”

  Kallie had half expected those words or others like them, given the wet curl of paper she’d dumped from the eviscerated poppet, but to hear the lie spoken aloud hit as hard as a low-hanging tree branch snapped back by a grinning and obnoxious cousin.

  “Who are you?” Kallie repeated. Her pulse pounded in her temples.

  “Check my employee file,” the maid said, her voice flat.

  “That’s it for the Q-and-A session,” the guard said, swinging his other hand up. “You need to vacate the room so we can move her to a secure location.”

  “A secure location? Y’all got such a thing?” Kallie asked, glancing across the room at Augustine. A sheet now draped his bloodied form. A pang pierced her. “I thought this was a secure location. So did he.” She gave her gaze back to the guard.

  His jaw tightened and he shifted, his boot soles scuffing the slate. “A more secure location,” he replied. “You need to leave, miss.”

  “Not a problem, sir,” Belladonna said, handing Kallie a beige blanket. “We’ll get our butts in gear.”

  Kallie twirled the blanket up over her shoulders and clasped it closed in front of her. No longer feeling quite as exposed, vulnerable, some of the tension leaked from her muscles. “Thanks, Bell.”

  “Hellfire. There’s that word again,” Belladonna said. “Twice in one day. Either you’ve got a concussion or you’ve been replaced by a pod person.”

  “Maybe a thump to the skull will convince you otherwise.”

  “I think I’d prefer the polite pod-Kallie to the skull-thumping non-pod version.”

  “And I bet the pod-Belladonna would be quiet. As quiet as a mouse in a library.”

  Belladonna snorted. “Now you’re just delirious.”

  The guard sighed. “Time to go, ladies.”

  As Kallie started for the door, Rosette called, “All of this and anything else that’s coming can be laid upon the doorstep of Gabrielle LaRue. Remember that.”

  Kallie paused. “The only doorstep Gage and Augustine’s deaths can be laid upon is yours. And yours alone.” She resumed walking as guilt shifted inside of her, restless and cold, a snake seeking the sun.

  Dunno, Kallie-girl. Maybe the blame ain’t hers alone.

  “Do you know what the crazy bitch is talking about?” Belladonna asked.

  Kallie shook her head. “Not really. She claims to have some kinda grudge against Gabrielle.” Stopping in the doorway, she turned and looked at Augustine’s body one last time.

  Blood had soaked through the sheet in a couple of quarter-sized spots. She tried to think of something to say, something meaningful, a good-bye and thank-you to the man who had taken a bullet for her, had died in her place, but—once again—her aching mind only tossed out clichéd and trite crumbs.

  Wish I could turn back time. . . .

  I can never repay you. . . .

  I’m so sorry. . . .

  Thank you. . . .

  “Eternal rest grant unto him, O bon Dieu,” she whispered, but the rest of the prayer wisped away like smoke beneath a ceiling fan, the words beyond her recall. “Good journey,” she wished him. Turning away, she walked out of the room, Belladonna a patchouli-scented pace behind her.

  Kallie was surprised to see Dallas sitting on a black metal bench against the opposite wall, his jeans-clad legs stretched out in front of him. His red hair stuck up in various odd places on his skull and was flattened down in others; his good-looking face bristled with reddish whiskers. But at least he looked a damned sight better than when she’d last seen him. He was conscious, for one thing.

  Relief flashed across Dallas’s face when he saw her. Jumping to his feet, he said, “Hey, darlin’. You okay? You’re looking a little rough.”

  “There’s the pot calling the kettle black,” she drawled. “Take a look in the mirror lately?”

  A rueful grin tugged at Dallas’s lips. “Afraid it’d crack if I did, and I don’t wanna add to my sudden run of bad luck.” He raked the fingers of both hands through his hair—for all the good it did. His hair remained spiked and flattened. “But you ain’t answered me. You okay, hon?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Compared to the condition Basil Augustine and Gage Buckland are in, a little rough ain’t nothing to complain about.”

  Dallas nodded, sympathy in his summer-evening-blue eyes. “True enough. Let’s head on outta here then. Maybe you should forget the rest of the carnival and head on home.”

  “Maybe. But that’s for me to decide, Mr. Bossy. By the way, why are you spending money on a hotel room when you live so close?”

  “Yes, Dallas, why, oh, why, pray tell?” Belladonna said, tone gleeful.

  Dallas glowered at Belladonna from underneath his ginger brows and Kallie saw the accusation in his eyes: Did you blab?

  “Nope,” Belladonna said, apparently seeing the same question in his eyes. “But if you don’t fess up, Dallas Brûler, I will tell her.”

  Kallie groaned. “No confessions until after I’ve had some sleep.”

  “Fair enough,” Dallas agreed, relief in his voice.

  “I’ll make sure you don’t forget,” Belladonna said, patting his shoulder.

  The root doctor aimed a sour look at her. “Thanks.”

  Kallie saw Layne a couple of yards to her left, standing in a little knot of people composed of a pair of HA(!) guards, a tight-jawed Mc Kenna-pixie, and a strawberry blonde in a rose skirt.

  So I did hear the nomads. Wonder what brought them here? And why the hell is Layne cuffed?

  One of the guards slipped a pair of needle-nosed pliers from inside his suit jacket and snipped off the flex-cuffs binding Layne’s wrists. The nomad swung his arms around, then winced. Touching a hand to his sternum, he said, “I had no idea he was injured. This is most inconvenient.”

  Kallie stared at Layne, cold beneath her blanket. Between the gunshots, Augustine’s death, the guilt coiled in the pit of her belly, and her weariness, she had to be hearing things, because she could’ve sworn the nomad had just spoken in a posh British accent.

  “What the hell?” Belladonna asked. “Is Layne mocking Felicity?”

  “Dunno. Who’s Felicity?”

  “Lord Augustine’s assistant. The Bondalicious chick with the Bluetooth and the gorgeous rose-colored pumps.”

  Leave it to Belladonna with her budding America’s Next Top Model fashion sense to notice the color of someone’s shoes. But . . .

  “Bondalicious? Seriously?” Kallie slid Belladonna a side-long glance.

  “Seriously. Look at the woman.”

  “You forgot to mention the knife in her belt,” Dallas grumbled.

  “Knife?” Kallie zipped her gaze back over to the tall, curvy—okay, all right, Bondalicious—strawberry blonde.

  “Long but amusing story,” Belladonna whispered. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Yeah,” Dallas muttered. “Another one I come off well in.”

  “I’ll make arrangements for a healer to meet with you, my lord,” Bondalicious Felicity said in efficient and cheery tones. She touched a finger to the Bluetooth curving from her ear.

  My lord? A dark suspicion sparked in Kallie’s pain-pricked mind.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Fields. Also, please see to it that Beckham receives a promotion to sergeant,” Layne said, continuing in a very definit
e British accent.

  A pleased smile touched the lips of the female member of the guard pair standing beside him. “Thank you, my lord.”

  When Layne spotted Kallie, a smirk played across his lips. An oddly familiar smirk. “Well, well, well, you proved me right, Ms. Rivière, but not in a manner I’d anticipated.”

  “Right?” Kallie repeated, pulse racing. “About what?”

  Rubbing his wrists one after the other, the nomad sauntered over to where she stood in front of the bench. She smelled sandalwood, sweet orange, and soap as he stopped in front of her.

  Layne’s gaze seemed wrong somehow, different, like a stranger looked out of his pine-green eyes—an aloof and coolly amused stranger lacking Layne’s deeply felt and open emotions, his passion.

  Or maybe not a stranger at all.

  “You seem to have a deadly, if not fatal, effect on males,” he said. “Myself obviously included.”

  Kallie’s skin prickled underneath her blanket. “Augustine,” she breathed.

  FIFTEEN

  ON THE WINGS OF THE PAST

  “Shit and hellfire,” Belladonna said. “The nomad told the truth. He is a Vessel.”

  “Indeed,” Layne-Augustine agreed. “A fact I’m quite grateful for.” His gaze slipped past Kallie, and she wondered if he was looking at the room he had died in, the room containing his cooling body. “I want you to know, Ms. Rivière, I appreciate all the effort you made on my behalf in there.”

  Kallie frowned, not sure she’d heard right since her ears were still ringing. “Appreciate? You got shot because of me. You died because of me.”

  Layne-Augustine waved a dismissive hand. “Hardly, Ms. Rivière. I got shot because I wound up in front of a gun barrel, and the bullet in my chest is the reason I died. Not you.”

  “What a bloody lovely reunion this is.” Mc Kenna stalked over, her dark brows slashing down, cold fury icing her eyes. “Do whatever it is you need to do, Basil, then get the hell outta Layne’s body. Ye’ve no idea how much this costs him.”

  “That is what I intend to do, Ms. Blue,” Layne- Augustine replied, trailing a finger along one thick dread. Glancing down at the nearly waist-length, honey-brown tendrils, he murmured, “Do you think he’d mind a haircut? And perhaps clothing that didn’t come out of the Salvation Army or wherever it is you nomads gather your rags?”

  A deadly smile tilted the pixie’s lips. “Try it, ye bloody blighter, and see what happens if you change a single thing about him.”

  Layne-Augustine arched an eyebrow, an expression that gave Layne’s handsome face a naughty-wicked edge. “That’s an empty threat, Ms. Blue, since we both know you won’t do anything that might harm Valin or his body.”

  “Trust me,” Mc Kenna said. “I know ways to make you suffer without causing Layne one wee lick of pain. You forced him into this; you’d goddamned better treat him with respect.”

  Kallie started. “You forced Layne? Why would you do that?”

  A faint scent of sweet and minty wintergreen drifted up from Belladonna’s black leather bag as she leaned into Kallie and whispered into her ear, “Ghost ships are always shanghaied, Shug. It’s one of the reasons Vessels lose their minds.”

  “Ol’ Basil here refused to cross over,” Mc Kenna said, her voice bitter and barbed. “Maybe he’s claiming unfinished business or the shock of a violent and unexpected death, but I’d bet my life that he never even attempted to cross.”

  “Is that true?” Kallie asked.

  “My reasons and my business are my own, Ms. Rivière.” Layne-Augustine’s gaze shifted inward, distant and icy. “Valin was here when he was needed most, and I made use of him. But I assure you both, Valin will be well treated. I—” His gaze lanced past Kallie, and his words broke off.

  She turned around in time to see two guards escorting the cuffed and shackled Rosette into the hall. Rosette looked at Kallie, a fierce and unrepentant light burning in her dark eyes. A smile curved her lips.

  “My, my, my,” a woman’s British-accented voice said. “Her nose appears to be a tad out of joint.”

  “Well said, Mrs. Fields,” Layne-Augustine said. “It turns out that Ms. Rivière is quick with her fists.”

  Guilt squeezed Kallie’s heart. Not quick enough to keep Augustine from getting killed and being in need of someone else’s body. Or to keep Layne in charge of his own.

  “A pugilist, then. How fascinating. Do you accept challenges?”

  “No, I ain’t a prizefighter,” Kallie replied. “I just work off steam.”

  “Ah.” An oddly disappointed sound.

  Kallie lost sight of Rosette’s bruised and luminous face—Joan of Arc marching toward the stake—when the woman’s guards seized her by the biceps and propelled her down the hall toward another pair of polished-steel doors.

  A niggling doubt cavorted at the back of Kallie’s aching mind. The maid hadn’t looked like someone who had just failed and been caught. Of course, she wouldn’t if she was insane. . . .

  The squeak of wheels drew Kallie’s gaze back to the assassination room. A gurney rolled out and into the hall, the thick carpet muffling the squeaks. The bloodstains on the sheet draped over Augustine’s body had grown and spread, twisting into a dark and unfathomable Rorschach design.

  “An intriguing and extremely rare moment,” Layne-Augustine murmured.

  Kallie couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to watch your own dead body headed for the morgue.

  She swiveled back around in time to catch the look on the freckled face of Augustine’s assistant as she watched the gurney that held Augustine’s remains glide away. Something in her expression crumpled. Grief, stark and barren, stripped all the vibrancy from her hazel eyes. She lowered her gaze and stood still and silent, her hands clasped in front of her.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Fields?” Layne-Augustine asked gently.

  The muscles in her slim neck corded. “Quite, my lord,” she replied. She looked up, her eyes once again clear and composed. “The healer shall meet you in your rooms to tend to the nomad’s ribs.”

  “Excellent, thank you.” Shifting his attention to Mc -Kenna, Layne-Augustine said, “You needn’t worry about Valin. I promise to take good care of him and return him to you in even better condition than when I entered him.”

  Both Dallas and Belladonna snorted, and Kallie bit her lower lip to keep from snickering with them like a nine-year-old.

  A faint smile tugged at Layne-Augustine’s lips and one knowing eyebrow lifted.

  “Gage’s family and our clan will be arriving before dawn,” Mc Kenna said. “Layne needs to be here for Gage’s wake and cremation tomorrow.”

  Layne-Augustine frowned. “That doesn’t give me much time.”

  “Ye’d better hurry, then,” the fierce little pixie growled. “Because yer ghostly arse had better be out of him before then.”

  Sighing, Layne-Augustine nodded. “Fair enough.” Turning to Felicity, he said, “Shall we, Mrs. Fields? I have much to do and little time remaining.”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  “Wait, there’s one more thing,” Mc Kenna said. “The bitch who killed Gage—she’s ours. I know you ain’t gonna hand her over to local law, given the circumstances, so I’m invoking Daoine shena liri.”

  Kallie knew that nomads referred to themselves as the Daoine—the People—but she had no idea what the words that’d followed McKenna’s proclamation meant.

  Layne-Augustine rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I hope you won’t also be invoking the Blood Hunt as a method of dispensing justice, Ms. Blue.”

  “How we dispense justice to the soul-murdering bitch is none of yer concern.”

  “Given that I am another of her victims, I believe it is.”

  “Holy Mother,” McKenna muttered, and she jabbed a hand through her black hair, her bracelets clinking. “You saying you wanna participate?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. We’ll discuss the details later, yes?”

  “Later, aye,�
� McKenna replied, voice low and hard. “I’ll drop in on ye tomorrow morning.”

  “Then we’re finished here. Ladies, gentleman . . .” Layne-Augustine paused, eyeing Dallas, then leaned his head toward Felicity’s. Shielding his face with the edge of one hand, he stage-whispered, “And have we determined Brûler’s status?”

  “We have. His status is flirtatious and in need of a shower. But not a threat.”

  “So that’s what I smell,” Kallie teased, pulling an edge of her blanket up over her nose.

  “Well and good, then. Ladies, gentleman, good day. Enjoy the carnival.” Shoving his dreads behind his shoulders, Layne-Augustine strode toward the steel doors and the foyer and cubicles beyond them, Felicity marching briskly at his side.

  Once Layne-Augustine and his Bondalicious assistant had pushed through the doors and out of sight, Mc Kenna twisted around and scooped up a leather jacket lying on the carpet beside the wall—one too large to be her own.

  Must be Layne’s, then.

  The pixie nomad straightened and tossed the jingling jacket over her shoulder. Kallie caught a glimpse of a fox’s red tail painted on the jacket’s back.

  “Will Layne be all right?” Kallie asked.

  Mc Kenna swiveled around to face her, and the mingled fury and contempt blazing in her dark eyes hammered into Kallie with all the force of a lead-loaded boxing glove to the sternum. She sucked in a sharp breath.

  “You dinnae get to ask about Layne,” the leprechaun snapped. “All of this is yer fault. Gage is dead because of you, and so is bloody Basil Augustine, and because he’s dead—many thanks to you—he made use of Layne when Layne could least afford it.”

  “When he’s grieving over Gage,” Kallie said. Guilt looped another cold coil around her heart. “I know, and I wish I could change everything that’s hap—”

  “Spare me,” Mc Kenna spat. “I don’t give a flying fook what ye know or what ye wish. It changes nothing.” She stabbed a finger at Kallie. “Don’t come near me or Layne ever again. Ye do, and yer a dead woman—I promise you.” The nomad spun and stormed away down the hall, slamming through the double steel doors at its end.