Black Dust Mambo

by Adrian Phoenix

  Like magic.

  And speaking of will-laced words and magic . . . Jean-Julien scooped up the Belladonna and Kallie poppets and stuffed one into each front pocket of his voluminous jeans. Out of tourist sight, out of tourist mind. He picked up the waiter poppet. Turning his chair around so that its back rested against the table’s edge, he sat back down, the poppet in hand.

  Closing his eyes, Jean-Julien drew in a deep breath, then centered himself. Tuned out the cheerful noise buzzing around him and focused on the steady rhythm of his heart and the pounding drums from the hall’s tribal circle.

  Placing the tips of his index fingers over the poppet’s black-button eyes, Jean-Julien whispered, “Mine thou art, your eyes, your body, and heart. I see what you see. I hear what you hear. And you do as I do, following each command true.”

  The darkness behind Jean-Julien’s closed eyes faded, and he became aware of another bright room, one bustling with activity as men and women in white uniforms and caps clattered pans onto massive stoves and griddles.

  He looked out through the waiter’s eyes, and it felt exactly like looking through the eyeholes of a plastic Halloween mask as his vision narrowed down to small dead-ahead spots. He heard the sound of his breath as if it bounced back from the mask’s confines.

  “Fetch a late snack and drinks for the guards. Do it now.”

  Obediently following Jean-Julien’s instructions, the waiter grabbed bowls of chocolate pudding and swirled whipped cream on top of each. He grabbed coffee cups, a carafe of coffee, sweeteners, and cream, and loaded everything on a metal serving cart.

  “Add the special spices contained in the vial secreted in your pocket. My word is—as always—holy fire.”

  White-uniformed figures danced past the waiter, frowns on their faces as he plowed ahead without altering his course. Shoving the cart through swinging metal doors, he wheeled it along the hallway until he found a quiet and empty spot.

  “Now add the special spices.”

  Jean-Julien moved the poppet’s stubby arms in a mixing motion.

  “Your will my desire,” the waiter whispered as, with slow and jerky movements, he managed to fumble the vial of black oil from his pocket, thumb free the stopper, then tip the vial upside down.

  And empty it into one bowl of pudding.

  Jean-Julien wished he could slap a hand over his forehead. The potion had been intended for several guards—not just one. But perhaps this would work best. The concentration required to keep several zombified guards on task might’ve proved overwhelming even for Doctor Heron. He continued moving the poppet’s arms.

  The waiter picked up a spoon and stirred the black liquid with its tiny bits of paper command into the pudding. Then he resumed his journey to the sixteenth floor.

  After watching the waiter deliver the snacks, Jean-Julien ordered him to bring the spoon of the guard who ate the jinxed pudding once the man had finished his dessert.

  Jean-Julien opened his eyes, tucked the waiter poppet into his pocket on top of the Belladonna doll, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  The key to Rosette’s rescue had been slid into the lock. Now all he needed to do was turn it—when the right moment came.

  His stomach rumbled, reminding him of all the energy he’d just expended and needed to replenish before laying any more tricks. He needed every ounce of strength possible to make sure he didn’t fail a second time with Kallie Rivière.

  Jean-Julien stood. He swiveled his chair back around, then sat once more. He picked up the salami, pastrami, tomato, and olive relish sandwich he’d purchased when he’d picked up his coffee, unwrapped it, and ate with gusto.

  As he ate, his thoughts rolled back to his final conversation with Gabrielle, a conversation that had replayed through his mind off and on for the last twenty-five years, the living embodiment of that old saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

  “I be fooling myself, oui? You ain’t ever gonna leave Babette.”

  “I never told you I would, Gabi. And now that she’s pregnant . . . No, love, Babette will always be my wife and the mother of my child. I love her, for true.”

  “You know nothing of love—just need. You done fooled us both.”

  “Gabi, ma belle ange, you’re my passion, the fire in my—”

  “The plaything in your bed. I found the poppet, Jean-Julien. I took it apart and removed my name. I burned it.”

  “What the hell you talking about? There’s no poppet.”

  “Not anymore, there ain’t. And there’s no longer any us. We’re through. Go back to Babette and stay in her arms—if she’ll have you, you sorry excuse for a man.”

  Two weeks later, Jean-Julien had found himself handcuffed and tossed in jail on multiple murder charges when a handful of his clients died of poisoning. At first he’d thought some kind of horrible mistake had been made, had even wondered if he’d mismeasured certain ingredients. But then he’d remembered the good-bye Gabrielle had hurled at him as she’d stood in the doorway of the weather-warped swamp shack known as Doctor Heron’s office.

  “I’ll make damned sure you never hoodoo another woman into your bed again, Jean-Julien St. Cyr.”

  A dark promise she’d fulfilled, beyond what he imagined even her expectations had been. With Babette so ill with morning sickness that lasted all day, Gabrielle LaRue had been the last woman he’d slept with.

  Swallowing the final bite of his sandwich, Jean-Julien wiped his fingers clean with a napkin. He pulled the Kallie poppet from his pocket.

  And now I have a promise for you, my bitter and lying Gabi. Those you love most are going to die, and you’ll spend the rest of your miserable life alone, locked within the prison cell of your cold, cold heart.

  But first, he needed to get Gabrielle’s niece away from the hotel and any protection offered her by the Hecatean Alliance. Needed to get her alone.

  Bringing the poppet to his lips, Jean-Julien whispered, “I command you, Kallie Rivière, I compel you. Mine thou art and my bidding you desire, no will of your own, my word holy fire.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  THE VOICE OF THY BROTHER

  Kallie paced the waiting room’s pristine and polished floor, her sandals clacking against the tiles with each step. The air smelled of fresh roses and carnations mingled with the clean scent of lemon—aromas to aid health and healing.

  “You’re wearing a groove in the floor, Shug,” Bella-donna said, voice soft.

  “Don’t care,” Kallie replied.

  She couldn’t believe what had happened to Dallas—stabbed multiple times, his throat cut. No way that was a pissed-off husband. If that guy, Belladonna’s spying Wiccan neighbor, hadn’t walked in when he had . . . Her throat tightened.

  “It’s safe to assume that whoever attacked Mr. Brûler is a coconspirator of Ms. St. Cyr rather than the usual disgruntled individual seeking payback,” Layne-Augustine said. “So we shall have to place you in protective custody once more.”

  “Great,” Kallie growled. “The last time we did that, you ended up dead.”

  “Indeed,” the Brit murmured. He stood beside Felicity’s chair, in damp trousers and shirt, still barefoot.

  Kallie shot a glance at the double doors at the end of the hall. “When will we hear something?”

  “I don’t know,” Felicity said. “Given the severity of Mr. Brûler’s wounds, I believe the surgeons and healers have their hands more than full.”

  Kallie also heard what Felicity didn’t say: He may not survive. Prepare yourself. If Gabrielle—or whoever she actually was—hadn’t sent Dallas to spy on her, he’d be in Chalmette right now in one piece. And up to no good with somebody’s wife or fiancée, most likely, true enough—but in one piece.

  Yeah, and if you hadn’t gotten all high and mighty and decked him, he’d still be following you around at carnival, safe and sound and annoying, with all of his blood circulating through his veins. He was only doing as Gabrielle asked.

  Gabrielle. Mingled p
ain and fury burned a hole in Kallie’s heart. Maybe Augustine had been right from the start: Gabrielle had set her and Dallas up to be murdered. Although she couldn’t come up with a single reason why her aunt would want either of them six feet under.

  Gabrielle was a woman more than willing to get her own hands dirty, and possessed a strong DIY work ethic. If she’d wanted Kallie and Dallas dead, they’d probably be gator food at this very moment.

  If the woman truly was her aunt and not some impostor.

  If? C’mon, Kallie, she must be. Maybe Gabrielle ain’t her real name, but who raises someone for nine years, then inexplicably has them murdered—especially when no inheritance is involved?

  But the memory of her mother’s voice, her soft words, underscored the power of the inexplicable: “I’m sorry, baby. I ain’t got a choice.”

  Kallie’s chest tightened. The matter of her aunt would have to simmer on the back burner for the moment. She had no intention of allowing Augustine to trap her inside a sigil-warded room, helpless and unable to do anything but wait. She also had no intention of twiddling her thumbs like a good little victim and waiting for the goddamned killer to play his next goddamned hand. No, she planned to find the cold-blooded sonuvabitch and stop him.

  Uh-huh. And how, exactly, was she planning on doing that when she didn’t even know what the goddamned bastard looked like?

  Her thoughts tumbled through memory’s trapdoor into a storm-lashed night from her past—a night eight years ago.

  Wind whips Gabrielle’s long hair into knotted, rain-wet spirals as she stands in a tangle of sawgrass and low-crawling peppervine, her face glistening with rain as she stares at the pitiful form sprawled in the grass beneath a white-blossomed dogwood.

  Kallie stands beside a Spanish-moss-draped old oak ten yards back, her heart pounding so hard her entire body rocks with each beat. Rain trickles warm down her face.

  Rain also drips from the brim of Sheriff Alphonso’s plastic- protected hat. “Her name is Sandra Findley, and I called you here first ahead of everyone else, Miss LaRue, cuz the sumbitch who snatched and killed this girl is purest evil, for true,” he says, his voice as tight as a coiled whip. His hands grip the gun belt strapped around his hips. “I plan to use every goddamned resource at my disposal to bring this monster to justice. And I’m hoping you can tell me who did this before I take word of her murder to her folks.”

  “And before de blood washes away,” Gabrielle replies. “I’ll do my best, Sheriff.”

  “I’ll appreciate anything you can give me.”

  Gathering her long cranberry-red skirt in one hand, Gabrielle

  crouches beside the woman’s head—no, not a woman, she’s probably younger than Kallie, thirteen or maybe twelve, her jeans yanked past her hips, her shirt and bra shoved above her small breasts—a girl who will never draw another breath, let alone become a woman.

  Gabrielle murmurs, “Come here, child.”

  Even though the rain is Gulf warm, Kallie feels cold down to the bone. She pads across the sawgrass, her sneakers squelching in the mud underneath, and stands behind her aunt. Swallowing hard, her muscles so tight they thrum beneath her skin, she looks at the dead girl. The girl’s blood, black as oil in a stark flash of lightning, glistens in the grass around her bashed-in head and shines in her dark hair.

  Delicate white flowers from the dogwood decorate the girl’s body, ghost blossoms in the stormy dark. In the distance, thunder rumbles.

  Gabrielle slips a small blue bottle from her skirt pocket, swivels, and hands the herb-filled bottle to Kallie. “Fill my palms, girl.”

  Unstoppering the bottle, Kallie does as her aunt requests and empties the bottle into her aunt’s cupped, rain-wet palms. The green and bitter scent of ragweed and vervain wafts into the air until the rain scrubs the scent away.

  “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,” Gabrielle prays, rubbing the herbs together in her hands, into her skin, consecrating herself as a tool of divination. “Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint Joan of Arc, Saint Gerard Majella, and Saint Moses, I seek de truth in de name of de Father, and de Son, and de Holy Spirit. Baron Samedi, god of the crossroads, please unlock de mystery of dis poor child’s death.”

  Gabrielle leans forward and plants one herb-dusted palm in the blood puddle seeping out from underneath the dead girl’s skull, then closes her eyes.

  Sheriff Alphonso shifts, his boot soles squeaking against the wet sawgrass—a restless sound swallowed up by the drumming rain.

  Twilight-purple light flares around Gabrielle’s fingertips, glimmers in the pool of blood. “I be asking de same question bon Dieu once put to Cain; ‘What have you done? De voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from de ground.’”

  Bayou-steeped power shimmers into the moist air, lifting the hair on Kallie’s arms and goosebumping her skin. She hears the sheriff’s boots squeaking against the grass again as he takes another step away from Gabrielle.

  “Sandra, chère , show me who did dis awful t’ing to you.”

  “Ms. Rivière? Hello? Anyone in? Anyone at all?”

  Felicity’s smooth voice hooked Kallie and reeled her up from the past. She focused on Augustine’s assistant, her pulse pounding hard through her veins.

  “Ah, there you are,” Felicity said. “I’ve been trying to tell you that I have your cell phone. Lord Augustine told me you needed it.”

  “Great,” Kallie breathed, clacking over to where the Bondalicious Babe sat. Felicity handed her the cell, and Kallie tucked it into a front pocket of her cutoffs. She shifted her gaze to Layne-Augustine. “Listen, I need to visit the room where Dallas was attacked—provided that the blood hasn’t been cleaned up yet.”

  The Brit glanced at Felicity and arched an eyebrow.

  “No, it hasn’t,” Felicity said. “I thought it best to preserve the scene in the event that Mr. Brûler either doesn’t survive surgery or that he survives, but remains unconscious and incapable of providing us with a description of his assailant.”

  Kallie blinked. “Doesn’t survive surgery . . .” To hear her fear spoken aloud chilled her blood. She rapped her knuckles against one of the wood arms of Felicity’s chair. Just in case. Little Miss Bondalicious regarded her with an amused smile.

  “My, my, my. Perhaps I should knock on wood too, since I’m the one who spoke.”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Kallie agreed.

  Felicity politely tapped her knuckles against the arm of her chair.

  Layne-Augustine shook his head. “I’m afraid I must refuse your request. It simply isn’t safe.”

  “It wasn’t a request, and you ain’t got a right to refuse,” Kallie replied, shifting her weight onto one hip and folding her arms beneath her breasts. “I ain’t gonna let you lock me up again. Sorry. I’ll sign whatever waiver you want so you don’t hafta worry about being sued, but I’m going to find this asshole before he realizes Dallas isn’t dead and before he comes looking for me.”

  “I see. And how do you plan to accomplish that?”

  “Blood divination.” Kallie decided it was wisest not to mention that it was a method she’d never tried before. “And I need to do it now, before the blood congeals and before that goddamned murdering sonuvabitch gets the drop on anyone else.”

  “Hellfire,” Belladonna breathed. “Do you—”

  Staring at her, Kallie jerked her head to one side in a little please-follow-my-lead motion. “No, I don’t need any help. You stay here and wait for Dallas, okay?”

  “Um . . . good. Okay,” Belladonna said. Slipping her black shoulder bag free, she handed it to Kallie. “Just in case you need anything.”

  Kallie looped the strap over her head and across her shoulder. “You never know,” she said, offering her friend a grateful smile.

  Layne-Augustine said, “I don’t believe a waiver will be necessary, since you signed one absolving the Prestige and the Hecatean Alliance of any responsibility for injuries incurred due to magic or malice when you regist
ered.”

  Kallie blinked. Oh. She really needed to start reading the fine print on stuff. “Okay, great. All I need then is the room key.”

  “You mean we need the room key, since I’ll be accompanying you,” Layne-Augustine said. “And I believe we need to hurry if we’re to get to the blood before it’s no longer readable, correct?”

  Kallie nodded. “That we do.” Even though she would have preferred to go alone, this was a compromise she could live with.

  Felicity handed the Brit a keycard. “The sixth floor, my lord. And I’ll send a pair of guards to meet you.”

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Fields. Please keep Ms. Brown company until we return.”

  “Of course.”

  As Kallie swung around and headed for the elevators at the waiting room’s mouth, dizziness whirled through her, spinning her thoughts like a weather vane caught in a tornado. She stumbled and, throwing out a hand, caught herself against the wall.

  Faraway voices, small and indistinct as though shouting into a high wind, buzzed against her mind. One sounded like Augustine; the other was unfamiliar and belonged to a man, a voice that somehow made her think of her long-dead papa.

  “C’mere, chère . Where you been, ma ’tit monde? How was school?”

  Her headache returned with a vengeance, throbbing behind her eyes and at her temples with a hard and nauseating rhythm. The pungent aroma of licorice filled her nostrils.

  A cold certainty iced Kallie’s mind and rocketed her pulse into light speed. Someone was trying to compel her. Working to dominate her.

  Electricity tingled beneath her skin, thrummed in her bones. The mojo bag tucked into her bra burned against her breast, its protective magic triggered. Ignoring the pain pulsing in her head and forcing the nausea back down, Kallie concentrated on surrounding herself with glowing white steel.

  “Back to you your spell will bounce, my will ain’t giving an ounce,” she whispered. “Compel to your black heart’s content, my will and desire ain’t gonna be bent.”