by Maria Luis
They all had secrets to hide, and I was particularly adept at uncovering their fears.
“Nobody bothered you, right?” Katie asked, leaning one shoulder against the door to her bedroom. “You know I worry.”
Katie and I had met at the strip club a few years back. I’d gone with a client who promised me a good time after I’d finished his tarot reading, and I’d been desperate enough for human interaction that I’d agreed to go with him. Three hours later, my “date” had decided to wine and dine a tourist from Montana, and I’d drank one too many cocktails at the bar. Katie had lent me extra clothes when I’d puked all over myself, and she’d listened when I confessed that there had to be something wrong with me: no matter how many times I tried to let a man touch me, I couldn’t.
“You a lesbian?” she’d asked after sipping on the salted rim of a margarita. “That’s cool.”
“I’m not a lesbian. I’m just like . . .” No words fit. How did I explain that what I wanted and needed were two different things? I needed men as a gender to stay far away from me, and, yet, I still wanted a man to get me off. Not that my brain ever turned off long enough for that to happen. “I’m me,” I’d finally muttered pathetically.
Or rather, I was no one.
A figment of mashed identities, hoping to survive yet another day.
“I was good all night,” I told Katie, refusing to meet her eye. If she caught onto the fact that I’d had a run-in with the sergeant, she’d never let it go. “Is that”—I lowered my voice—“George in there?”
Katie’s mouth lifted in a wicked grin. “George and Tyler.”
I laughed, not even scandalized by her overt sexuality. Just because I was messed up in the head didn’t mean my roommate deserved to live the abstinent life right along with me. “Get it, girl.”
“I already have, and I plan to do so again. I keep trying to convince them to, you know.”
“Fight swords?”
Her blue eyes lit with humor. “Hell, I wish. At this point I’m just hoping for a damn kiss between the two of them. It’s not every day you get two hot military dudes in your bed at once.”
I stepped behind my makeshift closet curtain and drew it closed. Stripped off my work clothes—too-large items I’d found at the thrift shop—and pulled on a pair of leggings and a comfy sweater. “Something tells me that you’re going to have your way by the end of the night.”
Katie’s voice turned hopeful. “You pull a card for me?”
“The deck is in my backpack.” I pushed the curtain to the side. “But I can, if you want.”
Biting her lip, she glanced back at her bedroom door. “I think I might live the spontaneous life tonight.”
“Live your best life,” I teased, dropping onto the sofa. “Promise them double penetration if they swap spit.”
Katie’s bark of laughter echoed in the living room. With a shake of her head, she leaned forward over the back of the couch and wrapped her arms around me for a hug. “Every time I think you can’t surprise me, you do, Avery. I just know you’re a kinky bitch under all those don’t-touch-me vibes.”
Kinky probably wasn’t the best word for me—could virgins be kinky?
According to books like Fifty Shades of Grey, yeah. According to my reality, I’d give it a hard hell-no.
I couldn’t lower my guard long enough for a man to kiss me, never mind take out his dick and put it inside me. A romantic visual, I know, but I didn’t have a romantic bone in my body.
Katie kissed the top of my head like I was a younger sister, which I guess I was. She was thirty-one to my twenty-five, and she was one of those suffocating affectionate people who believed hugs ought to be arm-delivered at least ten times a day.
In my ear, she whispered, “You’ll meet the right guy for you, Aves. And I have a sneaking suspicion he’ll be just as kinky as you.”
Rolling my eyes, I shooed her away with my hands. She skipped back, a tinkling laugh emerging from her lips, before she swung the bedroom door open and announced, “All right, boys, who’s up for a little D-P, huh?”
The door clicked shut behind her, and I drew in a deep breath. Katie didn’t know my history, aside from the basics: I had no family; I’d dropped out of school at the age of thirteen; and I’d spent a large portion of my teenage years bouncing from one homeless shelter to another after Momma was murdered and I was left on my own.
Small as it was, this apartment in the Sultan’s Palace was my most luxurious accommodation yet.
To the left of the couch was a small file cabinet, and I keyed open the top lock and removed a black binder, settling it on my thighs. Because of the whole no-school thing—teachers and administration asked too many questions—reading wasn’t a pastime of mine. Still, a few years back I’d been riffling through the plastic baskets at the French Quarter Market, when I’d discovered a tiny picture frame with a quote that might as well have struck me dead:
If you want to shine, New Orleans will let you thrive. But if you want to hide who you really are, the city will keep your secrets too.
The words had kicked around in my head for days after, taking root deep in my heart and spreading like wildfire.
New Orleans had hidden me; it had harbored me. And now, it gave me the opportunity to discover the truth.
I slipped the binder open, traced the tiny, wooden picture frame I’d squirreled away into my pocket all those years ago, and then flipped past all of my notes.
Lawyers and firefighters, school teachers and strippers.
Whoever brought up Mayor Jay Foley, no matter if the information was told to me in a positive or negative light, went in the binder. His was a name on the tip of everyone’s tongues these days, now that he was up for reelection.
The man tonight had said nothing about my stepfather, and yet for some reason I wanted to remember the cards I’d picked for him. Ruin. Death.
Cruelty.
I wrote it all down, recalling those blue eyes of his and the hard clench of his jaw. My pen scratched against the paper, my crappy penmanship drifting across the page and skipping out of the printed lines.
Sometimes, in life, you couldn’t remain within the confines.
I worried about that. I worried that I’d lived in the shadows of New Orleans for too long and that I would never have all of my answers unless I took that next step. My palms grew sweaty at the thought. I had the courage to watch Foley from afar, picking up information here and there that could ruin him forever.
Whether I had the courage to do more than cling to the shadows—my safety net—remained to be seen.
My eyes fell shut, and I shoved aside the binder. Grabbing the throw blanket off the back of the coach, I wrapped it around my shoulders and stepped out onto our small balcony—another perk to living in the Quarter.
Three stories below, Dauphine Street was dimly lit. A group of tourists meandered down the way, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, green Hand Grenade drinks clasped in tight fists.
“Gimme that! I need more.”
“You always need more . . . in bed.”
Their conversation floated up to the balcony, mingling with the jazz and rap music from Bourbon Street, one block over.
That could have been me.
Living life, hanging out with friends without having to constantly look over my shoulder. Maybe, twelve years after Momma’s death, I should start thinking that Jay Foley had forgotten all about me, about his stepdaughter who’d escaped while he killed another man.
Under any other circumstances, I’d believe that it was all in my head and that I’d grown paranoid over the years.
But then I’d hear him on the radio or see him on TV. I’d listen as he fed the public lies and pretended that my mother had died of cancer, out of the public eye, and not with a single bullet straight to the back of her head, execution-style. I’d listen as he spun a tale of a touching scene with Momma surrounded by loved ones as she passed and not, as events had actually played out, alone in her
dining room while her husband watched the blood soak the antique rug beneath her body. I’d listen as he pretended that I had been so distraught over my momma’s death that I’d spiraled into a depression and taken to inflicting self-harm.
“Laurel was a sweet, sweet girl, but there was nothing anyone could do to save her,” he’d told the media. “I doubt she even realized what taking too many pills might do to her sweet, little body.”
He’d effectively killed me without pulling the literal trigger.
And then he’d held a funeral, leveraging a body that was not mine into the Foley family tomb in St. Louis Cemetery #1 on Washington Avenue . . . exactly where I’d ended up, feet bleeding, a year earlier.
In that moment, at the age of fourteen, Laurel Peyton had ceased to exist.
A cry ripped through the night, high-pitched and keening, and the blanket fell from my shoulders to my feet.
Not Momma. It wasn’t Momma.
Another cry, followed by deep, masculine grunting.
Right, Katie orgasming.
Not Momma dying.
Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.
4
Avery
Sergeant Lincoln Asher was back.
It was Sunday night, cold and windy, and most of the other readers had already packed up for the evening.
You should have too.
Yeah, clearly, I’d missed the memo.
Dressed in navy-blue slacks, just like last night, and the same jacket over his baby-blue NOPD uniform shirt, he covered the short distance between Pirate’s Alley, nestled alongside St. Louis Cathedral, and my table. Without a word, he pulled out the chair opposite mine and dropped his big body onto it.
The chair’s legs squealed under the sudden onslaught of his muscular frame and then quieted, as though understanding that the sergeant was not a man to piss off.
Which was possibly the only reason that I opened my mouth and attempted to do just that: “Still alive?”
His full lips didn’t twitch at my snarky jab. “Don’t sound so disappointed.”
“Trust me, I’m not.”
Blue eyes zeroed in on my face. “You’re not disappointed that I’m alive?”
My brain pin-wheeled, trying to unravel the riddle of his words. “What? No. I meant that of course I’m disappointed.”
“Of course.” He drew out his wallet from his jacket and pulled money from the cash pocket. A crisp hundred-dollar bill winked at me just before he pinned Benjamin Franklin to the table with his palm.
“What is that?”
“What’s it look like?”
Unease settled in my limbs, as did a ball of disgust. Familiar memories of unknown hands, groping my body awake, boiled deep, and I purposely cut eye contact with him to drink some of my hot chocolate. “I’m not sucking your dick, Sergeant.”
Briefly, so briefly I wondered if I’d imagined it, his mouth tightened with displeasure. “Did I ask you to suck my dick?”
My gaze dropped to the money.
“I want you to read my cards,” he growled, “the way you did for that woman yesterday.”
“You mean, you want me to tell you what you want to hear?” I leaned forward, catching the flash of his blue eyes. “Let me tell you something.” I tapped the corner of the Benjamin Franklin, making sure not to touch his hand. “You could put five-hundred bucks on this table, and I still wouldn’t suck your dick.”
That did it.
His features hardened, and my breath caught. Yesterday, he’d been relatively easygoing, halfway engaging. Right now, there was nothing easy about Lincoln Asher. Callous was the first word to come to mind. Cruel was the next, as though he was a man so deep in hell that he’d not seen sunlight in years.
“If you were any other woman, I’d test that theory of yours.”
My back straightened at the punishing note in his voice. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that everyone has a price, and I’ve got no doubt that yours is lower than most.” He matched my pose, leaning in, twining Benjamin between his index and middle fingers like the most enticing bite of candy I’d ever seen. “It means,” he went on, voice low, “that I followed you home last night and I saw where you lived. I’ve been in those apartments before, and it’s no secret that your living situation isn’t exactly high-society living. Five hundred bucks would go a long way for you.”
I . . . I—
There was something obviously wrong with me. My fingers trembled and my knees locked together and my breathing sounded erratic even to my own ears, and I was . . . aroused. For the first time in my life, I was turned on, and it figured that after a childhood like mine, a stalker would be the thing to harden my nipples and make me want to set my hand between my legs.
Arrogant prick.
My hands moved over the Thoth deck, shuffling mindlessly.
Put him in his place.
“I carry a gun.”
I stifled a groan. Of all the things to threaten a police officer with, that was my choice of weapon?
Asher’s dark brows lifted. “You ever fire it?”
“Yes.” No. I had, however, made use of my taser on multiple occasions when the situation called for it.
“At what?”
A hard swallow stuck in my throat. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
His husky laughter rang loud in my ears. “You’re a shit liar.”
“I wasn’t lying.”
“Yeah, sure you weren’t.”
“Do you want me to read your cards or not?”
He fell silent, and for a moment there was nothing but the distant sounds of laughter and screams from Bourbon, mingled with the quiet murmur of Tabby weaving a story of lust and love to her client. I took the reprieve to study him in a way that I hadn’t last night—I didn’t need to have the Sight to know that Lincoln Asher was a dark, restless soul. His sins were apparent in the jagged scars on his cheek, as well as a split in his bottom lip.
The cold weather, maybe, but more likely that he’d taken a fist to the face recently.
Dropping my gaze to his hands, I noted his bruised knuckles with a silent whistle of appreciation. I had no doubt that Sergeant Lincoln Asher had returned the punch tenfold—aside from the break in his bottom lip, his harsh face was otherwise untouched.
Except for the scars, of course.
Blue eyes seared me when I met his gaze, and those icy depths were as turbulent as the waters swirling in the Mississippi River. “I want to know my future,” he said roughly. “My past . . .” An equally rough laugh reverberated in his chest, the sound so devoid of emotion that it might as well have been a gust of wind without a storm. “I don’t give a fuck about my past.”
I slipped a card from the deck, setting it facedown on the table. “You can’t run from the past.” I knew that for a fact—on the rare occasions when I tried to let go of the hate, a trip of fate always had me right back at the start again, staring at Jay Foley’s face on some screen and remembering that he’d ripped my world straight from under my feet.
I pulled two more cards and settled them on top of the first—the stack of three would represent the sergeant’s heart.
If he even had one.
Card by card I laid out the rest of the spread, all the while wondering why a man like Asher would be so utterly consumed with something so fanciful as tarot readings. Then again, it was human nature to crave the unknown, to be titillated by the notion that with the flick of a wrist and the flash of a card, your destiny could be revealed.
Setting the deck aside, I drew my heavy jacket deeper over my shoulders to ward off the late-night chill. “I can’t read your future without acknowledging the past.” With my index finger, I gently tapped a selection of cards on the left half of the spread. “You’ll find that your reading is uneven, unexplained, and whatever answers you seek will have a bottomless pit.” At his silence, I added, “But I can read to you what’s in your heart, what it desires most above everything else. Mayb
e that, combined with your future, will make up for ignoring the rest.”
5
Lincoln
I dipped my chin toward the spread she’d laid out. “That’s fine,” I said, like my heart actually factored into the equation—as though it had factored into any equation during the last thirty-four years. I agreed to what she said as though I gave a fuck about what a set of cards might tell me.
Despite my initial reaction to her reading last night, I firmly believed that free will triumphed over destiny or the fates or whatever the hell people were calling it nowadays. My actions had direct consequences, and on the flip of a dime, I could find myself in a very different situation than I had ten minutes earlier.
The cards weren’t why I was here tonight.
No, I was here because of her, this unnamed woman who lived in one of the largest homes in the Quarter, though its (alleged) tortured past meant that no one gave a shit that the stories of murdered sultans and flayed human body parts were nothing more than rumored fabrications regurgitated for every tourist who wandered past on a tour.
This woman intrigued me, with the way she’d hugged the shadows last night, as though unnerved that somebody might be watching.
I’d watched, but like I’d told her, I’d done so to ensure she made it home safe.
Because you suddenly have a heart?
Yeah, not quite. Or rather, not at all. I’d left that son of a bitch behind in my first foster-home stint. I had no use for it, not then and not now either, which was further proof that this hazel-eyed girl had somehow ground herself under my skin.
There was no tangible reason for my sudden fascination with her, but here I was, ready to pay her to tell me my fortune . . . simply because I’d wanted another chance to talk with her.
Silently, I watched as she flipped over the first card—my “heart’s innermost desires,” she’d said—and sat back in her chair, a little frown tugging down her lips. She adjusted her jacket again, drawing it closed over her chest even though two buttons were missing.
