Sworn

by Maria Luis

  When she spoke, her voice was ten layers of annoyed. “You let me believe we were literally jumping out of this window.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “You don’t make jokes,” she quipped, dropping her feet onto the platform.

  Eyeing the door to the room—and hearing Templeton calling my name—I followed her through and slammed the window shut. “Seemed like a good time to start,” I muttered, angling her so that she could file through the narrow path that led us down along the building, some forty feet up in the air.

  Her gait incredibly uneven, she tossed back, “I’m pretty sure I liked you more when you were all brooding and surly.”

  “Don’t worry, that Lincoln will be back soon enough and then you’ll remember how much you prefer me cracking jokes.”

  “Just in time for you to kill someone off that list of yours.”

  Hearing the fury in her tone, I snapped, “What the hell are you even talking about?”

  At the end of the building, we turned down, stepping onto the circular stairwell that would lead us to a small, grassy bank just next to the Mississippi River. If it’s even still there. Christ, if it wasn’t—if the river had assumed that spot of land—we were screwed in every meaning of the word.

  Avery’s stilettos echoed like pin drops with each wobbly step she took. “Your list. Josef Banterelli—dead. Micah Welsh—dead. Tom Townsend, missing.”

  I stared at the back of her head, my heart pumping blood that seemed to skip my head completely and head straight south to my legs. They were frozen, unable to move, and I snaked out a hand to grind Avery to a stop, too.

  Her right arm flung backward as she turned to me, her nostrils flaring. A second later, her precious taser was trained on me—aimed right at my crotch. “Don’t touch me.”

  On anyone else, that might have worked.

  On me, she didn’t stand a chance.

  I gripped her wrist, popped the taser free, and dropped the damn thing over the side of the stairwell.

  It took ten seconds for me to hear the plop! of it hitting muddy river water.

  Only a second after that for Avery to lose her ever-lovin’ mind.

  “Are you insane?” she hissed for the second time tonight. “You tell me to keep that on me and then you . . . you—” With sharp jabbing motions, she gestured to where it’d fallen below. “That! You did that!”

  I hooked a hand on her shoulder, turning her back around, and began to march her down the metal steps. “It was safer than you shooting me with it.”

  “Says who? You?”

  “You’re fucked without me, sweetheart. What are you going to do, tell Templeton and his lackeys to hold off a second while you wait for a cab to drive you home? Because, yeah, that’s going to go over real well.”

  Her silence was a personal win, until she cut back with: “Because your car is going to work any better? Like they don’t have it completely swarmed already?”

  “Ah,” I murmured, my tone laced with sarcasm, “but I didn’t park in the lot with everyone else.”

  Shoulders twitching under my hands, she glanced back at me. “Was Zak Benson here tonight?” Her gaze was steady as she waited for my answer, and I had a feeling that no matter which way I answered this for her, she was going to be disappointed.

  Surprise trickled down at my spine as I remembered what Ambideaux had told me—about how he’d stashed another list in my desk drawer as a way to incriminate me if needed.

  Apparently, Avery Washington had filched it when she’d been in my office the other night.

  If I weren’t so furious, I’d applaud her.

  As it was, I just wanted to keep us both safe long enough that we could hash this out somewhere else.

  “Number four,” she said, a little more forceful this time, “was Zak Benson here tonight?”

  I didn’t know what possessed me to tell the truth when I so rarely did in my life. Maybe it was the way she stared at me or maybe it was that I was so damn tired of the lies and everything else. Either way, as soon as I opened my mouth, I should have known it’d be a big mistake:

  “He was the guy on Stage One. The one we watched for close to an hour.”

  26

  Avery

  Betrayal was such a funny emotion.

  You could dole it out in spades, never batting an eye as you cut someone to the quick.

  But the minute it turned your way, exposing your weaknesses and highlighting your insecurities—well, suddenly, it seemed like something you’d never recover from.

  I tore my gaze from Asher, away from the inscrutable expression on his face, and continued down the stairwell.

  Why are you even upset right now? You knew all this going in.

  I’d suspected but I hadn’t known for certain.

  Turns out, hearing the confirmation wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear at all.

  And if he’d been here for Zak Benson tonight—no matter that he’d spent time with me instead—that meant that Tabby was up next. I couldn’t let that happen.

  My fingers twitched, missing the option to yank my taser out of my purse and put it to good use. Without it, I felt vulnerable, weak, and when Asher put his hand on my shoulder to draw me to a stop, I wondered if I could trust him at all . . . or if this was part of some bigger plan to toss me to the wolves.

  “Let me go first,” he muttered, stepping around me. “It’s a ten-foot drop to the grass and you’ll break an ankle if you attempt it.”

  “You sound like you’ve done this a time or two before.”

  Blue eyes touched on my face as he turned his body and gripped the base of the fire stairwell. “From the age of fifteen to sixteen, I was allowed upstairs but was never given permission to enter the rooms. How do you think I learned this stairwell even existed?”

  His body went into freefall before I had the chance to respond. Heart sinking, I lurched forward, hands on the railing, to see him land in a body roll in the grass below.

  I hate how sexy that was.

  Climbing to his feet, he motioned for me to jump.

  I looked down at my heels.

  They were going to have to go.

  In record time, I’d stripped them both off and threw them overboard.

  There was a plunk! of a heel hitting the water, and then a denser thud sound, like it’d landed on the ground below.

  I guess it was a good thing I’d decided that I hated them after all these hours.

  Positioning myself just like Asher had, ass out to the wind, I took a deep, steadying breath. “You can do this,” I whispered to myself.

  “I got you, Avery,” came Asher’s voice below. “It’s not far from you to me.”

  I’d spent most of my life watching out for myself, and it was no different now. If I survived tonight, it’d be because I stayed on top of my game and trusted no one.

  Not even Lincoln Asher.

  The thought twisted my stomach, and I chose that moment to push free.

  My body fell, dropping, dropping, dropping, the cool air rushing up under my dress and hitting my panty-less crotch—

  Sturdy, masculine arms caught me, dragging me inward and keeping me close.

  “Brave girl,” he whispered against my hairline, and I tried, I tried so hard not to melt at the words.

  I was brave.

  I’d always been brave.

  Lincoln Asher didn’t know the half of it.

  “Can you run with no shoes?”

  “I’ve done worse,” I told him, and I could see it in the firm line of his mouth. He wanted to ask questions. He wanted answers.

  What happened tonight wouldn’t happen again, though.

  I’d survived this long by staying cautious, and Asher had slipped under all of that when I’d least expected it. He was dangerous . . . and it wasn’t simply because he’d murdered.

  His hand wrapped around mine, tugging me behind him.

  The soil was damp from being so close to the river, and my toes squished every time t
hey hit the ground with another step.

  We could have run for an hour. We could have run for only ten minutes.

  The darkness was a thief stealing time, and it was only when Asher slowed, disengaging our handhold, that I felt myself breathe a little easier. The field ahead was blessedly empty, aside from one SUV so far off to the right that it was nearly concealed in a thicket of cypress trees.

  “Take this.”

  I glanced at him, shock no doubt written across my face as he held out his gun. “I-I—”

  “You’re getting some life lessons today,” he drawled, shoving the pistol into my hand and slipping my finger over the trigger guard. “Don’t touch the trigger unless you actually plan to shoot. Goes without saying—don’t shoot at me.” Then, he bent down and pulled another gun from his left ankle.

  The man was a dispensary for guns.

  It would be obscene if it wasn’t so sexy.

  No, not sexy.

  “Is the SUV yours?” I asked, fondling the gun like I knew what the hell I was doing.

  “Yup.” He glanced over at me. “You can yell at me and pretend to shoot me once we’re way out of here. Until then . . . stick behind me and don’t say a word.”

  I followed his order, biting my lip to keep from mouthing off.

  In the far distance, I could almost hear the notes of jazz playing. Closer up, there was the gentle rush of the Mississippi River lapping up against the levees. Beneath me, my bare feet shuffled through the short grass.

  Watching Asher as we approached the SUV was like something out of a movie. He dropped to his knees and checked beneath the car. Flicked on the light attached to his pistol and peered into every window. Only when he gave me a nod of approval did we hop inside.

  He started the ignition, put the SUV in drive, and peeled out of the vacant field as though the bats of hell, themselves, were chasing us down.

  “You’re not trembling,” he muttered a few minutes later when we pulled up to a red light. “I figured you’d be shaken to the core.”

  I was, but I wouldn’t let him see it.

  “I think I’ll honestly just feel better after putting on some underwear.”

  That made him laugh, and it was such a nice, deep, reassuring sound that I joined in. The laughter spread like wildfire between us, until we were going at it so hard that the car behind beeped to get us moving when the traffic light switched to green.

  The giggle monster, my momma had always called it. When you’re scared and relieved all at the same time, you’ll laugh until you die.

  Maybe I would.

  Maybe it’d be better that way, to at least know that the laughter was better than the tears.

  When we pulled up at the next red light, the laughter was gone.

  I turned to him, determined to make him open up about his plans for Tabby, only to see the barrel of a gun staring back.

  And Asher wasn’t the one holding it.

  A whimper escaped my lips, and I peered up to see a matching pistol positioned beneath Asher’s jawline.

  “Well, if I haven’t just stumbled right into a little family reunion,” said a voice from the backseat of the car, “the spawn of our lovely city mayor. Or should I say, his bastard son and long-lost stepdaughter. How utterly quaint.”

  The Blood Duet concludes in Defied on May 31st, and is now available for pre-order by tapping on the title.

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  Dear Fabulous Reader

  Hi there! I so hope you enjoyed SWORN, and if you are new to my books, welcome to the family!

  In the back of all my books, I always love to include a Dear Fabulous Reader section that talks about what locations from the book can be visited in real life or what sparked my inspiration for a particular plot point.

  We’ll break it down bullet-point style :)

  The Sultan’s Palace where Avery and Katie live is…real! But, much like in SWORN, the story is very much spun of tall tales and rumors. As the legend goes, a man arrived at the port of New Orleans around the 1860s and immediately rented out the property at Dauphine and Orleans from a well-to-do gentleman. Some months later, a ship arrived in the port and it took a full week for everyone to disembark and make the four-block trek to the house from the docks. Arriving from somewhere in the Middle East, it was a sultan, his harem, and his bodyguards. Once they entered the house, no one was ever seen coming or going until one night, some many months later, when a storm ravaged the city. The next morning, a little boy was running down the street when he caught sight of a trickle of blood leading down the front steps. He rushed to the police precinct, and they all hurried over. Opening the door, what they found turned their stomachs. There was the metallic scent of blood in the air and there were bodies strewn this way and that, all decapitated. They went to the courtyard in search of the sultan, and while the soil was still soggy from the night before, they found him there, his one hand reaching out from the ground, where he’d been buried alive. Who did it? Well, they say it was the first man who’d arrived in the city, perhaps the sultan’s brother who’d orchestrated the whole thing, and who was jealous of all the riches his brother had….PHEW. That was dramatic, am I right? And all untrue, but it makes for a great story and I couldn’t resist using it as the backdrop for Avery’s apartment. It is actually an apartment building today, and thanks to some lovely condo owners who let me in while I was a tour guide, I can say that it’s quite beautiful! But, yep, definitely not the stage of a horrific scene as the stories go! If you are keen to learn more, a quick search of “Sultan’s Palace New Orleans” will bring it right up for you!

  Mr. Luis and I like to joke around that between the two of us, we have all the shadowy parts of New Orleans covered. Him as a police officer for the city, and me, as a former tour guide for a ghost tour company. When beginning SWORN, I became (rather) obsessed with the idea of a book that played in on inner-city politics, quietly hushed events involving our finest men in blue, and the local lore that is so intrinsically New Orleans that it can’t be separated without causing a loss to the city’s culture. New Orleans has been my home for over a decade, and it carries a torch of vitality that anyone who has ever lived here will just say, “Yep, that’s New Orleans for you.” We are a city of people that loves our history, and here are a few ways I pulled that all in to SWORN:

  Tarot readers in Jackson Square—aside from my mother reading Tarot and so having a special place in my heart, I truly wanted to bring this somewhat “otherworldly” feel into SWORN. The readers in Jackson Square are staples of the French Quarter, but they’ve had their rough patches with city ordinances cracking down on them, enforcing permits and times in which they can operate. Moreover, I wanted to show that Tarot isn’t an “evil” thing, and like Avery showed us—it’s all in the way the cards are read. Poor Lincoln! ;)

  The Atchafalaya Basin, also known as “Whiskey Bay”—the Basin has long since been a spot for, unfortunately, crime. Check online and you’ll find article after article about bodies popping up. But what really interested me was the case of Baton Rouge’s serial killer [name redacted here but can be found online] dating to the early 2000’s. In fact, there were two serial killers operating at the same time in the same areas, though they had no known links to each other. Many of the victims were found in their h
omes, but a few were discovered at the base of the bridge of the Basin. When it came to Ambideaux, it felt important that he teeter the line of respectability—and, more specifically, that everything he did was calculated and methodical. A drive out to Whiskey Bay, and therefore seeming “innocent” of any of the people disappearing from New Orleans, fit his profile. Even so, I had to include the term “Whiskey Bay” somehow, and I hope Nat would approve.

  Sex and New Orleans go hand-in-hand. Home to Gallatin Street, a nineteenth-century strip of seven or so blocks that would make anyone quiver in their boots, it was once said that if you could make it on Gallatin, you could make it anywhere in the world. Fast-forward some forty years, and you’d find yourself smack-dub in the middle of the Storyville era, which was a quarantined section within the French Quarter that allowed all brothels to operate without penalty. Naturally, if you operated outside of that area in the Quarter, you’d be shut down immediately. Storyville produced Louis Armstrong—okay, well, he was born there and got his start there—and was the first legalized red light district in the country with some of the madams (i.e. Josie Arlington) making so much money that they mingled with politicians on the regular, owned some of the finest homes in the city, and were take-charge businesswomen, despite the unfortunate business they operated in. The Basement is my little nod to that era in time, which has always fascinated me. And I have to imagine that if Nat had lived at the turn of the century, she would have given any of those ladies a run for their money. Literally!

  Although there are many others, I may have rambled long enough! LOL! If you’re thinking to yourself, “Did this happen in real life, Maria?” Always feel free to reach out. I’m happy to talk New Orleans, and generally speaking, scandalous activities are my favorite discussion topics when it comes to history :)

  Xoxo,

  Maria

  Preview of Say You’ll Be Mine: A NOLA Heart Novel