by Lyra Byrnes
“I will take that, in the place of dem bones. Give it to me, and I will free you from Monsieur Poupee, that nasty pinstripe peasant. Give me the necklace, and the pledge is broken.”
I wavered. Could the Baron really undo the hideous deal with Mr. Doll? No, he was a trickster and a liar. I touched the necklace again, incense burning in my nostrils, and began to lift it, but it slithered out of my fingers. I could feel its small but powerful muscles flexing as it slid across the back of my neck. I looked down and saw the snake's head, its fangs extended.
Not real, not real.
“Give it!” the Baron screeched.
“No! You owe me a question.”
He hissed. I’d pissed off a voodoo god. Worse, I hadn’t had time to come up with a question, what with being assaulted by a spirit and a snake and all. There was so much I needed to know, but I thought of Rye. If I was gone in a few days, she was toast.
“How can I defeat Mr. Doll when he comes for me?” It was the best I could do.
The baron sucked air between his teeth. “He won’t,” he spat. “He a weak little bug. Emissary gonna come, string pretty fishy up in his net and take you home.”
I shuddered. “What does that—“
“No more questions!” he screeched. He lunged toward me and I braced myself for a body blow.
That’s all I remembered until Julian brought me around me with a glug of brandy.
“You did good, girl,” he chuckled. “Pete charged at you like a bull and knocked you over before the Baron could get to you.”
I sat up and touched the flowers. The necklace was no longer a snake, maybe it had never been a snake. “Can I take this off now?”
“Yeah, but keep it. In something lined with silk, like your cards do.” He dipped his hand into a wooden bowl and splashed water on my head and face. “It’s going to take more than alave tet to purify you, child, after being roughed up by the god of mystery, death and worldly pleasure.”
“What did he mean, Emissary?”
He grimaced. “It means your conjurer conjured up an entity to fetch you, child.”
“Who? How will I know?”
“You might not until it’s too late. Doll may be weak, but sounds like he’s got enough juice to control a…intermediary.”
I got to my feet shakily. The bone was still clutched in my hand.
Chapter Nine
The best thing to do, I told myself, was to carry on as if everything was normal. That meant paying my electric bill, buying groceries, fixing the handle on my car window. Maybe that way I could trick the universe into keeping me around past my sell-by date. But I couldn’t do it. Even I know the universe isn’t that stupid.
I still had the bone. Julius Spyglass had just about fainted dead away when he saw it. Now, he told me, not only did I have to get rid of it, but I was keeping the connection between me and the Baron Samedi open. He said the only thing to do was to bury it in a graveyard at midnight. He wrote out a list of items to bring, not all of them pleasant, and instructions for burial with words to say in French. All that midnight mumbo-jumboing might not even break the curse, but it would cut the line between the voodoo god and little old me.
Never have three mortal, human, normal-ass men chased me at the same time, but now I had three monsters suitors: Doll, his Emissary and the terrifying Baron Samedi. I made another cup of tea and slumped into a chair, considering my prospects, which were dimmer than ever, and my obligation to Rye. Dead Meatsville: Population at Least Two.
Mojo greeted me gently and expressed a wish to share a cup with me. He missed Russian tea. Bless him, he was a low-cost roommate—no food bills to cover, no dirty laundry to pick up.
“It’s not the Baron I’m worried about, or even Doll. It’s the Emissary. I mean, an intermediary sent by a demon, probably a dead person. Who walks…” One more word and I would start to cry, so I stopped talking and took a gulp of air.
“Let’s call a thing by its name,” Mojo said gently. “Zombie. That’s what you’re afraid of.”
“Yes. They don’t exist, though. Do they?”
“Hm.” He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Think of the body like this room. It could be anything. A bakery, a dry cleaner’s, a print shop, a dungeon, a daycare center. It's just wood and joists and whatnot, but you commandeered it. The body, too can be commandeered.”
“By voodoo.”
His floating head tipped down in a nod. “Yes. The bones remain the same, but a priest or the god itself can blow breath into them. Not life, but a pretty good imitation. Got it so far?”
I nodded, dry-mouthed.
“A person who’s recently dead and physically intact walks, talks and behaves like a human.”
“A meat puppet.”
“Essentially. Although some philosophers ask whether we the living are flesh marionettes manipulated by God,” he added loftily. “Well, not me, but you get the point.”
“And everything they say is the loa speaking through them?”
“It depends on the vessel. A well-chosen body, relatively fresh, will retain a sense memory of what it was before. It can tell stories, charm, even lie. The adept has only to reanimate the creature and wind it up, and it proceeds like a toy robot.”
“So it could be anyone.”
The silence hung over us like a poisonous fog.
“Whatever comes, we must put on the shield of dress and face the day.” I laughed in spite of my mood at his novelty glasses and a giant mustache. “It’s already past noon. Take me to Rye’s. I can put up with her while you run errands.”
“She’s marathoningTeen Mom today.”
He rolled his eyes. “Nevertheless, you mustn’t sit here all day brooding until midnight.”
*****
I pulled into the auto shop, my car farting a bit as it rolled to a stop. Poor old beast. I figured it should be in decent running condition and have working windows in case I needed to get anywhere in a hurry. Not that outrunning the Emissary was my plan. Trouble was, I didn’t have a plan. I was taking steps in the dark, one by one, as if they would lead somewhere. Step one: get car looked at. It couldn’t hurt.
It felt like a punch in the gut, actually. The good kind, the take-your-breath-away, lightheaded, slight case of drool kind. Draven was leaning over an open hood, shirtless, caramel-skinned, the muscles in his arms flexing as he did something manly with a wrench.
“Can I help you?”
An older man with a mustache wiped his hands on a rag, eyebrows raised. At that moment he could have helped by going away and letting me continue checking out the butt on his assistant, but it wouldn’t have been ladylike to say so.
“My car, it needs…everything.” Wait, that sounded as if I could pay for everything. “Just a tune-up, to get it into running condition. And the driver’s side window handle is broken.”
“Going somewhere?”
Draven had turned toward me and was running both hands over his hair and away from his face, his wide chest and flat abs on full display. The blue mechanic’s pants were hanging a teensy bit lower than seemed polite in mixed company. Unfair.
“How are you, Jinx?”
“Okay. You’re good to see. Uh, it’s good to see you.” Brought to you by Lessons in Seduction: The Jinx Delacourt Method.
He smiled, a slow-blooming smile as playful as it was sexy. “Joe can handle your repairs. I was just about to take off. It’s a beautiful day.”
Hot as hell is what it was, which is par for the course in summer in the South. My jeans felt heavy, as if they’d been soaked, and I had a wicked case of sticky neck where my hair was suffocating it.
“What do you say to a row on the lake?”
“With you?” Not what I meant to say. To cover, I nodded like a bobblehead.
“If you can bear it. Give me a minute to wash up and change.”
He slammed the hood down on the car he’d been working on and disappeared into the cool gloom of the shop. I glanced over at Joe, who was revv
ing my engine, frowning, shaking his head, poking at the broken handle and doing other stuff people unfamiliar with the eccentricities of my poor old heap do. Less pity, more worky there, Joe.
Draven appeared in his signature black jeans and T-shirt and gestured grandly to the open door of a vintage red Cadillac. I curtseyed lightly and hopped in. The car was in gorgeous condition, with white leather seats. There was radio and the dashboard was rudimentary—probably the way they did it back in the day. The steering wheel had been etched with words I couldn’t read.
The day was beautiful, and getting nicer by the second. We didn’t speak on the drive, and that was fine. The silence was comfortable, Draven’s presence next to me reassuring somehow. I wanted to lean my head on his shoulder, put my hand on his thigh, know that after this, we could see each other again like normal people who didn’t have swords hanging over their heads. With the sun shining and the wind making a mess of my hair, midnight, bones and graveyards felt far away.
He parked and left me to gaze at the river while he unpacked a rope and tied it to a tree. The river glittered in the sun, lazy and slow. It wasn’t much wider than a creek, and fringed with trees, grass and wildflowers. I plucked a daisy and stuck it behind my ear, where it promptly fell out.
Draven untied a long, low rowboat and handed me in. I’m not the world’s greatest at balancing, but I gripped my toes in my sneakers and hung on while the boat wobbled.
“What’s the rope for?”
“Later,” he said in that rumbly purr.
Draven took the oars while I leaned back, wishing for a white gown and a parasol.
“Water, earth, sky,” he said, his strange brown and gold eyes on me. “Nature gives us everything we need.”
“And we had to go and fuck it up,” I laughed.
“True. I like to think there’s balance in the universe, but anything goes out of whack if it’s manhandled too much. Look at the human body—it’s a miracle of self-regulation and regeneration. The movements of the planets and stars, so precise, the tricks developed by every species from ants to redwood trees to stay alive, get sustenance, propagate its species. That’s the prime directive of all living things, but we don’t pay attention, and that’s where imbalance comes in.”
“You think humans would be better off just farming and…mating and making more humans?”
I was down with the mating part, but not so much the others.
He laughed and shook his head, pulling the oars with unflagging, powerful strokes. Mm, strokes.
“No, I mean we don’t pay attention to the needs of nature. I can’t help it. I’m a child of the swamp, like you.”
“From Louisiana?”
“From the wettest bog in the bayou.”
“Wow.” I trailed my fingers in the water, then thought about water snakes and snatched my hand out. “Some people chalk that up to God, those miracles, I mean. A god or gods.”
“No reason science, nature and God aren’t all at work. Who am I to say? But remember the balance. Belief in something greater than oneself that’s benevolent means…”
“There’s a dark mirror image of it, too.”
“That’s a good way to put it. As above, so below.”
Suddenly the skin on my bare arms prickled as if a chill wind had swept across the water.
“What do you believe in, Draven?”
“Everything. It’s safer that way. Let’s turn around here.”
Chapter Ten
We wrangled to boat into a slip inside a cavernous wooden boathouse. Draven brushed off his hands and fetched something from the car. Another prickle of fear ran through me. The rope. Why would a man need to bring rope along on a date unless he plans to hijack a girl out to some secluded place where no one can hear her scream as he dismembers her or drags her off to hell?
He came back with a blanket and two glasses, then pulled gently on the rope, tugging something from the other end of the line where it disappeared into the water.
“Sancerre,” he said, holding up a bottle. “I hope you like it. It should be cold enough now.”
What a dreamy dream of a man, he’d thought of everything. I kicked off my shoes and sat to watch him open the wine and pour out two glasses.
“Did you bring wine along knowing I’d show up?” I asked teasingly as we clinked.
“No, I was going to ask you to come for dinner.”
“And he cooks, too.”
“Naturellement. You know what they say, Cajuns have a hundred ingredients and three recipes. I do miss the food. I miss a lot of things about home.”
So did I, but I didn’t have a lot of choice about staying.
“Then why leave?”
He poured me another glass. I hadn’t eaten and was already feeling lightheaded. “Because I never met a girl like you there.”
“Sweet talker. Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“I am trying to seduce you. Unless you say otherwise, of course…”
There was no otherwise. Not for this tragedy queen. Tomorrow I would turn twenty-five and life as I knew it would be over. I knocked back the wine.
One strong arm wrapped around my back. Slowly, he lowered me onto the blanket. His lips hovered above mine, his hair, fallen forward and smelling like fresh grass and wet stone, tickled my face. I wanted him to kiss me but I was pinned by his eyes as he ran a hand over my shoulder, pausing on a breast, and brushed his palm lightly over the nipple until it rose.
“Draven,” I whispered, “someone will see.”
“No one will see.”
He stroked my belly, my thighs, his hand so warm and alive it felt like a firestarter kicking up flames wherever he touched. I arched my backs to lift up my hips and grind against him.
“And I liked your neon sign. The Moon, it suits you. Dark hair like the night.” He paused to bury his face in my hair. “Blue eyes like the moon’s glow.”
I tugged at his shirt. The skin on his back was so smooth I wanted to bite into it.
“I want you, Jinx. I’ve wanted you from the moment I first saw you.”
“When was that?”
“You were parked in the town square, trying to put coins in the parking meter.”
I remembered that day. For some reason I had a case of the dropsies and each coin slipped from my fingers and rolled into a storm grate. I make a pretty sexy first impression.
“Take your pants off,” I said.
He grinned and obliged, sitting up to strip off shirt and pants while I undid my halter top. My skin was so sensitive even the breeze across my bare breasts threatened to set me off. But there were bigger things to think about.
Much bigger.
The man was solid muscle, golden caramel skin with a sprinkling of dark hair on his chest and a delicious trail leading to the valley of delights, which, well, did I mention “big”?
He eased off my jeans with teasing slowness, smirking at me the whole time.
“You seem nervous.”
“Not nervous. Just feeling…inadequate.”
“You’ll do fine.” He kissed me hard, his tongue pushing into my mouth and roaming every crevice and corner. Then his lips moved to my cheek and down to graze on my neck with light nibbles. He began to kiss me lower down, stoking alight everything his lips touched. Each bite and lick had me panting like a racehorse.
“I want to taste every inch of you, but I don’t think I can wait.”
“Don’t,” I said. Finally, I got that husky tone in my voice I’d always wanted.
Round One was hard and fast, a symphony and grunts and panting that had me seeing stars. Round Two was…exquisite. Draven took his time with my body, and let me take my time with his, exploring, discovering, delighting. We were alone but for the birdsong and the wind in the trees, a pale girl and caramel god, bathed in sunshine, lost in each other. Although he was inside me, I felt enveloped, wrapped in a blissful cocoon, warm, tingling, pleading, teasing, a chuckle here, a light slap there. We were perfectly in sync. By the
time I climbed on top of him and exploded in another shattering release, I was covered in sweat and boneless with exhaustion.
“You taught me something just now, Jinx,” he said as I rolled off him trying to catch my breath.
“What’s that?”
He set up on one elbow and traced the curve of my cheekbone. “There is a God.”
I swatted him with my halter top. Suddenly I felt exposed. The wind was kicking up and the chills I felt weren’t from Draven’s talented tongue and hands.
“We should head back. I have to pick up Mo—a friend.”
“Something told me you owed yourself a nice day out.”
His clothes still lay in a heap on the mussed blanket. I wanted to feel him one more time. It might be the last. I kissed him, inhaling his scent as a keepsake. “I’ve had worse.”
Chapter Eleven
As I rang the doorbell, I realized my top was on inside out, but that wasn’t the worst surprise of the day.
“Come on in,” said Rye. “The party’s just getting started.”
Since she didn’t follow that up with a “whoo!,” I figured that was Rye’s version of irony. And how right I was.
Yasmina was setting out platters of egg rolls and trying not to look at the guests. Can’t say I blamed her. Rye, me, head in a ball…and Baba Yaga, in an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt with “Foxy Lady” in gold glitter across the front. She was working a side-pony and I must say, she pulled it off. Also on the table lay a big dusty book bound in leather. I couldn’t read the title.
“You’re just sticking your fingers in all the pies, aren’t you?” Baba Yaga glared at me. Don’t worry, lady. The instant dislike was mutual.
“You don’t know my problems.”
“Sure I do.” She took a bite of egg roll. They looked really good. After the porn marathon I’d just starred in, food seemed like a great idea. “After talking with you, I wanted to make sure things came out okay with Rye here. I normally don’t turn witches that young but I was feeling frisky that day. So I show up and—blammo!—who do I find?”
If an eye roll could shatter enchanted crystal, Mojo’s would have.
