Siren's Call

by Cutter, Leah

  After only a few stops, just before the freeway, Kai got off the streetcar. She went up a block, past the abandoned warehouse and the park with litter lining the fence, then wandered back along the gray buildings into the color and traffic of Canal Street, passing the fancy hotels she sometimes did business with, the cool air blasting from the doors when they opened. Then she went north again, a couple more blocks, before wandering west.

  Something was north of Kai. Her nose was always turning north. She wandered the Central Business District, just west of the Quarter, past streets full of big important buildings, until she was close to the start of Tulane Avenue. Squeezed in between the modern offices were smaller stores with old-fashioned signs and windows full of unwanted goods.

  A Chinese import-export store made Kai pause. Green jade good-luck dogs sat in the window, their tongues hanging out as if they felt the heat seeping in through the glass. Arched dragons made of brass floated above their black wooden pedestals. White porcelain fish hung from the top of the window, and mirrors with black-and-white yin-yang patterns reflected their backs.

  Of course, because this was New Orleans, jade fleur-de-lis figures and harlequin masks also made up the display.

  An echo of Gisa’s scent slipped out from the store in front of Kai. Then it disappeared. Other scents floated around her as well: sweet incense, inhuman sweat, cheap plastic, and musty silk.

  Kai walked up the block, past the sandwich shop, the closed brewery, and the chic office garden in front of the upscale law firm, then circled back around, following her nose.

  Gisa’s scent didn’t linger around the door of the shop, as it would have had she passed through. Kai had the feeling of a receding tide, which kept drawing away as she approached. Something was there. But what?

  After the third time around the block, Kai knew she’d have to go in. There wasn’t anything more she could discover from the sidewalk.

  After another deep breath, Kai pushed open the door, the air conditioning instantly chilling her overly warm skin.

  And she stopped.

  Kai had been so intent on Gisa’s scent she hadn’t paid attention to all the scents floating out from the shop. She’d known they were there, but they hadn’t mattered. Not until she’d stepped in and realized that others were here.

  The inhuman kind.

  The store had a wide open feel to it, though it was full of ordered shelves. None of them were higher than three feet, so Kai could look over the tops of all the knickknacks and see the entire store. Just human things were sold here, like ornamental fish and lotus blossom vases.

  But the xita came here. All the time.

  The store was empty except for an Asian man wearing a black business suit with a white shirt, reading a foreign newspaper spread out over the glass on the front display counter. When he finally deigned to look up, his eyes went wide. Was he scared of Kai?

  He quickly came from behind the counter and started speaking rapidly to Kai in some language she didn’t know. He looked Asian—same black hair as Kai, same smooth eyelids she saw in the mirror every day, same tiny nose—but up this close, she could tell he wasn’t human.

  It wasn’t just his scent, but a feeling of ancient shaded patios and the pond he used to keep his scaly skin cool.

  When the man reached forward to take Kai’s elbow, Kai stepped back abruptly. He wasn’t touching her.

  “Sorry, sugar,” Kai finally said. “I don’t understand you.”

  The man stopped and stood up straighter, stiffer. “I see,” he said coldly. “You go now,” he added in heavily accented English. “Please. Leave.”

  “Excuse me?” Kai said, exaggerating her own drawl. “That’s no way to treat a potential customer.”

  The man sneered at Kai. “We don’t serve your kind. Xiao hu.”

  “What was that about my kind?” Kai fumed. “What did you call me?”

  “Nothing you know,” the man said, turning his back on her and walking toward the back of the store. “Nothing your mama taught you, she left you too young.”

  “My what?” Kai asked, startled. How did he know about Mama? How she’d walked out? Did he know her?

  The man paid no attention to Kai, settling himself over his paper, looking at it as if it held the next day’s Powerball numbers.

  Kai shook herself. There wasn’t anything for her here. Gisa wasn’t here. Maybe it was just the xita who came to this store that threw her, threw her senses.

  Determined, Kai turned and pushed open the door, welcoming the heat. The clouds had finally burned away, and a bright sky greeted her.

  How could she have been so careless? She didn’t normally go places where the xita were. She avoided most things that were inhuman. Kai held her head up, nose in the air. There had to be some other clue, some other scent or trace of Gisa. She was somewhere in the city.

  And Kai had to find her. Or else.

  * * *

  Kai wandered north, walking hot sidewalks in the blazing sun. She stopped at little local stores with its crowded corridors of white bread and local hot sauce, riding the scent of sugared donuts and deep-fried chicken, buying ice cold water then following that thread back into the heat.

  The scent this time took her closer to the water. Kai left the office buildings and businesses and started wandering neighborhoods full of old houses. Even ten years after Katrina, houses were still empty, rotting in the merciless heat. The line where the water had reached was still visible, higher than her head most places. Door still held spray-painted Xs, marking the searches, the number found alive and dead.

  Still, Kai couldn’t stop. Couldn’t rest. The compulsion to keep moving north, always north, took over. Tremé. Seventh Ward. Dillard. Her feet hurt. Her shirt was plastered to her back with sweat. She needed water and shade.

  Just a little more, the voice in Kai’s head kept saying, leading her by the nose.

  Kai avoided the worst places, her nose leading her away from the smell of gunmetal and blood. But violence lived here, and she didn’t belong, no matter how dark her skin was.

  She still couldn’t stop.

  The smell of the lake was close, maybe a neighborhood away. Kai passed by an abandoned old mall, going further north, when the pull changed.

  She’d gone too far. Sighing, Kai turned back. Damn it, she was too hot and tired for this.

  Kai circled around the block, spooking when a cat raced out from under a pile of trash. She didn’t know how she was still able to scent Gisa through the filth, but finally, the siren’s scent was clear.

  The trail led back to the abandoned mall Kai had passed. Glass covered the parking lot—broken drug vials, bottles, and just windows. The smell of moldy paper, rotten wood, and mildew filled the air.

  As Kai approached the crumbling building, she realized it was that place, an abandoned mall she’d seen in the news. A developer had said he’d rebuild it, then had embezzled the money and left it reeking of flood waters. Fifty-odd counts of fraud later, and he’d never served a day in jail.

  A chain-link fence blocked off the unstable structure, with new signs hanging on it, saying they were finally going to bulldoze the place.

  Probably pay the same developer to do it.

  This close to the building, Gisa’s scent grew stronger, along with the foul, burnt smell of meth mingled with gunpowder. When Kai looked closely, she saw two street kids hanging out in the shade of one the spindly bush oaks.

  Hanging out and making drug deals.

  Kai looked back at the graffiti on the new signs. Gang markings.

  Why would a gang steal a siren? What would they gain by drowning the city?

  Maybe Rilke’s story wasn’t true. Kai needed to do some research.

  A loud ringing of church bells startled Kai. It took her a moment to silence her phone.

  The kids were looking at her. Kai turned and walked away, shading the screen with her hand.

  The text message read, “911,” followed by an address.

 
Caleb was in trouble, and needed her help. Now.

  Chapter Two

  “What’s the emergency?” Kai asked as she rushed down the dark alley to meet Caleb. Graffiti-covered dumpsters hulked along the edges. Rotten beer, stale wine, and urine mingled with the scent of cheap fried food. Music thumped steadily from the clubs up the street.

  The evening’s twilight had just faded into true night, though the heat hadn’t loosened its hold. Kai’s shirt still clung to her back and her skin itched. She longed for a cold shower and the cool sheets of her bed.

  Caleb detached himself from the brick wall where he’d been leaning. The darkness hid his face, giving Kai just an impression of dark eyes and white teeth. He wore his usual tailored short-sleeved shirt, board shorts, and designer high top sneakers.

  He looked nothing like what he was.

  Kai suspected Caleb dressed that way on purpose. There was nothing about his dark brown skin that proclaimed him as xita. His eyes were plain brown, neither sparkling or golden. His canine teeth looked absolutely human. His voice still carried a hint of Alabama twang, but that was the only thing that set him apart.

  “So?” Kai asked again when Caleb hadn’t said anything.

  A little further down the alley, a door banged open, making Kai jump. A cook in an apron and rubber gloves, temporarily illuminated by the light behind him, threw a couple of big garbage bags into a dumpster before disappearing again, extinguishing the light as he closed the door.

  “I told you, darling, I need your help.”

  Kai glared at Caleb. “You used the emergency number. You’re only supposed to use that when you’re in real trouble.”

  “But I am—”

  “You’re not in the police station or the hospital,” Kai snapped. “And I don’t smell a body. But there’s gonna be one, soon, if you’re lying about this being an emergency.” He couldn’t just call her like that. He knew that.

  Finally, Caleb’s cool melted a little. “I need a favor and I don’t like asking,” Caleb admitted, stepping closer to Kai.

  “And the emergency part?” Kai asked, holding onto her anger.

  “Gotta do the job tonight,” Caleb said with a shrug.

  “No one else could help you?” Kai asked, suspicious. Caleb had two brothers, also in the family business, and his dad still occasionally took jobs. Plus more cousins, aunts, and uncles than Kai wanted to count.

  “You know Blind Randall?”

  “Drug dealer in Bywater?” Kai asked.

  At Caleb’s surprised nod, Kai added, “Did a job for him. Once.”

  Like Caleb, Blind Randall looked harmless: an old black man with eyes whitened by cataracts. His “office” was a ratty wicker chair outside of a grocery store, white cane by his hand and a chess board on the rickety table next to him. He played by memory—his opponent told him the moves out loud.

  That Randall could track Kai without sight hadn’t bothered her. What had set her back up was how much he smelled like blood, as if he’d bathed in it. She’d found his missing delivery boy in less than an hour, shacked up in Mid-City with a girlfriend who’d just gotten out of prison.

  Kai had suspected it had been a test, and not a very hard one. But she’d never gone back for another job.

  “What are you up to?” Kai demanded when Caleb didn’t continue.

  “Randall found out that someone’s planning to rob his warehouse tonight. Hired me for protection and persuasion.”

  “And me?”

  “Distraction.”

  * * *

  Caleb stepped away from Kai into the darkest part of the alley. He took off his gold medallion, St. Martin de Porres; held it with his hands pressed against his forehead for a quick prayer before handing it to Kai. “Don’t you lose that,” Caleb warned.

  Kai rolled her eyes. “I know. Idiot.” She put the warm medallion over her own neck. She understood why Caleb liked St. Martin—he was half-black, and he’d run an animal hospital. She didn’t share his faith, though, and wearing the medallion always made her uncomfortable.

  “Looks good on you,” Caleb flirted. “Though not as good as it looks on me.”

  “Come on,” Kai muttered, restraining herself from smacking Caleb on the arm. The cook down the street had just been out again, and it wouldn’t be that long before he came back a third time.

  “I ain’t ashamed. I’m a good-looking man,” Caleb drawled as he took off his shirt and handed it to Kai. “Got nothing to be ashamed of, darling,” he added as he quickly shucked his shorts and boxers.

  Kai shook her head and stuffed everything into her bag. She didn’t need light to see Caleb’s supple body—memory supplied that. He was simply muscled, not a gym rat or a couch potato, merely active and healthy. “Shoes?”

  “I hate this part,” Caleb muttered, unlacing them and gingerly placing one bare foot down, then the other. “The ground here’s slimy,” he complained.

  “Then change quickly.”

  Caleb held out his shoes, but didn’t let them go when Kai took them. “Kiss for good luck?”

  Kai snorted. “Don’t think that’s going to happen, hon. Not when you’re about to change. Dog breath. Ugh.”

  “You’re probably right,” Caleb said. He let go of his shoes, then grabbed them again before Kai could move out of the way. When he tugged abruptly, Kai stumbled toward him.

  She got a full hit of Caleb’s deep musk before his lips descended on hers for a bruising kiss.

  Kai responded automatically, opening for Caleb’s questing tongue, the taste, feel, and smell of him exploding across her senses. Warmth churned in her stomach, echoes of want and need thrilling through her blood before she remembered her anger and pushed him away, hard, knocking his shoes against his shoulder and his jaw by accident.

  “Ow,” Caleb said, rubbing his chin.

  “Asshole,” Kai said, glaring at him. She held her hands back from reaching for him again. Something about just being near him always got under her skin, and she’d broken her long-held rule about never getting involved with the xita again (not since Tommy) when she’d first taken him to bed.

  Caleb grinned, unrepentant. “Just getting in the mood.”

  “Wrong mood,” Kai told him, though she wasn’t still angry. How could she be? He warmed her, body and heart and soul.

  With a last, all-too-human shrug, Caleb began to change.

  “Oh, you are not getting away with that,” Kai told him as she watched. They were going to have to talk about boundaries again.

  It took effort for Kai to even pretend to be angry watching Caleb change. It was too fascinating. He condensed his body, shrinking as the process made him bend forward. Kai could always tell how he fought that part, tried to stay upright. Only when his hands touched the ground did he seem to relax.

  Hair sprouted across Caleb’s smooth back. His tight curls lengthened and rolled down to meet it. His hands and feet fused into paws, his thumb sliding up his leg. Kai teased him sometimes about being Pinocchio, the way his nose grew out.

  The white patches of fur bothered Kai, though she never told Caleb that. He made such a beautiful black man. But the husky he changed into had a white bib, some white on all four paws, as well as around his eyes. It was normal husky coloring, making Caleb look like an ordinary dog, just as he looked like an ordinary human.

  Except Caleb in dog form didn’t quite look normal. His eyes, now a startling blue, looked too intelligent, too keen. While he could fake dog behavior, and sit relaxed with his tongue lolling, it didn’t come naturally to him; he had to remember to do it. He stood with his tail straight out, on guard, watching everything. He didn’t move like a regular dog either, his stride too long and loping.

  Mostly importantly, Caleb didn’t smell like a normal dog.

  In human form, a person had to have something extra, like Kai did, to know Caleb was something more.

  In dog form, no other creature—unless it, too, was something extra—dared approach him. Even people avoided him, afr
aid even when Caleb appeared unthreatening and was only normal dog size.

  Kai finished tying Caleb’s shoes to her bag while Caleb shook himself and stretched after the change. Though he could run or fight immediately after transforming, he preferred to have a few moments to get reacquainted with four legs.

  “Ready?” Kai asked as she hefted her bag onto her back.

  After one last full-body shake, Caleb trotted to her side, his cold nose nuzzling her fingers.

  “Stop that. I’m still mad at you,” she said.

  Caleb gave Kai a toothy dog grin.

  “Lord, you’re a menace,” Kai said, shaking her head and following Caleb down the alley.

  * * *

  Kai glared at the gray metal, padlocked door. “Supposed to be open, huh? Or am I more than just distraction?” The low, long warehouse was near the Mississippi, in the Central Business District. More warehouses made out of cinder blocks stretched on either side, edged by concrete and asphalt on all sides—nothing green grew here, except mold. Trucks rumbled by two streets up, on Tchoupitoulas.

  This was a part of New Orleans most tourists never bothered to see.

  Caleb whined and pushed at the door with his shoulder. It didn’t budge. He glanced left and right, then started sniffing along the side of the building, nosing among the brown, stubborn weeds struggling out of the cracks.

  Kai tugged on the padlock, to see if it wasn’t fully latched. The feel of the cool metal stayed in her fingers after she dropped it. She rubbed them with her thumb, but she didn’t see anything in the orange glow of the streetlight, and she couldn’t smell anything strange, either, just concrete, diesel fuel, and the warm river water.

  But there was something there, tugging at her senses.

  After closing her eyes, Kai raised her hand and walked her fingers along the edges of the door: up, across, and then down, circling back again until the rough-cut edge of a key pricked her. With her eyes open, Kai could barely make out the unseen pocket where the key was tucked away.