Scented Lust

by Jacqueline Turner Banks

  He gave her a puzzled look. “A Demon who lives topside with a Dogon-Hunter?” he said as a question, apparently thinking they were playing some kind of word game.

  Jordan pulled him to a corner, out of earshot of the others. “Are you saying he’s a real demon?”

  Artest nodded.

  “Like Old Testament evil?”

  “No, more like the Greek interpretation, no absolute evil connotations—Daemon. Their personality depends on the individual’s values, just like humans and Hunters.” Artest’s delivery was casual, and his attention had already shifted to his discovery of the Asian girl with whom he was sharing a smile. “Kit’s here,” he mumbled as he led Jordan by the hand in her direction.

  She looked back at the “demon.” There was no way she could think about him without actually visualizing the quotation marks around the word demon. He and the Mrs. were sharing a laugh with Tyler. There’s demons, real demons in the world. I’m at a party with a demon. No, this isn’t a party. This is a meeting of otherworldly beings to discuss Sangsue. And Sangsue are what the rest of the world calls Vampires!

  She stopped walking. She didn’t plan to stop, but her feet stopped working. They were still a few feet from the Asian woman.

  “What’s wrong?” Artest asked.

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “Were you talking to me? It is a little loud in . . .”

  ”No,” she interrupted. “Did you hear my thoughts?”

  “Were they about me?”

  “No, I guess not. I don’t think I can do this, Artest. I’ll just wait upstairs. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  “What happened? Did somebody say something to you?” He glanced around the room like he was trying to figure out who could have approached her and resettled so quickly. He was thoroughly confused.

  “No, I’m just. . .” What is it? she asked herself. It’s fear, immobilizing fear, was the answer. “Artest,” she whispered. “I’ve always had to take care of myself, and I’ve been good at it. The part of me that knows stuff is telling me to get the hell out of here!”

  He looked around the room again. She thought she had embarrassed him, but when she looked, nobody really seemed to be paying any attention to them.

  “Let’s go back to the Togu Nu.” He started walking toward the room while she was still trying to make sense out of the words “Togu Nu.” She’d already forgotten the name and what he’d said about that room. Once they returned to the room with its billowy white fabric, he wrapped his arms around her and told her to close her eyes. Jordan did as he asked, and when she opened them, they were back in the bedroom.

  She sat on the bed. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “There’s no need to apologize. I can imagine how difficult all of this is for you.”

  “I’m not a weak person. . .”

  “Nobody said you were. I told Tyler that you have the soul of a warrior.”

  “Did you really?”

  “I did.” He sat next to her. “What was it? All the strangers?”

  “No, the demon. I was raised in the church . . .”

  He started nodding before she said the words.

  “No, Artest. You couldn’t possibly understand. Demons are . . . I don’t know what demons are, but they are not supposed to be described as nice enough guys. They are . . . demons!”

  “I really don’t know that much about him. . .”

  “You don’t have to know anything about him! It’s the fact that he exists!”

  He jerked like my words hit him. “Oh,” he finally said.

  They sat in silence for a moment or two. “I should probably tell you there was a Fairy and a couple of Witches down there too,” he said in a voice so small it didn’t sound like it came from him.

  “Oh my God.” She allowed herself to collapse backwards, and then she brought her legs up. She wanted to crawl into the fetal position, but she was afraid that that would be overkill.

  He sat where he was until he heard the laughter. She couldn’t help it as she laid there thinking about everything. She rewound the scene where they entered the living room and kept going until she stretched out. When she repeated the words, “I really don’t know that much about him,” for the second time, it struck her as funny. It was such a male thing to say about a demon. To her it was like saying he’s a serial killer, but I really don’t know that much about him.

  Artest lay down next to her and tentatively took her into his arms. “Jordan, you’re laughing,” he said, which, of course, made her laugh harder. “I just asked Jahia to come up.”

  “No, stop her, I’m okay.” She sat up and starting telling him what she was thinking. Before she finished, there was a knock on the door.

  Jahia stuck her head in before he could reach the door. “You, out,” she said to Artest. “There’s somebody who’s come a long way to see you.”

  “Who?”

  “Go downstairs and find out or don’t, but get the hell out of here! Mother Crocodile has spoken.”

  He looked at Jordan, and she nodded. She wished she could say he seemed reluctant to leave, but he darn near ran out of the room.

  “Okay, which one of us freaked you out?” she asked, her voice firm but loving.

  “The demon.”

  “Really? Sam? He’s such a quiet, refined kind of guy. Maybe a little brooding, but most demons are. I thought for sure it was one of the women.”

  All of that tickled Jordan, especially the fact that the demon’s name was Sam. She told Jahia what she was thinking, and they both ended up laughing. She wanted to find something bizarre to use as an example to explain her feelings. “Is Santa Claus real?” Jordan asked her.

  “Real, like an actual person?”

  Jordan nodded.

  “If he is, I’ve never heard anything about it.”

  “Suppose you ended up at a party and met the real Santa and three or four of his favorite elves?”

  “I get it, sweetie, we all do. Your reaction is perfectly natural, one we’ve all seen before.”

  It helped to hear that. She really cared what Jahia and Tyler thought.

  “Come on, baby girl. There’s some women down there you don’t want to leave him with.”

  “No, we’re not. . .” She couldn’t make herself lie to Jahia. She and Artest were not a lot of things, but if she had her way, they would be. “Which ones?” she asked, standing.

  “I’m not telling. As charming as he is, he’s not safe with any of us, and I’m including myself!”

  Instead of taking her back to the living room, Jahia led her to the kitchen, where she found Artest and a very attractive young woman sitting on his lap. A hot wave of jealousy shot through her with so much force it almost knocked her down. She mentally screamed his name before she realized what she was doing. His head jerked up like he’d been thumped in the back of his head. He looked at her, shocked, but he didn’t try to stand or toss off the cutie or anything like that!

  “Jordan, come meet my niece, Dacia.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  He’d been torn about leaving her. It wasn’t hard to understand Jordan being overwhelmed by them. He’d never met a human who wasn’t at least a little bothered upon learning that a lot of the beings they thought were products of writers’ creativity were real. Actually, he considered her reaction one of the milder ones. But it wasn’t often that so many of his countrymen and women were in one place, and he wanted to be a part of it.

  He was headed back to the gathering until he heard Tyler mentally calling him. He asked Artest to join him in the kitchen.

  Tyler was standing next to a lovely young woman. Artest knew at once that she was Dogon—they always knew their own—but from the side, he didn’t recognize her. She turned slightly, and he saw his sister’s profile, young and beautiful as she’d been when she’d entered the Service centuries ago. How is this possible? he asked himself, and then the woman turned, facing Artest, and she smiled.

  “Dacia?”

 
; “Yes, Uncle,” she said.

  He embraced her, lifting her off her feet. In his arms she felt like the twelve-year-old she’d been the first time he hugged her, but he inhaled deeply and found she smelled like his mother. The shock almost made him drop her. Scientists say scent memory is by far the strongest. Standing in Tyler’s kitchen with nearly forgotten memories rushing through his mind, Artest realized he’d just proved it. There was the faint cinnamon, some kind of talc mixed with a recently bathed body, and Tyler’s food cooked over an open flame—who would have guessed that, combined, those odors would take me back so far to the first person I ever loved?

  “Are you alright?” his niece asked him when she sensed his strong emotion.

  “I’m good, and now I’m happy as well.” He sat in one of the kitchen table chairs, and she surprised him by sitting on his lap.

  “Tell me everything,” he told her. “Start by telling me how long you’ll be here.”

  “I’m returning to San Francisco tonight, but I’ll be there until I’m reassigned.”

  “You’ve been assigned to San Francisco?”

  “Yes, we’ll get to see a lot of each other.”

  Artest didn’t say anything, but his next thought was that Fox must be getting ready to reassign him. Blood relatives who were still active Hunters were never allowed to live so close. When two Hunters married, one of them was immediately put on inactive status. Since they were all called eventually to help other Hunters within transporting range, the theory was that two people so connected could be manipulated by their enemies.

  His niece was the daughter of his sister and another Hunter who’d been his friend. Her father was killed in Service before they could be married and before Dacia was born. His sister returned to Mali and raised Dacia around distant members of their original family. Adama was probably about one hundred and ten or fifteen real years old when Dacia was born.

  “How’s your mother?” he asked because he knew he should.

  “She is well. We speak often. Maybe my move here will bring the two of you together.”

  “Anything is possible.” But it didn’t seem likely that his sister would be interested in reconciling with the person who’d killed her husband.

  Luckily, it wasn’t necessary to say more, because he heard Jordan call out his name. When the others didn’t react, he realized he was the only one who’d heard it.

  Her reaction to seeing Dacia on his knee wasn’t what he’d expected, and her very next thought denied it was jealousy, but he was pleased.

  “Jordan, come meet my niece, Dacia,.” he told her.

  Your niece? she asked mentally. He nodded as Jordan walked toward him.

  Is she the human lover everybody is talking about? Dacia mentally asked.

  I won’t engage in gossip, especially not about me, he told her. He knew she was teasing him, but he didn’t feel comfortable talking to his niece about his “lover.”

  “Jordan is my charge,” he said when the two women were face to face.

  He could see that the statement puzzled Jordan, but being a Hunter, Dacia knew Hunters call the Ketier they are actively protecting their charges.

  Jordan extended her hand to Dacia. “Pleased to meet you. I was under the impression Artest didn’t have any living relatives.”

  “It’s just me and my mother, but we are many not connected by blood, but by the heart.”

  ”You all make everything sound so beautiful and so profound with your accents.”

  Dacia laughed. “In this gathering, you are the one with the accent.”

  Jordan smiled, and he knew things would be fine between them.

  “Come let me prepare a plate for you,” Jahia said as she led Dacia away. Artest noticed she gave Jordan a wink when they passed. “You’ll have plenty of time to visit with your uncle.”

  Jordan had a playful smile that reminded Artest of a mischievous child. She kept the coltish look on her face as the others vacated the kitchen and she moved closer to him.

  “Before I go out there and make a bigger fool of myself, tell me which ones are your lovers,” she said as she stepped so close to him he thought she was going to take Dacia’s spot on his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck as she waited for his answer. Her behavior was very playful and relaxed. He had no idea of what Jahia had said to her, but she had his gratitude for it.

  “They’re my friends, not my lovers.”

  “Come on, Artest, give it up.”

  “Dogons are natural flirts. I’ve flirted with all of the women present, except for my niece, but I’ve never slept with any of them.” It was the truth, but just barely.

  “Okay, one more question. Which one did you make out with?”

  He laughed. “Jordan, I’m a grown man. What kind of question is that? Made out? What are we, high school students?”

  “Answer the question, grown ass man!”

  He grinned. “All right. One time, years ago, things got kind of hot and heavy with Kit. And I have a vague memory of kissing Marabella one time, but I believe I was bewitched. We were interrupted before anything happened.”

  “Which one is Marabella?”

  “The witch.”

  “Ah, hence the bewitched disclaimer?”

  She really amused him, and he couldn’t hold back the laugh. “It wasn’t a disclaimer. I really believe she slipped something in my drink.”

  “Why would she have to do that?”

  “Because I’ve seen what she really looks like!”

  He couldn’t tell what she started to say, but she looked shocked and then laughed with her head thrown back until her joy forced him to pull her to his lap.

  “You make me smile,” he told her. Among other things that you make me feel. She would have no way of knowing it, but in his long lifetime, he’d met or been in the company of courtesans, geishas, and sex slaves, but none of them exuded pure sensuality as much as Jordan. He thought about how distracting it had to be for her male students. He couldn’t imagine himself sitting still through one of her lectures and remaining focused on American history.

  “What does she look like?” she whispered in his ear.

  His mind was wandering, and her question threw him. “Who?” he asked.

  “The witch. What does she really look like? The woman I think you’re talking about is quite beautiful.”

  He laughed. “Some things are common images and clichés because they occur often. When you think of the common Halloween witch’s mask, you’re thinking of a generous rendering of Marabella’s face. I’m not saying they all look like that, because they don’t. Some of them are naturally lovely, but Marabella hasn’t aged well.”

  “How old is she?”

  “I would guess one fifty, maybe one seventy-five.”

  “Oh my goodness. Is anybody out there younger than fifty real years?”

  He didn’t have to think about that one. “No, you are by far the youngest person in the house.”

  “I still think I’m going to wake up and learn that I’ve dreamed all of this.”

  Before he could respond to her, he heard something that forced him to stand abruptly, but he held her so she wouldn’t fall.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Stay. No, come with me,” he said while pulling her with him towards the source of his concern.

  Tyler was standing near the temple door.

  “What is it?” Artest asked in English.

  “Maybe nothing, but I’d planned to light the candles in the temple. Twice I tried to open the door, and twice it stuck.”

  “It is a very old door,” Artest said, but the words were spoken for her benefit. Both Tyler and Artest knew something was wrong. It was a sign, and Dogon-Hunters heed signs.

  He placed his hands against the door and listened.

  “It’s not inside,” he said, and Tyler nodded. Artest knew Tyler had already checked, but he had to satisfy himself.

  “One of my guests was not invited,.” Ty
ler said in Bamanakan.

  Artest responded in Bamanakan when he answered. “Should I take her upstairs or away from the house?”

  Tyler thought for a moment. “Thunder is not yet rain. Keep her close for now. I’ll announce that it’s almost time to enter the Togu Na, but the temple will be available for the next few minutes if anybody is interested in visiting.”

  Artest nodded. “Then they’ll know to expect the test.”