by Molly White
Always Be My Banshee
Molly White
This book is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.
This book may not be sold, shared, or given away.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Always Be My Banshee
Copyright © 2020 by Molly Harper
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64197-162-1
* * *
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
This ebook is based on an Audible Original audiobook.
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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Contents
1. Cordelia
2. Brendan
3. Cordelia
4. Brendan
5. Cordelia
6. Brendan
7. Cordelia
8. Cordelia
9. Brendan
10. Cordelia
11. Brendan
12. Cordelia
13. Brendan
14. Cordelia
15. Cordelia
Acknowledgments
Also by Molly White
About the Author
1
Cordelia
If there was one thing Cordelia Canton understood, it was hair-soaking, ass-cheeks-sticking-to-the-upholstery heat and humidity. Even to her sturdy Floridian sensibilities, southern Louisiana was freaking ridiculous.
She lifted her heavy, umber-colored hair off of her neck and twisted it into a bun with the practiced efficiency of someone who had wintered in the relentlessly tropical Sunshine State. She secured the bun with an extra elastic from her purse, then peeled off the cotton gloves that were essential to her any time she left her apartment. She felt like she was suffocating, one body part at a time.
Steam curled up from the sidewalk after that afternoon’s waterfall of a rainstorm, making her sensible travel clothes stick to her like a second skin. She scanned the lineup of vehicles that seemed to cycle in and out of the lanes in a chaotic automotive ballet. None of them was the white van she was told to expect. She was starting to feel like a child left after school by a forgetful parent.
This was supposed to be her reward for years of competent service to the International League for Interspecies Cooperation—fieldwork. She despised fieldwork, loathed it. She hated the crowded airports, the never-ending cycle of gloves she needed to protect herself, the hotels that were never clean enough—
Stopping herself mid-mental rant, she shook her head, muttering, “No, you’re not going to do that to yourself. You will see this as a positive. You’re here because you’re the best analyst in your department. This is an opportunity. That’s what they said in the letter—an opportunity. It’s a good thing you were sent here. Just stop trying to turn this into a pity party.”
The last line sounded like Bernadette Canton, shockingly so, and it made Cordelia seal her lips against further “affirmations.”
Sitting on her well-worn luggage and talking to herself in her mother’s voice on the sidewalk outside the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport was not how she expected to begin this assignment. She’d traveled for the League before when artifacts couldn’t be moved safely to her office; to Hong Kong and Rome and a very strange convenience store in Parsippany, New Jersey. Each time she’d been treated with the same efficient consideration she received as an in-house psychic evaluator in the League’s Washington DC headquarters. She’d been picked up on time, in a nice air-conditioned town car with a translator/guide—which had been particularly helpful in New Jersey. She definitely hadn’t been left to sweat her ass off at the arrivals gate, amongst tourists who were already three-quarters drunk—she paused and checked her watch—for thirty minutes.
She pulled her pale blue linen blouse away from her neck and fanned herself. She understood the League’s need for subtlety and secrecy, especially with this particular assignment—an assignment so top secret that she didn’t know anything about the artifact she’d be examining, its origins or exact location. She did not understand why her supervisors insisted on all personnel for Mystic Bayou arriving separately and meeting up at the ride-share lane like a bunch of tourists. She also failed to grasp why the League would hire someone who clearly didn’t understand punctuality or the limits of a woman’s ability to tolerate boob sweat. It was October for goodness’ sake.
Of course, it wasn’t unusual for her to be brought into a work situation blind, so to speak. Her supervisors didn’t want to influence her evaluations. She’d worked in the League’s DC research offices for the better part of ten years. Day in, day out, she’d been comfortably enclosed in her little climate-controlled office, examining artifacts, determining their value and power, and cataloging them for the archives. Then the League whisked those items away and stored them in deep underground vaults in undisclosed locations. Not all of them were supernaturally powerful objects; some were just old. She’d seen some of history’s greatest events, living them as if she were there. And on occasion, she saw nothing. She loved those days. She slept better.
She opened her small travel pill organizer and dry-swallowed two Extra Strength Tylenol, a calcium supplement, and a prescription multi-vitamin. Traveling always left her feeling like a wet paper sack in a windstorm, even when she’d been on the road with her mother. The effort of keeping up her shield leeched away the nutrients from her relatively healthy diet, leaving her more susceptible to anemia, fatigue, bone fractures, and a host of other health issues. She had a box of supplements in her suitcase that would put a hypochondriac to shame, but this little travel kit should keep her covered until she got to her assigned League housing in Mystic Bayou.
Of course, if she didn’t get inside an air-conditioned space soon, she was going to toss those supplements and several bottles worth of water onto the shoes of her tardy driver. Even if that driver showed up in the next minute, she considered throwing up anyway out of spite.
She stared off into the hazy heat of the horizon, imagining that she was somewhere more pleasant— skipping a show to watch the sun sinking into the ocean off the coast of Oregon, or in that freak September snowstorm that had trapped the whole caravan in Wyoming. It had been the first time Cordelia had ever seen snow. For all her power, watching those little tufts of untouched ice fall out of the sky had been the most magical thing she’d ever witnessed.
Cold, lashing pain spiked through her temples, and suddenly she remembered how angry her mother had been when she’d skipped that show in Oregon, and the punishment that had followed. She shook off the memory and was suddenly aware of a white van pulling up to the curb. The side of the van read, “Crazy Jock’s Self-Storage” in bright orange block letters, just over what she realized was a rather offensive caricature of a Cajun.
“What fresh hell is this?” Cordelia said.
The driver put the van in park and stepped out. He was tall, lean, and pale, almost unnaturally so, and he wasn’t sweating even in this heat. Was he a vampire? She’d never actually met one, but after working for the League she’d come to realize that everything else existed, so why not vampires? Then again, it was broad daylight. She was pretty sure that was still a rule for vampires, right?
Ugh, the heat was making her all dull-witted.
She supposed it was his cheekbones that made her think of vampires. They gave him the haunted air of a Byronic hero, all hollows and edges and sharp-eyed misery. His hair was black, not just dark brown, but so black that it seemed to absorb the light around it. All he was missing was some heavy collared coat flipped around his ears and he would look very mysterious indeed.
This is what she got for traveling to New Orleans. She had vampires and all manner of nonsense on the brain and she hadn’t even left the airport.
Bottom line, he was gorgeous, even in jeans and a plain black dress shirt. But she was just too sweaty to care or concern herself with the very limp and sad first impression she was surely making on one of the most attractive people she’d met in a very long time.
This lack of confidence was temporary, not a chronic condition. She knew she was delicately pretty with a slim build and wide blue eyes. She’d made a career out of those guileless looks when she was younger. After all, Bernadette would insist, what audience wouldn’t believe pretty lies when they came from such an angelic little face? When Cordelia was feeling more like herself, she might have to put her wiles to her best advantage. Right now, she just wanted to scrape herself off the sidewalk and get out of this heat.
“You heading to the Devil’s Armpit?” he asked in a lilting Irish brogue that seemed much more cheerful than his tone. Of course, he had a beautiful—if slightly flat—voice to go with the face. The accent just wasn’t fair to her poor celibate soul.
She nodded slightly as she recognized the code her driver was supposed to give to confirm his involvement with the League. “Just a bit further off the map, actually. Here there be dragons.”
He rolled those blue eyes, just slightly, and she realized it wasn’t for her. The League’s archaic spy games could be trying even when you weren’t driving a bright orange rental van of dubious origins. “All right then, in you get.”
Without asking, he took her two large suitcases and loaded them into the van. She noticed that he was careful not to touch her with those pale, long-fingered hands, which she appreciated. She wondered if Dr. Ramsay had informed the driver of her “condition.” From what she’d heard of Jillian Ramsay, that was just the sort of thoughtful detail that had made her such a good fit for the community liaison position in Mystic Bayou.
Cordelia’s lips curved at the corners. It was nice, to find someone who was considerate of her skills. As much as they were a gift, psychic talents could be a curse. Having her head flooded with images, the emotional echoes from other people, other times—loving and hurting one another, and sometimes, dying. People had no idea the chain of others that held and touched the objects around them and left them teeming with memory traces. She avoided antique stores like they were radioactive. Everything she owned was new, from her clothes to her furniture to her utensils. It was just easier that way. Sure, she had enough control to avoid the worst of the pain, but it was exhausting to keep up that constant shield.
Hell, she’d had to spend most of the plane ride to New Orleans meditating, just so she could avoid the tide of anxiety, fear, and bladder fullness crashing down on her from previous passengers.
Cordelia climbed into the passenger seat. While the driver had gallantly wrestled her luggage into the van, he hadn’t actually introduced himself, which created a certain amount of social awkwardness when he took the driver’s seat. He cranked up the air-conditioner and pointed it in her direction, without comment. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all besides grumbling various colorful curses in what she thought maybe was Gaelic while he pulled smoothly into the melee of traffic.
While the hair on her arms stood up, she felt the familiar sensation of being in the presence of a creature who was “other” like herself. She couldn’t quite place what he was or what his gift could be. In fact, she wasn’t getting any sort of reading from him at all. Usually, when she was tired and distressed like this, she was practically bombarded with images, but all she felt now was blessed silence and air-conditioning.
Of course, the goose pimples could also be related to the air-conditioning. The blissful, blissful air-conditioning.
Cordelia expected that he might make some sort of small talk once they’d traveled out of the worst of New Orleans’ snarled freeways, but he kept his hands at ten-and-two and his tongue in check. No comments on the traffic or even the heat, just silence. She supposed it was a bit like taking a taxi—not that she’d ever tried that, since it would be the psychic equivalent of a rolling iron maiden. Maybe he was waiting for her to establish whether this was to be a non-verbal ride or a conversational ride?
It would be easier to sit there and enjoy the quiet, she supposed, not to mention the strong cell phone signal. Mystic Bayou was in the middle of nowhere. The assignment briefing mentioned the availability of satellite smartphones to keep in touch with loved ones in the “outside world.” Not that she had loved ones to contact, but context was always helpful—there may have been dragons at the edge of the map, but there certainly wouldn’t be more than two signal bars.
Still, Cordelia was going to have to work with this man and many other League employees over the next few months as they all tried to sort out the mess in Mystic Bayou. She didn’t know a single one of them besides the director of operations, Sonja Fong, and no one really knew Sonja Fong.
Ms. Fong was a League legend, only spoken of in hushed, reverent tones in the hallways and breakrooms. Cordelia never participated in those conversations, but still, she overheard things.
It wouldn’t hurt to have at least one acquaintance when she arrived in town. She’d developed a habit of keeping to herself since moving to DC, not just at home but at the office, too. She’d burrowed into her lovely private workroom with its light table and enclosed HVAC system, where she didn’t have to deal with other people or have their messy memories and emotions splashing all over her. Cordelia spent years methodically deprogramming her mother’s lessons from her brain, teaching herself to see the people around her as more than marks for the fleecing. And when she wasn’t sure that had worked, she kept her distance. The most social interaction she got was at the office, and that consisted of riding the elevator and making a concerted effort not to touch anyone or anything.
She lived in a nondescript building in an unexciting corner of Crystal City. She liked ordinary. She liked mundane. She’d had enough adventure and wandering. Through the miracles of the internet and home delivery, Cordelia could get groceries, clothes, movies, anything she needed without leaving her cozy apartment. And after the tumult of her childhood…yes, burrowing was definitely the right word. She’d built a den, dug in, and protected herself from the outside world.
The painful silence clouding the van was evidence enough of her rusted social skills, and of her tendency of burrowing inside her own head as well. And she still wasn’t talking. Was there a limit for how long they could sit there in silence before it was no longer acceptable for her to try to start a conversation? Had that window closed?
“So, Mystic Bayou,” she blurted out, surprising even herself.
The man’s shoulder’s jerked suddenly, as if he’d forgotten she was in the van at all. Cordelia tried to find it in herself to be offended, but she found she didn’t mind. It was funny, after spending so much of her time in front of an audience, blinded by a spotlight.
She cleared her throat, smiling hesitantly while she bolstered her mental shield. “What’s it like?”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” he admitted in that dry, musical voice. “I’ve never set foot in the place.”
She glanced back into the open cargo space of the van, across a landscape of carefully labeled boxes. While her bags had been secured by freight belts near the back door, a huge faded green duffel bag was wedged against the back of their seats. The airline luggage tag attached to the handle read “Brendan O’Connor,” with a departure from Dublin, Ireland.
“I thought they were sending someone from town to pick me up,” Cordelia said.
Brendan, if that was his name, shook his head. “I’m just starting there, myself. This is what you might call a strategic carpool. They needed someone to pick up supplies this morning and…well, you. Three birds with one stone.”
“Why the culturally offensive rental van? I thought the League had a whole fleet stationed in the bayou?” Cordelia asked.
“They do. Stretched to the limit, apparently, by some local to-do. No one had time or the wheels to come fetch either of us. So, the van was booked, loaded, and ready for me to take from the overnight lot when I landed,” Brendan said.
“This sounds like how people become victims of sketchy internet-based crimes on Dateline,” Cordelia replied.
He snorted, but didn’t disagree.
She added, “Well, thank you, I suppose, for taking the time.”
“Eh, I’ve always wanted to know what it was like to drive on the wrong side of the road. Unless you’d like to drive?” Brendan asked.
“Oh, no, I don’t have a license,” Cordelia said.
He turned to her, mouth agape. “I thought everybody in America had their own cars.”
“My teenage years were what you might call ‘unconventional,’” Cordelia said.
Cordelia relaxed into her seat, preparing herself for the moment that her shield slipped and this man’s feelings and thoughts flitted into her brain like unwelcome AM radio signals. While her gift was primarily touch-based, she could get flashes when she was enclosed in a confined space like this with someone. It was what had made the plane ride so uncomfortable, knowing that she could pick up someone’s memories like a germ. The stronger the memory, whether it was picked up by touch or proximity, the longer it would stay with her—bubbling up in her own thoughts or as nightmares, waking her up screaming in the middle of the night. But now, she was just getting a blank sort of white noise, which wasn’t…unpleasant.