Shadows: A Bayou Magic Novel

by Kristen Proby

  In the third corner is a door, presumably leading to the rest of the house.

  And then there’s the fourth corner, where there are currently four women tied to what looks like toddler beds. The tiny mattresses are bare. Some have blood and pee stains.

  The smell in the room is as bad as my mother’s house, but lingering with the stench of feces and urine is the metallic scent of blood.

  So much blood.

  And fear.

  The girls can’t see me. I try to talk to them, to get their attention, but they can’t hear me. I need to ask them questions.

  Where are they? How did they get here? Who brought them here?

  Without those answers, this is pointless.

  “Who are you?”

  I’m surprised when another girl glances up and talks to me.

  “I’m Brielle.”

  Her eyes widen, and her lip quivers. “He’s going to kill us. He’s going to kill all of us. And then he’s going to kill you.”

  “Who is he?”

  She shakes her head. “He’s the devil.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Cash

  “I dreamed,” she says as she walks into the kitchen from the bedroom. Her hair is a mess of dark waves around her beautiful face, her blue eyes look sleepy and tormented.

  I’ve only known her a week, and yet I miss the happy look she had in her eyes before all of this started. She was quick to smile. To flirt.

  Now, it seems she’s wrapped in an invisible, heavy blanket.

  I’m going to do my best to get her back to the happy woman I first met.

  “Talk to me.” I pull her onto my lap, and she reaches for my coffee, making me smile. I don’t mind sharing it with her. Hell, I’ll share my life with her if she’ll have me.

  That thought shocks the hell out of me.

  My job is too intense to have a family. It’s best to be single, without ties to anyone.

  But now that Brielle’s in my life, I can’t imagine it without her.

  “More walking,” she says with a sigh and leans her head on my shoulder. “But this time, I was in the room where he holds them.”

  “What?”

  “He has four right now. One saw me, but I didn’t get much information out of her.”

  “So, you don’t know where he’s holding them?”

  “No. And it pisses me off, Cash.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make me happy, either. I have to be in the office in about an hour.”

  “I’m coming with you.” She kisses my cheek, then hops off my lap and sets to work making her own cup of coffee. “I need to talk to Asher.”

  “You don’t want me to talk to him?”

  “No. I have questions, and I need to prove to him that I’m not a whack job.”

  “I think if that was the case, he wouldn’t have asked for my help,” I remind her as I slide my hands over her hips and around her waist to hug her from behind. “You smell good.”

  “Neroli oil,” she says, smiling up at me. “It’s good for anxiety. And, I’ll be honest, this whole thing has me more than a little anxious.”

  “You wouldn’t be human if it didn’t.” I kiss her hair, then turn her in my arms so I can pull her in for a strong hug. “Maybe you need a break. I’ll see if Andy and Felicia can join us for dinner.”

  “A distraction might be nice, especially after being in the bayou yesterday.”

  It was an experience I never want to repeat. I was honest when I told her that very little surprises me.

  And yet, I was shocked as hell.

  The living conditions were foul. The woman who birthed the three girls I’ve come to care about was…sick. That’s the best word I can use for it. She is mentally ill for sure, and that’s probably the root of the neglect of her children. But the fact that she admitted to killing her husband means that I’m under obligation to have her arrested.

  Though it wouldn’t matter.

  She’s already locked up, undergoing a far more brutal punishment than the government could ever throw at her.

  “My sisters warned me not to take you there.”

  “Why?”

  She leans back to quirk her brow. “Come on. You know you want to dump me after seeing where I came from.”

  “Dump you? No. I don’t want to do that.” I kiss her forehead and make slow circles on her back with my palm. “I have about a billion questions, but I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I can probably answer your inquiries.”

  “I think the one person who could answer the bulk of them the best is too mentally ill to do so. She belongs in an institution.”

  “I know.” She rubs her face and then leans her forehead on my chest. “I know she does. But she’ll never willingly leave that house. It has its claws in her.”

  “She admitted to killing your father.”

  “She did kill him.” She looks up at me again. “And he continued tormenting my sisters and me for the better part of a decade afterwards. Speaking of him, I need to know what Daphne saw when she touched the roses yesterday. Whatever it was, it freaked her out.”

  “What made him stop tormenting you?”

  “Millie met Miss Sophia, and she helped us get rid of him. He beat us repeatedly when he was alive, and then he taunted us from beyond the grave.”

  “A lovely man.”

  “He probably deserved much worse than what Mama gave him.”

  “Do you know how she killed him?”

  “No, she never said. In fact, until yesterday, she never admitted to killing him—that I know of anyway.”

  “But you knew she did?”

  “One day, he was there, being an asshole of epic proportions. Hours later, he was gone, she said he was never coming back, and we had a new shadow in the house. I was old enough to put two and two together.”

  “I see.” I nod and back away from her. “I won’t make any calls to have her picked up. But if I did, and they put her in an institution, it would be better than where she is now.”

  “Let’s get through this, and then we can worry about my mother,” she suggests. “One thing at a time.”

  “Deal.”

  “So, you’re telling me he’s currently holding four more victims,” Asher says, observing Brielle carefully.

  “Yes.”

  “Because you saw it in a dream.”

  She blows out a breath and starts to pace. “There are now four girls following me. They came to me in the dream and told me to follow them. Then, the next thing I knew, I was in a room with four living girls. It looked like a torture chamber.”

  “How so?” He starts taking notes. “Tell me what it looked like.”

  “It was a big room.” She closes her eyes and begins to describe a workbench with tools, an electric chair, and the beds where the girls were tied up. “It’s filthy. They soil themselves there, and there’s so much blood by the workbench. Mostly dry, but there was some fresh blood, as well.”

  “Look on the walls,” I instruct her as if I’m talking to a hypnosis patient. “Are there photos? Is anything written there?”

  “Nothing’s written,” she says quietly. “But above the workbench, he has a bunch of things pinned in a line.”

  “What is it?”

  She opens her eyes and looks right at me. “Hair. Braided hair.”

  “How many?” Asher asks.

  “Thirty-two.”

  I take a deep breath. “He’s killed thirty-two girls since he started this phase of his hunt. The braids are his trophies.”

  “I hope you’re right. Because if I can get my hands on that hair, I can positively identify the victims and give the families some answers,” Asher says, then turns back to Brielle. “I need you to do this again, but I need more information. I need you to walk through that door and tell me who he is. And, most importantly, where he is.”

  “I don’t know how to do that,” Brielle says in frustration. “I don’t know how it’s happening in the first place, Asher. Th
is is not one of my gifts. I’m a medium, and I have some psychic abilities, but dream-walking isn’t something I know anything about. I’ve never done it before.”

  “Hey,” Asher says, holding up his hand, his voice softer. “Brielle, I get it. This is scary, and…well, just plain shitty. I hate that it’s in your head. But I have faith that you can do this.”

  “Why do you suddenly believe me?”

  “I didn’t disbelieve you before,” he says. “But we haven’t told anyone that the bodies show evidence of electric shock torture. Or that their hair has been chopped.”

  She blinks, thinking it over.

  “How many bodies have you found?”

  “Six.”

  “Six out of thirty-two,” I say calmly.

  “You’re the profiler,” Asher says, turning to me. “Why aren’t we finding all of them?”

  “He doesn’t want you to find the ones you have,” I reply. “Where did you find them? The bayou?”

  He narrows his eyes, and I keep talking.

  “He’s a sick fuck, but he’s highly intelligent. He’s dumping the bodies in the bayou because he knows they’ll likely get eaten by critters and there won’t be anything left of them. So, if you found them, it’s because they didn’t have time to get eaten.”

  “The most recent was found by a swamp tour group. They saw her floating in the water and fished her out.”

  “That’s horrible,” Brielle says softly. “I’m going to let you two do your jobs. I’m headed over to Millie’s for the day. She and Daphne are already there poring through the book we fetched from Mama’s yesterday. Maybe there are instructions in there for dream-walking.”

  “I’ll take you.”

  She shakes her head no. “It’s not far. I’ll text you when I get there.”

  She kisses me, and then she’s gone.

  “Watching someone you love go through something this horrible is its own kind of torture,” Asher says, watching me.

  “I didn’t think I was made for it. Love.” I sit down again and sigh. “But she’s it for me. And I’ve only known her for a week. It’s fucking crazy.”

  “Not too crazy,” he says, flashing a smile. “I didn’t know my wife much longer than that when I knew she was it for me. And she was held and almost killed by a serial killer.”

  “Jesus. I’m sorry.”

  “It was a few years ago, and she’s doing great now. But I know what it’s like to be afraid for the woman you love. We’re going to catch this bastard if it’s the last thing I do. Now, the profile.”

  “He’s intelligent,” I continue. “Most of the bodies are long gone. Sadly, you’ll never recover them. He isn’t the type to bury them in the backyard or anything like that. But the braids are interesting. It tells me that it’s likely the hair that draws him to his prey. The color, the length. What a killer chooses as his trophies is quite telling.”

  “Long, dark hair. Why that?”

  “It’s usually one of two things. Either he’s killing his mother over and over again, or he’s a jilted lover, and he’s killing the woman who scorned him.”

  “That seems a bit dramatic.” Asher rubs his fingers over his mouth in agitation. “They all look like Brielle.”

  “I know.”

  “That has to be the connection between her and the victims. Do the girls know, after they’ve died, that she’s susceptible to being taken? Are they trying to warn all of the brunettes in town, but because Brielle has gifts, she’s the only one who can see them?”

  “All of those are great questions. But, honestly, I don’t know. That could be the case, or it’s Brielle that he’s killing over and over again.”

  “Do you think it could be one of her jilted lovers?”

  I didn’t before. I hadn’t considered it because what man likes to think about the dudes that have boned his girl before him?

  But it does make sense.

  “It’s the only thing I can think of,” I reply. “And, yes, I’ll be asking her for a list of her former boyfriends tonight.”

  “No man likes to ask his woman for a list of the guys that she used to have sex with. I don’t envy you.”

  “Yeah, it fucking sucks. But so does thirty-two dead girls, with at least four more being held. My ego can take it.”

  “I like you, Cash.”

  “Are you asking me for a list of the men I’ve slept with?” Brielle asks. We’re standing in Witches Brew with Daphne and Millie sitting nearby, all of them gawking at me.

  “Hear me out.”

  “I mean, most men just ask for a number,” Millie says to Daphne. “Like, ‘how many have you slept with?’ They never ask for a list of names.”

  “He’s taking their hair as a trophy,” I say, my eyes still on Brielle’s. “They look like you. The spirits are coming to you as a warning. Or a plea for help.”

  “So, you think the killer is an ex-boyfriend?” Daphne asks. “Talk about a bitter dude.”

  “There are two,” Brielle says simply, surprising me. “Devon Price and Simon Harp.”

  “Ew, you did it with Simon?” Millie asks, scrunching up her nose. Brielle rolls her eyes.

  “Neither of them was jilted. Devon was a guy I dated briefly in college, but he moved on to my roommate, so that breakup was pretty self-explanatory.”

  “And the other?”

  “He used to own the ghost tour company,” she says. “I found out after the fact that he was married.”

  “I’ll have Asher run a check on them,” I mumble as I shoot the man a text, seething inside at the idea of Brielle being with men who clearly didn’t care about or respect her.

  “Anything else you want to know?” she asks tightly. “Favorite positions? Number of times, that sort of thing?”

  “Now you’re pissing me off.”

  “We’re even then,” she says. “I get that you’re being a cop right now, but you’re my…well, my something, and I don’t feel comfortable with this conversation.”

  “Aww, isn’t that sweet?” Daphne asks. “She called him her something.”

  “Super sweet,” Millie says, resting her chin on her hand.

  “We’re right here,” I remind them both. “This isn’t a show for your entertainment.”

  “You should have asked us to leave then,” Daphne says with a shrug, not apologetic in the least.

  “I need to find him,” I say and reach for Brielle, pulling her to me. “I need to find this asshole so we can move on with our lives. I don’t care who these idiots are. They were stupid enough to let you go. They’re meaningless.”

  “Unless they’re killing girls,” Brielle says with a nod. “Okay. I’m hungry.”

  “Let’s go eat, then.”

  “I’m gonna go stay with your mom, Cash,” Felicia says as we finish up some pecan pie for dessert. Brielle and I met up with Andy and his wife for a casual dinner, and it was the perfect thing to take our minds off everything going on.

  “Really?” I frown. “Did she ask you to do that?”

  “No, but when I spoke to her this morning, she said she was tired.”

  “That’s what she told me the other day, as well,” I say, nodding.

  “I know it’s almost impossible for Andy or you to go see her right now, so I’m gonna go check it all out. See how she is and find out if she needs anything. I wish we could talk her into moving here with us.”

  “She’s a stubborn woman,” Andy says, patting his wife’s back. “And we appreciate you going to check on her.”

  “He’s right, on both accounts,” I say with a nod. “I’ve been worried about her. I’m glad you’re going to check on her. Please let us know if she—or you—needs anything.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  I pay the tab, and the four of us walk through the Quarter together. The restaurant isn’t far from Brielle’s apartment, so Andy parked there, and we walked over together.

  “This building,” Brielle says, pointing across the street, “used to be called Lafit
te’s Blacksmith Shop. The original owner, all the way back in 1722, was Jean Lafitte. He was a privateer and used the shop to cover up his illegal activities. It’s now a bar. Patrons have said, after a drink or two, they see Lafitte in all of his pirate garb.”

  “I mean, I see a lot of things after a drink or two,” Felicia says with a chuckle.

  “Well, there’s that,” Brielle says, smiling. “But I can say, and I’d never put this in my tour, that Lafitte is certainly still in residence. In fact, he’s currently standing in the window, watching as we walk past.”

  “And now it’s creepy,” Felicia says with a shudder. “You really should put this stuff in your tour.”

  “No way,” Brielle says. “I would get too many questions, and the hecklers would be off the charts.”

  “You’re probably right,” Andy says. “So, you can take us on private tours and tell us all the extra-scary stuff.”

  “Trust me when I say, the French Quarter has seen atrocities you don’t want in your head,” Brielle says, carefully selecting her words. “Sometimes, the scary stuff, as you put it, is entertaining. But there are times that it’s more than that. And if you feed into it, it’ll follow you home.”

  “I don’t want to know more,” Felicia says, shaking her head. “No more for me.”

  Once at Brielle’s apartment, we say our goodbyes, and I lead Brielle upstairs. While she puts her leftovers in the fridge, I walk into the bathroom and draw her a hot bath.

  “I didn’t know you were a bath man.”

  I turn to find her leaning her shoulder on the doorframe, watching me with a smile.

  “This is for you. I think you could use a little pampering tonight.”

  “Are you just trying to suck up after asking me about my former lovers?”

  “No.” I kiss her nose. “I’m just taking care of you because I’m worried about you.”

  “Well, that’s lovely.” She kisses the palm of my hand, then presses it against her cheek, leaning into my touch. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She crosses to the medicine cabinet and pulls out a bottle of bath salts.

  “Here, you can use these.”

  “Do they have a special spell on them for protection?”