Black Dust Mambo

by Adrian Phoenix

  Kallie looked at her friend. Belladonna winked, and Kallie couldn’t help but grin despite the cold knot tangling up her heart. “Why the hell not?”

  Dallas watched Kallie and Belladonna cross Decatur Street, weaving through the damned near bumper-to-bumper traffic. A heavy combination of springtime tourists and carnival attendees. Both women moved with a natural hip-swinging ease, Kallie in her cutoffs, black tank, and sandals, and Belladonna in her black-belted purple tunic, black leggings, and platform-soled black boots.

  Nice view. Very nice.

  He had a feeling they were heading for the carnival itself, the whole thing spread throughout the Prestige’s massive open-air courtyard—safe from the switched-off public. Maybe he should give Kallie a little bit of space—like, say, the space of one or two beers—before he started tailing her again. The killer was in Hecatean custody, after all.

  But, killer in custody or not, he hadn’t seen a mojo bag hanging around Kallie’s slender throat, and she shouldn’t be without one. Not here. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Dallas yelled, “Hey, Rivière! Where’s your protection?”

  Several heads at nearby tables swiveled in his direction at his shouted question, beignets and paper coffee cups paused at their mouths.

  Kallie twisted around, and dipped a hand beneath her tank and into her bra. Dallas’s heart danced a happy little jig. Pulling her hand out, she held up a small red flannel bag, cocked her weight onto one hip, and arched a dark eyebrow.

  Mmm, mmm, mmm. Lucky bag.

  Good enough. Dallas nodded and waved her on. Stuffing the mojo bag back into her bra, Kallie pivoted, all suppleness and sexy grace, and resumed walking.

  Dallas worked his way across the street, stopped at a restaurant’s booze-to-go window, and ordered an Abita Amber. A twinge of guilt twisted his muscles tight. He’d hated seeing the blend of pissed-off hurt hollowing Kallie’s face. Hated knowing that he’d helped put it there. Hated lying to her even more.

  The waitress slid a clear plastic cup full of foamy beer across the windowsill. “Thanks, darlin’.” Dallas paid, grabbed his beer, and sauntered along the tourist-thronged sidewalk. He poured a long draft of the amber liquid down his throat—malty and smooth, just a hint of caramel, and so cold it made his throat ache.

  But it would take a helluva lot more than one beer to wash away the niggling doubts coiling and looping and snaking through his mind. Doubts about Gabrielle. Doubts about everything she’d told him in that courtyard.

  After his potion had eased Kallie into sleep, Dallas had corralled Belladonna into a long chat about everything he’d missed during the day’s events—the soul-killing hex and Gage’s murder.

  “The killer? She told Kallie something about an eye for an eye never being enough and that Kallie could thank Gabrielle LaRue for everything. Psycho bitch.”

  That had stunned Dallas, the killer knowing Gabrielle by name. Troubled him still. And the soul-killing hex iced him down to the bone. Several dark possibilities had flashed through his mind:

  1. Revenge for some wrong, vicious and soul-killing complicated, nothing plain or simple about it.

  2. Every single word Gabrielle had told him in the botanica courtyard had been the absolute truth: “A seed done been planted inside de girl, a seed dat can never be allowed to blossom. If it does, Dallas-boy, den somet’ing more wicked den long-fallen Babylon and crueler den hell will walk de earth once more.”

  “How will we keep the seed from blossoming?”

  “You keep it away from de t’ings dat make it grow. Dis seed craves darkness and strife and blood. We gotta make sure it doesn’t get dem. Gotta make sure de seed ain’t fed.”

  But someone had been working their balls off (or tits off, in this case) to do exactly that, using blood and death and darkness. Kallie had never been the true target, just those around her, blood sacrifices to the seed harbored inside of her.

  And his least favorite possibility:

  3. Every single word Gabrielle had told him in the botanica courtyard had been the absolute truth. But then she’d decided to do what she believed necessary to stop a ravening evil from awakening and walking the earth, what she believed necessary to spare her niece a living nightmare. She’d found someone—Rosette—to lay down a hex that would kill both Kallie and whatever the fucking seed was. When that had failed, Rosette had kept trying.

  But why the attempt on his life?

  Had Gabrielle been behind the hoodooed poppet? Questions raised by the luscious Felicity Fields drifted through his mind:

  “Did anyone besides Gabrielle LaRue know you’d be attending carnival?”

  “No. Look, if you’re implying that Gabrielle had something to do with all this, you’re wrong. She’s the one who called me—”

  “And did Ms. LaRue’s call lead you to your door and the bucket beyond . . .”

  None of it made sense.

  Gabrielle was a powerful hoodoo, a woman of strength, but brimming with secrets. Dallas didn’t really know all that much about her. But he’d trusted her all the years he’d known her as a student, then as a fellow hoodoo and—he liked to think—as a friend.

  And he just couldn’t believe that there was anything wrong with Kallie. He’d never seen any sign of darkness in her. A quick temper, sure, but nothing that would qualify as “more wicked den long-fallen Babylon.”

  He wondered if Gabrielle had misinterpreted her cards, despite her denials, wondered if maybe it all came down to her thinking she saw something of Kallie’s murderous mom inside the girl. What other seed could she be talking about?

  Dallas poured the rest of his beer down his gullet, then ordered another cold one at the next to-go window he came to. He examined that afternoon’s phone conversation with Gabrielle again, twisted it this way and that, looking for rough edges, dangling threads, something not quite right.

  “She safe, boy?”

  “She is now. I potioned her up, and she’s sleeping. But two people are dead—one of ’em body and soul. The hex on Kallie’s mattress was a soul-killer.”

  “A soul-killer? You sure? Not many can shape a black hex dat powerful.”

  “True, but you can. And I’m sure about the soul-killing because a nomad Vessel happens to be here too. Which is good, since the Hecatean master died trying to defend Kallie.”

  “Sir Basil Augustine is dead? Sweet Jesus, Dallas, where were you during all dis?”

  “Sleeping off the effects of a jinxed poppet chained into a bucket of wormwood and sulfur water.”

  “I tol’ you to keep yo’ dick in yo’ pants, boy.”

  “I did, it is, and this ain’t got nothing to do with my dick, dammit.”

  “So you’re saying de death fairy picked you for no particular reason?”

  “No, I’m saying someone deliberately tried to kill me too, and if Kallie and Bell hadn’t stumbled across me, I’d be dead.”

  “Kallie found you? Did you tell her why you’re dere?”

  “Did you hear the ‘someone deliberately tried to kill me too’ part?”

  “I heard, boy. You’re talking to me, ain’t’cha? Obviously, dey didn’t succeed.”

  “The good news is the woman responsible has been caught. Bad news is she’s been laying the blame for everything at your feet.”

  “Silence, then: My feet? Who be dis woman?”

  “Bell passed this info on to me—the woman’s name is Rosette, and she’s a black chick in her midtwenties with beaucoup short platinum-blonde hair. She was working as a maid in the hotel. Know her?”

  “Rosette? I know a white girl named Rosalinda, but . . .”

  “Well, this Rosette knows you, darlin’. She—”

  “Don’t you dare ‘darlin’ ’me, Dallas Brûler.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, no disrespect, just a slip of the tongue. Anyway, she told Kallie that everything came compliments of Gabrielle LaRue. She also mentioned some bullshit about an eye for an eye never being enough.”

  “From several thousand m
iles away, Dallas hears a breath catch in Gabrielle’s throat as though a realization has sparked through her mind—a realization she doesn’t reveal.”

  “Bête comme une bête a chandelle, dis girl. Sounds like she be carrying a heavy grudge, but I don’t know her.”

  “She may be crazy as a June bug, for true, but I seriously doubt she has you mixed up with someone else. Do you think it’s possible that Kallie’s mother sent her?”

  Silence hangs heavy in Dallas’s ear; then Gabrielle sighs.

  “Anyt’ing’s possible at dis point, Dallas-boy. You might even be right about Sophie, but I don’t believe she’d try to snuff Kallie’s soul.”

  “Why not? She tried to murder her, for chrissakes.”

  “Sophie just wouldn’t and let’s leave it at dat.”

  And no amount of persuasion and cajoling on his part had earned him a single word more about Sophie Rivière.

  The conversation had ended with Dallas promising—since he was a goddamned glutton for punishment—to shepherd Kallie home as soon as possible and to find out as much as possible about Rosette.

  Gabrielle’s words—“She safe, boy?”—circled on an endless loop through Dallas’s mind. Odd words if she truly wished Kallie dead and the appropriate ones if she wished her niece protected.

  And Dallas wished he knew which way to take them. The only loose thread he’d discovered in remembering his conversation with Gabrielle was that caught breath followed by calm denial. He had no doubt those words—“an eye for an eye is never enough”—had clicked into place in Gabrielle’s mind like triple cherries on a slot machine.

  What ain’t she saying? And even more important, why ain’t she saying it?

  TWENTY

  MAY MADNESS

  “You gonna have it out with Gabrielle?” Belladonna asked as they walked underneath the circular arch proclaiming may madness in black wrought-iron ivy leaf letters.

  “Yeah, definitely,” Kallie said. She strolled along the crowded fairway, the grass cushioning the soles of her sandals a welcome change from a regular carnival’s playground of hard-packed dirt, dust, and dying weeds. “I can’t believe she sent someone—let alone Dallas, of all people—to spy on me.”

  Understanding and sympathy sparked gold light through Belladonna’s autumn gaze. “Me either. I mean, hell, if you’re gonna send a spy, send Jason Bourne, y’know? At least he’s sexy.”

  Kallie slapped Belladonna’s arm. “Pure evil.”

  “Well, someone has to be.”

  Game booths—spell a ring around the bottle and win!—and demonstration booths—chakra alignment here—nestled against each other. Drums throbbed and pulsed, a primal and earthy soundtrack against the musical dings, clangs, and deep-throated laughter curling into the air from the gaming booths as the women walked past lecture tents—how to use both runes and tarot in your readings—holding experts seated at tables lined with pitchers of water and folding chairs filled with note-taking listeners.

  The carnival drums pounded in time with the dull pain throbbing above Kallie’s right eye. Thanks, Dallas. She decided to blame the headache on his spy confession—or partial confession, since she remained convinced he had held something back.

  “Maybe Gabrielle chose him because she wanted someone she trusted completely to watch over you,” Belladonna said. “I gotta admit her actions surprised me too, but maybe it’s like Dallas said—she was just worried about you.”

  “Maybe, but it don’t make it right, Bell.” Kallie shoved her hands into the pockets of her cutoff jeans.

  “No argument here. Hey, you want some cotton candy?”

  “When in carnival, yada, yada . . . Sure. Purple.” Belladonna perched her hand on one cocked hip. Her scent—jasmine tonight—floated in the air, light and sweet. “Girl, please. You always pick purple. You need to expand your horizons. Live a little.”

  Kallie shrugged. “What the hell—let’s go with blue, then.”

  “That’s what I’m getting, so you get pink.”

  “What the—? Purple!”

  Laughing, Belladonna turned to the booth and placed their order. The guy behind the counter, a skinny teen, red-haired and beaucoup freckled, murmured a few words and traced a glyph in air laced thick with the sticky, buttery scents of caramel corn and spun sugar, and two paper cones floated over to the whirling cotton-candy-making machine.

  Kallie’s thoughts spun back to Layne and the grief she’d seen in his green eyes the moment his gaze had landed on her bed and Gage’s bloodied body. Spun back to the feel of his hard chest beneath her hands as she tried to summon him back into his lifeless body and siphon the hex’s poison from his soul.

  “I am fighting, woman. Quit pummeling me.”

  And now, like a cherry on top of a nightmare sundae, the nomad had Augustine’s uncrossed-over spirit jam-packed inside of him.

  Two people are dead because of me. Gage’s soul destroyed. How do I ever atone for that?

  Kallie tugged her hands free of her pockets as Bella-donna handed her a paper cone mounded with purple fluff. “I thought I was getting pink,” Kallie said.

  “I decided to have mercy.” Belladonna plucked a strand of blue from her cone and placed it in her mouth. “Yum. Sugar.”

  “You just had sugar.”

  “I stand corrected. Yum. More sugar.”

  “I think I want to attend Gage’s funeral. I owe him that much,” Kallie said, pinching a piece of purple fluff into her mouth. It melted the second it touched her tongue. Sticky sugar fuzz clung to her fingertips.

  Belladonna crossed her arms over her chest and gave Kallie a long and measured look. “Mmm-hmm. And when the pixie tries to kill you like she promised?”

  “I’ll deck her.”

  “Y’know, Shug, I hate to break it to you, but slamming knuckles into noses isn’t the answer to everything, and it’s far from accepted funeral etiquette. Oh. Wait. It’s a nomad funeral, so maybe it isn’t. And that’s another thing—I don’t think outsiders are welcome at nomad funerals.”

  “I know, I know,” Kallie said; then she sighed. She brushed her hair back from her face. “I’m going to see if I can reason with the leprechaun. Maybe I can convince her to call off the ban long enough for me to attend the funeral—then I’ll never bother her or Layne again.”

  Belladonna snorted. “Good luck with that, Shug.”

  Never bother Layne again. Never see him again.

  Well, no big deal, right? Sure, the man was beaucoup easy on the eyes, but she didn’t really know him, and he’d be back on the road again soon enough anyway. Yet the thought of never looking into his pine-green eyes again or winning a smile from his lips or catching his sweet-orange-and-sandalwood scent twisted cold around her heart. And even though that puzzled the hell out of her—do I feel this way because I saved his life?— she couldn’t help but wonder what tumbling into the sack with him would be like.

  It’d be good, I’d bet. Loving each other up from sunup to sundown until he rode away again. We’d have our space, our privacy, and would look forward to the next meeting.

  She stuffed another sticky piece of spun sugar into her mouth, perplexed by the direction of her thoughts. She remembered the flutter of Layne’s pulse as it stopped, remembered the feel of his ribs cracking beneath her hands, the hex’s oily taint flowing from him and into her. Remembered the look in his eyes when he’d opened them again—all green heat and light: I know you.

  We’re connected somehow—I felt it the first time I saw him standing outside my door looking all sleep-rumpled. Saw it spark in his eyes too.

  “My advice regarding the pixie?” Belladonna was saying as Kallie tuned back in. “Make a poppet of her, and compel it to be nice.”

  “I like that idea,” Kallie replied, wondering if she could stop at just compelling McKenna to behave. “But I’ll try talking to her first. If that doesn’t work . . . You got poppet-makings in that mambo-scout bag of yours?”

  “Nope, but you can buy them in the de
alers’ room.”

  “Wonder if they make poppets that small?”

  “Girl, please. In her case, the poppets are life-sized.”

  Kallie laughed, and the pain in her head eased a little.

  “Yup, you are pure one hundred percent evil.”

  “Kind of you to notice, Shug.” Belladonna stuffed a wad of blue fluff into her mouth. “But before you go look up the pixie or start hexing tiny poppets, there’s something you need to think about—and think hard.”

  All the amusement and mischief vanished from Belladonna’s face and her somber expression knuckled a fist of apprehension into Kallie’s guts. “And what’s that?” she asked, keeping her voice level.

  “I know you want to say your good-byes to Gage, I totally get that. But you’ve got to look at it from the other side. How do you think Gage’s family will feel about a squatter chick dropping in on the festivities? A squatter chick who also happens to be the last woman their boy slept with and in whose bed he died?”

  “Because of a hex intended for her,” Kallie finished. Her appetite for cotton candy withered. She crossed to the trash bin stationed between the bewitch a mole and wheel of destiny booths and dumped her cotton candy into its black-plastic-lined interior.

  “Think they’d want to see her?” Belladonna asked gently when Kallie rejoined her. “Think they’d want her to share in their sorrow?”

  “No, I guess not.” Shoving the heavy mass of her hair behind her shoulders, Kallie sighed. “If Jacks died in some woman’s bed because of a bullet or spell or whatever aimed at her, I’d fucking deck her if she dared show her face at his funeral.”

  “I know you feel bad, Shug, and I know you want to do what’s right, but in this case, staying away is the right thing.”

  Throat tight, Kallie nodded. “Yeah.”

  But she hated to leave it at that. To just walk away from a man who’d made her laugh and whose touch had made her moan. A man who’d died in her place. Her fingers sought out the soothing onyx-and-sterling-silver touch of her pendants and locked around them.

  The memory of Gage’s fingers slipping across the swell of her breasts to the base of her throat and the pendants that rested against her skin sparked through her mind.