The evil of the box emanated like waves spreading out from a body thrown in a pond.
It started with the trio.
“You should never have taken that from the shelves!” Amal towered over Orin, but the ginger shouted right back.
“You’re keeping secrets from us?”
“You don’t trust us now?” Lucio straightened his lapels in a gesture that could have been an ape beating his chest. “We’re supposed to be partners, Amal.”
The anger spread through the rest of the bar. A stocky woman picking at a salad reached over and grabbed the phone from a guy at another table.
“No one wants to hear your stock picks, Craig.”
“You wouldn’t hear if you weren’t listening in. Give it back.”
An Indian man in a tie and blue jeans hollered at them from a table in the back. “Would both of you just put a lid on it? I’m dealing with numbers over here.”
A deep voice from a dark corner muttered. “Y’all need to fucking shut up. You made me drop a stitch, dammit.”
Everyone bristled. Those typing either stopped or attacked their keyboards. A couple of people tossed back their steaming glög and then swore as it burned their throats. One nicely dressed young man, sitting with an older gentleman with a matching tie, stood and calmly hissed, “I hear what you’re saying. But what I’m saying is fuck this.” Then he turned and walked out of the bar.
Beth stopped dancing.
Even Seb reacted to the box. He spun from his inventory to growl at the lot of them, “No more fighting in my bar. I’ll kick all of you out right now!”
Anger descended on the room and as it often did, fear quickly followed. Junior felt fear claim the three boys at the bar and saw his chance to do something. He left his cooling glög and walked over, stepping easily between Amal and Lucio. He examined the box for a moment, saw the tortured faces tangled in the carved branches that had been unclear from a distance. He looked up at the snarling face of the ginger who’d given him an orange.
Then he took the cloth from Lucio’s hands, picked the box up without touching the wood or iron and walked out of the bar.
5
The Goddess
Outside, Junior wrapped the evil box in its blue cloth. Operating on instinct he walked away from the bar, back to the train. He didn’t know what to do with the box, but he knew it was a very bad thing and good humans shouldn’t have anything to do with it. When he got back to the train station, he had to wait twenty minutes before a guy in a wheelchair swiped his card and opened the gate beside the turnstiles. Junior followed him through.
It wasn’t until after he was through that he realized he could have jumped the turnstile. And then he noticed he was still holding the blue-wrapped box in his hands. He shuffled the contents of his satchel and shoved the box inside.
He took the stairs two at a time and hopped on the first train. It was Southbound. He recognized the first stop as the one the little girl and her granny had gotten off at and he slipped out just before the doors closed.
A janitor was coming out of a little closet in the station pushing a bucket of water with a mop. He paused to rub sand from his eyes and stretch a kink out of his neck. Junior took it as a sign and slipped into the closet as soon as the old man was far enough away not to notice the door opening on its own. Sure enough the little closet had a chair with a travel pillow hanging off the back. Junior focused his mind on the little girl. He thought of her ebony skin and pale blue eyes. He felt again her tiny fingers curled in his beard. He remembered her round face, dimples, and kindness. He conjured up her hair in its five tiny, bushy pigtails. And then the truth dawned on him. He knew who she was. When he turned around and stepped out of the closet, he saw the little girl in her bed, reading.
“Jane.”
“That is what my grandmudder calls me.” The little girl smiled down at her book. She was not scared, not surprised.
Junior didn’t know what to say. He could ask why she wasn’t afraid. He could ask if she was who he thought she was. He could ask how she knew his name, how she knew who his father was. But after all, she was an eight-year-old girl at home in bed at noon on a Wednesday in October.
He asked her, “Are you sick?” And sat on the edge of her bed.
“This body got a new heart when it was a baby.” She took a bookmark from the bedside table and laid it on her page, shutting the large book carefully. “We have just moved here from New Orleans and I met my doctas today. They say my heart is jumpy. I should rest. I think my heart is jumping because I have met you.” She smiled.
He asked, “Do you know me?”
“No. I am not the Jane you loved.”
“She,” Junior swallowed. “She died.”
“Her heart gave up.” She tangled a hand in his beard again. “The Jane in this world had surgery when she was just a baby. She died for a moment when the doctas sewed up her broken heart. I slipped in then.”
“Who are you?”
“You want to know what am I. I am a loa. My god sent me to this body because she was a good girl. I am here to help a family.” The girl who looked like Jane sighed sadly. “But I have not found them yet. While I am looking, maybe I can help you with the evil you carry now in that bag of yours.”
Junior hesitated, reluctant to share his burden with a little girl.
“I am not a little girl.” The little girl said. She added gently, “Your Jane is gone gone. You call me Diejuste. It will help you rememba.”
“You are Jane, but you’re not.” Junior whispered.
“Bon Dey sent me to this body to help a family. I am a good spirit in a good body. I am his servant on this plane. But I am here for six years now and I still have not found my family.”
Junior didn’t quite understand. “But your grandmother was with you on the train.”
“No, this woman, my grandmudder who calls me Jane, she is powerful. She is a good teacher. She does not need my help. And she is nearly fearless. She does not need your help.”
“My help?” Junior asked. “I can’t help anybody. I’m a monster. I’m cursed.”
“Cursed? No, I don’t think so.” The goddess in a girl’s body smiled. “I think you have a calling.”
“No.” He turned back toward the closet. “I don’t help people. I scare them.”
“Oh really?” Diejuste asked. “They aren’t scared when you meet them?”
“If they’re scared, they can’t even see me except out of the corner of their eye. I’m a shadow to them, a thing to avoid.”
“And they will always be scared until they conjure up the confidence to look at you straight on.”
“Like you do.”
“Like I do.” Diejuste smiled. “Has a child never looked at you?”
“Shh.” Junior put a hand up. He’d heard a small noise outside the room. He heard it again.
Diejuste heard it too. “My grandmudder is gone out till late. This sound is not her.”
Junior set his bag down on the foot of her bed and crept toward the door. He’d not gone two steps when Diejuste called out to him.
“Junior!” She whispered. “I can be a spirit of ill if I choose. I do not wish to choose it but I doubt my strength to avoid what calls to me. Take your bag.”
Junior went back and slung the satchel over his head. He settled it against his lower back and crept again to the door wondering why the box was calling to the loa, how the box was calling to the loa. He couldn’t hear it. He could hear small noises on the other side of the door. He cracked the door open and peeked out to see Orin and Lucio staring back at him.
Orin balanced on a counter in the small kitchenette, reaching up into an open cabinet with a coffee mug in his hand. Lucio crouched at the corner of a couch tilted up on its long end. The bottom half of the couch was white. The top half was green. The Latin man held a paintbrush in one hand and a dark green stained rag in the other. Both men were frozen as if caught with their hand in the cookie jar. The next moment they
had disappeared. The mug was in the open cabinet. The rag and brush on the plastic sheeting at the base of the couch.
Junior yelled. “I saw you!”
Diejuste, in the doorway beside him, stomped her foot. “Get back here, you damn brownies. We know who you be.”
Lucio came out from behind the curtains. Orin simply appeared in the corner of the kitchen, like a chameleon fading out of the background.
“Oh!” Diejuste giggled and clapped her hands like the eight-year-old she appeared to be. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
Orin blushed. “It’s a handy skill.”
“You’re Orin.” Junior stated it, surprised to see the man again.
“Yep.”
“I’m Lucio.” The couch painter came over and offered his hand to Junior. “I’m sorry if we disturbed you. We didn’t expect to find anybody home. Why aren’t you in school, Sweetie?” He bent down to tweak one of Diejuste’s pig tails.
The goddess tilted her head at the man.
Before she could say anything, Orin scoffed. “Lucio, she knows what we are. Do you think she’s really just a little girl?”
Lucio straightened.
Diejuste smiled widely. “I have some powers. This,” she pointed at the half-stained couch. “What are you doing?”
Lucio showed her a catalog sitting on the table by the door. “The green couch is circled but you have the white couch here. I’m making it green.”
“Can’t you just magic it green?”
Lucio crinkled his face at her. “This is more fun.”
Orin, wiping his hands on his jeans came over and shook Diejuste’s hand. “I’m Orin. Your grandmother-figure was nice to a pregnant lady on the train. So we came by to deliver some karma.”
As she shook the man’s hand, Junior asked, “What are you?”
The boys smiled at each other and Lucio answered. “We’re brownies. We’re karma’s bitches.”
Headed back to his work in the kitchen, Orin asked, “What are you?”
Diejuste answered for Junior. “We are not sure. His fadda is the boogeyman.”
Lucio patted Junior on the back sympathetically. “Dude, I’m sorry. There’s nothing like a great dad.”
Orin pulled pots and pans out of a TV box mislabeled perishables. “I don’t agree with Lucio on much but that’s the truth. Me, I won the lottery on great dads.”
“And hot sisters,” Lucio quickly added.
“I have one sister.”
The snazzy brownie bowed his apologies to Orin’s warning tone. After Orin turned away, Lucio confided to Junior, “And she’s got enough hot for three.”
Orin threw a bundle of dishtowels at the couch. “Lucio, I swear to god.”
“To goddess?” Lucio smirked. “Hey, don’t worry. I wouldn’t do Dee. She’s got crap karma after killing that nun.”
Orin sputtered, “After what?”
“Seb said Kyle said Dee killed a nun this morning. That Sister Sue chick who’s been all over the news.” Lucio turned to Junior and Diejuste. “You been watching the news? You seen all those gang killings? What’s up with that? Karma’s all over the place.”
“Dee did not kill the nun. She mourned for her.”
Junior had trouble following the tennis match, but Diejuste had no trouble. She raised her eyebrows at Orin. “Your sister is a banshee?”
“Yeah, and this dick knows it. He’s just trying to punish me for losing Amal’s box.”
“I don’t care about the box. That’s Amal’s gig. I don’t even know what his beef is with that thing.” Something occurred to Lucio and he flipped around to address Junior, spraying the carpet with green stain. “Listen, dude, even your boogeyman pops can’t be as bad as Amal’s dad was.”
“Not a chance,” Orin added.
“Hey, but a man is more than just his father’s son.” Lucio offered his hand to Junior. “What’s your name, man?”
Junior didn’t notice the hand and he was too overwhelmed to edit his thoughts.
“I’m Junior Leo. This is Diejuste. She’s a voudon loa inhabiting the body of a girl who in another world grew up to be my wife.” He shook his head. “My girlfriend.”
That stopped the talking for a minute. Junior barely noticed. He reached into his bag and lifted the box not quite into view.
Orin broke down the TV box he’d emptied. “I thought you’d just met on the train.”
“You’re inhabiting her? Like you’re driving the car now and she’s just a passenger?” Lucio was not so subtle in stepping away from Diejuste, although he tried to mask his discomfort by returning to work on the sofa.
Diejuste smirked. “It is more the other way around. Jane would have died as she did in Junior’s other world. Maybe I keep her alive until the doctors, they find how to fix her heart. I don’t know. She is not my job.”
Orin looked intrigued. He left the kitchen and started breaking down the other boxes as he asked, “You have a job? You stay here only as long as you have a job?”
“Yes. Your jobs never end, I know. But my god Bon Dey put me here over and over for one job at a time. I always come to help a family. But first I must find the family I am to help.”
“That’s cool.” Orin sounded uncertain.
Jane’s gorgeous smile spread over Diejuste’s face. “Thank you, Brudda. You have a good job, too, delivering karma.”
“Well, there’s good and bad.”
Diejuste’s read Orin’s unspoken words. “You are tired of the bad karma, you think.”
“I am.”
“But this morning on the train, you did good to punish the thief.”
“I shouldn’t have taken the kid’s wallet.” Orin punched a box bottom to break it down. “He’s just gonna rob more people now to make up for it.”
“He knows how it feel now, to have what cannot be replaced taken from him. His real ID is in the wallet. But that is not where he lives.” She nodded at him. “Look. You still have it.”
Lucio didn’t look up from the couch. “How do you know that?”
“I tell you, I have some powers.”
Junior pulled the box out of his bag. He had to give it back. He didn’t know what to do with it, anyway. Amal seemed to know how dangerous the box was. Maybe these brownies were the best ones to have the box after all.
Nobody saw the box. Lucio had his eyes glued on the half-green couch and Orin was examining the IDs in the wallet. Diejuste watched Orin’s surprise.
“You’re right.” Orin looked at Diejuste in amazement. “This address would be in the lake.”
Diejuste put her hand out. “You offered it to me before. I know now how this can be used.”
Orin put the IDs back and handed the ugly green wallet to Diejuste who turned to hand it to Junior. When she saw the box, she involuntarily took a step away from him. Junior had to step forward to take the wallet from her. Her fingers shook and the wallet fell to the carpet. As Junior bent to retrieve it, he tried to ask about the box. “Orin, where did you find this?”
But he was interrupted by Lucio. “So, Diejuste, let me see if I’ve got this right. You killed some little girl so you could have a body to do your god’s bidding on Earth.” He sneered at her. “Ever think maybe you’re just hearing voices in your head?”
“I did not kill her. I saved her life for now.” Diejuste tried to deflect Lucio’s sudden anger. “Will you give me any credit for making her grandmudder happy?”
Lucio kept at her. “Maybe her grandmother would have had a better life without having a brat to take care of.”
Junior’s heart caught in his throat. His mother’s life was definitely better without him. He was surprised to hear himself say it out loud. “He’s right. My mother is happier.”
Diejuste turned to Junior and put a hand on his arm. “He’s not talking to you, Brudda man. Not everything is about you.”
Lucio shoved the couch so it fell to its feet with a loud bang. “Yeah, I’m not talking to you, Scarecrow.”
> Orin threw a bag of coffee beans at his friend and business partner, “Shut up, Lucio.”
Diejuste tried to stay focused on Junior. “Your mudda don’t know.”
Lucio interrupted again, ignoring Orin. “Yeah, your mother doesn’t know much. She must be real adventurous, a chick who’ll get down with the boogeyman.”
Junior exploded, screaming at Lucio. “It wasn’t her choice!”
“The man knows not a thing. He too is a bastard.” Diejuste’s voice was strained.
“I know your little god voice is earning bad karma.”
Orin grabbed a tea cozy and a box of pasta and package of napkins and anything else he could get his hands on and threw them at Lucio. Lucio batted everything out of the way. The box broke. Fusilli flew everywhere. A package of cookies broke open and Lucio caught one and shoved it into his mouth before he grabbed a wooden chair and threw it at his friend. The chair shattered against the kitchen wall. Orin yanked open the silverware drawer. Lucio dove for an armchair. He used it to bat the more dangerous missiles out of his way as he charged at his friend.
The splintering wood caught Diejuste’s attention. She spun from Junior to face the fight. Junior watched her gaze fix on Lucio and he felt power building in the room. Mustering the strength that had allowed him to survive the last eight years as the face of everyone’s fears, he flipped the blue cloth over the bag and buried it back in his bag.
Lucio crouched. His face was a rictus of agony and with his hands gripping his head he could no longer deflect Orin’s increasingly dangerous missiles.
Junior yelled at the glowing little girl beside him. “Diejuste!”
Her gaze didn’t falter.
Junior knelt. He pushed through the thick red aura growing around the girl to grab her with both hands. Sparks flew from her eyes. But he pinned her with his own gaze.
Junior (A Wyrdos Tale Book 3) Page 3