Sworn

by Maria Luis

  If she had even the slightest hint of curves under all that fabric, I couldn’t tell worth a damn.

  “In a hurry?”

  Fingers turning white as she clutched the strap of her backpack, she faced me. Full-on. Eyes on my face, unwavering, chin tipped up at an angle.

  Fuck. Me.

  Her body might be lost to the tent of her clothes, but her face was another story. Gorgeous, despite the drawn lines of her dark brows and her pursed, angry mouth. That mouth of hers was fantasy material—full and pink and lush, the sort men spent their nights jerking off to in the hope that, one day, they’d wake up and have it wrapped around their cock.

  From the way her hazel eyes flashed, I’d venture a guess and say that particular fantasy was nothing but a pipe dream.

  “I have an appointment.”

  Her throaty voice jerked my eyes back down to her mouth. Jesus, but the sound was like velvet. Tempting. Sexy. Haunting. The perfect melody to hear after a night of back-clawing, hard sex.

  Shaking myself from the vivid reverie, I focused on the anger. Her anger. I’d long ago learned to live with my own. “You have an appointment at midnight?” I’d been a cop long enough to recognize even the best bull-shitters. “Really.”

  Hazel eyes narrowed on me, her mouth flat-lining another degree. “You going to arrest me?”

  Something about the way she’d ID’ed me, even with a nondescript jacket drawn over my Class B’s, made me feel as though she’d had her fair of run-ins with the NOPD in the past. To say nothing of the fact that her jaded attitude mirrored my own.

  Slipping my hands into the front pockets of my navy-blue, department-issued slacks, I cocked my head toward the other vendors. “There’ve been a few calls about harassment lately. Juveniles, mostly.” I paused, waiting for her to cut me some slack. One second passed, and then the moment bled into another. On my third breath, I demolished the silence, like a roach beneath my shoe, and spoke: “Wanted to do a quick walk-through of the square before heading home for the night. Make sure no one was having any trouble.”

  Not even a hint of a relieved smile softened her expression.

  I didn’t blame her for the suspicion. Hell, there wasn’t a single soul on this planet that I trusted not to stab me in the back the moment I looked away. It came with the territory of living double lives—of playing two sides of the same coin, always fully aware that one wrong move could end with my throat slit and my body tossed into the swamp.

  It was the reality of my life.

  At thirty-four, I knew nothing else.

  When the woman turned, dismissing me, I withdrew my wallet from my back pocket. Flipped it open and removed my police identification card like that would help me earn some street cred with her. “Sergeant Lincoln Asher.” I held out the ID, the back of my hand accidentally grazing her breast.

  Or where her breast ought to be, but again, her tent-like shirt concealed everything.

  It didn’t conceal the way her jaw worked tightly, though. Nor the hard swallow that slid down the length of her neck before she snapped, “I don’t care who you are.”

  No, she clearly didn’t.

  The feeling wasn’t mutual. And that was . . . unusual, really fucking unusual.

  The ID went back into my wallet, and the wallet back into my pocket. “You been reading cards for a while?”

  “If you’re going to arrest me, Sergeant, just do it.”

  “I’m not going to arrest you.” Although maybe there was a reason why I should. No one put up a fuss like this woman had in the span of five minutes unless she’d done something bad and more than a little illegal. “So,” I said, drawing out the O, “you read.”

  As if resigned to her fate, she dropped her backpack onto the crooked table and then let the chair clatter to her feet. A piece of paper fell from the unzipped backpack. Dark as the evening was, there was no mistaking the scribbles across the page.

  “Are you trying to ask me if I’m a fraud?” she demanded.

  I couldn’t tear my gaze from the leaflet. Instinct had me itching to reach for it, to hold it up to the scant light from the reproduction gas lamps and see what the hell she’d written down so furiously that her words didn’t even stay on the correct lines. “I don’t know. Are you?”

  “No.”

  “All right then.”

  She shifted, her elbow knocking into the backpack. More papers floated out, along with two worn-down candles.

  “Shit,” she cursed, the word leaving on a breathy sigh.

  Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I figured I had at least another two lives left in me—and no way would this slip of a woman have the chance to steal one.

  “Let me get that for you.” Yeah, just play the gentleman card like you give a shit. I didn’t, and maybe tomorrow I’d wake up and wonder why I’d pushed this woman’s buttons. Maybe tomorrow I’d remind myself that I wasn’t in a position to wonder about this woman’s jaded air or her pink, fuckable lips, or the way she looked at me as though she knew that I was no good.

  That my heart was as cold and impenetrable as the cobblestones we stood on.

  Right now, though, I didn’t think.

  I bent, my knees popping from years of excruciating labor, and I snagged the papers straight from her grip. Like the asshole I was, I lifted them well above her head so that I could read the words scrawled in perfectly imperfect chicken-scratch.

  What in the—

  I flipped to the next page.

  To the next.

  And to the next.

  “You a stalker, ma’am?” I kept my voice cool, easy.

  “I’m not . . .” A growl escaped her lips, and she made a hasty swipe at my hand. Fuck that. My hold on the leaflets went iron-tight as she blew out a frustrated breath. “I’m not a stalker.”

  “Then why”—I curled the stack in one fist, dipping my chin to meet her eyes—“do you have notes on at least five of my officers?”

  The blood drained from her face, and this time when she swallowed, I knew she tasted fear. “I don’t . . .” Her tongue swiped out in a nervous gesture, touching the cushion of her bottom lip. “It’s not just police officers.”

  “No?”

  “No, I-I—” Eyes slamming shut, she counted to ten, if the way her mouth silently formed the numbers was any indication. Then she looked at me again, and I felt lust spear me, unwanted and misplaced because while I’d done some fucked-up shit in my life, I still had boundaries. Screwing a woman who noticed the minute details was not in my future. Ever.

  Visibly swallowing, she finally ground out, “I watch people, okay? It’s a-a thing for me.”

  “Like a voyeur.”

  “What? No.” She pointed at the papers, and then reached into her backpack for her tarot cards. Holding them up with a little wiggle, she muttered, “I take notes, all right? On the people who visit my table and have me read their cards. Only ever on them.”

  Adrenaline grasped my lungs, heaving a deep breath from my chest. I needed to stop the trajectory of my thoughts. Hell, I needed to walk away and go the fuck home. It’d been a long night. Long and unforgiving, and not because of the shift I’d pulled for the NOPD.

  For everything else.

  Everything else I wasn’t allowed to say, and everything else I would never repeat to another human soul.

  The deck clasped tight in her hands drew my attention. “You never tell anyone what you hear?”

  Uncomfortable silence stretched between us before her throaty voice answered, “It’s for me. I . . . I analyze patterns in what’s told to me.”

  She was a shit liar, but she could keep those secrets of hers to herself.

  “Read me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My cards.” I lifted my gaze to her face. Shock resided in those hazel eyes of hers, as did blatant distrust. She was right not to trust me—that was a fact. I cleared my throat. “Read my cards.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Lifting a brow, I murmu
red, “Scared?”

  “Of you?” Disbelief coated her tone like thick honey.

  “You see anyone else standing here?” At her silence, I folded my arms over my chest. “Read my cards . . . unless maybe you are nervous, just a little bit.”

  Her teeth worked her bottom lip, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she broke the skin. “You don’t scare me.”

  “Don’t I?” I tested her words, taking a step toward her and breeching her space. But she surprised me—for all the lip-nibbling and the stammering, she didn’t budge and she sure as hell didn’t retreat. Defiance radiated from every inch of her.

  It was more of a turn-on than I’d like to admit. Worse, it made me curious. Who had broken her spirit so badly that her armor was as thick as my own? I didn’t have the answer, but the longer she stood there, with her hands balled into fists and her eyes narrowed into slits, the more I wanted to dredge the truth from her lips.

  No matter that it wasn’t any of my business.

  “No one scares me,” she said.

  Another lie, but I wouldn’t press her on it.

  I only studied her, allowing my silence to bait her into giving in. Patience, man, have patience.

  Three . . .

  Two . . .

  One—

  “Fine.” With a hard glare, she slipped the cards from their velvet pouch and shuffled them with sharp motions. “Two cards. Your past and your future.”

  “What about my present?”

  The shuffling slowed, then stalled completely. “It doesn’t matter. In a moment, this will be your past too.”

  I wanted to tell her that she looked too damn young to be spouting out that sort of wisdom. But was she really that young? It was too dark to tell, her features lost to the shadows, and she didn’t give me the opportunity to give it another thought.

  She cut the deck, wrists moving fluidly. Selected a card from the middle and held it up, allowing the sparse moonlight to reveal the image. I wrangled in the urge to snag it from her grasp and hurry up the process.

  “Ruin.”

  My chin jerked back. “Excuse me?”

  “Ruin,” she reiterated, voice soft but unyielding, “it’s the Ten of Swords.”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  Her teeth audibly clacked together. “I’m aware, Sergeant. Ruin—it’s a card in the Minor Arcana.” She flicked her nail against the card, and then turned it toward me. In the slight shadows, all that remained visible was the color red and what looked to be a sword with a myriad of other, smaller swords piercing the largest one. “It represents a period of endless fighting, a struggle that you can’t win.”

  This was a bad idea.

  Maybe she was a fraud—in that moment, I hoped it was true. I hoped that she’d lied to every single person who had ever sat at her table here in Jackson Square because I refused to believe that everything I had worked toward in the last thirty-four years had been for nothing.

  My fingers sank into my dark hair, my palm following the curve of my skull to where I’d been branded like cattle years ago.

  Hazel eyes met mine. “With no hope, your past has led to your destruction.”

  I opened my mouth to speak. Or maybe I only thought that I did.

  There were no words—only blood. The blood I had spilled and the blood that I had given. Not for the first time in my life, I felt dirty, rotten, all the way to my soul. And hopeless, like there was no end to the struggle and to the pain and to the goddamn detachment I forced upon myself so that I could do what I needed to do and not consider the consequences of my actions.

  “Interested in your future?” she asked apathetically, already swiping another card from the deck.

  No, I wanted to yell. If Ruin was my past, then there was no telling what the hell my—

  “Death.” She turned the card around to show me. “Your future is Death.”

  And as I stood there woodenly, my fucking brain trying to wrap around the reality of my existence, she gathered her belongings and swept off into the night.

  Leaving me alone.

  As I’d always been.

  3

  Avery

  I’d lied to Sergeant Lincoln Asher.

  Oh, not about the cards I’d picked for him. Not exactly, anyway.

  But I’d allowed him to believe that he was doomed, past and future, that there was no hope left for him to believe in. If anything, the Death card marked a turning point in his future, where something inherently good, no doubt, waited just around the bend.

  Except he’d made me feel uncomfortable. He was too rugged, too forward, too in-your-face masculine, and in a split-second decision, I’d sought to force his weight off the proverbial seesaw and set my queen directly in front of his king. Checkmate.

  Curiosity led me to pull yet another card for him on my way back to my apartment.

  His present.

  Cruelty.

  Whenever I felt the sharp blades of long-standing hate seep into my bones, I pulled out my deck and chose a card. And always the card was Cruelty—in other words, the constant analyzing and deciphering which inevitably ended in nothingness.

  Tabitha once explained the card to a client as a person lost in a maze. No matter how many times you peered over the uncut hedges, no matter how many times you retraced your steps, all of your work always led you to . . . nothing.

  Cruelty was a mind-game, so it made sense that I’d been pulling the same card now for four years. Before that, even, if you counted the number of times one of the readers in the square rolled out a spread for me—long before I’d ever picked up a deck myself.

  But why would Sergeant Asher play mind-games?

  With a glance over my shoulder at the empty street, my fingers stole under my too-big shirt for the key I’d hooked onto a chain around my neck. The French Quarter may have been my home for the last twelve years, but I wasn’t ignorant to its many ghosts, those of fictitious rumors and others which were firmly rooted in reality.

  Too much went unseen in New Orleans for me to ever feel truly safe.

  Keying the antique door open, I slipped inside the multi-apartment, nineteenth-century building and locked everything up behind me. I lived in what New Orleans’ legend called the Sultan’s Palace, a home of alleged brutality and death and chopped-up human parts.

  No part of the tall tale was true, and the only reason I’d agreed to live here, at the corner of Dauphine and Orleans, was because the rent was cheap and the landlord didn’t ask questions.

  Lugging my belongings up to the third floor without an elevator was annoying but habit at this point. My fold-up chairs bounced against the outside of my leg, and my backpack hung low on my shoulder. The table had been left behind—hopefully it’d be there tomorrow morning.

  Would Sergeant Asher come back then?

  I hoped not.

  He’d been . . . I didn’t know, really. Harsh, maybe? His face certainly had been. Even though I had pretty much no sex drive, I could recognize a good-looking guy when I saw one.

  Lincoln Asher wasn’t good-looking, not in the classical sense. Thick dark hair, as black as the Mississippi River at night, had been swept to the side. His nose, like mine, had clearly been broken at some point. Full lips that didn’t tug up into a smile, not even once. A series of jagged scars that cut across the profile of the right side of his face.

  The prettiest thing about him had been the color of his eyes—an icy blue that was an exact match to the underside of every porch ceiling in the city. Haint blue, it was called. A color that homeowners bought by the gallon to paint their porches with, so birds wouldn’t nest, thinking it was the sky. Legend had it, however, that the custom was rooted in Voodoo—where porch ceilings were painted blue, the color of water, so that spirits couldn’t trespass into the home.

  In Sergeant Asher’s eyes, I’d seen nothing but the ghosts of his past.

  The man was dangerous, self-destruction in wait, and I couldn’t lie and say that I wasn’t exactly the sa
me.

  Didn’t mean we needed to step off the edge together, though.

  “That you, Avery?”

  I closed the apartment door with my elbow, still juggling everything in my arms. “Yeah, Katie, it’s me.”

  Our apartment was miniscule, a whopping five-hundred-square-feet. You’d think we lived in Manhattan and not in New Orleans, but after three years, it was home. We had a single bedroom that belonged to Katie, a galley-style kitchen, a narrow bathroom, and a living room that seconded as a bedroom for me.

  The apartment was in Katie’s name, and she paid an extra hundred bucks on the rent each month. I would have given her the bedroom anyway—she often invited certain guests over, and the thought of walking in on naked asses and naked cocks and naked everything else didn’t appeal to me.

  Leave me to my pull-out couch and I was perfectly fine.

  “How was the square?” she asked, coming into the living room from her bedroom. Dressed in shorts and an extra-large T-shirt, Katie’s blond hair was a tangled mess on the top of her head. At my raised brows, she wiggled her own and hooked a thumb over one shoulder. Company, she mouthed, which said it all.

  Guess I’d be making use of my headphones again tonight.

  “It was fine. Had my fair share of people.” I set all my stuff down behind the couch, so that they wouldn’t be an eyesore for our guest. “A few regulars. Nothing too crazy.”

  Liar.

  All right, so maybe I was itching to sit on the couch and record my night. I hadn’t lied about that to the sergeant—I really did pay close attention to everyone who sat at my table. For the first few years after my mother’s death, I’d done nothing but hide from my own shadow. A teenage girl in New Orleans, alone, was never a good idea. Slowly, as the initial fear had dissipated, everything came back to Jay Foley, my stepfather.

  Now the current mayor of New Orleans.

  So, I watched and I waited. Like tonight, no one could resist having their cards read for long. I’d told the fortunes of lawyers and firefighters, of school teachers and strippers. I harbored the information away from all the pertinent people, always pushing the telling questions and patiently teasing out the answers from the darkest parts of their souls.