by G A Chase
Thomas cringed as he swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed dangerously hard against the sharp metal. “Please don’t kill me.”
“I don’t like being stabbed, abducted, or threatened. Don’t do it again. Now, how exactly did you find me?”
He pointed at the cell phone in his pocket. “My shadow helped Professor Yates develop the doppelgänger detection system. Once my evil twin joined me, I was able to simplify the technology to a smart-phone app.”
Peachy. Another bit of technology that won’t do me a damn bit of good. “So you just happened to be standing in the right place at the right time when your phone vibrated in your pants? Then you whipped out your knife like some flasher displaying his cock and rammed it in the first woman who passed by? I’m not buying it.”
“I got a notification when the professor’s detection system went off. I could see his computer screens on my phone, so I knew who you really were. I saw you walk up to his office in your riding attire and motorcycle and leave in that dress, pushing a scooter. My smart-phone app tracks you like you were wearing a GPS chip. It didn’t take a genius to figure out you’d visit your surrogate family eventually. With the crowds, Frenchmen Street was the least conspicuous place for me to lie in wait.”
Sere could feel each hard breath he took against her knife. “So you’re saying you didn’t have help? Because if this is all just you, I have no reason not to slit your throat.”
“Don’t do it, Sere.”
Hearing Kendell’s voice at the door made Sere instinctively flex her arms and force the blades harder against Thomas’s throat. A trickle of blood ran along the edge to the hilt.
“How did you find me?” she growled at Kendell between clenched teeth.
“Joe told us you were in town,” Kendell said. “You parked my old scooter near the band’s van. Professor Yates told me you’d borrowed it. Since we didn’t see you at the club, we figured there must have been a problem—”
“Please stop,” Sere interrupted. “I’m sorry I asked.” Life-and-death situations weren’t the time for long-winded answers to pointless mysteries.
“Just put the knives down,” Myles said in what was probably supposed to be an authoritative tone but sounded more like a councilor talking someone off a ledge.
Sere refocused her attention on the two blades poised like scissors about to clip off Thomas’s head. “Not until he learns his lesson.”
He stared into her eyes. “If you’re not going to help me, then go ahead and kill me. I can’t live like this any longer.” She could see from his unflinching gaze that he was serious.
You’re not a killer. As the adrenaline drained from her system, she remembered the intellectual exercise she’d conducted on the ride down to New Orleans. “Don’t cross my path again, and I’ll see what I can do. If I see you again, I will kill you.” Even drawing on Jennifer’s life force had its limits. Now that she had Thomas at her mercy, she no longer had the thrill of the fight to keep her energized. She’d gotten what information she could out of him, and he wasn’t in a position to resume his threat. Reluctantly, she lowered her blades.
Thomas backed slowly away while still facing Sere, as if he couldn’t believe she was going to let him live. With each step he took, she calculated how much strength it would take to throw the dagger into his heart.
Sere shook her head in disbelief when Myles and Kendell helped her outside to the black VW bus with white sugar skulls. Of course it belongs to you two. The blue tarp that had covered the back of Thomas’s van lay in a heap next to the back door.
“I guess he didn’t want to drive around with the incriminating evidence,” Sere said. “At least that should keep me from getting blood all over those Mexican blankets.”
Kendell stuck close to Sere’s side like an overly protective mother hen while Myles spread the plastic-impregnated cloth inside the old bus. “We can take you to Professor Yates. He can hook you up—”
“No.” One intense connection to Jennifer in a week was more than enough. “Just take me somewhere I can get cleaned up. The wound looks more dramatic than it is.” She still felt lightheaded from the blood loss. Though she could draw on Jennifer’s healing energy to speed the process, blood and tissue still needed to be regenerated by her own body. With no direct threat, she preferred to do the work herself.
Myles turned and jiggled the key in the VW’s ignition as if unlocking a Japanese puzzle box. The ignition finally engaged, creating a loud backfire before the old engine settled down to its rhythmic rattling. “We’ll take you back to our place. It’s not much, but you’ll be safe.”
Sere faded in and out of consciousness during the short ride. Each time she felt the warm embrace of sleep coming on, Kendell grabbed her hand to bring her back to reality.
“Honestly, I’ll be fine. I’ve suffered worse.” Sere didn’t mention that her last injury had been recent. There was no need to add to their concern for her.
“It makes me feel better knowing you’re still with us,” Kendell said.
“At least I’m not being tossed around like a rag doll. From now on, I think I’ll stick to my motorcycle for transportation.” Leaving her fate in the hands of another driver felt like giving up all her autonomy. Every block they drove past Esplanade into the Quarter made her skin crawl, which didn’t help with healing the gash in her back. Fortunately, the ride didn’t last long.
Kendell helped her out of the van and up the stairs to their apartment. Once the need for physical exertion had passed, her body experienced the damage Thomas’s knife had inflicted. Sere fell onto the ottoman between two attentive pups.
“Wait here for a minute, and I’ll get a bath going for you,” Kendell said.
With her blood-soaked dress, disheveled hair lacking the wig, and as much spent adrenaline as blood pumping through her veins, Sere felt acutely out of place. In an attempt at easing her discomfort, she patted the heads of the two Lhasa apsos that lay on either side of her. “How old are your dogs?” Casual conversation had never felt more out of place, but at least it was a distraction from her condition.
Myles pulled a bottle of Jameson’s from the cupboard. “Cheesecake is thirty-four, and Doughnut Hole is twenty-one.”
Sere stared into the older dog’s eyes. “I know I haven’t spent much time in this reality, but I didn’t think that kind of age was possible for a dog.” The mutt still had the alertness of a puppy.
“Their longevity was payment from Papa Ghede for dealing with your father.” Myles handed Sere a glass filled two fingers high with whiskey.
She turned the clear tumbler with the amber liquid in her hand. “How did you know?”
“A good bartender or an attentive gentleman never forgets a lady’s drink preference.”
She tossed the whiskey back with one gulp. The familiar smooth vanilla flavor and floral bouquet were drowned out by the metallic taste of blood that still filled her mouth and sinuses.
Myles refilled her glass as soon as she lowered it from her mouth. “After the last couple of days you’ve had, no one’s going to judge you for going on a bit of a bender tonight. You’re safe here.”
She sipped the second drink. “I’m not a friendly drunk—usually there’s carnage involved.”
He sat on the sofa and set the bottle on the side table. “Like up in Jackson’s Bluff?”
“That was different. I was soliciting information.”
“Is that also what you were doing with Thomas?” Myles asked. “Because if so, we might want to work on your investigative style.” He hid his smirk behind a sip of whiskey.
She turned her back to him so he could see the gash that ripped through her dress clear to her exposed ribs. “He had it coming.”
Kendell saved Myles from receiving more of Sere’s cuttingly witty sarcasm by emerging from the hallway. “I’ve got everything ready. Let’s get you out of those clothes and cleaned up.”
“I keep telling you, I’m fine on my own.”
From Kendell’s s
cowl, Sere knew she was in for a fight, and unlike a physical altercation, it would be a battle she wasn’t likely to win.
“I’m fully aware of your interdimensional situation,” Kendell said. “I helped create it. You may be a badass, but you know better than to cross me.”
Only Sanguine could really control Sere, but as the guardian angel’s sister in the paranormal, Auntie Kendell came in a close second. Poor Joe was a distant third, having to rely on physical strength rather than rapier wit.
“I suppose I could use some help cleaning the wound,” Sere said. “It is a little hard to reach.”
Kendell softened her strict stance by uncoiling her arms from her chest. She took Sere by the hand as if she were a little girl who’d gotten hurt playing outdoors. “Bring your drink. We need to get all of the foreign material out of that wound. Even with your kickass attitude, it’s going to hurt.”
Sere wanted to explain how many times she’d been in worse situations, but making Kendell turn green from the stories wasn’t likely to give the woman the fortitude to do the necessary work. “Lead the way.”
Sere stepped into the bathroom, expecting it to be covered in plastic like a murderer’s kill room. With the trail of blood that dripped off her dress, she wouldn’t have blamed Kendell for trying to keep their home from looking like a crime scene. To her surprise, the small but luxurious bathroom smelled of vanilla from the softly burning scented candles. A thick towel was laid over the lip of the sink and another on the edge of the deep tub, which was filled with swirling water. Kendell touched Sere’s shoulders and started peeling off the rags that just that afternoon had been a polka-dotted sundress. Drying blood bonded the fabric to her skin like glue.
Sere tried to reach up to help, but Kendell swatted her hand away. “Just relax, for a change, and let me take care of you. Put your hands on the sides of the sink, and lean over so I can attend to that gash. It looks awfully deep.”
Sere pulled Thomas’s knife out of her dress pocket before Kendell managed to yank the mess of fabric past her breasts and unhooked her bra. She set the blade in the sink to be cleaned. “I don’t need to be stitched up.”
Kendell pressed a hot towel into the wound. From the sting, Sere assumed there was some antibiotic cleaning agent involved. “I’m fully aware of your physiology. All I’m going to do is get out the dirt and fabric. Then I’ll tape a dressing over it so you can bathe without pain or recontamination. By the time you rejoin us, I’m sure you’ll be as good as new and just as feisty.”
After years of training, Sere didn’t really know how to let down her guard. Being continually prepared for battle meant certain muscles in her arms and shoulders hadn’t relaxed in a decade. Kendell’s firm, caring touch on Sere’s back was like having Lefty’s scutes massage it.
“I think that will do it,” Kendell said. “Can you feel anything in your back that shouldn’t be there? I can go deeper.”
Sere shed the remainder of her blood-soaked clothing so she could stand upright. Her muscles resumed their standard tension of preparedness. With only her knife sheathed against her thigh, her reflection in the mirror looked ready to resume the battle. “I think you got it.”
Kendell wadded up the blood-soaked towels and garments and stashed them in a black garbage bag. “I set some clothes out on our bed. My jeans might be a little loose on you, and I can’t vouch for the condition of Myles’s cotton shirt. If they don’t work for you, rummage around until you find something that fits. Enjoy the bath for as long as you like. Please use anything you find in this apartment as if it were your own.”
Sere unstrapped the knife holster and set it and the blade on the counter next to the sink. “Thank you, Auntie Kendell.”
Once Kendell had left the bathroom, Sere picked up her glass of whiskey and eyed the tub with trepidation. Luxury had a way of being more addictive than alcohol. Joe always said soldiers in the field never let down their guard, and Sere had enemies both known and unknown to contend with. For all of her adult life, bathing had involved cold and often murky water shared with other creatures. The deep jet tub filled with water contaminated only with bath salts felt like a well-baited trap.
She took a long swig of her drink. “I’m being foolish. I’ll never be as safe as I am right now. It could be months before I’ll once again be able to truly get all the grunge off me.” She stepped into the hot swirling water and set her glass on the tiled enclosure surrounding the tub. Easing into the water felt like the equivalent of downing a glass of Jameson in one gulp. The warmth soothed every nerve ending.
Memories of the first seven years of Serephine Malveaux’s life came flooding back. Archibald Malveaux had more than his share of faults, but as a young girl, Serephine had been kept in the dark regarding her father’s activities. The hot bath reminded her of a warm antebellum afternoon. Her mother had been combing out Serephine’s long gossamer hair while the girl lounged in the mansion’s copper tub. The humid, fragrant New Orleans air seemed to meld right into the bathwater.
In Sere’s hazy memory, a wild man had burst into the house. “Your husband has stolen my family!” he yelled at Serephine’s mother. The man looked to have spent the last week sleeping in the gutter. His once-fashionable suit was ripped and soaked. He smelled of rotting meat, alcohol, and vomit. All young Serephine could think was, Why has this crazy man interrupted my bath time?
“Please, not in front of my daughter.” Her mother’s voice quivered. Serephine had never heard her sound like that.
“Why not?” the man yelled. “What about my daughters, who are about to be prostitutes in your husband’s brothels? Is your sweet, innocent child somehow more precious than my own? I curse you all for letting him get away with this evil.”
Sere hadn’t understood all of the man’s words back then, but the fear in his voice had made her shiver in spite of the hot water and sultry afternoon. It was as if the world’s cold reality had just been dumped on top of her. The little girl was forced to grow up in an instant.
Sere stopped the memory like a projectionist holding a film reel’s single frame under a magnifying lens. The man’s penetrating brown eyes, high cheekbones, and jet-black hair were all too familiar. Kendell’s great-great-grandfather was no less passionate about those he loved than Kendell herself, whose lineage was woven into Sere’s.
“You just had to fuck the man’s daughters, didn’t you, father? All the women and girls you could get your hands on became your indentured concubines—stolen from their families as payment for loans you knew their men couldn’t pay. How many of New Orleans’s high-class families have you destroyed and bound to me because of your lusts?”
Sere drained the last of her Jameson’s as a means of bringing her thoughts back to the present. “I suppose it’s more like Illegitimate-Half-Niece-Multiple-Times-Removed Kendell, but Auntie feels like a more appropriate title. Given enough family history, I suppose we’re all interrelated somehow.”
She lounged back in the fiberglass tub with the empty glass still in her hand and drifted off to sleep.
Sere woke the next morning on the living room couch with Doughnut Hole licking her face. She vaguely remembered getting out of the lukewarm water, dressing, and rejoining Kendell and Myles after her bath the night before. As with most conversations that didn’t directly pertain to her mission, she’d only half tuned in to what they’d said. Their one useful tidbit of information was that three more people had gone missing along the route from Jackson’s Bluff to New Orleans, bringing the number of likely homicides to seven. The fact that there were no signs of human remains led Sere to believe Monty had graduated from amateur murderer to full-blown psycho killer.
Kendell and Myles had gone to bed soon after being convinced Sere was fine and wasn’t going to sneak out in the early-morning hours to go hunting the demon without first saying goodbye. She picked up the small black dog and stared into his black eyes. “I’m awake. You can stop now.”
He gave her a playful bark. When she set
him down, he made a beeline for the back bedroom. Great. Now I’ll have to resume the mindless conversation. I need to keep it short so I can get back to the hunt for Monty. Yesterday’s distraction has put me seriously behind. Not that Kendell and Myles weren’t pleasant enough, but sooner or later, they would offer to help—or worse, ask about Sanguine.
“You look like a new woman.” Kendell followed the two dogs into the living room, wearing a thick robe.
“I hope I didn’t keep you up too late. The need for things like sleep and food still mystify me.”
Kendell headed into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. “Don’t worry about us. As club owners, Myles and I keep pretty unusual hours. How are you feeling?”
Sere got up from the couch, reached for the ceiling, and stretched out her back. Every muscle was working as intended. “All better.”
The harsh stare from under Kendell’s brow indicated she wasn’t completely convinced, but Sere didn’t press the issue. “What are your plans?”
“I’m not going to kill Montgomery Fisher, if that’s what you’re asking. I do need to meet with him, however. The more I understand about his life, the easier it will be for me to intercept his doppelgänger.”
“We can go with you. As business owners, we can say we’re in the market for a new accountant. That should at least get you in the door.”
There it is—less than five minutes before she offered to help. “I don’t need a chaperone.”
“Maybe not, but you will be walking through the Quarter.” Kendell grabbed her oversized handbag from the counter and pulled out Sere’s wig and glasses. “Myles found these in the blue tarp when he cleaned out the VW. He disposed of everything covered in blood.”
Sere’s heart started fluttering. “I hope he did a thorough job of it. Those blood-soaked items could lead the police back to you. If they figure out that Thomas was involved and start questioning him, he might put you two in a lot of trouble to save his hide and maintain whatever hold he thinks he has on me.” Worrying about you is really not what I need right now.