He listened, like he always did, until she was done talking before he said anything himself. “What was the card?”
“It was the king of spades.”
He sucked in a breath, holding it for a moment. “Well, from what I understand of these things, that can be a very bad card. It represents a dark presence, or a man with dark intentions, coming after you. Something like that.”
Katie didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Do you think Xavier will come after me? He had to know about the house. He had to know what would happen to me. Damn it, I just realized he’s the one who told me to go exploring through the house by myself!”
“I think it was actually you,” he said gently.
“No, it was him, and that’s not my point. What if he’s still after me? What if that was what the cards were saying?”
He settled back in his chair, scrubbing his chin with one hand. “I didn’t know you believed in such things.”
“I don’t. I mean, not really. I’ve just seen too much not to accept the possibility, you know? Spirits talk to people in different ways. How do I know that woman didn’t actually get a message in the cards?”
“Because she was a fortune teller. A hustler. The people who really have that power don’t set up a shop on a New Orleans street to con money out of tourists.”
“But this wasn’t a tourist section.” Katie realized she should have thought of that sooner. That section of the city had been nearly deserted, and bleak. Tourists wouldn’t go there. She’d gone there purely by accident. “What if she was real? What if she saw something really dark and bad coming for me and now I’ll never know because she wouldn’t finish? She was too scared to even finish, Carlson! What does that mean? What does that mean?”
He dropped out of his chair to kneel beside her, and hold her. Here was something else he was good at, Katie thought to herself. “Shh,” he whispered. “It’s okay. Listen, I don’t go in for all of this stuff myself. I run a nightclub, and it makes me a living, and after that I leave New Orleans to itself. I see how this bothers you, though. Why don’t you let me take you to a man I know tomorrow. He knows about this stuff. He’s deep in the voodoo religion. He will tell you that you’re fine.”
As cooky as it sounded, that actually did make Katie feel better. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being a real spaz.”
He lifted her head, and kissed her lips, and her worries began to melt away. “You are not being a spaz,” he promised. “You are being you. I think I might be falling for you, Katie Pearson, so please don’t change. Even if we only have this short time together, always be you.”
Chapter 17
“I have to warn you. Brian is a little strange.”
It was about the fifth time that Carlson had told Katie that same thing, and she had believed him the first two times. Now, standing outside Brian Samedi’s apartment, she was starting to understand what he meant.
The door to apartment twelve was decorated with tattered paper streamers in all sorts of colors. Stenciled grinning skulls peeked out from behind, a stark contrast in white and grays. Dangling from thumbtacks stuck all over, tiny animal bones were tied together with fishing line. Katie recognized a mouse skull, and a bird’s wing, and what might have been part of a lizard’s tail.
So, yeah. ‘A little strange’ seemed just about right.
Well, it couldn’t possibly be any weirder than what she had seen in New Orleans already.
Carlson knocked on the door, and Katie braced herself for whatever she was about to see.
“A moment, if you will,” came the answer from inside the apartment. It was a cultured voice, with maybe a little British in the smooth accent, and Katie tried unsuccessfully to match the sound of it to the bizarre look of the decorations on the door.
Several locks were undone from the other side, including at least two sliding chains. Then, after a moment of silence, it opened to them.
Katie contained a gasp. The smiling, tall man was wearing a sweater vest over a crisp white shirt buttoned all the way up to the top. His skin was a lighter shade of brown, like warm caramel, and his eyes were bright and inquisitive. His smile, when he saw Carlson, was warm.
“My friend. It’s been too long. Do come in, won’t you?”
“Thank you, Brian. It’s good to see you, too.”
The surprises didn’t stop there.
Katie had expected to see more bones, more skull decorations, more of the cultural references to a religion that was so closely associated with death. Instead, she saw a living room with simple, comfortable furniture. The rug had a plain spiral pattern. The curtains were open wide to let in the morning sun. A crucifix hung prominently on one wall.
Nothing here would have seemed out of place in any of the several dozen houses Katie had purchased and sold.
Seeing the look on Katie’s face, Carlson’s friend laughed. “I know. You were expecting to see me all tattooed and wearing a necklace of baby chimpanzee skulls around my neck. Perhaps a walking cane with a huge crystal on top? Or a bone through my nose?”
Katie dropped her eyes to the floor with a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry. I’m still new to the whole voodoo scene. I didn’t mean to imply--”
He laughed even harder at her discomfort, and put a hand gently on her shoulder. “Please, don’t trouble yourself over it. I am a devout practitioner of voodoo but this,” he waved a hand around the room. “This is my home. Here I am free to be all of who I am, rather than just a houngan sur pwen.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.”
Brian turned his smile over at Carlson. “I like your new friend. She speaks her mind without fear.”
Carlson reached over to take Katie’s hand. “I told you she was special, didn’t I?”
Katie wasn’t sure how she felt about being the topic of conversation when she was standing right here, but it was nice to have found friends in a foreign city. Friends who were willing to listen to the crazy things in her life.
Friends, unlike her boyfriend Riley, who weren’t going to just walk out on her when the mood struck.
Brian sat her on the couch close to him. Leaning back, that wide smile still in place, he folded his hands over one knee while Carlson sat in a chair facing them over a low coffee table.
“A houngan sur pwen is a junior priest,” Brian explained to her. “Consider me like a lay minister in the Catholic Church. I can do most things a priest can, but not everything.”
“Oh.” That actually made sense to her, even though it had been several years since she had practiced any sort of religion at all. “I get it. I’m sorry. Creole is such a mashup of French and other languages that I can’t seem to get a handle on it.”
Brian nodded. “Exactly. Voodoo is the same, and it has to do with our history here in New Orleans. African, French, American slavery, and a host of other cultural aspects all mixed together to create what we have today. That’s a discussion for some other time, however.” He took her left hand by the fingertips and held it up. “For now, I see that you are troubled.”
For a moment she thought he was trying to read her soul, sort of like Mama Parlander the fortune teller had, but then she realized he was actually pointing out the onyx ring on her finger.
“The ring? No, I just bought that from a street vendor.”
Brian shook his head. “This is bad magic. You’ve had a fright, from what Carlson has told me. One that you’ve yet to get over. That being the case, you should avoid wearing anything that reminds you of it, and anything that will pull in the negative energies around you. What you need is something that will dispel those energies. Something that will increase your own positive force. I can tell you have a lot of positive energy in you, Katie Pearson.”
She couldn’t help but smile back at him. The compliment was given with such sincerity that she could easily believe he meant it. Carlson had brought her to Brian Samedi because he trusted Brian. There was no reason why she shouldn’t trust him, too.
> “But it’s just a ring,” she insisted.
“Then,” Brian said, “you will have no problem giving it to me. Let me guess. The vendor told you it warded off the ‘evil eye,’ right?”
“Heh. Actually, yes. That’s exactly what they said. How did you know?”
“Katie, that’s what all the vendors tell the tourists. There are so many little trinkets out there warding off evil eyes that there can’t possibly be any evil eyes left. I tell you what. You give me the ring, and I will dispose of it in a proper voodoo ceremony. In its place, I’ll give you a proper gris gris.”
She looked at him blankly again.
“Of course. Forgive me. You also don’t know what that term means. A gris gris is a voodoo charm to ward off evil. I have some here that are blessed, or perhaps if you have something of a personal nature that you’d like me to bless for you instead?”
Katie immediately reached for her purse, and from inside she took out the ceramic horse that Carlson had given her. “Here. Can you bless this?”
He took it from her hands, and turned it carefully to inspect it from every angle. “Why, yes. This will work nicely.”
“You’ve been carrying that with you?” Carlson asked her, an amused tone in his voice. “I had no idea that it had that kind of effect on you.”
“The figure isn’t what’s having an effect on me,” she said, a little shyly. “It’s you.”
She could tell how much it made him happy to hear her say that. She hadn’t realized, until that moment, just how much she was starting to like Carlson. It was going to be really hard to leave him when her vacation was over, knowing she might never see him again.
Then again, she was a free spirit, just like the ceramic horse. She had nowhere she needed to be. No one who had any claims on her time. It wouldn’t be the first time that she had just up and moved halfway across the country.
Maybe she could spend some more time here in the Big Easy, and see where this thing between her and Carlson was going to go.
“Oh, Carlson,” Brian chuckled. “I would watch out for this one. I think, perhaps, she figures prominently in your future.”
“Is that a prediction?” Carlson joked with his friend. “Are the spirits talking to you?”
“Not yet,” Brian said. “We will perform the ceremony, and then we will see what the loa say.”
Katie felt cracks form in her good mood when she heard that word again. The loa, the spirits of voodoo, where everywhere here in New Orleans.
Forget about it, her thoughts urged her again. Just let Carlson take care of you. Let him be what you need. Just forget.
Just forget.
Katie blinked, realizing that she had faded out there for a moment, coming back to herself with the onyx ring slipped off her finger and held out for Brian in the palm of her hand. She didn’t even remember taking it off, but there it was.
“Thank you,” Brian was saying to her. He took out a handkerchief from a pocket and used it to wrap the ring so his fingers didn’t touch it. “Now. We will destroy this with fire, and with the aid of the loa. May the great spirit grant that you never see it again.”
He compressed the handkerchief into his palm, squeezing it tight, tighter, tighter.
Then it burst into flame in his hand. He threw it up in the air, making Katie gasp and shrink back. The fire quickly became ash, and the ash quickly became smoke. Just like that, the ring was burned and gone.
Katie took in several deep breaths, watching his hands to see if the ring was going to reappear. Of course, it didn’t. “How did you do that?”
He gave her a wink. “Some things are real magic. They can’t be explained. Only experienced. Like the reading you had from that fortune teller.”
“No, but that...that wasn’t real. That was just mumbo jumbo. I was only worried because everyone here seems to know about loa, and what they could do to me, and I have no idea. That wasn’t real.”
Carlson shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Brian looked at her directly, wiping ash off his hand. “No, Katie. That was real.”
Chapter 18
Katie held the little ceramic horse in her hand. She’d been staring at it ever since leaving Brian’s apartment.
He’d done a little ceremony to infuse the horse with what he called angelic energy. The horse’s eyes had sparkled, just for a moment, and then he’d handed it over to her.
She folded her fingers around it now, remembering the rest of what had happened in that apartment.
Brian had asked her what she had heard from the fortune teller. Katie told him everything, right up until the moment when Mama Parlander had disappeared again. Brian shook his head as he handed over the horse to her.
“The cards mean something to a practiced voodooist. Like the king of spades means bad things, or a bad man, coming for you. All the cards have meaning. The numbers, the face cards, the jokers, the aces. They represent movements of the spirits. I’m afraid I can’t tell you what the fortune teller saw, but I can tell you this. The loa here in New Orleans have seen you. They know you. I think they have plans for you.”
Plans for her. Katie did not like the sound of that.
A long stay in New Orleans might not be in the cards after all.
No pun intended.
“You okay?” Carlson asked her. “Can I get you anything?”
With a long sigh, she stretched across him to put the horse down on the bedside table. They were both naked under the sheets, but there was nothing sexual about it as she lay across him. “Just hold me. this is all just too much.”
“Come now, ma chere. You are tougher than this. You have been through so much in your life. One of the things that attracts me to you is how you are a strong, independent woman. You’re tough, Katie Pearson. Maybe tougher than me.”
She kissed the slope of his shoulder, and held onto him tightly. If she could hold on long enough maybe he could help her get through the night without another nightmare.
So she closed her eyes, and let herself fall asleep.
Faces hovered over her, blurring in and out of her vision, bathed by candlelight, shadowed inside deep hoods. Her own face was there, and gone again, and back once more.
Katie realized she was dreaming. She was helpless to stop it. Now she was back in the basement, the cold floor under her ass, the sounds of chanting all around. Katie heard herself scream.
But the sound didn’t come from her.
It came from the other Katie Pearson.
She felt something moving inside of her as everything continued to swirl and move and shift. It was something cold and slithering. Almost snakelike. Almost...
Spiritual.
Katie was fighting to wake herself. This had to end. This nightmare needed to stop. She didn’t want to see what was coming. She remembered some more of what happened now. There was something coming, and she didn’t want to see it.
A shape hovered into view above her as she screamed and screamed with someone else’s mouth. The shape became a silhouette. A man, tall and dark, coming for her, reaching out a hand for her.
Inside of her, the Katie Pearson who was riding in her skin made her raise her hand, until her fingers touched--
Katie’s eyes flew open wide.
It was dark all around her. She wasn’t in the bed anymore. That was the first thing she noticed. She was on her feet, and she wasn’t in Carlson’s bedroom.
She wasn’t in the basement of that house, either.
Her eyes slowly adjusted and she saw that this space looked vaguely familiar. She was standing here in the jeans and top that Carlson had bought for her. A pair of sneakers she didn’t recognize, either, and that Carlson must have bought just for her.
When did she get dressed?
What was that in her hand?
Her finger wrapped around something hard, and wooden. When she brought it up closer to her face to look at, she could see the edge of a blade protruding out of the handle she held. A knife. She was holding a knife.
> Fresh blood dripped from the edge as she continued to stare at it in disbelief.
What was happening?
All around her, lights came on, blinding her until she blinked away the spots of afterglow on her retinas.
Then she saw. She was in the club, downstairs from Carlson’s apartment. That was why it had looked so familiar.
She shouldn’t be here. Somehow, she knew that this was a mistake. Something was so very, very wrong.
Upstairs. She needed to get back upstairs. Back to Carlson. She would be safe there. She wanted to be safe with him.
She took two steps toward the back, and the way up to his apartment.
On the third step, she stumbled over something.
When she looked down, she saw that it was a body.
The woman wore a flowing purple dress, and under the blood that smeared her face, Katie could see her dangly earrings, and the mole on her one cheek.
It was Madam Parlander. She’d been stabbed several times in her back. The blood on the floor had been streaked across the floor tiles, forming the lines of a pentagram.
Her body was lying in the center of it.
Katie looked down at her feet. She was in the middle of the bloody design, and she was trapped. If she took a step in any direction, she would step on the blood.
In her heart, deep in her soul, she knew it would be a mistake to step on any of those bloody lines.
She could taste a dusty sort of heat on the air and knew it was magic. This was the work of voodoo. This death was used to cast a spell, and she was in the middle of it.
Katie looked down at the knife in her hand again, seeing it clearly for the first time. Seeing the blood all over her knuckles and wrist and forearm. The blood splattered on these nice clothes that Carlson had bought her.
She wasn’t just in the middle of this.
She had done this.
No. No, no, no, no, no! She was not a killer. She was not a killer!
But the knife was in her hands. Madam Parlander’s blood was on her skin. She did not remember any of this, but she couldn’t deny the evidence in front of her.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 89