by Lyra Byrnes
“Draven—that sounds like a name for a movie star's kid.”
He laughed. “It’s older than movie stars. Older than movies, and radio and stone tablets.”
That was okay by me. Hell, Mojo claimed to be in the high hundreds and I got along with him just fine.
“You have beautiful eyes, Giselle.”
The tired old line sounded sincere and romantic coming out of his pouty lips. I felt as if I were melting in a shimmery warmth, glowing from the heat he threw off. I tried to think of something sexy to say but all I could think of was, “Take me now!” So I looked down at my lap. Yeah, I got game.
“Dance with me.” It wasn’t a question, but it was an opportunity to be pressed up against that wall of muscle so I almost jumped out of my seat.
He took my hand and led me to the floor. A slow song had couples in clinches, swaying. I could do that. Anything faster would not have ended well.
Electricity shot through my spine as he placed a hand on my lower back and wrapped the other around my shoulders. Damn, he felt good, warm and strong, and smelled toasty and fresh like autumn leaves, old rum and wind. It was such a relief to put aside my ongoing state of panic just for a while and sway in the arms of a smoking hot mechanic. Even the butterflies I felt when in the company of a towering promise of sexytimes quieted, and I let his rhythm take over, gentle and sure. What curse, what demon, what deadline? I was where I wanted to be.
He slid his hand up my neck and grasped a handful of my hair. Before I could stop myself I leaned in, gasping as he crushed my lips against his. They were warm and full and talented. My mind went blank. The only visions I had were of massage oil and blackout curtains. I wished I was wearing pretty underwear. I wished I owned pretty underwear.
The song ended and he broke off the kiss. It took everything I had to pull back from those magical lips. He gave me a maddeningly hot smile. His dark hair had fallen into his eyes and he pushed it back with one strong hand, teeth flashing. I wanted to laugh with the joy of witnessing that gesture, but a fast song started up so I hightailed it back to the table.
Draven didn’t sit down. He picked up his glass, nodded at Rye, and put a gentle finger on my cheekbone, tracing its curve.
“You are much more beautiful than I expected, Jinx Delacourt. I'm not the first man who finds your charms irresistible.” His eyes drifted back down my shirt and those damn impertinent tips still pouting longingly in his direction. “And know this, I won't be the last.”
He melted into the crowd and was gone. Rye let out a breath as if she had been holding it.
“Wow!”
Sometimes she had just the right word. “You have a Sean,” I offered modestly.
“Steve. I thought he was a babe until I saw…that.”
I must admit I was feeling pretty proud of myself, all fancy with a foxy stud who said I had beautiful eyes and who’d given me the kiss of a lifetime in front of God, Rye and half off Asswhoop. I took a sip of my drink, eyes downcast, just humble as hell. Nothing could bring down my mood. Girl, I was riding high.
“The things I saw in that room,” Mojo said sourly. If he’d had a body he would have shuddered. There was a piece of toilet paper stuck to his ear.
“Sometimes a girl has to adjust her bra,” shrugged Rye. “Grow a pair.”
“I’m a head. In a ball. There is as little chance of me ‘growing a pair,’ as you so charmingly put it, as there is of you two clucking biddies remembering that you have a very long date with a demon coming up.”
I sat back and sighed. My lips were still tingling and other parts were busy in ways they should not have been, considering this was a public place. “It seems so far away, that whole mess, and we’re down to three days before I get snatched, if it doesn’t happen before that.”
“I’m safe if I’m with you, right?” Rye asked.
“Neither of us are safe anywhere,” I sighed. “But Baba Yaga said there was nothing she can do with Serafina dead. There’s no way to stop him from coming. I’m out of ideas.”
“There’s one way.” Mojo had never looked so serious. He was wearing a skull headdress and it didn’t look funny, it looked downright scary. “You have to face Mr. Doll himself.”
Chapter Seven
Alone in the shop with the neon sign turned to off and the door locked, I put Mojo on the divining table and kicked off my boots. At the sight of the velvet cloth, Mojo’s eyes grew wide.
“Oh no, dear. We’re going to talk.”
I was so sleepy. Not to mention I had mentally blocked off a few hours for thinking about Draven. Draven taking me in his arms, stripping his shirt off after a workout, naked after a workout, kissing me under a waterfall, naked under a waterfall… Jeez, maybe I’m more of a basic bitch than I thought.
“Do we have to?” But I was already in the kitchen making tea. My little apartment is above the shop and it has all the modern conveniences, like a bed I wished I were in, a TV I wished I were watching, and half a desiccated cheesecake I wished I were eating.
“Only if it’s a life-or-death situation. What’s your definition?”
Snarky-ass head.
“Since the witch Serafina is dead, you have two options. One, conjure her up from the grave, which I don’t recommend. They never come back quite right, and have been known to be cranky.”
I shuffled back in with my tea and sat down. An hour ago I was floating on the clouds, wrapped in the arms of my dream man. Now I was a miserable, frightened ball of mess. “Are you wearing a monocle?” It was screwed into one ectoplasmic eye under a mortarboard.
“Or two, go directly to the source and try to deal with Mr. Doll. That’s where Rye’s little friend comes in. The Spyglasses are a powerful voodoo dynasty. I entreat you to do this.”
“It’s bad luck to see the bride before her wedding day.” I revert to scorn when cornered, like a sarcastic possum. “Anyway, from what I got from the visions, he may not even be strong enough to be summoned. He’s a little nobody in the service of some count or baron.”
“Baron Samedi?” Imagine a man-face-shaped blob turning white with fear and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what my tea party guest looked like. “That’s a powerful spirit. Nasty fellow.”
“You’re not helping.”
“If I had anything comforting to say, Jeannette, you know I would.” It was serious. Mojo almost never used my full name. “There is one other possibility.”
I brightened up at that. Anything that could get me out of facing either otherworldly monster would be terrific. Well, not terrific, but less gruesome.
“When you were cursed, Mr. Doll needed a middleman, as it were. That’s where Serafina came in.”
“I know all this.”
“But she was in South Louisiana, near you. Rye was cursed a few months later, and we have no evidence that Serafina was traveling through the south spotting magical babies for her master.”
“And Rye wasn’t magical yet.”
Mojo gave me a wry smile. “Right. If it were someone else, well, how many voodoo practitioners are on the loose in West Virginia?”
My belly seemed to slosh with icy liquid. “You mean, within a few years, Mr. Doll grew strong enough to place the curse himself?”
“Signs point to yes.”
*****
They say everything looks better in the morning, but this morning was an exception. Once the dirty Draven dream had dissipated—I think a hot tub was involved, basic bitch times one hundred—the reality slammed me in the face. Three days before I was to come of age and be cast down into eternal damnation. There probably wouldn’t be cake.
I made some coffee and decided to throw my cards. It had been a while since I’d had a vision—not since Rye’s visit, in fact—and I was hoping to learn more. I shook the cards out of their silk wrapping.
This covers you, this crosses you…swords and some reverses, yuck.
I took out the crowning card and laid it down. The tinkle of a little bell seemed to go off
in my ear.
“That sucks donkey sack,” came a high, piping voice.
A small, skinny black kid peered at the cards, his forehead furrowed. “The Tower.” He shook his head, clucking. “That’s some bad juice right there, lady.”
“Can I help you?” I asked. Hadn’t I locked the door?
“Nah, I’m all right.” He made himself comfortable on the velvet loveseat, stretching out one arm across its rosewood frame. “Thought maybe I could helpyou.”
“When the sign says Closed, I’m not open.”
“Yeah, homes. I kinda take my opportunities where I find them. So give a little brother a break.” He gave the crystal ball a tickle, but Mojo didn’t stir. “I can hook you up.”
“With what? Teenage sass isn’t being traded on the open market, little man. What are you, 12?” I asked, sweeping the cards into a pile.
“Fifteen, lady. I just look small on account a’ my being malnutrified. It’s advantageous for my ninja skills.”
“Oh, so you're the ninja.”
“Not yet. Working on it,” he said soberly. “Rye told me it’s rainin’ shit times ten on your head and you left your umbrella at home. Got a great-uncle in the business.”
Voodoo business. The margins were thin and you might get turned into a zombie, but you get your own coffee mug.
“What I need is to find a mambo called Serafina, but she’s super dead.”
“I can help you with that.”
I thought about what Mojo had said and firmly decided that was a no.
“Good choice, “said Pete. “Then I can take you right to the source. Shake down the loa and get your answers.”
That didn’t sound too bad, depending on what a loa was. Pete saw my expression and sighed. “Those are the spirits or mysteries. We give ‘em gifts and say nice things and they talk to us. Like, ‘You look so pretty today, Erzulie Freda.’ Put a glass of pink champagne in her hand and she tell us what we need to know.”
“You bribe your gods?”
“Huh! Don’t you? Candles, incense, statues an’ shit, it’s all the same. Anyway, they more like in-between spirits. God ain’t talk to us. He in the bathtub.”
Chatting up a spirit intermediary didn’t sound too unpleasant, and I figured this was my chance. Anyway, Mojo had insisted. As much as I balked at his lecturing, he was usually right.
“Will I be safe?”
“Lady, ain’t none of us safe in this world. I might could get hit by a bus on my way home.”
The kid dug something out of the pocket of his baggy jeans and held it out.
“A chicken bone tied with red thread. I’m busy that night.” It smelled awful.
He looked at me pityingly. “This your ticket. And you betterhope that’s a chicken bone.”
“What goes on wherever I’m going?”
“Julius Spyglass School of Witchcraft an’ Wizarding, but we don’t ass around with brooms an’ shit.” He cocked his head thoughtfully. “Yeah, we do, actually. See you tonight.”
“This can’t be happening,” I muttered. Ninja children, creepy bones of mysterious origin, a voodoo ceremony in 21st century America, curses and demons…was this really what my life had become?
“Look, lady, in addition to my skills at slippin’ in doorways and nunchuk combat, Oncle Julius taught me one thing. Ain’t no such thing as no such thing.” He leaned forward, serious and intent, elbows on his knees. “Supernatural don’t exist, everything is natural. Julius says, don’t no one know how a airplane stays up, what the hell’s in a aspirin, what Donald Trump do with his hair. But they do what they do.”
He stood and hitched up his pants, which promptly dropped below navel level again.
“I’ll pick you up at 10:30. Wear something tight.”
Chapter Eight
“So Rye says you psychic. Seeing anything right now?”
Pete turned the old Plymouth into an unlit street just outside Asshat city limits. He was so small he had to look up through the top curve of the steering wheel, but he’d managed not to kill us, so that’s something.
“Yes, yes, it's coming to me. A bunch of people are going to walk into a church, right in the middle of an intersection. They’re carrying things—I'm sensing flowers, liquor and what might be, yes, is it food?”
“You hilarious, lady.” He swung the Plymouth up to the curb. “Trust Ninja Pete. I’ll find your demon and this swamp bitch too.”
“You speak respectfully on this land, son,” came a booming voice. “Julius Spyglass, welcome to the Peristyle at the Crossroads.”
He was little taller than me, with a round jolly face and round jolly torso, wire-rimmed glasses and a beaming smile.
He led me into a circular room, no pews, no pulpit. Painted drums of all sizes lined the walls. Fresh flowers were piled up before an altar by women in white. Incense made the air a grayish fug. Everywhere were candles in glass, liquor bottles, coins, cigarettes, bread and shiny trinkets. The room was anchored with a painted pole in the center.
One of the women draped a rope of fresh flowers over my neck. The blossoms were bunched between silver charms—a boat, a heart, a coin, a little phallus.
“Don't be afraid, daughter,” said Julius. “We're going to call down a loa, see who you're pledged to, maybe ask him a favor.”
“I'm supposed to give you this,” I remembered, holding out the bone. “Pete said it's my ticket.”
His eyes widened. “A ticket, yes. But not to this place—to the next one. Give it to whoever answers. Don't accept anything in its place and don't take off this necklace. But that bone, you got to pass it on.”
“Can it break a curse?”
“If Petey did it right, yes. All we have is hope, dear.”
As he spoke, the drums started up, a low, steady thumping that set heads bobbing in time. Pete stood by the pole in the center of the room. He looked older in his long robes. I was trusting this skinny-armed kid with my magical future.
Pete said something low and one of the drummers stopped. I saw a shirtless young man standing behind a set of double-drums, his arms hanging limply at his sides. An atmospheric shift, like an airplane cabin losing pressure, made my stomach lurch. Everyone else in the room seemed to feel it, too, but the continued to dance, all boneless limbs and snapping necks. It was too much. I closed my eyes.
A man in a white top hat appeared on the inner screen of my eyelids, one grinning dark face looking back at me from each closed lid.
My eyes flew open, and the man stood in front of me. It was the drummer, posing elegantly in the center of the room as one of the women raced forward to place a white top hat on his head. Another handed him a bottle of rum, a third puffed a giant cigar to light and put it between his teeth. The drummer winked at the ladies.
“Les filles, elles savent ce que j’aime, le BaronSamedi,” he said in an unpleasant nasal whine. He took a giant swig from the bottle. “Who'll be my bride tonight? Maman Brigitte, she got a date with a wild goat. A wild goat, I say!” Cackling laughter cut through the low thrum of drumbeats.
“She fornicating with a four-legged beast, grabbin’ his shaggy hair in her fists, his tin-can breath on her sweet neck. Oh, where’d I find such a low-down woman? What a lucky man I am! You getting lucky with me, baby girl?”
A plump woman obligingly shoved her pelvis against his and began to grind, her tongue lolling from her lips. Julius threw Pete a warning look, but Pete was shivering, eyes white. This was not what I’d signed up for. What happened to the chick who wanted a glass of pink champagne? The vision was terrifying, bony and snide and smelling of death, but the women in the room had fallen into a state of gaping lust when he appeared.
A girl in her teens split her robe from the neck and stood before him, glinting with sweat in the candlelight. But I wasn't looking at her breasts. All I saw was the blood streaming from her eyes. My stomach lurched and I gripped the bone tightly to fell something that was real. Everything else—the bloody-eyed woman grinding on the cackl
ing skeleton, the graveyard scent in the air, the drums louder than a fleet of jets overhead—was just a vision. That’s what I told myself, anyway, concentrating on the greasy film the bone spread in my palm.
The drummer turned his head and threaded his way through the dancing throng and lifted his nose—a couple of holes in a skull-like face—to sniff the air.
“Catholic girl, where you at?”
I stiffened and tried to sink into the shadows, but the drummer found me, cigar between two bony fingers.
“Fee, fi, fo fum,” he whined, leering. “Feel de rhythm of de drum.”
I could smell the rum and wet-leaf stink of cigars on his breath.
“Fi, fo, fum, fee, little Catholic girl gonna fuck wit’ me.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julius move toward me, but I shook my head. Not real, not real.
“No, I see you are pledged to another. Such low-down women. Got my wife layin’ wit’ goats, my concubine trawlin’ for two-bit demons. Lotta dirt-eatin’, rump-waving cock-gobblers in this damned-to-hell world.”
I took a breath.
“I want to talk to him,” I said firmly. And by “firmly,” I mean squeakily.
“You talk to me, I pass on the message. But we gotta make a trade.”
The bone. I’d forgotten the bone. I opened my fist.
“That's an ugly little thing. But you seem attached to it.” He cocked his head. “I tell you what, Catholic girl, you give me dat old bone, and I give you somethin’ precious to me. It will break my dry old heart to give it up, but you, blue eyes, you’re special to the Baron.”
Julius had said not to accept anything in return. “No, just take it.” I willed my voice not to shake.
“Tough little hen.” He reached out a bony hand toward my hair but I reared back in horror. “Oh my, my. What is this? My sigil?”
My hand flew to the flowered necklace. The little silver phallus, the sign of Baron Samedi.