And he did want to keep renting the large one-bedroom apartment upstairs, so he offered no further resistance to her schemes.
The store was smoky with incense. Ylang ylang. Despite the open door and late breeze, a visible cloud hung in the air, haloing the bookshelves and trinket displays full of sugar skulls, candles, statues of saints, and porcelain figurines. The fact that he recognized the scent spoke of Mel’s influence on him these past months. If someone had bet him he would know the difference between Ylang ylang and Geranium two years ago, he would have lost the shirt off his back.
Apart from the four girls clustered by a wall of talismans, only one other patron was in the store. A rail-thin man with a rainbow tank top and cut-off jean shorts showing the bottom of his ass cheeks plucked a Revenge is Love candle from a wooden shelf. He read the label with one hand on his hip. When he scratched his ash blond hair, glitter rained onto the floor.
King’s heart sank. Despite Mel’s endless tactics, business was still slow. At ten o’clock on a Friday, this place should be packed wall-to-wall with tourists, ravers, or even drunks. Five customers did not an income make.
Behind the counter, a twenty-two-year-old girl with a white pixie cut took one look at the falling glitter and her nostrils flared.
Piper wore a sleeveless tank top with deep arm holes revealing her black sports bra beneath. A diamond cat earring sat curled in the upper curve of her ear and sparkled in the light of the cathedral chandelier overhead. A hemp necklace with three glass beads hung around her neck. Every finger had a silver ring, and a crow in flight was tattooed on her inner wrist. She managed to mask her irritation before Booty Shorts reached the counter with his purchase.
“$6.99.” Piper slipped the candle into a paper bag with the Madame Melandra’s Fortunes and Fixes logo stamped on the front.
Booty Shorts thanked her and sashayed out into the night. A glow stick around his neck burned magenta in the dark.
“I don’t see what a candle can do that a hitman can’t.” Piper blew her long bangs out of her face.
“Why would you have someone else fight your battles for you?”
“I don’t hit girls.” Piper scoffed in mock indignation. “Anyway, my point is it’s a waste of time sitting up all night with a candle praying to some goddess who doesn’t give two shits about my sex life. Don’t cry about your sour milk! Go get another fish! A cute, kissable fish who’ll let you unsnap her bra after a couple tequila shots.”
“Be grateful for the candle-burning crybabies,” King adjusted the folder under his arms. “Unless you want to be a shop girl somewhere else.”
Her nostrils flared. “Apprentice. I’m learning how to read fortunes. Sometimes I set up a table in Jackson Square and make shit up. People pay me! It’s unbelievable.”
“The Quarter is a dicey place for a young woman to be alone.”
“Awww. I’ve always wanted a concerned father figure.” She pressed her hands to her heart. Then she rolled her eyes. “Who said I was alone?”
“Were you with Tiffany?”
“Tanya,” she corrected. “And no. We broke up weeks ago.”
King rubbed the back of his head, leaning heavily against the glass case. “That’s right. You left her for Amy.”
“Amanda,” she said. “Keep up, man.”
He’d never been great with names. Now faces—he never forgot a face. “I’m sorry. How’s Amanda?”
“She’s—”
A teenage girl burst from behind the curtain, clutching her palm as if it’d been burned. Fat tears slid down her cheeks, glistening in the light until her friends enfolded her in their arms.
The velvety curtain with its spiraling gold tassels was pulled back again and hung on a hook to one side of the door frame. From the shadows, a voluptuous black woman with considerable hips emerged. Mel’s kohl-rimmed eyes burned and an off-the-shoulders patchwork dress hugged her curvy frame. Gold bangles jangled against her wrist as she adjusted the purple shawl around her.
“Bad news?” Piper arched a brow, and King realized she’d begun to mimic Mel’s dramatic eye makeup.
Mel crossed the small shop, and King straightened again. He hoped his eyes weren’t glassy, and the mints had done the trick.
Mel stopped short of the counter and put one hand on her hip.
“Crushing hearts?” Piper asked, and she sounded excited about it.
Mel rolled her eyes. “I only suggested a book.”
Piper frowned. “What book?”
Mel puckered her lips. “He’s Just Not That Into You.”
Piper’s grin deepened. “You’re so cruel. Do you want me to talk to her? I’m really good with damsels.”
“They’re release tears. They’re good for the soul. She’ll wake up tomorrow and feel like the sun is shining, the baby bluebirds are singing, and—”
“—she’ll be $80 lighter for it,” Piper muttered.
“She’ll be fine.” Mel tapped her long purple nails on the checkout counter and turned her dark eyes on King. “You, on the other hand, you’re in trouble. Big trouble.”
King felt the sweat beading under his collar. He resisted the urge to reach up and pull at it. It was the chandelier overhead, beating down on him. Or he could blame the muggy night. New Orleans was hot as hell in June. Sweating didn’t mean a damn thing.
“You’re awfully quiet tonight, Mr. King.”
He shrugged.
Mel stopped tapping her fingers on the glass countertops. King noticed reflective gems had been glued to the end of her index fingernails. “I see a woman in your future. She’s someone from your past. Pretty little white thing. Blonde. Big blue eyes. And she needs your help.”
His ex-wife Fiona had brown eyes, and no one would have called her a pretty little white thing.” She’d been nearly six feet tall with the body of a rugby player.
Lucy.
“Is this a real fortune, Mel?” he asked his tongue heavy in his mouth.
Mel wrinkled her nose. “As real as the booze on your breath, Mr. King.”
He adjusted the file under his arm. “It’s mouthwash.”
“I’ve done told you when you signed your lease, I wouldn’t let no drunk man in my house again.”
King found it amusing when Mel’s southern accent thickened with her anger. Amusing, but he didn’t dare smile. Mel hadn’t wanted to rent her spare apartment to anyone, let alone a man. It had taken two weeks of wooing and reference checking to convince the fortune teller an ex-DEA agent was an asset rather than a liability.
“At least he’s not an angry drunk.” Piper tried to pull the file free from King’s underarm. She bit her lip as she tried to peel the flaps apart and glimpse the contents within.
He slapped her hand lightly. “I’m not even buzzed.”
Mel’s eyes flicked to the case file then met his again. She arched an eyebrow.
King didn’t believe in palm reading or fortune telling. Ghosts only existed in the mind, and he would be the first to admit he had a menagerie of malevolent spirits haunting him.
But despite what his mother called a healthy dose of skepticism, he believed in intuition. Intuition was knowledge the frontal lobe had yet to process. He trusted his instinct and he respected the instinct of others. No one person could see every angle. Shooters on the roof. Boots on the ground. You had to rely on someone else’s eyes, and this was no different.
Did Mel sense something about the case Brasso brought him? About a witness on the run and the man hunting her? And this mysterious woman from his past...
Mel spoke to the gaggle of girls. “Who’s next?”
Three hands shot up. Someone cried, “Me!”
Clearly, they were eager to have their hearts broken.
“Wait.” King touched her shoulder, and she turned. “Were you serious about the woman?”
“I don’t need to be a fortune teller to know there’s a woman, Mr. King.” Mel tucked one of the girls behind the curtain and met his eyes again. She looked at hi
m through long, painted lashes. Candle flames danced on the walls behind her. “She’s in your apartment.”
“You let a woman into my apartment?” His heart took off. “There’s a woman in my apartment? Now?”
Mel grinned and dropped the burgundy curtain.
“Good luck with your ex-girlfriend.” Piper swiped at the floor with a corn husk broom, doing no more than smearing the glitter. “Hope you have better luck than I do with mine.”
“I’ll be okay.” King stood at the base of the stairs, looking up at his dark door. “Probably.”
3
The moment the water overtook the car, Lou made her largest slip yet. She took Angelo, the car, and the dead driver. She didn’t know if this was her doing, or if some things slip through on the current of their own desire. After all, there were enough rumors. Ships found floating without people. The Bermuda triangle. Planes disappeared and were never seen again. No debris ever found. She wasn’t so egotistic to assume she was the only one who could slip through thin places.
Once the dark water turned red, became a different lake in a different place and time, Lou kicked out the window and swam.
She surfaced beside the body of the driver. He floated face down in the water. His shirt was puffed up in places where the air had entered beneath his collar. The water of Blood Lake, always the same crimson hue, added a surreal dimension to the floating body. As if the driver floated in an ocean of his own blood.
A large splash caught her attention, and she paddled in a half-circle. Her heavy boots tugged at her ankles, making it harder to stay afloat.
It wasn’t Angelo. He was moving slowly toward the shore, making poor progress under the weight of his leather jacket. He slapped at the surface of the lake, each clumsy stroke of his arm like an eagle trying to swim. She spun further to the right in time to see a large dorsal fin dip beneath the surface about ten yards away.
She didn’t need to be told getting out of the water was a good idea. Blood in the water was sure to attract any predator, earthly or otherwise. The splattered brains on the sinking car’s window was an added draw.
And she didn’t have much time. The ripples of the creature’s descent were already lapping at her breast bone.
She swam for shore in slow, controlled movements. Not panicked. Not like prey. Yet she expected at any moment to find herself jerked under. Each easy stroke toward Angelo was an act of self-control.
Yet she emerged from the lake unharmed. Her heart hammered, but her body was whole. Angelo inspected a cut on his hand. He hadn’t been careful enough with the broken window he’d pushed himself through.
Lou watched him, waited for him to adjust to his surroundings.
Finally, he looked up. He made a small sound of surprise, and Lou followed his gaze toward the water. The body of the driver bobbed once. Then a harder jerk submerged all but the puffed shirt. A flick of a large grotesque tail covered in purple spines slapped against the surface. One more tug and the body was gone. Only ripples on the surface suggested an exchange had happened.
Angelo stared gape-mouthed at the sky, transfixed by the two moons sagging there. “We are dead.”
Lou tried to imagine what this place looked like to him. What it had looked like to her on her first visit.
The red lake. The white mountains. The strange yellow sky. A black forest with short trees and heart shaped leaves. Incongruous colors that were so different than those of her world.
“You are a demon.” He crossed himself and kissed a saint pendant hanging from a gold chain around his neck.
It was the smell of sulfur that made him think of Hell, no doubt. It hung in the air and would cling to her hair and skin until she bathed. She shook water off her hands. “This is not some Roman Catholic parable.” Though you will learn a lesson here, she thought.
“Who are you?”
“Jack Thorne’s daughter.”
Angelo’s eyes widen. “No. She hit the bottom of the pool and didn’t come up.”
I didn’t come up, she thought. I went down. Sometimes the only way out is through. And Lou thought there wasn’t another person on Earth who that could be more true for.
She remembered every detail of that night, of her father’s final hours. As if those moments had been burned like images onto film, forever preserved in her mind.
On the last night of his life, Jack Thorne entered their Tudor house in the St. Louis suburbs. He stood there in the doorway, wearing his bulletproof vest and badge. He was an intimidating sight, over six feet tall and filling the doorway like an ogre from a storybook. His gaze was direct and cumbersome most of the time. Only when he smiled, and the lines beside his eyes creased, did the gaze feel friendly.
“I want to talk to you,” he said.
Louie, twelve, had slowly lowered her book, mentally marking her place on the page, before looking up from the window seat where she sat.
Her father had laughed, his grin transforming his face. “You’re not in trouble. Scout’s honor.”
He’d never been a scout, but that hadn’t stopped him from hailing the three-finger salute.
He ruffled her hair before heading to his bedroom where he changed. She’d listened to him, to the sound of his holster buttons snapping open. The clunk of the gun being placed on the dresser. One boot falling with a thud to the floor. Then the other. The Velcro of the bulletproof vest ripping free. These were the sounds of him coming home, and they had comforted her.
At dinner, she pushed a piece of soft, over-boiled broccoli around her plate, and waited. She listened to her mother complain about her day, about her part-time job at the chiropractor’s office.
“They don’t even vaccinate their children,” her mother sneered between sips of red wine. “Six children and no vaccinations. Haven’t they ever heard of herd immunity?”
“Mmmhmm,” her father said companionably and scraped up the last of his turkey and broccoli with a fork. The turkey was dry as sandpaper, and the broccoli was practically mush. But Jack Thorne ate it with the same relish he would have a 24 oz. Porterhouse because of his respect for the woman who made it. Tasteless food never hurt anyone, he’d told Louie once. But cruel words do.
“Dr. Perdy said, ‘my children have never been sick.' I wanted to ask, ‘do you know why, Dr. Perdy?’ Herd immunity, that’s why. And do you know how we gained herd immunity?”
“Hmmm?” her father prompted, as he was expected to. He sat back in his chair, unbuttoned his jeans and began reviewing his teeth with a toothpick.
“He’s supposed to be a medical professional.” Courtney finished her glass of wine. “A medical professional surely understands what could happen if we sabotage our herd immunity.”
Her father took a swig of beer. “Do you want to do anything special this summer, Louie?”
Louie looked up from her broccoli and shrugged.
Her mother made a tsk with her tongue, a sound which she reserved to express her annoyance. In this instance, it was about her husband’s unbuttoned pants at the table and his attempt to shift the conversation to their daughter.
Louie’s showers usually ended with such a tsk of her mother’s tongue and a complaint about her aching back. Other times, her mother would thrust the towel past the curtain and hold it there until Louie wiped the water out of her eyes and took it. She hadn’t been allowed to bathe alone since she’d returned from Ohio.
“She should do summer school this summer,” Courtney said with arched brows. “Her social studies grade was dismal! We need to get serious about this, Lou. You only have four years before you start applying to college.”
Louie opened her mouth but caught her father’s slight shake of the head. She shut her mouth and resumed her assault on the vegetables.
Courtney topped off her glass of wine and retired to the bedroom, with the cordless phone as she did every night. She’d call her sister, and they’d talk while watching the DVR recordings of her favorite soap operas.
As soon as the bedroom doo
r closed, her father nodded toward the back door. “Last one out is a snot-covered Wheat Thin.”
Louie wrinkled her nose. “Gross!” Any lingering hunger from her unsatisfying meal was squashed by this disgusting image. She pushed back from the oaken table.
Despite his playful attempt to put her at ease, her heart knocked wildly against her ribs and her legs dragged beneath her like two bags of wet sand. She wasn’t sure if it was the prospect of going near the pool or the pretense of their conversation.
Her father turned to find her trailing reluctantly behind.
She closed the door behind her and stepped out into their fenced backyard. She skirted the kidney bean-shaped pool. Her eyes transfixed on the dark water. “What’s wrong?”
“Come over here and sit with me,” he said. He slipped into one of the poolside chairs and patted the seat beside him.
Her arms and legs felt ten pounds heavier, but Louie obeyed, inching toward him. Once they were knee to knee, he spoke up.
“I want to talk about the pool.”
The pulse in her ears blocked out all sound.
“Stay with me, Louie,” he said as she instinctively stepped away from the water. “I know this scares you, but it’s important.”
When she didn’t answer, he put his hand on her shoulder, cupping the large scar encircling her upper arm and clavicle. Twenty-three stitches and months of physical therapy to combat the scar tissue which formed after.
“Louie, Louiiii. Oh baby,” he sang. If he wanted her to smile, he sang mumbled nonsense from some ‘60s cover song. “Do you trust me?”
She did. But she only managed a small nod despite her father’s pleasing baritone.
“Do you remember me telling you about Aunt Lucy?”
Her brows pinched together. “The one you named me after?”
“That’s the one. I want you to go stay with her.”
“You’re sending me away?” She swayed on her feet. The shadows dancing at the edge of the motion lights pressed in on her, swiped at her neck and face with cold fingers. And the water—the godawful water—seemed to roll toward her like a hungry, anxious tongue, lapping at the sides of the pool.
Shadows in the Water Page 3