He stepped back, noting my serious tone, lifting my chin to look me in the eye. “We good?”
I nodded and smiled. The way he touched me was unnerving, the feelings he elicited from me with such ease. The last time I felt like this my head ended up in a bad place. It made me stupid and weak and cut my heart open. No one had ever gotten close enough to do that again. Not even Elliot could reach that place. “I need to get to the shop,” I lied. His expression took a more serious note, and I knew he’d heard me leave that message stating the contrary.
Maneuvering around his arms, I kissed him quickly on the lips and headed for the toaster oven. “I’m making toast and you’re eating a piece.” But by the time I turned around he was gone.
“Should I come by after work?” he asked, emerging from the bedroom a few minutes later, dressed with his keys in his hand. “Or are we not there yet? It is Friday night.”
It was that awkward stage where neither of us knew what the other wanted. I wanted him to stay all day, but I had deadly business to attend to and dinner at Lillian Whitman’s house, a party I suspected was more business than pleasure. “I have plans tonight that can’t be cancelled. Tomorrow? Lunch? Dinner? Midnight snack?”
His disappointed face brightened. “All of the above.” He gave me a final kiss and headed for the door, with Jet under his feet before he reached it.
“Watch Jet,” I warned. “I don’t let him outside alone. Too many crazies looking for black cats.”
“Sorry, little man,” he said, bending down to run his hand over Jet’s arched back. He gave me a last look that set my stomach aflutter. Then he maneuvered around the cat and headed toward his bike parked openly in the driveway, in the neighborhood he now apparently trusted.
17
I considered dialing Fin’s number but chose to mull over it while I ate breakfast. I supposed it could have been just another dream, not some harbinger of another evil spirit gunning for my ass. The only way to find out for sure was to call Fin and ask if they were missing another one, but I suspected I would have heard about it by now it they were.
A cup of coffee and two slices of toast later, I dropped down on the sofa and turned on the TV. The morning news sobered me.
At this time, police have no reason to suspect foul play, but they are treating the disappearance as suspicious. An anonymous tip placed attorney Christopher Sullivan at a pub on the south side. Investigators are hoping to get answers after interviewing staff and witnesses.
My stomach felt like a right hook had just been delivered to it. I knew this was coming, but I wasn’t prepared to see Christopher’s name and picture plastered across to the screen of my television. The police knew he was at MacPherson’s the night of the murder, and that meant they were about to find out who he left with—if they didn’t already know.
A loud bang on my door nearly made that toast and coffee come roaring back up my throat. “Fuck,” I muttered, creeping toward the widow to see if a patrol car was parked out front, lights flashing as Chatham County PD stood on my doorstep to take me away in handcuffs. A stupid thought crossed my mind for a second, but then the stronger voice of reason prevailed and convinced me that running out the back door would only delay my incarceration and tarnish my plea of self-defense. And there was always the insanity plea. I was about to pull the blinds back when I heard the patio door open.
“What the hell is going on with you, woman?” Sugar strode into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. “I told you to get a metal rod for that damn door, didn’t I?”
I’d taken that advice, but apparently I’d forgotten to drop it into the door track before leaving for the beach with Jackson the night before. Note to self: put metal rod in door.
“Jesus, Sugar. Next time you knock on my door you might want to do it with a little less aggression.” I glanced at the kitchen cabinet where I kept that little wooden box. “You know I’ve got a gun in that cabinet behind you.” Not to mention the possibility of invoking the dragon.
She grabbed her cup from the counter and walked over to me, regarding my weary eyes with commiseration. “Baby, you in a world of trouble.”
“Nah, I’m not in trouble, Sugar—I’m fucked. I’m a bona fide member of the fucked club.” I walked back over to the coffee pot and poured myself another cup. “You know what I did the night before last?” I asked, although her family being honorary members of the Crossroads Society pretty much guaranteed she already knew. They were all in the secret club, maybe even had a secret handshake. I was about to find out just how good a friend she was. “I killed a man. Christopher Sullivan.” Her unflinching stare confirmed what I suspected.
“Mmhmm,” she replied, glancing at the TV as the news was making its way back around to the story of the missing assistant DA. That’s the thing about local news. If you miss it the first time, all you have to do is wait a few minutes for the top stories to recycle right back around. “Now you listen here,” Sugar ordered, penetrating me with her best don’t-fuck-with-me stare. “I know all about that. I also know what it was that you killed, and it wasn’t Christopher Sullivan. Well, technically it was, but not until after that godforsaken piece-of-shit spirit tried to suck you dry. I guess the damn thing thought it could inhabit all this,” she waved her hand up and down my body, “and spring that other spirit loose by itself. Bypass the middleman. Kinda like sucking its own dick.” She smirked and downed the rest of her coffee. “But I guess it didn’t get the memo about that dragon, now did it?”
I cocked my head at her, wondered why she was standing in my house at 9:17 a.m. “What are you doing here, Sugar?”
“I went by the shop first thing this morning to see how that little date of yours went with that bad boy last night.”
“How did you know about that?” I hadn’t even mentioned it to Sea Bass when I left yesterday.
“I know things, Katie B. When you gonna get used to that? I got the sight, and last night my sight was telling me you was fraternizing with that man you can’t stand.” Her expression turned sly. “Besides, I pulled up to your place right about the time you was disappearing around the corner on the back of that Harley. And since you decided to play hooky today, I figured I’d pay you a little visit. Now, I known you since the day that shop opened, and you ain’t never laid out of work. Not one day. Hell, I seen you walk into that shop looking like Typhoid Mary.”
Busted by my own compulsive work ethic. “I wish the two of us could just sit down and have a real nice girl talk about Jackson Hunter, but as I said earlier, I’m fucked. I got more problems than I can handle, Sugar. Keeping my ass out of jail, for one. But right now I’m more worried about that tattoo I dreamed about last night.”
Sugar’s face went cold. “You mean like—”
“Yep. The tattoo looked different but the feeling it gave me was the same. I’d bet my right arm that the other spirit has busted free, or it’s about to.”
Without saying another word, she made a beeline for my bedroom. I followed and watched her rummage through my closet. “What the hell are you looking for, Sugar?”
“A damn suitcase,” she answered. “I’m getting you out of this house before that spirit comes looking for you.”
After what I’d done to the first one, I doubted this one would be stupid enough to try getting inside of me. After all, the spirits were separate but inextricable parts of the same entity, so I’m sure both of them understood the futility of trying to overcome the beast in me. My real value to them was in my ability to apply that tattoo to the host’s skin. I just needed to avoid clients until that party tonight when I prayed Fin would tell me they’d discover a brilliant method for capturing the spirits.
“I’m not going anywhere, Sugar. I just need to avoid the shop for a little while.”
“The hell you ain’t! I don’t care if you turn into Godzilla. Mmhmm, you got to get out of this house, baby.”
“Stop!” I said, grabbing her arm before she yanked all my clothes off the rack. “I’m
having dinner at Lillian Whitman’s house tonight. I’m just laying low for the next ten hours until I can talk to Fin and sort all of this out.”
She stopped and looked at me with a firm gaze. “Well, I ain’t leaving. You got anything to eat in this place?” She headed out of the bedroom and I followed her to the kitchen as she opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs. “All this drama is making me hungry. You got any bacon in here?”
“I’m out of bacon,” I said. “Don’t you have to go to work?”
She ignored me and turned on the stove burner, dumping a full tablespoon of butter into the hot skillet. “How many eggs you want?”
“I already ate.”
She cracked two eggs into the skillet and flipped them with a shake of the pan after a few seconds. Then she slid them on a plate while refilling her coffee cup with her other hand. A real multitasker. Sugar was one of those people you wanted to stay close to during a catastrophe. She had that gift of knowing how to handle things. A proactive nature. I suspected that short of the Apocalypse, there was nothing that could defeat her.
I grabbed another cup of coffee and joined her at the counter while she ate her breakfast. The silence was beginning to get uncomfortable—for me—as Sugar chewed her eggs and stared into the space in front of her. “How do you do that?” I finally asked.
“Do what?” she replied without moving her eyes from the random spot they were fixed on.
“Make me feel like I’m being interrogated without saying a word or even looking at me?”
Now she glanced at me. “Why? You got something you need to confess?”
With a frustrated sigh, I headed for the living room and sank into the couch. Sugar finished eating, then washed her plate before following and sitting down next to me. “We went to Tybee Island and watched turtles hatch on the beach,” I said, breaking down and indulging her curiosity about my date with Jackson, including the part about him leaving shortly before she arrived. Then we spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon watching talk shows and grazing on junk food, like a couple of stoners with nothing better to do than loaf and eat all day.
“I don’t see why you’re not invited. You’re a member of the society.”
“I ain’t got no time for dinner parties,” Sugar said, tossing clothing options from my closet onto the bed. “Lillian Whitman knows better than to waste an invitation on me. I’ll invite myself if I feel the need for painful conversation.” She dangled a red dress at me. “This one. Brings out them gorgeous eyes.”
Without question, I took it and proceeded to strip off my shorts and T-shirt before slipping into the dress. “It would be a hell of a lot more fun if you went with me.”
“I’ll pass, baby. Besides, I got a show tonight.” Sugar was a featured performer at the Blue Light Club. She also ran a popular blog that doled out advice that until recently I never suspected was anything more than that. But since learning about her family’s deep connection to root work, I was beginning to suspect those suggestions for donations might be a clever front for payment rendered. Payment for a little conjure to help her followers solve all those problems they submitted to her for “advice.”
“Now about them shoes,” she continued.
I looked down at the black kitten pumps I’d stepped into. “What’s wrong with them?” I rarely wore them because they were too conservative for my taste. But considering where I was spending the evening, I thought they’d be appropriate.
“Nothing wrong with them,” she muttered, glancing at a more stylish pair on the floor of the closet. “If you’re heading for church.”
“It’s dinner, Sugar. Not another ball.”
“Baby, you in Savannah,” she sniped. “Them shoes gonna be judged the second they step foot in that big ol’ house.”
I complied, kicking them off in exchange for the not-so-comfortable pair of four-inch black heels. A minute later my phone went off. It was a text from Fin’s driver letting me know he was parked out front.
Sugar walked me to the Bentley and gave me a serious look before I got in. “You be careful out there,” she warned. “Don’t you forget I’m on speed dial if you need me.”
“I know, Sugar. But don’t you worry about me. I can be a real beast when I need to be.”
She glared at the Bentley with contempt before heading toward her Eldorado parked in front of it at the curb. It was too big to fit in the driveway behind my car. “Damn waste of money, with all them folks starving around here.” She yanked the heavy door open and started to climb inside. “You might be seeing me again before the night is up,” she yelled over the yard. “In fact, I might just move in with you until that thing is back in the book.” She shook her head. “Lord, what I won’t do for my girls.”
“I know, Sugar,” I whispered, too low for her to hear me. “I know.”
When I turned back to the Bentley, the driver was standing next to it holding the door open. I thanked him and climbed inside, savoring the experience of traveling in a car that cost more than that house I was renting. I could probably buy two or three for the price of that car, and throw in a brand-new Honda Accord to go with it.
We pulled away from the curb—or should I say glided—and headed for Lillian Whitman’s palatial house. The driver smiled at me through the mirror, and it occurred to me that I didn’t know what to call him. “What’s your name?” I asked, studying the back of his well-manicured head. His hair was conservatively smoothed into a shiny dark cap, and I guessed him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His suit looked expensive, and I wondered if that was one of the perks of working for Fin Cooper, or if he had to shell out a month’s salary to look the part. He smelled good, too.
“My apologies, Miss Bishop. I should have introduced myself the first time we met. I’m Joseph.”
“Joseph,” I repeated. “That’s a nice name. You been working for Fin long?”
“Going on eight years.”
The car went quiet as I struggled to think of something to keep the conversation going, to fill the awkward silence. But the moss-covered trees captured my attention as they did the last time I’d driven out to the house, the night I found out Victor Tuse was dead. It was nice to enjoy them from the backseat of the Bentley, without the distraction of driving my own car and having to keep my eyes on the road. The last time I was in the backseat of the Bentley a pair of black shades rolled across the windows to conceal the society’s location. But now that I was an honorary member, I knew exactly where we were going.
“Joseph?” I said, still staring out the window at the trees lining the drive.
He caught my eyes through the rearview mirror. “Yes ma’am?”
“Are you a Savannah native?”
He nodded his head. “Born and raised. My grandparents migrated here from Louisiana. New Orleans area. But my parents are Savannahians.”
“So you’re familiar with hoodoo and root magic?” I was curious to get another perspective. One from outside the society, and he seemed normal enough.
Initially he remained silent, and I wondered if I’d overstepped my bounds with the question. Savannah was a town of fierce etiquette, after all. It only took one misplaced question to offend. Fortunately, a good drink was enough to mend fences around here.
“About as much as the next person,” he eventually said.
I smirked at his evasion. Obviously I’d hit a nerve with the question, but I was talented at reading people’s reactions where they might be too vague for others to notice. “I’m just wondering if you believe in all that stuff?” I looked directly at him through the mirror. No hiding from the question now.
“Well, Miss Bishop, it’s my opinion that only a stupid man tries to refute what he knows nothing about. Or what he’s seen with his own two eyes.”
“Is that an affirmative, Joseph?”
He grinned back at me as we pulled off the main road and headed toward the big house. “Yes, ma’am.”
18
Fin w
as waiting on the steps as we pulled up to the house. Always the gentleman, he opened the door and extended his hand, assessing my dress as I stepped out. “Lovely as always, Miss Bishop.” We hooked arms and climbed the double staircase leading up to the front door. “We’re having lamb tonight. Hope you don’t have any aversions to eating young creatures.”
I smiled faintly at the thought. I did try to eat ethically, and normally chose foods that were on the humane side. And while delicious, lamb and veal weren’t a regular part of my diet.
Lillian’s beautiful house hit my senses—as it always did—the moment I walked through the front door. It was just one of those things I’d never get used to, the grandeur of the place, and the unattainable objects that only came to those with the good fortune of history and inheritance.
“Katie,” Lillian greeted as we walked into the palatial living room. It was nice to hear that someone had finally dropped the formality and was addressing me by my given name.
“Hello, Lillian,” I said in return. “It’s nice to see you again.”
She smiled slyly at me, betraying the professional circumstances of the gathering. “Fin tells me you’ve been a busy woman lately. Got some cleaning up to do. But we can talk about all that later.” She walked over to the bureau and poured me a glass of scotch without asking my drink preference. The perfect hostess, she was. Just like a seasoned bartender memorizing a regular client’s favorite drink, she presented it to me and motioned for me to sit.
A moment later I heard voices coming down the hall. Dr. Greene came into the room with Emmaline and Davina McCabe, all three sporting wide grins as they greeted me. Moses Greene was a tall man with puffy hands that made me question his skills as a cardiologist. Maybe he was retired from surgery, resigned to stress tests and consultations these days. With his graying hair and the deep definition to his facial skin, I estimated his age to be late fifties or early sixties. But then again, people of color tended to age more gracefully, so he could have been in his seventies for all I knew.
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