My eyes shut instinctively and then popped back open. There was a brick wall to my left where a minute ago all I could see was a hurricane of construction debris flying in a whirlwind around us. Then there was another one starting to form on my right. Brick by brick the walls went up in a flash of architectural magic. To make the whole scene even more surreal, I looked closer at the makeshift wall and caught a glimpse of a face staring back at me.
“Sugar?” I swung around and saw her standing behind me, safely confined in the tight space with her eyes fixed on the same wall I was just looking at. “You okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she replied. “I’m just hoping that face over there in that wall is a friend of yours.”
I turned back to the camouflaged eyes that were now more pronounced in the texture of the brick. “Cairo?”
It took about twenty minutes for Jackson, Fin, and a whole arsenal of Cairo’s clan to dig us out. But had it not been for Jackson’s strength, I imagined it would have taken a lot longer to get through all the rubble of a collapsed four-story building. Lucky for us, because even though the area was deserted at night, the police and fire department had probably already gotten wind of it and were on their way. Besides, I could feel Legvu growing stronger inside that tiny piece of bone tucked in my pocket.
I handed the charm to Fin. “It was José,” I said. “Legvu promised him something he couldn’t refuse if he helped get the second spirit out of the grimoire. Imm—”
“Immortality,” Fin said before I could get the word out.
“You knew?” I glared at him for lying to me by omission.
“Now before you get all fired up about it,” he said, staving off my wrath, “let me just say that we only had our suspicions. In fact, while we were digging you out Lillian called to let me know that José confessed, probably about the same time Legvu got himself sucked inside this piece of bone I’m holding. He called Lillian in a panic after looking in the mirror and noticing his hair was falling out in clumps. Had open sores forming all over his face. That man’s skin was literally sliding off his flesh.”
“I don’t get the connection. Is he sick?”
Fin smirked and bit off the tip of a cigar before lighting it. “I guess you could say that. It appears that José is a little older than he looks.”
“How much older?”
“Say . . . more than a century. Apparently, he’s been forty-five for about a hundred years. Sold his soul to the devil more than once, but that debt always comes back around to bite you in the ass. Seems he was overdue for a little rejuvenation and decided to offer his services to Legvu in exchange for a little magic nip and tuck.”
I laughed bitterly. “What will happen to him, now? His age will eventually catch up and send him to the grave?”
Fin’s face sobered. “I’m afraid it already has, Miss Bishop.”
29
The shop was busier than usual when I walked through the front door. Fridays were relatively slow, with the weekend crowd preferring to get their tattoos on Saturday.
“Hey, Carl,” I said to my business neighbor sitting in Mouse’s chair, giving him a cordial smile as I headed for the front desk. He owned the thrift shop three doors down and had a habit of drawing out a single-session tattoo into two, usually with me applying them. Sea Bass was convinced he had the hots for me since he always insisted I be the one to do the work. But today I had more important business to attend to.
His eyes visibly brightened. “Hey there, Katie. I was hoping you’d be in this morning.” He glanced at Mouse. “No offense, Mouse. It’s just that Katie usually takes care of me.” Mouse snorted but said nothing, focusing back on the American flag she was wrapping around the cap of his shoulder.
“Sorry, Carl. I had a breakfast date with my boyfriend.” It was a lie, but it was kinder than shooting him down when he inevitably asked me out. I guess it wasn’t a total fabrication, seeing how I did eat scrambled eggs and toast on the kitchen counter with Jackson before leaving for my meeting with a real lawyer.
Carl’s expression sagged. Maybe now he’d move on to someone who would reciprocate and show a real appreciation for his devotion.
The morning after the mill collapsed, Fin made a call to his attorney’s office to set me up with legal representation. There was still the matter of an eyewitness seeing me with Christopher Sullivan the night he disappeared. But since that anonymous call had been made by a demented god who was now safety imprisoned back in the grimoire, there was no evidence that I’d been anywhere near Christopher the night he vanished. On top of that, they’d never actually found a body—thanks to Fin and his accomplices—so there were no legal grounds for the police to bother me any further. For all intents and purposes, I was a free woman.
“That’s right, Carl,” Sugar added. “Katie B got her a big ol’ boyfriend who ain’t gonna appreciate another man sniffing around his woman.”
I glared at her and cocked my head, begging her to be kind to the man. Sea Bass was hunched over her chest, tattooing a four-leaf clover a few inches above her left breast. Despite hanging for dear life from that beam for an entire day, Sugar seemed relatively unscathed. Even Dr. Greene had been astounded by her miraculous recovery. Though a little sore, she was back to her usual self, and I couldn’t help but think that Pearl May Mobley’s juju had something to do with that. A powerful conjure woman for a mama came in handy.
“Hmph,” I said, examining the tattoo. “Feeling a little lucky, are you?”
“Luck of the Irish,” she replied.
“Since when are you Irish, Sugar?”
“Since I be sittin’ here with my ass intact. I figured a little good luck charm ain’t gonna hurt.”
Indeed, I thought. We were all lucky to be here.
The front door opened and in walked Fin. “That meeting go well, Miss Bishop?”
“As well as I could hope, Fin. I think the worst is over, at least for now.” One thing I learned early on in life was to never underestimate the power of karma. While killing Christopher Sullivan was an act of pure self-defense, I knew deep down that as long as his body wasn’t put to rest in the family plot, there would always be that threat in the back of my mind that old ghosts would resurface and the police would come knocking on my door again. That was an unpleasant possibility I had to live with.
“I have something for you,” he said, holding out an envelope.
“What’s this?” I opened it and extracted a set of papers. It was the deed to the building we were standing in.
“Signed and notarized,” he pointed out. I was listed as the grantee. He’d promised me the deed if I joined the Crossroads Society and helped them recapture Legvu, but I never really thought he’d make good on that offer. I figured without a legal contract, he’d find some sleazy way out of handing over a whole building.
I looked up at him. “I thought—”
“You thought what, Miss Bishop?” The look in his eyes as he waited for me to question his integrity made me question my own. “That I would renege on a deal?”
My shoulders slouched as I smiled back at him. “No, Fin. I’m just a little stunned right now.” I glanced around the room and shook my head at the thought of what I’d just been handed. “This may be a little hard for someone like you to understand, Fin, but most working folks don’t have the luxury of not worrying about the rent. You just liberated me.”
He laughed quietly. “Well, then today is a good day.” He turned to leave but added a remark before walking out the door. “I’m sure you’ll more than earn that deed with the next calamity the society has to deal with.”
“N–next calamity?” I called out to him. “What do you mean by next?”
“The crossroads, Miss Bishop.” He glanced back at me and pulled a cigar from his pocket. “We still need to find those bones.”
I dodged a few cars and headed for Lou’s to grab lunch. For the first time in God knows how long I felt a little peace, and the freedom to just sit in one of the old
vintage booths by myself without a care in the world that couldn’t wait. Fin had just changed my life with a piece of paper, and I decided there’d be plenty of time to worry about the bones tomorrow. Today was mine.
The grilled cheese sandwich on the plate in front of me disappeared in record time, along with a pickle and a hefty serving of greasy fries smothered in ketchup. I was debating between a sugar cookie or a brownie to top it off with my cup of coffee, when my eyes rolled around the room and stopped on a woman sitting at one of the booths against the far wall. It was the woman who’d been stalking me, with the blonde hair and large glasses. She was staring back at me.
“That’s it,” I muttered, getting up to confront her before she disappeared again. I walked across the room to her booth. “Why the hell are you following me?” I asked without an introduction. If she was so interested in me, I figured she already knew my name. She sure as hell knew where I lived. She smiled and motioned to the seat across from hers. “Hold on,” I said, going back to grab my coffee and purse while keeping an eye on her to make sure she stayed put.
I slid into the seat as she smiled and took a sip of her coffee. Her eyes were concealed behind the dark lenses of her sunglasses. “I was wondering if you’d come over,” she said. “I guess I could have come over to your table or knocked on your front door the other night, but it was best that you came to me. It’s much more likely that you’ll stay and hear me out since you initiated the exchange.” Her voice was soft and disarming. Clever if she meant me harm, because she had my interest and the proximity to pounce. My breath caught when she pulled the large frames from her face, revealing her bright emerald eyes. A memory flashed in my mind and then disappeared as fast as it came.
“Do you remember me?” she asked. “It’s Katie now, right?”
I gazed at her familiar eyes, allowing an unexplained emotion to wash over me. “Now?” I repeated.
“The last time we met,” she continued, “you still went by your given name, Katarina.”
In an instant, the oxygen seemed to vacuum from the room. Katarina, Katarina, Katarina, my father called. I was four years old, standing in the middle of a valley circled by a range of mountains that were green at the bases and snow-capped at the tops. The air was warm and smelled of wildflowers each time the breeze picked up and carried the scent through the valley. But as I stood with my bare toes cushioned against the grass with a gust of wind almost lifting me off the ground, I realized it wasn’t the wind at all. I looked up at the blue sky, clear of even a single cloud. The voice echoed from the sky again, Katarina, Katarina, Katarina. My father sailed through the blue, casting a giant shadow over the valley as he passed over my head. Fly with me!
A sharp gasp left my mouth, nearly sending me over the edge of the seat. As I refocused on the woman sitting across from me, smiling with a graveness that suggested it was more condolence than pleasantry, I remembered where we’d met.
“You came to see me a long time ago.” The encounter was vivid in my mind. I was seven or eight when she walked up to me as I was leaving school. She was standing on the sidewalk, blocking my path and gazing down at me. Then she took a deep breath and told me she was my aunt. I was adopted very young and had no memory of my birth parents, and certainly no memory of any other relatives. My adoptive mother acted very strangely when I got home that afternoon and told her about the encounter. She said the woman was crazy and reminded me about the rule of never taking to strangers. But to this day I knew that woman wasn’t a stranger.
She nodded. “I’m your aunt, Marianna. I think I mentioned that when we first met. Do you remember me asking you to show me your tattoo?”
“I remember you. And I remember you showing me yours.” She had a tattoo like mine. Hers was slightly different, but the colors were the same. “You ran your hand over my back, and then you just turned around and walked away. So why are you here now?”
“Katarina,” she sighed, “I’ve always been with you. In New York and now here in Savannah. But it’s time for me to leave. Right after your twenty-fifth birthday.”
“I don’t know what’s happening here,” I said. “I don’t know you, and I think you owe me the courtesy of cutting through the bullshit. So why don’t you just tell me what you want and what my birthday have to do with it?”
She stood up and walked over to the counter to order two more coffees. She returned and placed one of the cups in front of me. “I’m sorry. My nerves are frayed and I’ve gotten quite dependent on caffeine to keep them calm. Ironic, yes?” She took a deep swallow of the piping hot drink and proceeded to answer my question. “Katarina—”
“My name is Katie,” I corrected.
“Of course.” She took a deep breath and continues. “Do you know what you are? What we are?”
I’d been called a couple of things lately—creature, shifter—but I preferred to just refer to myself as a woman who happened to host a dragon on her back. To me they were two separate things that managed to coexist and borrow from one another on occasion. “I like to think I’m a woman with an unusual pet,” I snickered. “But I suppose you’re going to finally put a name to it.”
“No, Katie, you are not a woman with a dragon on her back—you are a dragon when the beast is awake and a woman when it sleeps. But make no mistake, you are the dragon first.”
I put my cup of coffee back down on the table before I dropped it as her words ran through my head on a loop, trying to decipher what part I’d heard wrong. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re telling me.”
“The transformation will take place on your twenty-fifth birthday, when you will become the dragon permanently. Then you will rejoin your father at Mount Triglav in the Julian Alps.”
I laughed in a short, mocking way. “That’s absurd.”
“No more absurd than the girl sitting across from me who grows claws when she’s threatened, or sprouts wings and flies across skyscrapers.”
Until a couple of days ago when Legvu slashed my throat, I hadn’t completely changed into the dragon in over two years. And since leaving New York I’d managed to control the beast fairly well. I had to admit, though, it was showing unpredictability lately.
She leaned across the table for discretion. “I know about Christopher Sullivan and what was inside of him,” she whispered. “Your strength is impressive. The dragon is waking up.”
My coffee cup tipped over and nearly fell to the floor as I pull away, shocked and shaking. “How do you know that?”
“It doesn’t matter, Katie!” Her eyes turned fearful, almost desperate in the way they raced back and forth between mine. “You have to believe what I’m telling you before it’s too late!”
“What if I don’t want this?” I asked, shaking my head because deep down in my gut I knew she was telling me the truth.
“It’s our birthright, Katie. It happens to all of us.”
“All of us?” She had a similar dragon on her back, and I was pretty sure she was a lot older than twenty-five. “You’re my father’s sister?” From what I’d been told, my mother was an ordinary woman from Russia. My father was the dragon in the family.
“Half-sister. Same father, but my mother was human. I’m just like you, Katie—a dragon’s child. We have a choice.” Her eager expression gave me hope. “We’ll always be dragons, but we can choose which form will dominate after our transformation. Do nothing and the choice will be made for you. But if you know how to play the game the choice is yours. In fact, that’s the reason I’m here. All women should have choices, Katie. I did, and so do you.”
“I’m in,” I said without hesitation. “Just tell me what to do.”
A sly grin edged up the side of her face. “Well, my dear, if you want to live your life on your own terms, all you have to do is die.”
THANK YOU TO MY READERS
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NEWSLETTER
ALSO BY LUANNE BENNETT
THE FITHEACH TRILOGY
The Amulet Thief (Book One)
The Blood Thief (Book Two)
The Destiny Thief (Book Three)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe an ocean of gratitude to the Katie Bishop Beta Reader Group for reading the book and providing priceless insight that simply made the book better.
Thank you to my family and friends: My mom for holding her tongue when I decided to walk away from my former career to write silly little stories all day. Jen Drummond, Debra Loe, and Linda Williams for all your support. Jen, you are a tireless proofreader and seer of hidden story opportunities.
Thank you to my spiritual kin: Sonja Cox, Tabitha Cooper, Joshua Saunders, David Harper, and Derrick Bostwick for donating your precious time and talent, and for always having my back. That kind of loyalty is priceless.
Thank you to my incredible betas around the globe: Gina Jacobson, Davina Kehoe, and Susan Wallace.
And of course, Little Bear and Miss Lila for treading across the keyboard when it was way past time for a break, and for curling up in my lap on cold winter mornings in that back room.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LUANNE BENNETT is an author of fantasy and the supernatural. Born in Chicago, she lives in Georgia these days where she writes full time and doesn’t miss a thing about the cubicles and conference rooms of her old life. When she isn’t writing or dreaming up new stories, she’s usually cooking or tending a herd of felines and Basset Hounds.
Crossroads of Bones (A Katie Bishop Novel Book 1) Page 25