Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo (Southern Vampire Detective Book 2)

by Selene Charles

  Revenants were basically zombies but with unshakeable allegiances to their witch puppet masters. Revenants could drink, eat, and boink whatever the heck they wanted to and, in many ways, appeared practically human, but the eyes were a dead giveaway, which was why they weren’t permitted to walk freely outside of Oz—a term I’d coined for that place a few years back.

  His kind were granted few rights in Oz but even fewer in my world.

  The mysterious male with shaggy black hair and soft, almost feminine features broke from the band of shadow he’d wedged himself into. He walked toward us with the unmistakable shuffle of the freshly turned.

  Mercer clenched my fingers, and I felt the vibrations of tension running through his touch. Shifters didn’t much like magick, finding it unholy and unnatural. That was kind of a stone-and-glass-houses sort of argument if you asked me, but Mercer was from the old world, and ingrained prejudices weren’t so easy to shake.

  The male stopped five feet from where I stood.

  Apart from the eyes, revenants also had one other thing in common.

  Who sent you?

  He didn’t speak it. He thought it.

  “Fuck me,” Mercer growled, clamping his lips tightly at the male’s intrusion into his brain as well.

  Revenants had their tongues cut out after the turn. A dead man’s tongue is worth its weight in gold in Oz—spells and all that—but if one were fortunate enough to be reanimated by a good witch, sometimes she—I may have forgotten to mention earlier that all witches were females since magick ran only through the female line—would gift you speech of another form.

  The only other times I’d come to Oz, I’d been on SCPD business. I’d never come as a civilian, but I understood protocol. Without the password, I wasn’t going any farther.

  “Twinkie.”

  His eyes glimmered a vivid purple, before he nodded, turned on his heel, and walked away. The message was clear: follow or leave.

  I inhaled deeply, attempting to disentangle myself from Mercer, but a low growl pulled from his chest, and I knew he was hanging onto my hand, not for me, but for himself.

  Shoving the sheet into my pocket, I pulled him forward. The revenant moved with sharp and precise movements, turning down back alleyways. Lights and speeding sirens raced by my periphery.

  The homeless marched from one derelict building to another, clutching whichever drug consumed them.

  Just because the place was filled with magick didn’t make it any better than our world. It was just as grimy, polluted, and crime riddled as anyplace else.

  All around, I could hear people fighting, shooting the piss, screwing in shadows, and living their lives. I sensed something so incredibly free about the place that, though I could see the filth and the squalor, I also envied it in some ways.

  In Oz, people could be whoever they wanted to be. I could be a vampire in love with a shifter, and no one would give a damn or care, as long as I had coin to grease palms with.

  We passed jazz clubs, tattoo parlors, gaming hells, bordellos... Whatever one could wish for, one could find there, but there were rules, even in a place that seemed hell-bent on anarchy.

  That’s why, when the revenant walked up to a steel door that’d definitely seen better days—dented and painted in varying shades of decay—and he knocked out an obvious pattern, I bit down on my bottom lip and rocked back on my heels.

  Though I’d quit the SCPD, being a cop was ingrained in me. I knew whoever the blind witch was, she lived outside the realm of the law. Chances were good that I wouldn’t be given my charm without some cost. I didn’t have much in the way of cash, but I was a vampire and had other skills at my disposal.

  I didn’t want to break the law, yet I’d do just about anything to make sure I walked out of Oz with that charm.

  A hidden blind in the door opened, and a pair of eyes peered through. The eyes looked first toward the revenant and then over toward us. I felt the gaze lick at my flesh like flame, and a growl vibrated through Mercer’s chest.

  Without thought, I reached over and placed my free palm against his chest, rubbing gentle circles on it as I soothed his beast under my breath.

  “Mercer,” I whispered at him after a second, when he still hadn’t relaxed. “Chill.”

  Blowing out a hard-edged breath, he relaxed his grip, but only a very little. Still, that was enough to get a little feeling back in my fingers. I knew what coming to Oz cost him. Shifters ran on the adrenaline and instinct of their animals, and as awe inspiring and powerful as his predator was, wolves simply didn’t care for the prickle of wild magick.

  The blind shut with a resounding boom that echoed like gunfire down the suddenly and eerily quiet alleyway, then the door opened. The steel didn’t groan, as I half expected it to, but rather opened on silent hinges.

  When I finally got a good look at the body the eyes belonged to, I couldn’t hide my grimace.

  The man was muscle packed on muscle packed on muscle, with a shaved black head and piercing quicksilver eyes that gleamed like molten metal. Nothing at all was pretty about his features, either. They were pure sinew and grit, stretched tight over a frame of bones imperfectly chiseled by a capricious god. A rawness to his appearance let me know he was old—like old old—like so old he’d probably been around before the rise of the Ottoman Empire old.

  The only thing remotely delicate about him was the filigree-patterned hoop in his left ear, with hammered vines of golden leaves wrapped around it. The very feminine piece of bling felt as out of place on him as a purse on a pig. It was also a dead giveaway to his origins.

  He didn’t need to open his mouth for me to know his metal teeth would be filed to razor-fine points. The man was Djinn, a.k.a. one bad mofu. My eyes immediately dropped to his wrists, and I breathed out a shaky breath. He was wearing golden cuffs, which meant he was owned.

  He was a demon leashed... for the time, anyway.

  “You may go,” he said in a thick accent, the likes of which I’d never heard. It was both grating and dulcet.

  The revenant bowed and slipped into the darkness.

  Silver eyes turned toward us. “My mistress has been waiting.”

  The way he said it was full of pure disgust, as if I’d kept him waiting too long or something. I suffered the very juvenile desire to stick my tongue out at his back as we followed him through the doorway.

  Mercer shook his head once at me, a very forceful no. I rolled my eyes, hating how well he knew me but listened to my furry partner’s advice. Best not to get on the wrong side of a Djinn right out of the gate.

  I noted the oddest thing. Zero noise had been coming from the door when we’d been outside, but the moment we stepped through, the decibel level blared to eleven, causing me to cringe and stare around at the very packed assembly of bodies within.

  The door slammed shut behind us, with the sound of locks clicking into place, and I’ll admit my heart might have stuttered at that point. Inside, I smelled a plethora of Veilers, and not all the scents were pleasant. The fragrant aroma of perfume could hardly conceal the stench of sweat, grime, and the sweet bouquet of blood.

  I wet my lips as hunger suddenly clutched at my throat.

  Mercer had dropped my hand, but he replaced it against my lower spine, pressing gently. He sensed my discomfort, and I couldn’t help but lean into his touch.

  We were surrounded by shifters. Vampires. Trolls. Dwarves. Giants... though I could spot none of them, I totally smelled their particular aroma of decay, which meant they were invisible. That was a matter of self-preservation on their part, not many places in the world would feel comfortable with having giants tramping about freely. Therefore, to walk among us, they had to be mostly unseen.

  Poor bastards.

  Finally, witches were everywhere, as far as the eye could see—also eunuchs.

  That term isn’t the one that most people understand it. Eunuchs in this case were the females’ counterpart, their males. Sexually, they weren’t hindered, but they
were blocked magickally, ergo eunuchs.

  The women, no matter the species, were dressed to the nines—strappy gowns, fuck-me heels, and painted faces with shining eyes full of avarice. The men were in sharp suits and ties, looking posh like old money.

  The place, however, was anything but high scale. It was the set of a slasher flick, like an abandoned warehouse turned sporting arena for a night. Steel beams and bars littered the place. A menacing red glow flickered then died, flickered then died over and over, reminding me of a heated iron forge, casting long malevolent shadows over the faces of the rabid, manic crowd cheering and jeering at the goliaths battling it out in a metal cage down below, covered in concertina wire.

  I’d run the beat enough times to spot an underground fight club when I saw one. This place was fueled by booze, adrenaline, and loads of cash.

  My stomach twisted, but I kept my footsteps steady as I followed the Djinn down a long, narrow hall to an office in the back. He didn’t knock on the nondescript cream-colored metal door. He simply turned the knob, opened it, then stepped back and gave us a wordless gesture to proceed.

  The moment I stepped through the door, I came face-to-face with the blind witch herself.

  A smallish woman, probably Bianca’s height, maybe even an inch or two shorter, she never stood up from behind her desk. She wore a vivid purple-and-teal head scarf that trailed like a braid down her left shoulder. Dressed in a tunic of gold, red, and black tribal patterns, she was an arresting figure. Her skin was the color of rich mahogany, with wrinkles that attested not so much to age, but rather wisdom. Her skin was smooth, but she was not young. An unmistakable aura of power surrounded her, making the fine hairs on my arms stand on edge.

  She could have been forty, or she could have been four hundred. I had no way of truly knowing. Milky-white eyes turned eerily in my direction, and without blinking, she whispered, “Sit.”

  The voice was primal, powerful, and mellifluous.

  The Djinn shut the door behind us, and I sensed that in that relationship, at least, the witch and not the demon had the upper hand.

  I sat. Mercer followed suit not a second later. The office was the sort of low-rent place that scuttled with roaches and rats and seemed oddly perfect for a witch that clearly lived outside the lines. My gaze was immediately drawn to a cloth-covered object sitting on the far-right corner of her desk.

  The object was oblong, and judging by the scratching and cawing noises coming from within, something lived inside.

  “Tut,” the blind witch murmured, reaching into a desk drawer and pulling out a glass box. “Calm down, wee one. Calm down.”

  She pulled out a small box no bigger than my palm, and scuttling inside it was a smallish but furry spider. I tried to hide my disgust. Even in death, I hated bugs.

  With a sharp flourish, she flicked the latch up and held her palm out for the spider. It hopped onto it without a moment’s hesitation. The covered object moved, and the cry of an animal echoed from inside.

  That time, the call was vaguely familiar. It had sounded like a monkey, but the pitch was wrong. It was too sibilant, too... different.

  The blind witch—who I assumed was Jezebel—trailed a long nail down the tarantula’s brown-furred abdomen before turning her attention to the object. When she slipped off the covering, I was horrified to realize I’d been right... and wrong.

  A small black-and-white spider monkey licked its dark lips as it looked at the spider with beady red eyes. That same strange whistling noise came out of it, and now I knew why.

  Half the monkey’s throat was bloody, raw ground meat, as though some creature had ripped and eaten it out. Its fur was matted around its one empty eye socket, caked with dark grime. Fur was missing in large patches, and its tail was partly chewed off.

  The thing was not alive, yet it sucked in greedy breaths as it reached rotted fingers out through the cage toward its dinner.

  The witch unlatched the cage, and in one smooth motion, the zombie monkey snatched up the spider, landed on her shoulder, and shoved that bug into its mouth, gleefully crunching down on it.

  If I’d been human, I might have barfed as bits of that spider slipped right through the monkey’s neck and landed on the witch’s shoulder. One furry spider leg continued to twitch in a lifelike way.

  “What you want, girl? Me got no time for games.” She snagged my attention, and I finally looked away from the macabre sight and noticed her eyeing me hard. The lyrical Caribbean patois was hypnotic, an effect I was sure the witch was well aware of. Her fingers ran lovingly along the desiccated end of the monkey’s tail.

  “I need a soul charm. Twinkie said you’d—”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes, Twinkie.” She practically spat Bianca’s nickname. “Me know all about that git. Her name only get you here. What you give me in return?”

  I thinned my eyes. “What do you want?”

  With a deep laugh, she tossed her head toward the television screen behind her. On it were the two fighters, one female, one male, both dwarves. The strength and ferocity of their battle was awe-inspiring.

  The male, carrying an axe, swung high and wide, nearly clipping the female’s skull, but she rolled out of the way just in time so that only a part of her hair was shorn. In response, she speared his midsection with a fist, knocking the breath from his lungs as she punched him to the ground and immediately took a dominant position, hammering his head with her steel gauntlets until blood and gore sprayed and spattered the crowd, who grew more and more manic with bloodlust.

  I curled my lip, but not with disgust. Mercer reached over, lightly dragging one of his fingers down my arms, and I trembled.

  I’d just fed on Mercer a few hours before, but the adrenaline pumping through the place, along with the high of the crowd, produced a sort of rising hysteria in me. I craved the blood, wanting to walk down there, stick my fangs into the fallen dwarf’s neck and drink until I was bloated. I swallowed.

  The place had to be charmed to elicit such an immediate and powerful response, not just from me but from everyone else in it.

  Fuck, getting the charm wasn’t going to be easy. I swallowed hard.

  Jezebel laughed.

  I curled my fingers around the chair and glared at her.

  “A fight.” She spread her hands. “Winna take all.”

  Mercer leaned into me and whispered in my ear, “Relax, female.”

  What was happening to me in here? I hadn’t been so strung out and desperate for blood in a long time, but I felt myself slipping into a haze of lust the likes of which I’d not felt since my initial turning. My throat ached, my tongue was parched, and my head rang with the constant demand for thick, viscous, bloody fluid.

  “You want me charm, you do the fight. Or you leave. Choose, you.”

  I stared into the beady eyes of that macabre monkey and I knew I couldn’t leave without that charm.

  “I’ll fight,” I spat.

  Jezebel said nothing, only giving me a thin, cruel smile before snapping her fingers. I waited, expecting that maybe she’d sealed my words with a curse of some sort, but that wasn’t at all what had happened.

  The next thing I saw was a bolt of glowing blue thread rush out of the body of the male lying on the cage floor. He twitched once then collapsed, eyes wide with blood leaking down his cheeks like a river of red gore. That bolt crashed through the window at Jezebel’s back and rammed straight into her. Her eyes—which had been milky white just a second before—glowed purest ebony as words I could not understand spilled off her tongue.

  My stomach clenched.

  Jezebel was a soul stealer.

  I didn’t need to examine that dwarf to know he wasn’t just dead—he was obliterated. The soul was the purest part of any Veiler, and once the body was gone, the soul returned to its celestial collective.

  It wasn’t like Buddhism that we’d return as a bug or some crap in another life, but the soul was the beating epicenter of life and therefore sacred. What the witch had done w
as the darkest of black magicks and would have seen her burned at the stake for it centuries before.

  Her grin was lascivious when she saw that I finally understood the real terms of our deal.

  I had no doubt that she was far older than four hundred. She was a life stealer, so the shell housing her could have been thousands upon thousands of years old.

  What Nana Romini did was nothing compared to that. One could steal years without sacrificing the purity of the soul. Jezebel’s magick wasn’t just dark—it was anathema.

  With a laugh that caused my skin to crawl, she tutted. “Backing out now, vampire?”

  She licked her dark stained lips, smirking almost sensually and already appearing younger than she had when I’d entered a few minutes earlier. Her eyes were back to the milky white of bleached shells.

  Untethering a soul was high-level magick, which few knew or had mastered. That was why I was there. I needed the charm if I had any hope of surviving, but I was questioning my morals at the same time.

  The witch needed to be locked away for the good of all. She was a cancer, a disease, and I hated that I found myself in my position. If I didn’t fight to win, she’d suck my soul out, but if I did, my opponent would lose his.

  “Everyone come here want something,” she hissed. “You feel sorry for dem, you weak. You weak, you lose.”

  “I said I’ll do it, and I’ll fucking do it,” I snapped, angry at myself for the position I found myself in.

  A satisfied gleam filled her eyes. “You go next.”

  I cracked my knuckles. I could do this. I’d fought monsters bigger and badder than dwarves and survived.

  She snapped her fingers, and my eyes immediately zoomed to the television screen. The female dwarf that’d just waylaid the male was staring with a dead-eyed gaze back at me, lying lifeless on the mat with a slobbering ram-horned beast standing over her.

  A second later, another bolt of blue ripped through Jezebel’s back.

  With each soul she ate, youth tightened her features.

  The monkey chittered violently at me with its rotten teeth.