Steele City Blues: The Third Book in the Hell’s Belle Series (Hell's Belle 3)

by Karen Greco

  Darcy sucked in a breath and gripped the bar, while Frankie glanced up at the newly formed crack, nonplused. He was used to it by now. My voice was flat and my eyes dry, but my frustrations were still funneled through my feral magic. The witch in me hadn’t manifested until a few months ago, so my magic was a mess. I took another swallow from the tequila bottle.

  "You need to learn to control this," Darcy said, her tone so gentle that the sound of hail pummeling the street nearly drowned her out. "You can't keep screwing with the weather patterns."

  "Yeah, Nina, you're making global warming a real thing," Matty said, popping into the bar from the stairway that led to the second floor apartment. Babe's second floor apartment. It was currently occupied by Frankie and me, and whoever else needed a place to crash.

  I bristled as my dimwitted cousin swooped in and planted an aggressive kiss on Darcy.

  "Don't do that here," I barked when I saw him getting handsy.

  Matty paused, his hand halfway up her shirt. "You need to get laid." He tossed his overgrown hair, and rock star entitlement oozed off of him.

  Matty was the lead singer in Killing Haley, one of the most buzzed about emo bands in the country. The act gathered even more notoriety after the drummer went all witch-doctor mental on their fans at a Providence show a few months ago, causing the fans to zombie out and cause a riot. Of course, Leila was behind it. And, of course, it was “totally punk rock” and Matty’s career skyrocketed.

  All this made my cousin damn near insufferable. But he was in love with my best friend, which meant I couldn’t stake him.

  "Really, you do,” he continued, blissfully ignorant of my growing rage. “You are a tense bitch and no one likes to be around you."

  I gripped my hands against the wood of the bar. My baby fangs sprouted, sending waves of pain through my jaw as they ripped through my gums. Frankie yanked my arm, holding me back before I tried to rip out Matty's throat. At least the hail stopped. When my vampire buttons were pushed, the magic disappeared.

  "Easy there," Frankie soothed, his lanky, muscular form leaning over the bar and into mine. My anger, along with my fangs, receded, but it was replaced by something more unsettling. Frankie's hands on my skin sent electric charges up my body. I tried to shut him out of my head, but it was too late.

  When Leila’s vampire assassin lover nearly killed me, Frankie linked me to him to keep me alive. The downside of that was we could read each other's feelings. For the sake of our friendship, we kept up mental shields, but sometimes — times like these — they didn't work so well.

  Frankie looked down at me, his eyes bright, and whispered, "And if you need to get laid, I'll take one for the team." My knees buckled at the promise that held, but I shrugged myself out of his grip.

  "Get away from me," I seethed, hiding my desire behind disgust.

  He just snickered and went back to his absinthe.

  Casper dropped into my body without any warning, leaving me with a heavy feeling. "Now look who needs to get a room," he quipped.

  "Don't you start either," I muttered, shaking out my muscles as my body adjusted to his unexpected presence. The kid needed to wear a cat bell or something. I noticed all eyes in the bar were on me, so I pointed to my head. "Ghost."

  I first met Casper when this whole mess started a few months ago. The vampire assassin that tried to off me a knife spelled to drain power from witches, power that the knife could store until it could be transferred to Leila. Casper, a handsome 18-year-old witch who had a promising future ahead of him (including a free ride to neighboring Brown University), was one of his first victims.

  Everyone nodded and went back to their alcohol. Except Matty and Darcy. They continued to make out. At least Matty moved his hands to play with her white-blond hair instead of her boobs.

  My adrenaline popped and I glanced towards the door, nerves on edge. We had the address of one of the goons from the highway. Frankie and I could ride out there, scope out his place, maybe see what the neighborhood werewolves were up to...

  "Hate to say it, chica, but you could use a valium 'script," Casper said, razzing me out of my daydream. While he rode around in my body, he was privy to my thoughts. Invisible to everyone else, the only way he could communicate was by jumping into my skin. Literally. "We could hit a few pharmacies. There's got to be one that isn't looted yet."

  Usually he was respectful of my privacy. Today, not so much.

  I brushed at my forehead in displeasure. "What do you know about this?"

  "Um, in case you didn't notice, I am a ghost," he huffed.

  “A ghost with no one to talk to but me,” I muttered, wishing he could go possess someone else. I was the type of witch who had a natural affinity for the dead. That meant I could communicate with spirits. Some would call that a gift, and my gift was a rambunctious teenager who ran his mouth.

  "Girl, please,” Casper continued. “I was snuffed out by a psychopath. You think I don’t understand, but girl I know."

  "You don’t know what loss is like," I shot back at him. The only way through my grief was leaving a pile of dead bodies in my wake.

  He rattled inside my head. "I'm still here, haunting the earth, so I know I'm dead. How's that for a mind-fuck? Don't you think I feel loss every damn day?"

  I crossed my arms and chewed on my lower lip. "I don't know how to do this without Aunt Babe," I admitted, turning my back to the room, keeping my voice low.

  "Do what? Magic? We'll figure it out."

  "Not the just magic. Just...I don't know, how to live without her," I said, my voice unsteady as I battled back several weeks worth of unshed tears. "She was the closest thing I had to a mother."

  "Nina," Casper said, his tone soothing. "You need to live. If you died, you won't really die, so what good will that do you anyway? You want to come back as a vampira?"

  "Not particularly."

  "Then stop going off half-cocked," he replied.

  "I just—" I started to argue but he interrupted me.

  "You just nothing. I get that you're hurting, but it's time to let that pain go. You want justice. We all do. But there ain't no justice if you're dead."

  I puffed out my cheeks. He spoke a hard truth.

  "Kind of scary when the voice of reason is an 18-year-old ghost," he added.

  "No joke," I said, swiping at my wet eyes with the bar towel. His ego was going to be out of control now.

  The front door creaked open and my hand went for the shotgun again. But I dropped it when resident barfly Alfonso poked his head in. His arm was tightly wrapped around his girlfriend Eva. Or at least a figure that was around Eva's height. This person was bundled tight in a dark blanket that made it look like she or he was wearing a burka. Al slammed the door and leaned against it before releasing his grip around his companion’s shoulders. She twisted out of the sheet. It was indeed Eva.

  "This is bad, Nina," Al started before I could even ask him what was wrong. "It's real bad."

  "What's up, Al?" I asked, glancing over at Frankie, who abandoned his drink to gape at Eva's unraveling.

  "They tried to snatch her," he said as Eva hyperventilated her way out of the sheet.

  "Who did?"

  Alfonso pointed towards the street, puncturing the air with a wild finger. "The Goon Squad!” he yelled. “Your mother's Goon Squad!"

  "Why the hell did they try to snatch her?" Frankie asked.

  Al blinked at him. "Hello? Witch!"

  "I know she's a bloody witch." Frankie gritted his teeth as the tension in the bar rose. I felt the wash of emotions tweak at his hunger and wondered when he ate last. "Who sold her out?"

  "Neighbors, I guess," Al grumbled. "Knew we should have thrown a spell at those assholes."

  "Michael and Kimmie Dorsey," Eva squeaked, kicking the sheet off her feet. "I gave them a tarot reading last year. It wasn't good."

  "What wasn't good about it?" I asked, bracing myself for Eva's story as she and Al made their way to join us at the bar.

/>   "The cards said she was cheating," Eva said. "But I mean, I had a sign up that said the tarot was for entertainment purposes only. They didn’t have to believe me."

  "Oh Eva," I said, shaking my head.

  "She was fooling around with his best friend because his dick was too small, and somehow that's my fault?" Eva protested.

  "Let me guess. You saw Kimmie put a hex on her husband and you offered to remove it?" I asked.

  Eva shrugged. She owned a little magic shop in downtown Providence filled with Wiccan kitsch. Before we met her a few months ago, she was a grifter, a con artist, offering to read futures — and remove hexes — all for a hefty sum of money. And she almost always found hexes, which almost always required very expensive removal. The ironic thing was, Eva actually had the gift of divination, so the futures she read were true. The hexes, not so much. Unhappy wives have been known to stray. Didn't need a hex for that.

  "Talk about shooting the messenger," Casper quipped.

  I rubbed my temples in frustration. "Walk me through what happened, here."

  "There's nothing to walk through," said Al, his agitation manifesting in his perpetual motion. "One minute we're, you know...."

  "Now there's a visual for you." Casper continued the running commentary that only I could hear.

  "...and the next there are three 'roided up goons grabbing at Eva, reading her some sort of bullshit Miranda made expressly for witches."

  "How'd you get her away from them?" Frankie asked, failing at hiding his amusement at their being caught in flagrante.

  "How do you think?" Al thundered. "I cast a spell."

  I tightened my lips. "And the spell did what, Al?"

  "How the hell do I know? I didn't wait around to see what happened to them."

  I rephrased my question. "What was the spell supposed to do, Al?"

  "Knock ‘em out," he said, his eyes on the floor.

  I drummed my fingers on the bar. "For how long, Al?"

  "It was a stun spell. I think it was a stun spell. I haven't done one in years! I cast it, they were knocked on their asses, something worked. Now we need to hole up here for a while."

  Al was a fellow witch and a close friend of Aunt Babe's. He was also a raging alcoholic who hadn't practiced magic for several decades, not until Leila blew into town. To say his spell work was rusty was an understatement.

  "Fine," I said, my voice a little sharper than I meant it to sound. With me and Frankie crashing upstairs, the apartment was already pretty cozy.

  "They were human, I assume?"

  Al snorted at that. "Yeah. Leila always sends humans."

  "There's got to be a reason for that," I said, shaking my head.

  "Damned if I can figure out what it is," he added for me. "You got a beer?"

  "Kegs were tapped out last night," Darcy said. "The distributor's freaked out by the lack of human ownership of this bar. In short, we are out of beer."

  Al grumbled his frustration.

  "What about Clown Shoes?" I asked. "I wonder if they'd sell to us."

  "That ain't one of them crap breweries is it?" Al asked.

  "Crap brewery?" Darcy said. "I thought the beer was quite good."

  "Craft," I corrected. "I think he means craft."

  "Nope, I meant crap," he stated.

  "He thinks craft is crap," I explained.

  Darcy smiled at that. "What about money to pay for the beer? Babe's isn't exactly rolling in the cash these days."

  I eyed the paltry patronage in front of me. She wasn't wrong. "BYOB — bring your own beer — until further notice, I guess."

  Al pulled out a wad of cash. "Nina, could you run to the store for me?"

  I rolled my eyes and took at twenty from him. "I'll see what I can find but it's slim pickings out there. Most places were looted."

  "Booze is the first to go," Frankie added.

  "Bet you're glad you have the place spelled," Darcy said, glancing around. "The bar would probably be burned down by now."

  "Yeah, and it took a damn load of work to spell the place to look like it was already looted and partially burned," I added, remembering the three-day ordeal that had Casper and me at each other's throats. But we got it done.

  Al got Eva settled onto a barstool. I poured a glass of water and placed it in front of her. "You okay?"

  "Oh, thank you, honey," she said, patting my hand. "Yes, just shaken up is all. It's a scary thing to have a bunch of muscle men break down your door and try to snatch you. Thank goodness Al was with me."

  "You know, Eva, you could have thrown a spell yourself. You're a crack witch when you put your mind to it."

  "I didn't even foresee they were coming. Some great diviner I am," she said, looking into her glass.

  "Well, if anyone knows about screwing up spells..." Al said, raising his chin at me.

  "Shut up, you old goat," Eva chided him. "Nina's a nice girl, and she just needs a mentor is all, now that..." Eva's voice trailed off and she gave me a sad smile and squeezed my hand again. "I'm sorry, honey. It’s not your fault you were never taught properly."

  “She never paid attention in Witchcraft 101. That didn’t help,” Frankie said.

  I bit my lip. It wasn’t a lie. My Blood Ops training included courses on witchcraft, but since I was a living vamp with no magical inclinations at the time, I skated through those. Hindsight and all that...

  "It's all good, Eva,” I said. “I am better at the physical stuff. We all need to know our limitations."

  Frankie snorted. "Indeed."

  I was about to set him straight with a spell Casper and I were practicing, but the door to the bar swung open. For the third time in less than an hour, I snatched the shotgun from under the bar. This time, I leveled it at an interloper.

  A tall man strolled into the bar, his face obscured by his Baja hoodie, which was snug around his broad shoulders. I gave the shotgun a pump and aimed it at his midsection.

  He held up his hands. "Just looking to wet my whistle, that's all."

  My hands began to shake as Casper went into a panic. Trying to control it, my pulse raced as his adrenaline spiked. He pushed himself out of my body, jarring me with a violent enough force that I stumbled forward, lucky that the gun didn't discharge accidentally.

  I swore under my breath at the ghost and regained my composure, shotgun still pointed in the direction of the stranger. "You're in the wrong bar, mister. You need to take your business elsewhere."

  "I'm certain this is the right one," he said, dropping the hood from his face. "You do have something for whistle wetting, I assume?"

  A shock of thick silver hair flowed down the nape of his neck. Under hooded lids, pale green eyes stared down the bar lined with my very few customers. The remnants of a hard life lined his skin. He was old, but this guy looked fierce.

  "We don't serve strangers these days," I said. "And you, sir, are a stranger."

  "I am no stranger," he snickered. "You hear me, little girl?"

  I tilted my head. A strange familiarity filled me at the sound of those five words. But it was Al who stood up and walked to him.

  "Well, I'll be damned," Al said, walking a slow circle around the man. "I'm not so sure I'm happy to see you. This isn’t the safest city for our kind, you know?"

  Al moved between me and the stranger, which rendered my shotgun threat worthless. Not wanting to shoot a hole through Al — not today, anyway — I lowered the shotgun. “You know this guy, Al?"

  "Sure as shit, I know him," Al said, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back on his heels. "And he's either going to be our downfall or our savior, and I'm not sure which."

  The stranger's laugh was hearty, tinged with decades of cigarette smoke. He opened his arms and a small smirk spread over his weathered face. "Child, come and give your old granddad a hug."

  3

  "Well don't just stand there like a slack-jawed idiot," the stranger who said he was my grandfather barked. "You going to put that shotgun down or what,
girl?"

  "Nina," I said. "My name is Nina."

  "Your father named you. Never liked it. My choice was Adele."

  I leveled a sharp look at Frankie, who didn't hide his smirk. "You say you're my grandfather but I don't know you, stranger."

  Al turned to me. "Nina, this is your mother's — Babe's — father."

  "Came here all the way from Mexico," the old man added.

  "Babe's funeral was weeks ago," I said, not releasing my grip on the gun. "Or, at least, the burial of her remains. We weren't allowed a funeral. Orders of your other daughter."

  "That woman is no kin of mine."

  "See? That's something you have in common," Al interjected.

  Dog started scratching from behind the closed door that led to the upstairs apartment. I cradled the shotgun and ducked under the bar, then moved backwards across the room to the door, not letting the stranger from my sight. My 130-pound hellhound slouched into the bar, stopping by my side so I could give her head a scratch. She stared at the old man and a growl vibrated through her body.

  Gramps squinted at her and snarled back. Dog's throaty growl morphed into a whimper. She slithered around my legs and hovered behind me. So much for my noble protector.

  "You don't look Mexican," I said, sizing up his light hair and eyes, to say nothing of his towering height and slim build.

  "That's because I ain't," he said. "By birth anyway."

  Casper's sudden disappearance now made sense. His entire family was from the same area of Mexico that my family was from. And they were scared to death of my grandfather, who had a fearsome reputation across the border. Between Casper's reaction, not to mention Al's uncharacteristic reverence, there was little doubt that he was my abuelo. But damn, he was not what I expected. At all.

  "How the hell did you become the most feared brujo in Mexico if you're a gringo?"

  "Your ignorance is showing, child," his voice was gruff. He walked over to Frankie and sized him up. "Hand over that bottle, will you, son?"

  "These are tough times to go out on the piss, mate. You'll need to find your own bottle," Frankie responded, his eyes darting between the two of us.

  “Goddamn limeys,” Gramps muttered, then gave a quick flick of his wrist. Frankie clutched his head and doubled over in acute pain.