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

by Karen Greco

  "You got a tequila for an old man?" he called down to me.

  "Nope," I said without looking up from my work.

  "Whiskey then. How about a whiskey."

  "Not that either."

  He drummed his fingers on the wood. "I see a bottle right there, in your hand."

  "No idea when I'll get more inventory. I can't squander it."

  "Right," he said. "Look at all your customers."

  Sarcasm noted.

  Frankie slipped onto a barstool and propped his chin in his hands. I bet he'd ask for popcorn if we had any.

  I took out a shot glass and poured out a measure. I looked down to my grandfather, lifted the glass and drained it in one swallow. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

  "You're a cold woman," he said.

  "And you’re a murdering asshole. What are you doing here?"

  "I heard a magic man from the Big Easy was coming into town."

  I opened my mouth to say something, but Frankie gave me a quick head shake. I chewed on my lip instead.

  "So," Gramps asked, "you call in some voodoo jokester?"

  "And if I did?"

  "What can some old Creole do that I can't?" he boasted. "I'm the biggest brujo in Catemaco, the only city in the world dedicated to witches. Did you know I slept with Marie Laveau? You bed a woman like that, she tells you a secret or two."

  Frankie burst into a fit of laughter. "That would make you well over 150 years old. Unless you had relations with her corpse."

  "Laugh all you want," Gramps said. "We made love on the spirit plane."

  I shuddered at the thought of Gramps getting it on with an elderly voodoo queen on any plane, never mind the spirit one. "So you tell me, what can this Creole do?"

  A burst of air swept up the bar, pushing my beer bottle over and overturning Casper's glass of water.

  "Dammit," I muttered. Beer was in short supply and I couldn't afford spills. I snatched up a bar towel and began mopping up the mess.

  "This Creole can hear every word you said, old man. And this Creole is insulted."

  "Wow," I whispered as a man shimmered into view beside Casper.

  His skin was a deep cocoa brown, a striking contrast to his vibrant emerald green eyes. Chiseled cheekbones met a strong jaw and an aquiline nose. He shook out his thick dreadlocks, which weaved their way down to the middle of his shoulder blades. He crossed his arms in front of his broad chest, biceps bulging.

  A smoking hot man just appeared in my bar. Why didn't a magic trick like this happen on sorority night? We'd have cleaned up.

  I snapped my gaping mouth shut when Frankie cleared his throat.

  "How did you do that?" I asked, shaking my head to clear out the cobwebs.

  Frankie's back stiffened. "I take it you're the bloke Bobby sent."

  "Weh," he said. His gem-colored eyes raked over my body, sending delicious shivers down my spine. I giggled.

  "Weh?" Frankie spat out. "What in bloody hell does ‘weh’ mean?"

  "Yes," I said. The word came out breathless. I shook the cobwebs out of my head and continued. "‘Weh’ means yes in Creole. Bobby definitely sent him."

  "Right," Frankie said, sizing him up.

  "I'm Nina," I said, sticking my hand out to shake his. "Welcome to Providence." He took my hand and laid a delicate kiss on top.

  "I didn't know vampires could blush," Casper squealed.

  I yanked my hand back, rubbing it with the other. "The ghost is Casper. That's Frankie." I jerked my head towards the sulking vampire.

  "I'm Leon," he said. "Pleasure to meet you. Bobby is a big fan of yours."

  "What about me?" Gramps yelled from the end of the bar. "You going to introduce me."

  Leon turned to Gramps. "You're a man who needs no introduction. You're Catemaco's most infamous brujo." He gave a small bow and flourished his hand.

  "Yeah, well, you be sure to remember the brujo part," Gramps said, his whiskey-soaked voice sounding gruffer than usual. "I ain't no witchdoctor. That's more your bag of tricks."

  Leon laughed, showing off a set of perfect teeth, not a fang in sight. "Maybe we teach each other a few things."

  "That was a pretty neat trick," Casper said. "Was that some sort of invisibility spell?"

  "Weh and no," Leon said. "But I don't disappear, I just blend."

  "Like a chameleon?" I asked. He nodded. "Wicked."

  "Can you disguise yourself as prison bars then?" Frankie asked, the corner of his lip curling into a snarl. "Because if that's all you’re good for, may as well head on back to the bayou."

  "Oh my friend," Leon said with a disarming grin, "that's not all I have in my bag of tricks. What you need?"

  "We need to break a few people out of a prison," I said, leaning against the bar.

  A slow smile spread on his face. He placed his elbows on the bar and leaned into me. "But first you need to break in."

  "Exactly," I said, shifting my own weight towards him. If I still had a heartbeat, it would be pounding right now. "We're in good hands, here. See, Frankie? Good hands." I slipped my hand into Leon's calloused one. “Ohh, you must grind a lot of herbs.”

  "Steady on, Nina. Stop taking the piss," Frankie barked.

  "Who's taking the piss?" I asked. My eyelashes fluttered a bit.

  "You! You're taking the piss. Act normal."

  I laughed. "Normal? I am normal."

  "For fuck’s sake, you just giggled. That's not normal. You're not normal." Frankie turned to Leon. "Sir, kindly turn off whatever it is your doing. This doesn't help our cause."

  Leon smirked. "What's the magic word?"

  "Gris-gris, I suspect," Frankie said, referring to voodoo's magic talisman.

  Leon conjured a small gris-gris bag from under the barstool. He dropped it in the liquid that remained in Casper's glass, causing the flat water to hiss and bubble. My schoolgirl-crush stupor lifted. Leon was still hot, but now his hotness didn't consume me like a 15-year-old with raging hormones.

  I yanked my hand away from his. "What the hell did you spell me for?"

  "Sorry," he said. "Bobby told me I should do something like that. Said you were a bit of a hard-ass chick, and I should try to loosen you up a little. No hard feelings." He at least had the good sense to look sheepish.

  "You're playing with fire there, boy," Gramps chimed in. "Lucky she didn't chew out your throat with that spell. And you." Gramps turned to me. “You had no idea you got whammied?”

  "It was completely painless, I assure you," I said. I snatched up the bar rag and rubbed at an invisible stain on the counter.

  Changing the subject, Leon nodded at Casper, who went dead quiet (pun intended) once the gris-gris hit the water. "So who's the ghost?"

  Gramps cocked an eyebrow. "What gave him away? Is he floating again?"

  Leon snickered and leaned towards Casper. "His aura."

  "Ghosts have an aura?" Casper asked, clamping his mouth shut immediately. He shrunk away from Leon, going silent once more. I peered at him from my spot behind the bar. He refused to look anywhere except at the worn wood in front of him.

  Gramps broke the silence, barking down the bar at Leon. "You a priest?"

  "Naw," Leon drawled. "Just a simple root man."

  "This friend of yours, Bobby?" Gramps pulled out a cigarette and rolled it along his lips. "He sends a gris-gris guy when you need a priest? This is no job for a novice."

  "He didn't look all that novice to me," I said. Gramps conjured a flame on one of Babe’s old Veladoras. He turned the candle face toward me and, like a schoolyard taunt, I saw it was the Resurrection candle. As he brought it towards his Faros cigarette, I worked a fast spell in my head and expelled a small puff of air, extinguishing the fire before he sparked up his smoke.

  Gramps gave a grudging snort but didn't remove the cigarette from his mouth. "Still."

  "You want help, I'm here," he said. "You don't want help, I go home. Ain't no thing. Means I won't miss French Quarter Fest. And the cold up here," Le
on shivered. "My bones don’t like this."

  "I think he’s exactly what we need," I said, taking a minute to admire the man’s form.

  Frankie moved into a wide stance and crossed his arms across his expanded chest. "You just remember who was here first."

  Gramps guffawed. "A jealous vampire is a dangerous one. You remember that gris-gris man."

  "Didn't mean nothing by that spell," Leon said, extending his hand towards Frankie as a gesture of peace. "Bobby didn't tell me she was spoken for, my friend."

  Frankie clasped Leon's hand just as Max swept into the bar, a blast of rain-soaked April air following him in. His hulking frame filled the door way and water rolled off his anorak and onto the floor. "Who's spoken for?"

  "Nina, apparently," Gramps said, his voice strained. He was stretched across the bar, reaching for a bottle of cheap vodka that the distributor sent over.

  "No one is spoken for," I said, snatching the bottle before he could get his paws on it. I shelved the vodka where it belonged.

  "You putting me on some sort of health program?" Gramps asked.

  I ignored him.

  Max shook out of his wet jacket and strode towards Leon. His bulbous muscles strained against his thin cotton t-shirt, still sweat-streaked from the gym. Constant workouts were part of his anger management prescription, but it looked like the Berserker behaved like steroids on his human body. He squared off in front of Leon. "Who the hell are you?"

  Leon stood his ground and simply smiled. "Leon Rusé." He extended his hand to Max.

  Max just stared at him. "What's your business here, Mr. Rusé?" He trilled the "r" as a mocking gesture.

  "I was invited," Leon said. His emerald eyes darted between me, Frankie and Max. "By Nina."

  I twisted the towel around my hands. "Sort of. I mean, I never met him before. He's a friend of a friend. An old vampire I know...we know — me and Frankie — lives in New Orleans and he owed me a favor."

  Max’s eyes swept along the array of bottles still lined up on the bar. "This old friend send a shipment up too?"

  "No," I said. "A werewolf pack in Mass hooked me up."

  "Calling in a lot of favors, aren't you?" Max pushed past Leon and sat in the stool next to Casper, glancing over at him. Max’s mouth dropped open as he recognized the ghost. "Wait, aren't you...?"

  Casper offered a thin smile. "In the flesh, so to speak."

  Max was on the scene when Casper was murdered, so he knew the ghost in his old physical form.

  “I don’t even want to know,” Max said with a shake of his head. He reached for a bottle of tequila. He twisted the cap and the sharp smell of fermented agave hit my sensitive nose. I pushed a rocks glass over to him. "What else did I miss?"

  Pretty much everything, I mused silently.

  I resumed putting away the bottles to keep myself busy. Max missed Casper’s transformation from possessing my body to getting his own back, with some alterations, of course. And he missed my transformation to the bastard child of Dracula and the Wicked Witch of the West.

  "Oh come on, kid," Gramps moaned from his seat. He motioned for me to pour him a glass of what Max was drinking. I pushed the bottle down his way. He pulled out a flask and proceeded to fill it.

  Frankie broke the awkward silence. "Did you check the new keg?"

  I put a beer mug under the tap and pulled the handle. Air and a bit of foam sputtered out, then the amber liquid poured from the tap. I filled the glass and slid it in front of Frankie.

  Max's arrival felt like a large lead weight dropped on the bar. Casper slumped miserably over a fresh glass of water. Leon shifted around the bar, staring intently at the blue cobalt bottles that lined the upper shelves. Frankie hovered close to him, his sullen mood stereotypical brooding vampire. Gramps sniffed his unlit cigarette and expelled a series of loud sighs from his perch at the bar. Now that he had his booze, he wanted a smoke, too.

  "Any idea what's in them?" Leon asked, pointing at the bottles. His voice infused the space with a touch of levity at least.

  I shrugged. "Potions stirred by my aunt, most likely. But I have no idea what they do."

  "Your aunt was a witch?" he asked, eyebrows lifting. "That makes you?"

  "Witch," Gramps said gruffly. "And vampire. Both."

  Leon raised an eyebrow and then whistled appreciatively. "Never thought that was possible. You got some power in you then, woman."

  "That's the rumor," I said vaguely, examining my nails. I picked at a ragged cuticle.

  "Can you take that one down?" Leon asked, smartly not pushing for the story behind my dual nature. I followed his finger, which pointed to an average-size bottle about halfway up the wall.

  "They may not be potions," Frankie said. "Babe made a mean moonshine. Her still was on the back patio until the cops took notice."

  "That was my recipe," Gramps said. His chest puffed up with pride. "The secret's in the mash."

  I glanced up to the shelves. "Frankie, would you mind?"

  Frankie puzzled at me. "You can’t make that jump?"

  I jerked my head towards Max. As far as I knew, he wasn't privy to my vampire turn. Being Bertrand's lackey and playing both sides with Leila meant he wasn't around us much. Not only did I not feel like getting him up to speed, but I didn’t trust that he could keep my situation a secret from those two.

  Frankie narrowed his eyes at me, but vaulted the bar anyway. He did a straight jump up six feet and hovered midair to grab the bottle before coming back to earth and landing with the weight of a feather. Impressive.

  He handed the bottle to me. I uncorked it and gave the content a quick sniff. A rotting scent assaulted my nose. But I realized too late that whatever was in the bottle wasn't liquid. It was a powder, and some of it went right up my nose. I expelled the stuff in a huge sneeze. I replaced the cork swiftly, but the offensive scent traveled into my taste buds. I worked my tongue around, trying to get the foulness out of my mouth.

  I rubbed my nose and passed the bottle to Leon. "Definitely not moonshine."

  Max gestured to Leon, grump swirling around him like a tornado. "So, why is he here again?”

  "Vacation," I lied.

  "A vacation here? Now?"

  "A modern-day witch hunt? Better than Disney World," Leon said without missing a beat.

  Max squeezed his glass and the veins popped in his hand. "Stop bullshitting me."

  I sighed. "We needed an extra hand, that's all."

  "For what?" he asked. He narrowed his eyes at me. "You aren't even considering going back into Steele City? Are you?” I gave him a weak smile. He turned to Frankie. "Is she?"

  "You know Nina. When she gets an idea in her head..." Frankie pressed his finger tips to his temples and pushed them out, arcing his hands away from his body. He included the homemade sound effect of a bomb explosion.

  "Thank you for your support," I deadpanned.

  "You are out of your minds, all of you." Max’s face began to take on a red hue. "You both barely got out of there alive last time."

  "Well, technically..." Frankie began.

  "Yeah, you're dead, I get it. Invincible," Max said. "But she's not. It's like she has some sort of death wish. Do you have a death wish?"

  I swallowed and gave a short shake of my head.

  "Well, the three of you go in there—"

  "Four," Casper interjected in a small voice.

  Max threw up his hands. "Even better. The four of you. I told you before, you need an army."

  "What are our choices?" I asked. "You figure out another way to bust out Dr. O?"

  "I'm working on it."

  "Yeah? What are you working on?" Gramps shouted from the other end of the bar. He took a pull from his flask.

  "Diplomacy," Max said. "Maybe you've heard of it. It's that thing that doesn’t require kicking doors in or running around half-cocked."

  "Who's the diplomat? You?" I asked.

  "Bertrand."

  I laughed. "Bertrand? He's negotiating with Leil
a? What's he trading? We've got nothing she wants."

  "You've got Kittie," Max said.

  "Kittie's dead to her," Gramps said.

  Before Max could respond, I pulled the collar of my shirt off my shoulder, exposing the head of the rattlesnake. The serpent’s tongue flicked in and out while it undulated just under my skin.

  Max shivered. "How the hell did that happen?"

  "An accident," Gramps said.

  "Like hell," I snapped. "The point is, Kittie's got no magic left. She's tapped out."

  "What are you saying? You have it?" he asked.

  I nodded. "How's that diplomacy looking now?"

  Max stood. "I've got to relay this to Bertrand."

  "What's your rush?" I asked, wariness creeping through me. Max was downright punchy today.

  "My rush is that he thinks she wants Kittie back. She's playing him for a fool."

  "Ami Bertrand is no fool," Gramps said. "I promise you, he knows about Kittie."

  "How's that?" Max asked.

  "I told him."

  Max's face clouded. Mine did too.

  "You trading secrets with Bertrand now, too?" I asked, tossing up my hands in frustration. "Christ, old man. Don't you think you should maybe tell me these things?"

  "Tell you what?" he asked. "Aren't we all on the same side here?"

  "For now," I said. "Doesn't mean you should trust him."

  Gramps blew out his lips and expelled a sound of annoyance.

  "Listen to your grandfather," Max said. He may have agreed with Gramps, but his expression betrayed his simmering resentment. "We're on your side and don't want to see you slaughtered. You go into that prison, you won't come out. We'll get Dr. O out. And even if we can't, he's safe. Leila knows better than to hurt him."

  "I thought the federal government didn't negotiate with terrorists," I said, annoyance rising as he mansplained.

  "You're out of your depth, Nina."

  "You do know what she's doing in there, right?" I asked. I shoved my hands in my pockets, worried if I waved them around I'd inadvertently let loose a spell. And given the rise of my anger, it'd be a doozy. "She's experimenting. On the weres. On the witches. She's separating the wolf from the human. She's syphoning magic out of the witches. She's the freaking Karl Gebhardt of the supernatural world."