by Faith Hunter
“The few dollars you might have on you mean nothing to me,” he said, looking me up and down again. He dwelled on my saucy boots before he sent his gaze back up my body, a slow, wicked grin claiming his mouth. “There are other ways to pay.”
I almost planted a boot in his face.
He was already laughing. “No. That’s not what I was saying.”
“It better not have been.”
He bowed slightly at the waist. “My name is Philippe Angier, and, as I mentioned, I have been expecting you.”
Should I trust him? This was a mystical city, full of twists and turns, so perhaps he could help. Also, he wasn’t awful to gaze at, so I decided to go with my better instincts and accept his hospitality.
He drew the rest of the curtain aside for me, pulled out a chair, and fixed the fabric so that it would block out the rest of the room.
“No,” I said, gripping his wrist, just as I had done with my attacker earlier. “I don’t want any surprises to creep up on me.”
He tilted his head, giving a long glance to his wrist, grinning that grin. I realized that I was still holding on to him when it wasn’t necessary. With my fingers burning, I disconnected from him and sat, but I did it sideways, in such a way that I could monitor the entrance to this rear room. I also managed to scoot the chair so my back was to a wall.
Leaving the curtain open, he sauntered to his seat. “Still on guard, are you? If you hear anything out front, I have an assistant working the counter there, so . . .”
“Don’t fret. I’ll spare her the karate chops.”
He gave me an entertained, touché nod, not at all fazed by my sharp tongue or my sudden appearance.
“You said you were expecting me,” I said, testing him. “Why?”
“A precognitive vision.”
“Really.”
He leaned back in his chair, surveying me again with that gray gaze. Lovely bumps crept up my arms.
“My visions are very real,” he finally said. “In this particular one, I saw that someday soon I would find a . . . different . . . sort of customer hiding near the love potions and herbs. I had time to come to terms with you.”
“Any con man would claim that.” But again, he had known that I didn’t have an identity.
“What if I told you,” he said, “that I sense these clothes you’re wearing are not your type?”
I glanced at the skull-and-crossbones tank, the cutoffs. The boots.
He laughed. “You had a sort of uniform you always wore . . .” His expression changed, from amusement to something serious. “You’ve come so close to death, more than once.”
I didn’t answer, but I thought of the red eyes outside. Had that been one of my near-death experiences?
He was still being vague, but then he narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re so alone in this world. No one to turn to, no one to go home to.”
It was as if he had punched me square in the gut. “I wouldn’t know.”
He leaned toward me, lowering his voice. “Do you trust me to tell you even more?”
No. Yet I wished to hear what he had to say, more than anything. I didn’t have many other options.
Resting his hand on the table—my, he had nice long fingers, didn’t he?—he turned it palm upward. “May I?” He gestured toward my hand.
Psychometry. Some psychics could get readings off objects or biotic things such as skin or hair. I knew that, too, as if it had been a normal part of my life at some time. I was getting the feeling that far stranger things had been a part of my existence as well.
I placed my hand in his, trying not to think about goose bumps or shivers. Trying not to think of how warm his grip was as he closed his fingers over mine.
A few seconds later, he took in a sharp breath.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Today,” he said, “you woke up just as alone as you have been for a while now, cher. In a room you didn’t recognize. You don’t know how you came to be there.”
His gaze softened. Pity. I recognized that well enough, though I suspected I had little tolerance for it.
“And . . . ?” I asked.
“And those boots you wear. They’re especially unfamiliar to you. They make you feel . . .” He seemed to search for words, then only came up with, “Powerful. Is that it?”
I nodded slightly, still reluctant to give too much of myself away.
He gripped my hand harder. “You come from so much darkness. That’s clear.”
“How so?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I see . . .” As he paused, his gaze unnerved me. “Fire. An explosion. Pain. Then, it’s as if . . .”
I must have squeezed his hand this time.
“I’m getting a symbolic reading, so you’ll have to interpret the images.” He furrowed his dark brow. “It’s as if you were shut into a coffin—one made of glass. Then you were freed, but there was still containment. Does any of that make sense?”
Not literally. But I felt contained right now by being shut out of the information we all take for granted—information we normally wake up knowing every morning.
“There’s even more fire after the coffin imagery,” he added. “But this time the flames nearly devour you.”
Now I was shaking my head. I couldn’t have lived the life he was describing on a realistic level. So what did it all mean?
He ran a thumb over mine. Comforting me?
Comfort. It might have been the first thing—or last—that I needed at this moment. But before I pulled my hand out of his, he looked grim, as if he had received one more vision.
“You’ve had an interesting night so far.”
“You’re referring to the ‘it’ that was chasing me earlier?”
“I wish I knew what it was. But I saw the burning eyes . . . the black shape. I think you don’t need me to tell you that it was dangerous.”
“Any hints about how to avoid it in the future?”
He nodded toward the shop in front. “Indeed, I know people who can help.”
“But I can’t pay you for any protection items or spells, remember?”
His smile was slight. “You didn’t run in here for the fun of it. And for me to deny you help would be terrible karma. Besides, it’s a slow night, even for March. I’ve been bored until now, cher.”
What was he saying? That he had assumed the mantle of white knight for a random damsel in distress?
I was torn. I had the feeling I could take care of myself very well, thank you, under normal circumstances, but someone was after me out there, in the night. I would be foolish to refuse help from the only savior available.
He pushed back from the table and came round to my side. “May I?” he asked, motioning to my boots.
Why not? I stretched out a leg as he bent down, and I tried like mad to keep those white-knight thoughts from crowding my head. When he ran his fingers over the viny texture of the boot, I restrained a quiver. It was as if I could feel his touch, even through whatever material these boots were made of.
“I’ve never seen anything like these,” he said. “And I get nothing on where you purchased them.”
I frowned at the word “purchased,” and I wasn’t sure why. Instinct again? But if it was instinct, it wasn’t a good one. I had broken into a bed-and-breakfast already. Had I also shoplifted these clothes and boots?
When Philippe smoothed a hand up the back of my calf, further exploring, I went tight between the legs. I almost shifted in my chair. And when he slid a finger into the top of my boot, brushing skin, I jerked away from him.
His gaze was fascinated now. “It’s as if they . . .”
“Are attached to me? I know. I tried to strip them off.”
“They wouldn’t budge?”
“Right.” Then a gobsmacking thought hit me. If these boots
were as odd as I believed they were, was it possible that they had led me into this voodoo shop on purpose? Were they voodoo items?
I could tell Philippe was thinking the same. “You ran in here like you were part of the wind, and the way you fight, my darlin’? Are you sure these ain’t superhero boots?”
Gob. Smacked. “I’m not certain of anything.”
He stood, his hands on his lean hips, considering. Behind him and to the left, in another room where a curtain was pulled back from the entrance, a shelf of jujus and gris-gris and dolls stood, timeless, as if knowing the answers that we did not.
“These boots could be the work from an old, powerful woman in the area,” he finally said. “They call her Amari.”
“So I should see her.”
“I would say an unqualified yes, except for . . .” He looked at my boots. “They say Amari doesn’t sell any charmed objects.”
At that point, I concentrated only on the “charmed” part. “You think these boots are enchanted? That’s the reason they won’t bloody come off me?”
“I do get that feeling. But you have a bigger worry than that.”
Back to the “sell” word he had used. “If this Amari doesn’t offer charmed objects for sale, then how did I end up with the boots?”
What had I been up to? And, damn it all, was it possible that the red-eyed creature was trying to fetch the boots back for Amari?
Splendid.
“Is there a chance,” I asked, “that there’s another witch round here who sells clingy boots that make a girl run like the wind and sting like a bee?”
As Philippe turned the question over in his mind, I saw something in the room behind him, through the spaces of the shelves between the jujus and dolls.
Eyes. Red eyes.
He must have noticed my widened gaze, and he turned round. But I jumped out of the chair, my body taking over again, as if my mind had no say. I dove for what I thought was the gun in his waistband.
Yet he was no fool—he’d already drawn the weapon, firing at the shelf, wood and cloth flying every which way. A scream came from the front of the shop.
The red eyes disappeared. I felt Philippe’s hand on my arm just as I was about to dart away.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
Trust him? Sounded good at the moment. “Sure. Why not.”
We made a break for the front door, his coworker peeking over the sales counter as we ran outside and he pulled me toward the edge of the sidewalk, where a motorcycle sat dormant. He hopped on, reaching in his pocket for a set of keys, then revved up the bike. I had already jumped on the back of the seat, my arm round his waist.
Shoving the revolver into my hand, he didn’t say a word as we took off into the night and I glanced over my shoulder, swearing that a pair of red eyes was fading into nothing on top of the shop’s roof as we roared away.
3
We rode until the city lights gave way to cypress trees dripping with Spanish moss as we veered off the main roads and found the side ones. Full night made everything eerie while Philippe the karmically proper psychic steered me into the middle of nowhere.
My wariness of him was still alive and kicking, but the man had given me his firearm. He had lent me the means to kill him, and that did wonders for my so-called trust.
Yet even if I hadn’t held that revolver, I had my boots. Just how much of a lethal weapon was I, myself?
We went deep into where the bayous ran, and he slowed the bike as we turned onto a slim road that paralleled the duckweed-thickened water. I didn’t want to think about what might lurk under the surface. Night creatures sounded off with chirping and croaking and clicks as a lone light came into view.
It belonged to a lantern from a planked cabin with a tin roof. When we pulled up to the stairs leading to the porch, I saw a rickety swing hanging from the eaves and a screen door that angled halfway off its hinges. Philippe cut the engine, but I didn’t dismount. All my inner alarms were screaming.
I held on to that revolver as he waited for me to alight. He hadn’t worn a helmet—neither of us had taken the time to don one—so his dark hair was disheveled, its long, loose strands roguish. He looked like a pirate who hid out here in the backwater.
“This is where the witch lives,” he said in his lazy accent as we both merely sat there, staring at the cabin.
“How do you know?” I wished he’d had the time to explain more about her to me before we had fled the shop.
“Rumors. And a vibe.”
I realized that he might be more than a psychic. “Are you also a voodoo practitioner?”
He laughed. “No. I only rent space in the shop for readings. But I’m well acquainted with everything in it. I haven’t been there long—only a few weeks—but I’m learning more every night.”
“What did you do before this?”
“Curious, aren’t we?”
“You don’t have to answer.” We needed to be getting on with this, anyway.
But it seemed Philippe liked my keen interest. “I was a carpenter. Still am, although business is slow. I’ve always had the seeing gift, just as my maman did, and I make use of it on the side for her sake.”
From the manner in which he said this, I wondered if his mother was sick or destitute. My heart beat an extra time.
He must have seen I was sympathetic because he brushed off what he had said. “My senses have been sharp lately, and that’s probably why, a week ago, I had the vision of you.”
“It’s fortunate you were prepared. I can’t say the same for myself.”
I finally stepped off the bike, and he put down the kickstand, then dismounted as well.
“So let’s find a way to get these boots off,” he said.
I prepared every apology I could think of, in case I had stolen the items. This was the best course of action, I kept telling myself. If Amari had sent an employee out to reclaim the enchanted boots, I was better off facing the music here and taking my chances.
“I hope we don’t need an appointment,” I said.
Philippe merely gave me a look, and I shrugged. Maybe I was a polite sort in real life.
Our footsteps echoed on the stairs, then the porch, and my boots tightened round my legs. Clinging, as if they wished to hold on to me and me alone.
I opened the broken screen, then knocked on the door. When no one answered, I knocked again.
“Nobody is home,” he said assuredly.
“How can you be . . . ?” I didn’t finish the question. “All right. So what do we do now?”
Philippe reached round me and opened the door, which was so warped that it took a shove from him. He sent me a smug glance.
I tried not to dwell on how he smelled of cedar or perhaps pine as he brushed past me. Either way, yum.
I walked inside after he did, glancing round. Dark, with only the slim lights coming through the slats of the shutters.
Reaching back toward the wall, I groped for a switch. When I flipped it on, it didn’t work. Chills fingered up my spine as I backed up to the wall, wanting to feel it behind me in the near darkness. I continued scanning the room, my eyesight adjusting. Meanwhile, I held up Philippe’s revolver, evidently knowing just how to use it, comfortable with it in my grip.
Boot steps thudded as Philippe moved toward the window. There was a sharp sound as he pulled the shutter cords, and the room lit slightly more with wan moonlight.
It allowed me to lock onto a form across the room that was draped by a sheet. I nearly squeezed the revolver’s trigger until I concluded that, based on the shape and the exposed gilding on one side, what I was seeing was a covered standing mirror. Another look round showed a second shrouded frame above a fireplace. When Philippe got to it and peered beneath the linen, he spoke.
“Someone doesn’t like looking glasses.”
And
that wasn’t the only disturbing element in this small cabin. As I surveyed the area—the simple kitchen in the corner, neat as a pin; the cot on the other side of the room—I saw a table near me.
A table with bones spread over it.
My boots reacted sharply, like the ends of vines digging into me. I gasped, flinching as a sudden memory grabbed me: a woman’s voice saying, “There is a cost for these.” Then the feel of the boots sliding up my legs as someone put them on me . . .
I jerked out of the memory, and my skin . . . It felt as if it were puckered. Yet when I ran my free hand over my arm, my flesh was as smooth as always.
I wasn’t certain what I had just experienced, but I knew for a fact now that there had been some sort of cost for the boots, and if I had remembered this little nugget of information because I was inside this cabin, the price was no doubt still to be paid to Amari.
Had their powers lent me the speed and strength to run from the witch before I’d paid for them? Why couldn’t I remember?
Sliding down the wall to the floor, I pulled at the boots again, wanting them off. Now.
“What’re you doin’?” Philippe asked, coming to me.
“Trying again,” I said. “If she’s not here, then at least I hope the boots will be when she returns. I think that’s why I was led to you, by fate, by a spell Amari cast, or . . . I don’t know. The boots belong here. When I caught sight of those bones on the table, the boots responded, and I had a flash of memory. Someone told me there was a price for these, and I don’t think I paid it.”
Philippe blew out a breath, then ambled over to the table and reached for a bone. When he made contact with one of them, he froze.
“Philippe?” My voice seemed to echo in the cabin until his took over.
“Liberatio,” he said.
My boots shifted on my legs, as if restless.
“Say it again,” I whispered, my breath quickening. He’d felt a psychic vibe from the bone.