“Okay, now you run along and get your moldy old greatcoat or whatever you call that thing you insist on wearing.”
“Yes. Very good idea. I will visit the…the necessary, too.”
Heidi liked the way Niko kept looking at her over his shoulder as he took the stairs two at a time. “So he pees like everyone else?”
“Well, I saw him drink coffee, which he proclaimed was shit compared to some chicory crap he used to drink.”
Heidi finally looked back at Rémy. His eyes flashed at Niko’s departing form. If Heidi didn’t know any better, she’d say he was jealous of the interaction between her and Niko. But Rémy loathed Niko and wanted him sent back to Everlost. And he had probably fucked supermodels before he’d gotten sidetracked on his quest for his ancestor’s gold.
Rémy now said, “What did he mean last night, I looked just like Michelle? He’s awfully gay for someone with a girl named Michelle.”
“Don’t worry, Rémy,” Heidi said soothingly. “I’m sure he’s entirely gay, and he’ll go back to Everlost once we figure out this whole pentalpha thing.”
But Heidi didn’t want Niko going back to Everlost. And she could not have mistaken the sexual tension between them.
Chapter Five
Rémy had earlier charmed the park service volunteer who ran the Jean Lafitte Visitor Center. Thank God her nametag reminded him her name was Cherise. In addition to falling for his normal charm as an urbane, worldly sophisticate, Cherise had been all over the fact that he was descended from Jean Lafitte. She had been a puddle of goo on the floor when he’d shown her his driver’s license, and had allowed him to peruse several rare manuscripts.
That was how he’d found the Testament of Solomon and the pentalpha reference. Today, he was so slick with Cherise that before he knew it, Niko and Heidi had spirited the book out into the brick courtyard.
“And you think this book might help you find the hidden gold bars?” gushed Cherise, totally ignoring some moron who wanted to buy a stuffed alligator.
Rémy tried not to let his eyes flicker with irritation. “Yes, it’s leading us on a fascinating treasure hunt.”
“And who are your new friends? Are they helping you?”
Rémy craned his neck to view Niko and Heidi sitting on a brick fountain with their thighs plastered together, the book open. At last, he couldn’t ignore the distinct jealousy that flared in the pit of his stomach when those two went near each other. Was he actually jealous of the mousy, washed-out stockbroker for being the object of Niko’s attraction? He didn’t understand why Heidi wasn’t a sucker for his smooth-talking, handsome routine. She was nowhere near the stature of the women he dated. Curvaceous, made up to the teeth, even silicon-filled—now that was Rémy’s style. It surprised him that jealousy reared its head when Heidi had taken Niko’s hands in hers.
Maybe it was a case of if he couldn’t have her, he didn’t want anyone else to have her either. Fuck it. Now he was in competition with a dead man? Could it be that Heidi was something of a necrophiliac? Was she ignoring Rémy because he wasn’t a reanimated corpse reeking of musty mildew? Rémy did not like being ignored. Women did not ignore Rémy Lafitte. Women did not ignore Rémy Lafitte.
With a start, Rémy realized he’d again snapped the cord that held the beads of his eleke necklace. “Oh, God!” He caught the beads as best he could, and Cherise instantly fell to her knees to gather a few that had rolled on the floor.
Now this was more like it—women falling to their knees for him. Rémy was used to that. He didn’t get down to help Cherise.
“Yes, I suppose they’re new friends, associates of mine,” Rémy admitted. “Although I don’t know how much help they’re being. That’s all right. You don’t need to gather every bead.”
“But it’s an eleke,” Cherise protested, giving Rémy a handful of beads. “Without it, you’ll have very bad luck indeed.”
“Then I’ll keep the beads here. Thank you.”
Stuffing the beads into his jeans pocket, Rémy made a beeline for the French doors that led to the courtyard. He was rolling up his sleeves and getting down to work before he even got near the cozy couple. “What’d you find? Do you see what I mean, the part about the pentalpha?”
“Indeed,” said Niko with shining eyes, poking a forefinger at the open book. Rémy squatted eagerly, dangling a loose hand on a knee, and saw that Niko had found the correct spot in the book. “Right here. When a demon harassed a youth, a favorite of Solomon’s, by sucking out his vitality through his thumb, Solomon prayed in the temple and received from the archangel Michael a ring with the seal of God in the shape of a pentalpha.”
“Yes, exactly!” declared Rémy. “The whole book is about Solomon and his magical ring. But what’s the magical ring?”
“You’ve got a magical necklace,” said Heidi.
“Right. That’s a far cry from a ring. Any of you have any rings? No? And read on, Niko. Doesn’t it say something about Baal-Berith?”
“Yes. So the ring enables Solomon to command the demons. Solomon lends the ring to the youth who throws the ring at the demon, stamps him with the seal, and controls him. Solomon orders this demon to imprint the Duke of Demons, who is Beelzebub. Or Baal-Berith. Same thing.”
“Well,” said Heidi. “It’s pretty obvious what that is.”
“What is?” asked Rémy.
Heidi pointed at the book. “The thing about the demon sucking the vitality from the youth’s thumb.” She looked at the two blank-faced men as though they were the crazy ones. She slapped her upraised hand to her knee and cried, “Back then, people didn’t speak in plain language! There was always some politically correct veil draped across every text so you had to decipher what they were really saying. No one is really lying or sleeping with people, after all.”
“She is right,” Niko allowed. “They are just fucking, plain and simple.”
“Exactly!” said Heidi, and once again jealousy gripped Rémy’s stomach. They were two peas in a pod. He was the odd man out. Those two were on the same wavelength. “Well, to me, anyway, it’s obvious that this demon sucking his thumb refers to, well, a blowjob, to be honest with you.”
Even Niko looked stumped at Heidi’s conclusion. But Rémy was curious to hear more of her theory. “You think so? You’re right. They did refer to things in oblique ways back then.”
Heidi seemed encouraged. “Right! So bear with me here. In a way, then, maybe last night Niko was unintentionally acting out the demon sucking scene.”
“Oh, come on!” said Niko. “That’s a bit of a stretch. You’re equating me to a demon?”
“Let’s hear her out,” said Rémy. Mainly, he was just eager to hear Heidi’s take on blowjobs, and anything that exonerated anyone from the activities of the night before was fine with him. “She could be onto something here.”
“Well,” said Heidi, “back then, didn’t they call balls stones? Niko, back me up on this. You’re from back then.”
“Yes,” Niko said reluctantly. “I suppose sometimes balls have been called stones.”
Rémy added, “As in, ‘you don’t have the stones to do that.’”
“Right!” cried Heidi. “Well, what did ol’ Baal-Berith tell us to do? Place a stone on nine pentalpha points. What if the pentalpha is a map of some kind, and we’re supposed to—well, you know…”
Rémy eagerly took up Heidi’s idea. “So you’re saying that one of the nine points was last night in the graveyard? This makes total sense.”
In her eagerness, Heidi was sitting on the edge of her seat. She had brushed the Solomon book off onto Niko’s lap and was almost touching knees with Rémy. “Yes, yes! And another of the nine points could be right here in the Jean Lafitte Center.”
“I like your thinking,” said Rémy warmly, and he dared to take Heidi’s hands in his, just as she had done with Niko. “If it’s not the right idea, no one’s certainly lost anything.”
Heidi giggled. “Except inhibitions.”
Yes. Heidi was starting to warm up to Rémy. Things were feeling fairly hot and heavy to Rémy’s way of thinking when Niko burst out, “Oh, for God’s sake! The egun are not sex-addled purveyors of sexual favors!”
Rémy didn’t let go of Heidi’s hands, now that he had them. “Oh no? Then why were you so worked up last night when you stumbled out of that mausoleum? Horny after not getting any cock for a hundred and fifty years?”
Niko drew himself up with dignity. “Now, listen here, Monsieur. I—”
Heidi squeezed Rémy’s hands. “Rémy. I’m on vacation. I’m horny after not getting cock for a hundred and fifty years. What the fuck do I have to lose? We’re on a wild and crazy adventure as it is, and people get insane in New Orleans.”
Rémy liked the direction this was heading. Not only could he put Niko in his ghostly place, he could reassert his masculine authority over Heidi. The plain Jane hadn’t fallen into line so far, and he was pleased that she finally was playing along with him. “Yes! What the fuck do you have to lose? You’re here in The Big Easy, and you’re right, it might be part of the entire puzzle.” He indicated with his eyes a tiny alley, a bricked-in niche, mostly hidden by the low-hanging branches of a magnolia tree.
Heidi’s eyes gleamed wickedly. Rémy could tell she didn’t often do things on the spur of the moment. She was working herself up into such a frenzy, she was squirming on the brick bench and wringing his hands. In a low voice, she said meaningfully, “Let’s do it.”
Not wasting another second, Rémy leaped to his feet. Heidi sprang up, too. With a conspiratorial giggle, she allowed Rémy to put his arm around her, and they practically jogged off to the hiding spot.
Of course Niko tagged along, whining the entire way. “This is not part of the plan! You upset the fine balance of things, Monsieur, with your self-serving ways. Remember, the egun won’t favor you with their wisdom unless you prove you are truly interested in them. You are acting as though you just want personal gain. Monsieur, I beg you!”
Rémy was already leaning against the brick wall while Heidi kneeled at his feet, nimbly unbuttoning his fly. Already, he panted in anticipation of the starved, desperate woman’s expertise. Desperate, plain women made the best cocksuckers. “Listen, if you’re going to stand there, do something useful. Be the lookout. Can you do something magical?”
Niko snorted. “It seems that the two of you are about to do the magical thing. You are distracting us from our goal, our mission.”
As Heidi wrapped her lips around Rémy’s straining cockhead, his eyes rolled up into his head. “Are you see-through or something? Make yourself wide and big. Act like a barrier to those tourists. Ah! Oh, Lord, Heidi!” Rémy was surprised he remembered her name, especially in a time like this. “Heidi, good Lord, that’s good. Don’t stop. Don’t fucking stop.”
Heidi wasn’t about to fucking stop. Like any good, needy, washed-out woman, she was voraciously hoovering Rémy’s dick. In fact, she swiftly brought Rémy to the brink of orgasm, then skillfully backed off, several times. It aroused Rémy more than he’d expected to look down and see her strawberry-blonde head, sleek hair parted competently on the side, bobbing up and down as her tongue described intricate patterns on the underside of his cock.
He realized, between the waves of lust, that he actually felt bad for using Heidi. He had allowed her to become carried away by the exotic adventure of being in New Orleans. Once again, he had used his amazing good looks to seduce a poor, disadvantaged woman. Worse, he had actually used the spirits of his ancestors to hook up with her! Niko was right—the egun would not look favorably upon him.
Still, this bit of uncustomary self-realization did nothing to stop Rémy’s cock from pulsating inside the hot mouth. Even when Niko started muttering to himself—was he turning into a zombie? Rémy could see the whites of Niko’s eyes as he chattered in some foreign language—Rémy only clutched Heidi’s shoulders harder, digging his fingers into her flesh.
She was good. That good. He even felt a sort of affection for her swiftly bobbing, shiny head. She was being a courageous daredevil, sure, by getting onto her knees and taking some relative stranger’s pole into her little mouth. But there had to be more to it than that. Swept away in the rush of momentary lust, Rémy hoped there was more to it. He hoped Heidi actually liked him—and liked him better than she liked this charismatic, bewitching ghost the half-dead guy currently calling forth some demons or other.
“Ah, God, Heidi!” cried Rémy, loud enough to attract the attention of some tourists. “God, you suck good. Don’t fucking stop. Don’t fucking ever stop—”
He came in a sudden surge of exquisite ecstasy, flooding Heidi’s mouth with his seed.
For a few long moments, he became as much of a jabbering fool as Niko. All his rattled brain could think was, Thank God. Heidi’s going to know I’m not gay now.
“Oh!” Heidi finally fell back, her mouth detached from his pulsating cock. Rémy felt like sliding down the wall himself, but he needed to get his shit together. Now of all times he needed to at least be a gentleman, to show Heidi she was more than an eagerly sucking mouth to him. He held out a hand to help her up.
She was wobbly, and leaned against him. “Shitpickle,” she whispered. She seemed not to dare to glance at him, looking shyly at him from under long lashes.
Rémy found he really liked it, holding her like this. Being the man, supporting her like this, felt natural. He knew she was a strong, independent businesswoman. Those strong, independent businesswomen often got wilder than their wild counterparts. He even brushed a lock of shiny hair from Heidi’s eye. “You okay?”
She laughed with relief. “Better than okay,” she said all in a rush. Then she felt her jaw. “Only…my jaw’s going to regret that later.”
Rémy laughed genuinely now. He had almost forgotten the muttering Niko, but Heidi twisted around to look at the supernatural phantom.
“What’s with him?”
“I don’t know. He started talking in tongues. Maybe he’s talking to the egun who disapprove of our sexual congress.”
Heidi frowned and removed herself from Rémy’s torso. “No. He’s speaking in a weird mixture of French and Spanish, mostly French.”
“Creole,” said Rémy.
“Right. From my college studies, sounds like he’s talking to his sister. He’s saying ‘sister’ a lot.”
Rémy became interested. “He did say he could still communicate with her in Everlost. I wonder who else he can get ahold of?” Then he remembered he shouldn’t be self-serving.
“Should we wake him?” asked Heidi. “This is starting to scare me. I’d hate to lose him, to let him wander back to Everlost again. I don’t think he wants that. Actually, I’m not sure what he wants. I wonder if he wants to stay here with us, or if he wants to reincarnate again?”
“I’m sure he wants to be with his sister, whatever the case is,” said Rémy. “We’ve got to get her out of Everlost, too.”
Chapter Six
Sabine was telling Niko she didn’t want to be in Everlost anymore. Niko hadn’t heard his sister this clearly since he had become semi-mortal again.
Heidi insisted that the temple referred to in the Solomon text was the Voodoo Spiritual Temple on the edges of Beauregard Square. Last night her friend Shayla had said she was going there. They had been by her room at the French Market Inn so she could make a fresh toilette, but none of her friends were there, their trunks untouched. The trio walked the ten blocks or so to the Voodoo Temple, Niko’s head swirling with sounds and images.
What could be called music blared from little boxes. Niko had been experimenting with photography before he’d died, but photographic images assailed him from every angle, some enlarged beyond human size. What used to be his beloved Vieux Carré had been overtaken by clanging, jarring, drunken bedlam.
Men reveled with women as though it was some giant outdoor house of ill repute. Women wore the loose, short shifts Niko had imagined was Heidi’s nightgown. Men seem
ed to have no regard for women, nor they for themselves, which might explain how readily Heidi had dropped to her knees to service Rémy’s admirable prick. Women had no shame.
Almost everyone spoke English. Gone were the beautiful, lilting, and tinkling sounds of his native languages. Some people had the same accent as Niko, but most seemed to be tourists, crowding into the Vieux Carré as though it were some kind of sightseeing boardwalk. Hardly anyone seemed to actually live here anymore. It was as though they’d emptied all the real shops, crammed them to the rafters with garish, cheap garbage, and told all the citizens to leave. It was a ghastly Edgar Allen Poe story come to life.
One heartening sight, though, was that apparently men in bright feather boas wearing very tight undergarments—and not much else—were an everyday sight here. In Niko’s time, sodomy was tolerated behind closed doors. Although, of course, one dare not kiss one’s lover in the street. It had never irked Niko to keep it a private affair, but these men were flaunting their sodomite tendencies with their perfumed hair pomade and wrist fans, and no one seemed to bat an eyelash.
Through it all, of course, Rémy and Heidi remained serene. They were used to it. It was normal to them, Niko had to keep reminding himself. Heidi walked between the two men, and every time something would startle Niko, he’d nearly jump into the poor woman’s arms.
“What else did Sabine tell you?” Heidi had to almost yell over the hubbub of the crowd.
“She wants to get out of Everlost,” Niko yelled back. His companions had purchased something called a “muffuletta,” a giant sandwich of meat and cheese. True, the vendor had cut it into fourths, and Rémy was already on his second fourth, but Niko could barely take one bite. The bread was hard, and everything smelled like chemicals. What Niko wouldn’t give for a soupy paella or a nice dulce de leche poured over a pound cake. He wound up picking the cheese out from between the meat and depositing the rest in a big can.
Redemption Song [Midnight, New Orleans Style 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 5