Once Haunted, Twice Shy (The Peyton Clark Series Book 2)

  “Then come in. We ain’t got us much time remainin’,” Guarda ordered as she held the door open wider. Lovie stepped inside and I followed suit, finding, again, that my eyes needed more time to adjust to the darkness of Guarda’s small house. I instantly felt heat around my ankles, ambling up my legs and seizing the middle of my body. The heat continued to travel up my chest and seemed to linger around my neck. I wasn’t sure if Guarda’s house was incredibly hot, or if I was having a reaction to the absinthe. I had a feeling it was probably the latter.

  “Sit there,” Guarda said to Lovie, pointing to an old, white, plastic outdoor chair she’d moved into the living room, beside the wall of skulls. Lovie didn’t say anything, but merely obeyed as she was instructed. Then Guarda turned to me, studying me with those milky eyes that made my skin crawl. “Ya gonna lay down in the center o’ the room,” she said curtly.

  Looking at the living room floor, I saw she’d set out a red piece of fabric that was maybe six feet long by four feet wide. Holding down the corners were lit candles sitting on white plates. Each candle was a different color—white, blue, silver, and black—and all were dressed in oils and herbs. “Guess you were expecting us?” I asked with a hesitant laugh.

  “’Course,” Guarda answered somewhat evasively. I figured I shouldn’t attempt to make any more small talk. Instead, I took my seat on the red fabric and hoped it wasn’t as soiled and dirty as the carpet appeared to be. “Take off yer shoes an’ socks,” Guarda said gruffly. I just nodded and did as she instructed, pushing my socks into my shoes and piling them neatly on my right, beside the red cloth. “Now ya gotta lay yerself down,” Guarda continued.

  I lay down on my back and faced the ceiling. That bizarre heat began working its way up my legs again, only this time, centering on the parts of my body that touched the fabric below me.

  “Are you well, ma minette?” Drake asked. “I feel hot.”

  “I know. I’m not sure what it is but, yeah, so far I’m okay.”

  I didn’t realize Guarda had left the room until she returned with a handful of what appeared to be even more candles. These candles, however, were shaped differently. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed one of them was shaped like a snake. I found it hard to pay much attention to Guarda because I was growing hotter by the second and my vision became blurry.

  The heat inched up from my backside and traveled in tiny rivulets of warm electricity toward my face, breasts, stomach, and the tops of my legs. My body seemed incredibly heavy, dense, and weighted. Then my feet suddenly felt as if they were miles away from my head. I found myself completely shrouded in darkness, which threw me for a second until I realized I had simply shut my eyes. When I opened them, I couldn’t focus on anything—the candlelights surrounding me became blurry, casting strange shadows around the room that diffused into the background. It felt as if everything around me was moving, and I couldn’t concentrate on any one thing because nothing remained stationary.

  “Baron Samedi.” Hearing Guarda’s voice, I tried to focus, but I couldn’t see her. I shifted my head to the side, but it felt so heavy I could barely move. Hardly able to make out the silhouette of Guarda kneeling beside me near my stomach, I recognized a white candle in her hand that was shaped like a skull. With her eyes closed, she said, “I call on you, Loa Baron Samedi. I come ta serve you.”

  Having never heard the term “Loa” before, somehow I knew that it was a spirit Guarda was contacting. But not just any spirit. I could feel the weight of this particular spirit, and his significance. I didn’t know how I possessed that knowledge, but I knew he was a being, an entity, that was endowed with tremendous power.

  “Loa o’ the dead,” Guarda continued, her voice wavering in and out, as if it were being picked up and carried away by the wind. “Spirit o’ death, hear me.”

  The heat began to boil inside me and even though it tortured me, like it was burning right through me, I couldn’t make a sound. It was as if any control I’d previously possessed over my body was now lost. I opened my mouth and tried to yell, but no sound came out. Then I tried to think of Drake, tried to contact him, but I couldn’t. My entire body was paralyzed while my mind knew and felt everything going on around me. However, I couldn’t think in sentences or words.

  Suddenly terrified, I tried to move my head to make eye contact with Lovie and tell her I’d had enough and we needed to leave, but my body wouldn’t budge. I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, rigidly immobile. I closed my eyes again, and was suddenly struck with the image of Lovie lying slumped over in her chair, her body unresponsive and flaccid. In my mind’s eye, I watched her drop off the chair and fall onto the ground in one fluid motion. Even though I couldn’t actually see her to verify it, I had the uncanny knowledge that Lovie wasn’t with us any longer. She was under Guarda’s spell, and at the mercy of Guarda’s powers. Suddenly Lovie and Christopher’s fears about Guarda started to make sense to me. I was overcome with the absolute certainty that whatever spell Guarda was weaving, the purpose behind it wasn’t simply to aid me in unblocking my psychic walls. No, there was definitely more to it than that.

  “Baron Samedi, hear me, I’m yer servant,” Guarda’s voice continued to ring through my mind. “I need you, oh great Loa. I plead fer yer help an’ in return, I offa you this vessel, this woman.”

  I didn’t understand what her words meant but I was suddenly very frightened by them because it appeared that I was being offered to some spirit of death.

  “Drake!” I whispered. “Drake, can you hear me? Are you still there?” But Drake didn’t respond.

  “I hear you.” It was a man’s voice, which resonated clearly. It was deep and I could understand it, which meant he was speaking English. But somehow, I had the feeling that my brain was translating his words, and giving his words meaning.

  “See him,” Guarda said and it suddenly seemed as if she removed the block restricting my movement. I felt my body sitting up of its own accord where before, I’d been frozen. I leaned up onto my elbows and perceived a man kneeling before me, studying me curiously. I was immediately conscious that he was no ordinary man. There was a presence about him, an aura, that hinted of his dynamic power.

  “I offa you this woman, Baron Samedi,” Guarda announced again. “In return fer yer help. I offa you her willin’ body ta do wif as ya please.”

  “Hello, baby!” the man said to me with a wide and toothy grin.

  Baron Samedi, the Loa of the dead, was, in two words: primitively sophisticated. He was dressed in a black top hat and a matching tuxedo with a gigantic, live snake (maybe a boa constrictor?) wrapped around his shoulders. He wore dark, perfectly circular glasses that rested on the tip of his bony nose. Cotton plugs stuck out of his nostrils. Somehow, and I couldn’t tell you how, I possessed the knowledge that he was dressed like a corpse in Haitian burial style. His face was completely white, abnormally so, and awfully gaunt. It resembled a skull even though there was flesh on top of the bones. He held a lit cigar between the bony fingers of his right hand. When he brought the cigar to his lips, the smoke wafted out from behind his sunglasses and ears.

  “Who are you?” I asked, amazed to find my own voice. I didn’t know why, but I suddenly felt as if I was in complete control of myself again, as though the powers of the absinthe had released their hold on me.

  The spirit laughed a dark, disturbing sound. But even more intimidating was that he never opened his mouth. I could only hear his laughter in my head. He continued smoking his cigar and staring at me, or so I had to imagine, since I couldn’t see beyond his dark glasses. The snake around his shoulders swayed this way and that, seeming to mimic the wafting of Baron Samedi’s cigar smoke.

  “She ignorant, great Loa,” Guarda piped up, crawling toward the spirit as if she were an abused dog, trying to appeal to her master’s rare moment of kindness. “She dunno her place.”

  “Quiet,” his voice sounded in my head as
he faced her with an angry expression. Guarda immediately pulled away and appeared shocked or stunned into silence. She stayed on all fours, staring up at him curiously. When he turned his attention back to me, the protruding lines of his jaw appeared to slacken a bit. “You don’t know me, mortal?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  I had a feeling that not knowing who he was wouldn’t win me any favors, but lying about it was probably even worse. “Um, I know you’re a spirit,” I started. That was about the full extent of what I knew about him, though. As to his reputation, I could only hope he was a good Loa . . .

  His chuckle sounded through my head again. “It depends on what yer definition o’ good is,” he said, his voice reverberating through my mind as his toothy grin vanished and he bent down onto his hands. I couldn’t stifle the shock that traveled through me as I realized he could read my mind. But that shock wasn’t given much time to brew because moments later, he was crawling toward me until barely three inches of air separated our faces. The snake continued to waver this way and that, but never touched me. Thank God.

  “I’m the all-knowin’ Loa o’ death, baby.” Who knew Baron Samedi had a distinctly Southern accent? It seemed to have tinges or remnants of his Haitian beginnings, but the accent wasn’t exactly obvious. Again, there was something inside me that told me his English was merely for my benefit—just so we’d understand one another.

  “Do ya approve o’ my offerin’, Loa?” Guarda asked, her voice taking on a lilt that hinted at her excitement. But Baron Samedi ignored her. Instead, he ran his hands down my waist, pausing at my hip bones. He palmed the lump in my pocket—the gris-gris meant to protect me. I could hear his chuckle in my head as he shook his. “You want protection, baby?” he asked. “This ain’t enough. You need me.”

  “You’re offering me protection?” I asked, frowning because he didn’t seem the protective type.

  “I might be known fo’ debauchery, obscenity, an’ being a wild lover, but I’m also the protector o’ all children,” he answered stonily. “And it up ta me whetha you live o’ die.”

  I swallowed hard. “Are you going to kill me?”

  He chuckled again as he ran his bony finger down the side of my face. “Do you wanna die, baby?”

  “No,” I answered immediately.

  “Your wish is mah command.” I figured that meant he wasn’t going to kill me . . . or so I hoped.

  “But about your protection . . .” I started, suddenly worried that Lovie’s gris-gris wasn’t all she thought it might be. ’Course I couldn’t say I was surprised—I didn’t think anything could compete with the power of Baron Samedi.

  “If you desire mah protection, baby, you must ask fo’ it an’ you gotta offa me somethin’ in return.” He smiled more broadly as I realized he regarded that offering as something sexual in nature. “I am the Loa o’ the dead, which means if you want mah assistance, you must come where I dwell.”

  “The graveyard?” I asked, repeating the first word that occurred to me.

  Baron Samedi nodded.

  “How do I find you there?” I asked, growing nervous. “I mean, what do I do once I’m there?”

  I could feel him grinning at me. “I can’t give you all the answers, baby.”

  Somehow, and maybe it was because I’d lost my grip on sanity, I wasn’t afraid of him. Figuring he told me all he intended to on the protection subject, I turned to my other concern. “Are you going to remove my block?”

  He chuckled and leaned closer to me until I couldn’t help inhaling the smoke wafting out from behind his glasses. It tasted rather heady, but sweet when it hit the back of my tongue. “Have you heard the one ’bout the guy who died from a Viagra overdose?” Baron Samedi asked me.

  Was he really going to tell me a joke? My knotted eyebrows reflected my puzzlement. “No,” I answered, without speaking either. I was thinking my responses. Hmm, very strange.

  “They couldn’t close his casket!” Baron Samedi replied, his deep laugh echoing through my head as his lips slightly turned up at the ends.

  “That’s a good one,” I answered with an uneasy smile, finding his crass sense of humor slightly endearing.

  “You tell me one,” the Loa of death demanded. It almost felt like we were just two kids exchanging dirty jokes on the school playground.

  “Um,” I started while wracking my brain, trying to remember a crude joke that might impress him. He seemed to favor the obscene ones. “Okay, got one,” I thought with a smile. “How does a woman scare a gynecologist?”

  “Tell me,” he answered, not missing a beat.

  “By becoming a ventriloquist!” I answered, silently hoping he wouldn’t kill me for telling him such a stupid joke. He pulled back and I could hear the roar of his laughter in my head. When the moment passed, he leaned back down and the snake disappeared from around his neck, vanishing into thin air. My eyes went wide. “I am Baron Samedi, mortal,” he started, his tone now more serious. He reached his bony hand up to his face and removed his glasses. I gasped in shock when his glowing, white eyes met mine. He didn’t have pupils and the irises of his eyes were as white as freshly fallen snow. “I am head of the Guédé family and my wife is Manman Brigit.” He paused and then smiled more broadly. “She knows of my vast sexual appetite,” he added, almost as an aside. Then he dropped his attention from my eyes to my breasts and lower still. When I glanced at my body, I found I was suddenly naked. I bucked in response, but the Loa’s hand on my upper thigh calmed me. “Be still. Allow me,” he whispered as he continued to gaze at me unabashedly. His smile showed obvious appreciation when his eyes centered on the mound between my thighs. I felt my thigh grow hot beneath his hand and watched him close his glowing white eyes as he inhaled, and a smile pasted itself across his broad mouth.

  “What?” I said, my voice sounding quivery because I didn’t understand what was going on.

  “Quiet,” the Loa responded. “I am acceptin’ mah offerin’,” he added in a softer tone, seemingly feeling sorry for reprimanding me. He opened his eyes and they seemed to glow more brightly. “I am experiencin’ yer body as best I can.”

  “Oh,” I responded, still not understanding what that meant but at the same time, I couldn’t say I felt defiled at all.

  “I stand at the crossroads o’ this world an’ the next,” he continued, apparently after having gotten his fill of experiencing my nudity. He brought his glowing eyes back to mine and I found myself zoning out as I gazed at the white orbs that dominated his face. “I decide who passes ta Guinee an’ who stays on this plane.”

  “Oh,” I said again, shaking my head, trying to force myself out of my trance-like stupor.

  “You have death in ya,” he announced in an inquisitive tone of voice. He leaned closer to me and stared so hard it felt as if he were peering right through me and into my soul. Maybe he was. It seemed like he was trying to detect what sort of death resided inside me. I figured he must be channeling Drake’s essence.

  “Yes,” I answered. “I’m possessed by a spirit, but I also have a spiritual block and can’t communicate with the spiritual world because of it.”

  “Now that you have accepted mah payment, oh great Loa, we call on you ta unblock her,” Guarda suddenly interrupted, crawling toward us, with one of her hands extended out, as if she wanted to touch him.

  He turned toward her sharply and his eyes grew brighter, blazing with an angry intensity. “Silence!” his voice roared through my head. Guarda dropped back down to a slump again and nodded, cowering as she crawled away.

  When Baron Samedi faced me again, the anger blanched from his expression. He leaned back down until we were inches apart and took a long drag of his cigar before exhaling it into my face. I suddenly had the desire to inhale the smoke and breathe it in as deeply as I could. I closed my eyes and sucked it in for three counts as the headiness of the smoke filled me. I felt his bony fingers gr
asping my upper thighs as he pushed my legs apart and settled himself between them. Somehow, though, I had no worries that he might try to take advantage of the situation and penetrate me.

  I suddenly felt very dizzy. Upon opening my eyes, I found it wasn’t Baron Samedi at all who hovered above me, but Drake. He knelt between my legs, gazing down at me, and tightly grasping each of my thighs. “Drake?” I asked with a laugh as I felt something euphoric erupting inside me. I pushed my pelvis against his waist and rocked back and forth, riding the waves of elation that rippled inside me. I opened my eyes again and found Drake staring down at me. He was so incredibly handsome with his dark hair and up-to-no-good smile. But there was something that didn’t fit; something was definitely off. His eyes were glowing white. I reached up and cupped the back of his head with both of my palms, forcing him down on top of me. “Why aren’t you talking to me?” I demanded.

  “Que voulez-vous que je dise, ma minette?” he responded and I understood the French to mean: “What would you like me to say?”

  I ran my fingers through his hair, continuing to grind myself against him. Heat began building between my thighs. “I don’t want you to say anything,” I responded. “I want you to kiss me.”

  He chuckled and his smile was undeniably wicked. He gripped the back of my neck none too gently and forced my face upright. Gazing at me, his eyes glowing that unholy white, he pressed his lips on mine, demanding my reciprocation with heated urgency. I wrapped my arms around him and allowed my tongue to mate with his as I undulated against him. When he pulled away, I found it wasn’t Drake at all, but Ryan I was kissing. He chuckled as stray locks of his honey-gold hair dropped down into his face before he pushed them aside. Just as with Drake, Ryan’s eyes glowed fiercely white.

  It only perplexed me for a moment before I wanted to feel Ryan on top of me; no, I wanted to feel him inside me. I gripped his neck again and pulled his face down to mine, forcing my tongue into his mouth. He returned my eagerness and we both lapped at each other almost ferociously. When he pulled away, he looked down at me, shaking his head as his smile widened. “Yer block is officially removed, impetuous creature.”