The music switched to Nine Inch Nails’ “Discipline,” and Contestant Number Two bounded onto the stage and shucked his clothes like they were on fire.
If he was that quick in the sack, Kallie felt sorry for his girlfriends.
Tall and skinny, but good-looking with long, dark hair, his entire body quivered spasmodically and she thought he was having a seizure until she realized he was dancing.
Of the ten men who had signed up, only seven would actually be participating. One had hurried away for the restroom and had never returned; another had hyperventilated, then fainted; and one was a no-show. She wondered what the ratio would be for the ladies when it was time for the wet-T-shirt contest.
Number Two finished his “dance,” then joined Number One at the backdrop. Contestant Number Three strode onstage to N-Trance’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and given his dancer’s tight-muscled build, graceful moves, and his wild, natural Afro, her answer was a definite yes.
The shrieking decibels increased to jet-engine levels, so Kallie guessed the audience agreed with that assessment.
“Back that thing up, baby boy!” Belladonna shouted. Number Three offered her a wink and a slow, sexy smile. Playing dirty. Playing to win.
But the bucket of water would determine the winner, not a playa’s smooth moves.
Number Four, a short but gorgeous guy with a ripped physique and dark bedroom eyes framed with long lashes, peeled his clothing down to his boxers and danced to AC/ DC’s hard-pounding “You Shook Me All Night Long.”
Kallie had a feeling that wouldn’t be wishful thinking on his part. Lying down, everyone was the same height. And given the slow, sensual way he moved his hips, he knew exactly what to do with them.
“Shake me, lover boy, morning, noon, and night!” Belladonna yelled. She blew him a kiss that he pretended to catch. He pressed the captured kiss against his boxer-clad crotch.
Aw . . . a romantic.
Number Five, pudgy and sweating, tripped on his way out to the stage and fumbled off his clothes, his movements completely out of sync with his song, Queens of the Stone Age’s “Make It Wit Chu.” But then he started dancing. He whirled, all grace and flowing rhythm, popped his hips in belly-fluttering fashion, a sexy beast.
Belladonna jumped out of her chair to call, “More man to love, baby!”
The Pussycat Dolls’ song “Buttons” throbbed from the speakers as Number Six, a clean-cut, dimple-jawed guy with a decent but not spectacular build pranced onto the stage and stripped with such military precision that Kallie suspected he did it for a living. Maybe he even worked for one of the clubs on Bourbon Street.
“Shake it, honey buns, shake it hard!” Pro or skilled amateur, Belladonna obviously didn’t give a rat’s ass.
Gorgeous Number Seven sauntered barefoot out from the wings, winked at the male judge, then unbuttoned his French-blue shirt to Justin Timberlake’s hip-swinging “SexyBack.” Kallie stared as Layne-Augustine peeled off his shirt, revealing his long, lean torso and the exquisite muscles she had felt beneath her hands when she’d been resuscitating him.
“Give it to me, you hot nomad!” Belladonna yelled once more.
Blue-inked tattoos rippled along his shoulders and down to his biceps, swirled across his chest and belly in Celtic designs; detailed knotwork looped underneath his hard pecs around to his back; shamrocks, spirals, and fanciful animals cavorted on his flesh. Concentric circles curled around both of his nipples, and a dragon’s knot-work tail disappeared beneath the waistband of his blue boxers.
Kallie wondered if Layne’s nether regions were also tattooed. A beautiful spiral design had coiled around Gage’s hard length.
A barb of guilt pricked her. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since she’d tumbled and played with Gage, then discovered him dead in her bed, and here she was wondering about his best friend’s most intimate parts.
What the hell is wrong with me?
“Go, baby, go!” Belladonna yelled.
Layne-Augustine unbuckled his belt, undulating with an easy and sexy grace that seared the guilt from Kallie’s heart and pooled heat between her legs. He moved Layne’s body as if it was as familiar as his own. His dreads worked free of their knot and slithered over his muscle-cabled shoulders to his waist.
He unzipped his pants with a slow, teasing pull on the zipper, then shimmied his hips. His trousers dropped to his ankles.
Belladonna gave a wordless and happy shriek.
The Brit stepped out of the trousers and danced like he hit the clubs every weekend and most weeknights, moving his hips with mouth-drying suggestiveness, muscles rippling like water. As he danced, he slipped a cigarette out from behind his ear, placing it between his lips. He lit it with a lighter he’d tucked against his palm. The cigarette’s end glowed as he inhaled.
Layne-Augustine’s grace faltered as he coughed out a cloud of smoke prickly with the scents of lavender and sage into the night. Squinting through watering eyes and still coughing, he traced glyphs in the air with his cigarette.
Layne must not be a smoker. But what the hell is the man doing?
The scented smoke swirled together to form a motorcycle on the stage, a chopper with high handlebars and a sissy bar. Recovering from his coughing faux pas, Layne-Augustine reclined on his smoke-cycle—how in the name of Houdini is he doing that?—and suggested with subtle thrusts of his hips what might happen if someone were to join him.
Show-off. “Saddle up, naughty boy!” Belladonna hooted. “Mama’s gonna ride!”
With a smug smile, Layne-Augustine rolled off of his chopper and undulated his way to the backdrop to stand beside the other six contestants. When he stubbed out his cigarette, the smoke-cycle vanished.
Rudi, the emcee, a woman with a hairspray-shellacked beehive hairdo and a matronly shelf of a bosom, paused to touch Kallie’s shoulder and whisper, “You’re up next, sweetie,” before bouncing onstage.
“Let’s hear it for the men!” she cried. A deafening and lust-filled roar answered her. “Y’all come up here,” she said to the contestants once the applause had died down, motioning them to the front of the stage.
Belladonna set up a line of buckets beside Kallie. “Here you go, Shug.”
Kallie smiled. “Great.”
Belladonna hurried back to her seat and her prime view.
Steam curled into the air from the water’s surface. Kallie dipped a finger into the first bucket to test the warmth. She didn’t want to accidentally scald anyone. A braided band of guilt and grief and loss snapped her shoulder muscles taut.
Too bad you didn’t finger-test the bed before Gage slipped under the sheets. Would’ve saved him from a helluva lot more than just a scalding.
Kallie closed her eyes and rolled her shoulders in hopes of working the tension from her muscles. Wallow later. You’ve got a job to do, no matter how silly.
“And now the moment y’all have been waiting for! The wet boxers!”
Kallie opened her eyes. Show time.
More screams and wild applause. The emcee nodded at Kallie and stepped aside. Wrapping her fingers around the handles of two buckets, Kallie walked across the stage to Number One.
Several males in the audience wolf-whistled, and one yelled, “You can get me wet anytime, darling!” Laughter followed.
Kallie couldn’t help but wonder if those particular guys were keeping their wives or girlfriends company or were just curious. “That’s what she said,” Kallie replied. “Or would, if y’all knew how.”
More wolf whistles, hoots, and laughter.
Kallie placed one bucket on the stage, then lifted the other in both hands. “Ready?” she asked, her gaze skipping from one boxer-clad man to the next.
Each one nodded. Kallie tossed half of the first bucket on Number One, the weight lifter, soaking him from chest to feet. His wet boxers clung to him.
Huh. So he ain’t building muscles as compensation for a small dick. So much for that myth. I don’t see nothing for him to comp
ensate for.
Smiling, Kallie moved to the next man and flung the rest of the bucket’s warm contents on him. Eh, average. She picked up the next bucket as Rudi scuttled up with a full bucket to replace the one she’d just emptied.
Kallie moved down the line. Three—Average. Four—Oooo, nice! Five—Where is it and what the hell was he thinking by entering the contest? Six—Something to write home about.
And Seven. Kallie tossed the last of the water on Layne-Augustine. The soaked material clung to his thighs and outlined everything underneath them. Her eyes widened. “Goddamn,” she whispered. She peeled her gaze away from the Brit’s wet blue boxers and looked up into his eyes.
Amusement danced in his pine-green eyes. “I believe the words I said when I made the same discovery were ‘Oh dear God.’”
“Good choice,” she murmured, her gaze returning to his wet and clinging boxers. Layne must know how to use it since his ex-wife is so damned reluctant to let go of him.
The emcee told the audience that they would be allowed to choose their favorite by applause in addition to the judges’ choice of winner.
“Number One,” she called.
The applause was healthy, but not overwhelming. The emcee moved to the next man. Kallie heard the tap of heels on the stage and looked over to see Felicity Fields, her freckled face somber, stride toward her.
“Mrs. Fields?” Layne-Augustine questioned as she stopped beside Kallie.
“My lord,” she replied as though he stood completely clothed. She glanced at Kallie. “Someone has just tried to kill Mr. Brûler.”
Kallie snorted and waved a dismissive hand at her. “Happens all the time. Don’t worry about it. Man has more lives than a dozen cats.”
Felicity blinked. “My, my, my. Not the response I expected.”
“After the first five or ten attempts, you kinda get used to the fact that someone’s always gonna be trying to kill Dallas Brûler.”
“Really? Fascinating. However, this isn’t one of those times. He’s on his way to the HA medical clinic on the twentieth floor. His injuries are critical, I’m sorry to say, and by the time we get there . . .” With an elegant half-shrug, Felicity left the rest of her sentence unspoken.
But her meaning had been crystal clear: He might already be dead.
Kallie stared at her, a cold pit opening up in her belly.
Layne-Augustine scooped up his trousers and fought them on over his wet boxers, then grabbed his shirt from the stage. “Do we have his attacker in custody?” he asked.
Felicity shook her head. “Assailant unknown. We’re questioning the guest who discovered Mr. Brûler.”
“Right,” Layne-Augustine said, voice grim. He headed across the stage in a brisk stride, Felicity in his wake.
Heart drumming hard and fast, Kallie followed. She curved a come along finger at Belladonna.
Shit! Please don’t let my threat to readjust his nose again be the last words I ever speak to Dallas.
TWENTY-EIGHT
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
The primal pulse of palm-thumped drums sounded through the dealers’ room in the Starlight Convention Hall, an earthy pulse that echoed deep within Jean-Julien’s heart. Seated at a small, round table, he added the final component to the poppet he was constructing—a bit of cloth he’d cut from the waiter’s shirt.
“I still command you, I still compel you,” he murmured as he stitched the poppet closed with thick black thread. “Mine thou still art and my bidding you still desire, no will of your own, my word holy fire.”
Finished with the doll, Jean-Julien sat back in his wrought-iron chair and picked up the to-go coffee cup resting on the table. He took a sip of his cooling mocha, savoring the melted-whipped-cream-and-chocolate taste, and examined his handiwork: three basic cloth poppets with black-button eyes.
One contained the single hair he’d gathered from Belladonna when he’d brushed past her at the carnival. His hope had been to glean a strand from the Rivière girl, but she’d been standing much too close to the suspicious and watchful Brûler for him to attempt it. Deciding to hedge his bets in case Gabrielle’s niece proved elusive, he’d created a poppet of her friend as well.
The second poppet contained a strip of paper bearing Kallie’s name in place of a personal item, and the third—the waiter’s poppet—had been crafted as a remote-control device to help Jean-Julien guide the zombie-dusted waiter in his task.
Preparation for his daughter’s eventual rescue.
And speaking of rescue—how about the unfortunate arrival of the room’s occupant just as the last of Brûler’s blood was spilling onto the floor?
Renewed frustration strummed along Jean-Julien’s muscles, stringing them tight. He finished his coffee, then placed the empty cup on the table beside the waiter poppet. Just a minute more and he would’ve been able to see the light go out in Brûler’s eyes.
He believed it impossible that the Chalmette root doctor could have survived. Between the stab wounds to his gut and the knife across his throat, Gabrielle’s former student should’ve bled out before help arrived.
Hell, man had damn near emptied his veins before their interruption. But without seeing the man’s lifeless body, Jean-Julien couldn’t be positive of Brûler’s death.
All he could do now was focus on killing Kallie Rivière, then freeing Rosette. The niece was more important than Brûler anyway—a source of far greater pain for Gabrielle. Still . . . he’d been so close.
Brûler’s blood washes across the gray-and-umber tiles in a steaming red tide—the sound a powerful whoosh as it pours from the wound.
Jean-Julien had used his keycard to slip into another room to steal clean clothes—too-big jeans belted tight to keep them from slipping down his hips, and a sail of a Hawaiian shirt with a palm-tree motif—and scrub the blood from his loafers. He’d dumped his bloodied clothing in a trash bin on the fourth floor.
Jean-Julien felt safe hiding in plain sight among the patchouli-and-sandalwood-reeking crowds browsing the booths in the dealers’ room since he was reasonably certain that the idiot who’d interrupted his deathwatch over Brûler hadn’t actually looked at his face given that the man’s gaze had never traveled north of the knife in Jean-Julien’s hand.
The downside of his unplanned attack on Brûler was how it might affect Kallie Rivière’s actions—not to mention those of the Hecatean Alliance—especially if she now suspected that Rosette hadn’t acted alone. Which would mean his daughter’s self-sacrifice would’ve been in vain.
Foolish to act on impulse.
Jean-Julien glanced at Belladonna’s poppet, hoping he wouldn’t need to use it, hoping that he wouldn’t be forced to harm the pretty voodooienne, but knowing he wouldn’t hesitate to do so—if necessary.
Jean-Julien scanned the crowded conference hall for any indication of danger—HA guards or officials walking in his direction with a purposeful stride, for instance. But he saw nothing out of the ordinary. People thronged and milled at the booths and blocked the aisles with their pastry-widened asses. Voices in several languages thickened the air with laughter and greetings, cheerful questions, and enthusiastic sales pitches.
“Lord amighty! Are them there voodoo dolls or hoodoo dolls?” a gravelly male voice asked, its inflection all East Texas.
Frowning, Jean-Julien shifted his attention back to his own table. A tall man of about sixty with gray-threaded white hair and a red face stood at his table, his thin, whip-cord frame dressed in a blue-and-gray-checkered short-sleeved shirt and crisp new jeans. He regarded Jean-Julien with curious blue eyes.
“Voodoo or hoodoo?” he persisted. “We don’t use pop-pets much in my Wicca clan, but I’ve heard plenty about them dolls, I’ll tell you what.”
“I’m a hoodoo root doctor,” Jean-Julien replied, “not a houngan, but there’s no difference in how the poppets are used.”
“Houngan,” the man repeated, eyeing Jean-Julien. “Now that’d be a voodoo priest, is that right?”
r /> “Oui,” Jean-Julien said, forcing a polite-but-you’re- boring-me smile onto his lips. “Now, if you will excuse—”
“Are they for sale?”
“No, they’re not, and this is not a booth, m’sieu. Please—”
“Cuz, I tell you what, Mr. Hoodoo, I sure could use one a them love poppets, if you know what I mean.” East Texas winked one good-ol’-boy blue eye. “The missus just ain’t been looking at me like she used to, says it’s the menopause—if you can believe that.” He shook his head, slow and reflective, clearly unable to believe that the menopause should dim his wife’s ardor for his sun-baked and ropy hide. “Used to be I had to practically beat the woman offa me with a stick just so’s I could get some sleep. And if you’d be willing to help a partner out, I’d be more than happy to pay . . .”
Tuning out the rough-road sound of East Texas’s voice, Jean-Julien sighed and stood up. Reaching into the pocket of his borrowed too-big jeans, he pulled his vial of black dust free, unstoppered it, and tapped a small portion into his palm. The sweet, dark smell of licorice mixed with the citrus tang of bergamot curled into the air.
Jean-Julien then leaned across the table and blew the dust into the man’s red and startled face. “My bidding you desire,” he intoned, annoyed with the necessity and the interruption, “no will of your own, my word holy fire.”
Waving his hand in front of his face, East Texas blinked, coughed, then stared at Jean-Julien, eyes unfocused. Black dust peppered his face.
Telling the man to lower his hand, Jean-Julien said, “Go away. Leave this room and go back to your own room, then go to bed. You’ll have no memory of our meeting. And you shall never bore me or your wife again. Go away. Now.”
East Texas stepped forward, bumping into the table.
Jean-Julien twirled a finger in the air, saying, “Ah-ahah. Turn around, then go.”
Teetering around in a careful but unsteady circle, East Texas shuffled like an old man into the crowd. Jean-Julien watched him until his white-haired head vanished from view. He blew air out his nostrils, still irritated. Why on earth did some people seem to think they could talk right over you whenever you said something they didn’t want to hear, like no? As if all their will-laced words would change your mind?