Black Dust Mambo

  Someone was pounding on the door hard enough to make it shake in its frame. And yelling like a madwoman. Belladonna lifted her mouth from the nomad’s and glanced at Kallie. But Kallie continued her compressions against Layne’s chest, her eyes closed, sweat beading her forehead, as though she heard nothing.

  And maybe she didn’t. Girl was in the zone, totally focused on the nomad and the rhythm she’d created in hopes of jump-starting his hex-flatlined heart. The air crackled with power and seemed to ripple around her like silk fluttering in a breeze.

  Belladonna frowned. Never seen that before. How much of herself is she pouring into that boy?

  “OPEN THE DOOR!” the madwoman screamed. Belladonna jumped to her feet, ran to the door, and yanked it open. A pixie of a woman in jeans and a huge Bourbon Street T-shirt stood there, her fist lifted for another door-shaking, hotel-quaking knock. Belladonna’s gaze skipped from the pixie’s short, black, bed-spiked hair to the blackbird V tattooed beneath her right eye.

  Lovely. Another nomad.

  Oh, and in the pixie nomad’s other hand? A gun. Natch.

  Belladonna grabbed the woman by the arm and hauled her into the room, slamming the door shut behind her. “What the hell are you thinking, raising a ruckus like that?” Belladonna snapped. She waved a hand at the gun. “Put that damned thing away. We’ve got trouble enough, and you don’t need to be adding to it.”

  The pixie’s doe-eyed gaze skipped to the dead nomad on the bloodied bed, then to just-technically-dead Layne sprawled on the carpet in front of the bed. She sucked in a breath, and the color drained from her face when she took in the sight of a nearly naked Kallie kneeling beside him and trying to stiff-arm life back into him.

  Despite all that, the pixie didn’t do any of the foolish things Belladonna had been expecting given her performance at the door. No screaming. No fainting. No weeping and wailing or gnashing of teeth.

  Instead the pixie nomad snugged her gun into the back of her jeans beneath her whale of a T-shirt. “Wha’ can I do?” she asked, a rolling lilt to her words.

  “Before you interrupted me, I was breathing into him,” Belladonna replied. “You take over, and I’ll call for an ambulance.”

  Without another word, the pixie hurried across the floor and dropped to her knees beside Layne’s body, then bent over him and went to work.

  Using the phone on the nightstand beside the bed, Belladonna called the Prestige’s front desk and requested that paramedics be sent to Kallie’s room. Then, realizing what would happen when the medics got a good look at the carnage in Kallie’s room with its rapidly rising body count, she asked that the carnival administrators be contacted as well and a representative sent to 415.

  Belladonna hung up the receiver and turned around. She opened her mouth, intending to tell Kallie that trouble in all shapes, sizes, and levels of authority was on the way, but when her gaze settled on her trouble-bait best friend, the words piled up in her throat.

  A white aura streaked with deep purple and sparkling with pinpricks of full-moon silver crowned Kallie’s bowed head and flickered around her body like tiny pearlescent tongues of fire. Power—strong, deep, and pure, and unlike anything Belladonna had ever felt from Kallie before—radiated into the room. But something muddied the light spilling out from underneath Kallie’s palms and across Layne’s green tank.

  Belladonna stepped closer, narrowing her gaze. An inky and virulent blackness seeped up from the nomad’s chest and into Kallie’s hands—as though she was siphoning the hex into her own body.

  Belladonna’s heart kicked hard and fast against her ribs. A growing shadow pooled behind Kallie as the hex venom she pulled from Layne trickled from the soles of her bare feet and soaked into the carpet, staining it black.

  Oh, that can’t be good—for us or housekeeping.

  Belladonna fought the urge to grab Kallie by the shoulders and yank her away from the nomad. She realized it was too late in any case. Whatever damage the hex venom could/would do to Kallie had already happened. The only thing Belladonna could do now was to help her friend conquer and dissipate the nasty trick.

  Stepping over to the thickening shadow, Belladonna reached into her leather bag and felt around for her bottle of uncrossing powder and pulled it free. She drew in a deep breath and centered herself as she focused every ounce of her attention on the tainted juju slicked like oil upon the floor.

  The heady scents of sandalwood, five-finger grass, patchouli, and myrrh wafted into the air when Bella-donna tapped the dark gold-and-green powder into her hand. “I call upon the powers of Gédé in the names of Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte and ask for your help in unmaking this unholy trick.” She traced a cross over the darkness oozing across the carpet.

  A final twist of black wormed out from Kallie’s foot and merged with the puddle.

  Belladonna knelt beside the shadow, her heartbeat steady despite the fear icing the blood in her veins, and lifted her powder-filled palm to her lips. “Saint Michael, give me courage, and Saint Expedite, give me speed to end this bad trick once and for all before it claims another victim,” she whispered. “Au nom du Père, le Fils, le Saint Esprit, si soit-il.” She blew the powder into the liquid shadow.

  The black puddle writhed as though touched by the finger of bon Dieu. Thick smoke stinking of bitter worm-wood, seared pine, and the rotten-egg odor of sulfur fogged the air. Coughing, Belladonna fanned a hand in front of her face and rose to her feet. When the smoke cleared, the pool of blackness surrounding Kallie had vanished.

  “Hellfire,” Belladonna coughed.

  “That’s it, Layne, keep fighting, damn you,” she heard Kallie mutter. “Don’t you give up.”

  Belladonna glanced over to see the pixie lift her head and sit back as the nomad’s eyes fluttered open, dried blood flaking from his lashes. His heavy-lidded gaze fixed on Kallie.

  “I am fighting, woman,” he whispered. “Quit pummeling me.”

  The dark-haired swamp beauty in her red undies—filled out well enough to stop his heart again—quit pounding against Layne’s chest and opened her eyes. Just mere pinpricks, her pupils, as though she’d been staring into the sun, her violet eyes gleaming with light and heat—a heat Layne felt inside of him with each renewed pulse of his heart.

  She lay a trick on me, or am I just bewitched?

  Kallie blinked, her expression perplexed. And for a split second, Layne had the weird sensation that she was thinking and feeling exactly the same things he was—until she spoke, her words suggesting otherwise.

  “About time, dammit,” she said, brushing sweat-damp tendrils of her dark coffee-colored hair from her face. “I was beginning to think you’d died just to spite me.”

  “Nope. Don’t know you well enough to spite you.”

  “Give it time,” she replied absently, pulling one dangling bra strap back up onto her shoulder.

  “Shhh, you need to rest,” another voice interjected. “Medics are on their way.”

  Layne recognized the soft, faded brogue. He turned his head and looked into Mc Kenna’s dark eyes. “Hey, buttercup,” he said. “Don’t think I need medics. Not now. What’re you doin’ here?”

  She cupped her warm palm against his face. “Ye called me, luv. Now shut up and rest.” She glanced at the bed, sorrow filling her eyes. “I’ll check on our Gage.”

  As she started to rise to her feet, Layne grabbed her arm, stopping her. “He’s dead,” he said, more roughly than he’d intended. “Don’t touch him. Just leave him be.”

  Her dark eyes searching his, McKenna sat back down, crossing her legs underneath her. Layne slid his hand from her arm, the touch of her skin and the soft, pale down on her arm as familiar as his own flesh. And, as always, dammit, soothing.

  “Mind telling me why?” McKenna asked. “Wha’ happened to Gage and to you?”

  “Hexed,” Kallie volunteered. “And the trick that killed Gage still had enough juice to knock Layne on his ass when he touched him.”

  “A h
ex that’s now gone,” said a flannel-smooth voice. Layne looked up at Kallie’s tall, slim-muscled friend with her halo of black and blue curls. She held up a half-empty bottle of amber dust. A satisfied, catlike smile stretched across her lips.

  “Thanks, Bell,” Kallie said.

  Mc Kenna looked at Kallie and her expression hardened. “And how did both men happen to get hexed in yer room?”

  “I didn’t lay the goddamned trick, so how the hell would I know?” Kallie replied, sitting back on her heels and meeting Mc Kenna glare for glare.

  Layne felt sick as he remembered what he’d felt—or rather what he hadn’t felt—when he’d touched Gage and had tried to summon his clan-brother’s spirit.

  Absolutely nothing.

  “Gage was more than hexed,” Layne said. “I couldn’t reach him.”

  “How is tha’ possible?” Mc Kenna asked. “Yer a Vessel and—”

  “Maybe he’d already crossed over,” Kallie cut in, earning herself another narrow-eyed glare from McKenna in the process.

  “No. He hadn’t fucking crossed over because there was nothing left of him to cross over. Nothing remains of him.” Layne’s voice was strained even to his own ears. “The hex not only swallowed his life, it ate his soul. Like it tried to eat mine.”

  FOUR

  SOUL EATER

  Fear slicked a finger down Kallie’s spine. Soul eater. That kind of evil, that kind of blackest-of-the-black hex, required incredible power and was spoken of only in guarded whispers for fear of calling it down. She stared at her hands, pulse racing.

  How the hell did I manage to reel the goddamned hex out of Layne and through me without it killing both of us, body and soul?

  “Holy Mother,” the little nomad breathed, distress darkening her eyes.

  “Hellfire.” Belladonna’s gaze settled on the floor just behind Kallie. A muscle ticked near her left eye. “Jesus Christ.”

  “You sure?” Kallie whispered, meeting Layne’s gaze.

  “Wish I wasn’t.” Layne eased up onto his elbows, wincing. He touched his fingertips to his sternum. Winced again.

  “I broke a few ribs,” Kallie said. “Couldn’t be helped.”

  “I’m alive, so I ain’t complaining.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  A smile brushed Layne’s lips.

  “Stay down,” the little nomad gal said, glaring at Layne as if she were a towering basketball center and not a leprechaun. “Let me check ye over before ye do a man-stupid thing like get up and act like everything’s all rosy and never been better.”

  “Hell, woman,” Layne muttered. “You’d think we were still married. You lost the right to boss me around when we got divorced.”

  “I never bossed ye. Not once. Directed, maybe. Guided, sure. But never bossed,” the black-haired leprechaun declared.

  Layne snorted in reply.

  “Hush up, you. Just lie down,” the never-bossy ex-wife ordered. “I need to make sure yer all right.”

  With a resigned grunt, Layne eased back down onto the carpet. He looked at Kallie from beneath his bloodstained lashes. “By the way, this is McKenna. She’s a shaman. McKenna, this is Kallie. She’s a hoodoo.”

  “Charmed,” Mc Kenna said, her tone anything but.

  “Be nice, Kenn,” Layne warned.

  “Oh, please, not on my account. I wouldn’t want her to strain herself.” Kallie flashed the nomad leprechaun a sweet-as-fresh-baked-apple-pie smile.

  “Strain this.” McKenna lifted a hand, then extended the middle finger, an equally sweet smile on her lips.

  Looked like the leprechaun had some sass to her. Kallie couldn’t help smiling again—but hopefully not in any kind of way that could be misconstrued as friendly.

  “Hate to break up a good catfight and all,” Belladonna said, her voice once again a velvet purr, “but paramedics and carnival security are on their way up. I suggest y’all get your shit together.”

  “Lovely,” Kallie muttered.

  Mc Kenna bent over Layne and touched her fingertips to his temples. Her eyes closed. Kallie felt power flow from the woman and into Layne, power as deep and strong as an ancient river sure of its course. Power deeper even than Gabrielle’s—and, until now, Kallie had never felt energy as intense as her tante’s.

  Just who is this leprechaun anyhow?

  Kallie studied Layne’s fairy-sized former wife. Her small, sharp features cast the illusion of childlike youth, but now Kallie noticed the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes and the laugh lines bracketing her sensual mouth. Still young and good-looking (okay, really good-looking), yes, but definitely older than Layne, maybe even by a good fifteen or twenty years.

  Which one of them had ended the marriage? The way the leprechaun kept touching Layne made Kallie think the divorce was still fresh enough to act as an aphrodisiac—must have you since you’re no longer mine.

  Not that it was any of Kallie’s concern. Well, maybe a little, given that she’d just saved the man’s life. She frowned. Didn’t that make her responsible for him? Not that she needed or wanted the responsibility, since she was still trying to figure out how to handle her own life, but still . . .

  She remembered the shock that had tingled through her the first time she’d looked into Layne’s green eyes, remembered the inner finger-to-the-lips hush that had followed.

  “Here.” Belladonna shoved a wad of pink material that smelled faintly of irises and green-tea-scented body lotion under Kallie’s nose—Kallie’s well-worn and comfy pink bathrobe. “All kinds of officials are going to be here any minute. And you shouldn’t look like the stripper hired for a bachelor party.”

  “A horror movie bachelor party,” McKenna murmured, opening her eyes and lifting her head. “The stripper of death.” The little nomad’s expression suggested she wasn’t entirely kidding.

  “I said be nice, woman,” Layne growled. He sat up, pain crinkling the corners of his eyes and tightening his lips. But his pine-colored gaze held only humor.

  Kallie snatched the robe from Belladonna’s hand. She slid her errant bra strap back onto her shoulder again, then rose to her feet. Chin lifted and holding Mc Kenna’s gaze, she belted on the robe. “So how is he? Layne, I mean?”

  Mc Kenna shot her a sharp glance. “How do ye mean? In bed, or healthwise?”

  Kallie blinked. “Healthwise! I’m sure he’s fine in bed.” When Mc Kenna’s lips parted as though to speak, Kallie hastily held up a hand and blurted, “No. Don’t answer that. Totally not necessary.”

  “Hello, I’m right here,” Layne said. “I’m fine. Dandy, even. In all ways. So I’ve been told.”

  “He’s good, aye.” A knowing smile curved McKenna’s lips. “Now healthwise, I found no trace of foreign magic in him, and everything seems to be in working order. Thanks to you.”

  Kallie stared at her, decided the nomad’s words were sincere, then shrugged one shoulder. “Well, okay, you’re welcome, but I didn’t do it for you.”

  “And now it’s your turn to be nice, Shug,” Belladonna murmured. “Give it a try.”

  “I am being nice.” Kallie swiveled around to face Belladonna. “I wanna take a look at the bed before everyone swoops in and tosses us out. See if there’s anything to indicate who mighta laid this goddamned trick.”

  Belladonna nodded, her curls bobbing. “Okay. And may I point out that we’re dealing with an enemy that wanted Gage more than dead—he wanted Gage erased from existence? That’s a very special kinda hating. It also means we’re in way over our heads.”

  “We need to contact our clan,” Layne said. “This is nomad business. We’ll deal with it.”

  “He’s right,” Mc Kenna said.

  “No offense, but where’s your clan at right now?” Belladonna asked.

  “Florida,” Layne replied.

  Belladonna perched a hand on her hip. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot they can do to help you at the moment. And something needs to be done now. Given that this is a murder-by-magic,
I requested carnival authority, not the cops.”

  “Law involvement is the last thing we want,” Kallie agreed. “The switched-off may not believe in magic or the supernatural, but they do believe in Manson-style madness, and that’s how they’ll see this. We need to find who did this to Gage and why.”

  “Oh, we’ll find the bastard,” Layne said, his voice cold and flat.

  “Question is, how did the killer even know Gage would be here?” Kallie asked.

  Belladonna tapped a blue-lacquered fingernail against her chin, her gaze on Layne. “If Gage told you about hooking up with Kallie, maybe he told someone else too.”

  “And the word got to the wrong person,” Kallie said. “But why kill Gage with a potential witness present?”

  “Maybe being passed out in the can saved you from dying too,” Belladonna said. “Or maybe it made you convenient to pin the murder on. Did it look like anyone broke into the room? Was the door unlocked?”

  Kallie shook her head. “I don’t know. Not that I noticed, anyway. Maybe whoever it was had a passkey. Hell, what a mess.”

  “A mess?” Layne repeated. He looked at Gage’s body on the bed. A muscle flexed in his jaw. “That what you call murder in your neck of the woods, hoodoo woman? A mess?”

  Kallie bit her lower lip, wishing she could take back her poor choice of words. But they were already out there, and she knew from personal experience that more words would only fan the flames into a heart-devouring bonfire.

  “Yo’ mama wasn’t herself, honey-girl. You were de moon at night for her, de sun during the day. Her life done revolved around you.”

  “Maybe it shouldn’t-a. Maybe that’s why she pulled the trigger.”

  “Kallie, no, don’t even t’ink dat—”

  “No one should ever live for anyone else.”

  Nothing anyone could say would stitch together a grief-torn heart. Only time eroded the rough edges and smoothed them away, like a river over rocks. But also like a river, time deepened the crevices carved within by violent loss. By betrayal.

  “Sorry, baby, I ain’t got a choice.”

  Kallie shut the memory down. Over and done with a helluva long time ago.