“Yup. Incorrigible, true-blue, one hundred percent pure evil. That’s you.”
Belladonna flapped a hand at her. “Stop. You had me at incorrigible.”
NINETEEN
MAGNETS FOR DISASTER
After Kerry had ducked past the glistening palmettos at the end of the driveway and vanished from view, Kallie spun around in the mud, cupped her hands around her mouth, and yelled, “Jacks!”
“Wait. I thought he wasn’t here,” Belladonna said.
“He got out of that grave, Bell,” Kallie replied. “But since the Baron mentioned smelling blood, he could be hurt and holed up somewhere.”
“Jacks!” Belladonna cried.
Thunder muttered, low and deep, moving away with the storm. The rain slackened, slowed to a stop, leaving the air hanging heavy with the smells of wet earth and ozone.
Kallie circled the silent house, peering in windows and yelling her cousin’s name as she went, Belladonna echoing her cries; but as hard as she listened for the sound of his teasing voice—Over here, p’tite peu. Hey, short stuff, you blind?—all she heard was the rain dripping from the eaves, the growl of fading thunder, and Belladonna’s shouts.
As Kallie came back around to the grave, she noticed tire tracks in the mud. According to Kerry, the assholes who’d grabbed Jackson had tossed him into his own truck. But the Dodge Ram was no longer here.
Breathing in a thick perfume of wet greenery, moisture-beaded hyacinths, and decaying wood, Kallie allowed her gaze to follow the tire tracks leading to the mouth of the driveway, and a horrible suspicion flashed like cheap neon in her mind.
Jackson had gotten out of his grave and managed to drive away in his abandoned truck, probably tearing up the gravel driveway to the dirt road. Hell, she would’ve floored the gas pedal in his place.
And he’d peeled out onto the road just as Layne had arrived.
Pushing her wet hair back from her face, Kallie studied the tire tracks. No. Jacks would’ve stopped if he’d collided with anyone. He never would’ve left a man lying beside the road, no matter the cost to himself.
Whereas the bastards who’d buried him in the first place probably wouldn’t have even slowed down.
So her happy fantasy of Jacks escaping, his faithful dog at his side, and driving home was tossed aside like a losing lottery ticket.
A less happy fantasy, one involving Jackson’s original kidnappers returning to dig him up—alive? Near death? Undead?—to take him to another of Doctor Heron’s pre-ordered designations left her cold, her hands knotted into fists.
Shit. Goddammit, Jacks. Where are you?
A sudden thought occurred to her, and she fumbled her cell phone from a pocket. Pulse racing, she speed-dialed Jackson’s number and held her breath as it began to ring. After the fifth ring, his voice mail message kicked on.
“If y’all meant to reach little ol’ moi, the good news is—you succeeded. Bad news is—I ain’t able to take your call at the moment, but kick back, have a drink, maybe two, and I’ll return your call tout à l’heure. Y’all know what to do at the beep.”
Disappointment seeping like ice water through her veins, Kallie thumbed in a text message—HOLD TIGHT. IM LOOKING 4 U—then hit send. With a sigh, she slipped her cell phone back into her pocket.
Kallie rubbed her face, weariness returning with leaden muscle vengeance. She couldn’t go home without her cousin. Didn’t want to go home without him. But Layne needed medical attention.
And, most likely, an exorcism.
Another quick glance down the driveway confirmed that Layne still hadn’t moved or regained consciousness and Kallie didn’t know whether to be scared or—given that goddamned Babette had taken up residence—relieved.
Her aunt was a skilled healer; most folks in Bayou Cyprés Noir took their injuries and ailments to her instead of going to the urgent care center at the south end of town, or to any of the local physicians.
But if Layne’s injuries required surgery or if his brain was swelling … those were things her aunt couldn’t tend to. Sooner or later, she would need to call McKenna in New Orleans. Hopefully they could put their differences aside long enough to help Layne.
She took one last look at the grave, throat aching.
I’m not giving up on you, Jacks.
Waving Belladonna over, Kallie waited for her shotgun-toting friend to join her, then said, “We gotta go.” She nodded at the driveway. “Layne.”
“I know.” Belladonna’s voice was pitched low. “Do you think that maybe Jacks drove himself home?”
Kallie shrugged. And even though she didn’t think so, she still hoped. “Maybe. But he didn’t answer his cell.”
“Maybe he’s being a good driver.”
“Maybe.”
Another fantasy, but one Kallie wanted to keep for the moment and, judging from a glance at Belladonna’s shadowed, half-turned-away face, so did her friend. Without another word, Kallie tucked Layne’s Glock into the back of her cutoffs, picked up Jackson’s soaked Dingo (the left one, she noticed), and started walking over to the Dodge Dart, with its opened passenger door.
Belladonna strode beside her, tall and willowy, the gravel loud beneath the soles of her platform boots. “Y’know,” she said, the shotgun crooked over her arm, “all that business in the grave. How is it possible for Cash to be influencing the loa of death? And speaking of loas, how the hell did one end up inside of you, girl? Did I miss something when I was sleeping at your aunt’s?”
“Shit, Bell, I’m sorry. I forgot you were busy snoozing when Gabr—dammit, Divinity—finally told me the truth—or part of it, anyway.”
“So spill.”
Pushing her wet hair back from her face and trying to finger-comb the thick, mud-snarled tresses into some kind of order, and failing, Kallie quietly told her friend about her tante’s dark, disquieting revelation about the long-ago removal of her soul, her Gros Bon Ange.
“When you were born to yo’ mama and papa, yo’ soul was removed to make room for de loa placed inside yo’ infant body. De same loa dat yo’ mama tried to awaken with blood and darkness by murdering yo’ papa and shooting you.”
When Kallie finished speaking, she became aware that Belladonna had stopped and was no longer walking beside her. Slowing to a halt, Kallie glanced over her shoulder. Belladonna blinked, then looked away, but not before Kallie saw her expression of horrified disbelief.
“Hellfire,” Belladonna whispered. She resumed walking, her pace slow, her stride shortened, catching up with Kallie a few moments later.
“You okay, Bell?”
After a moment, the voodooienne shook her head, then looked at Kallie again. Sympathy softened her features, but anger simmered in her autumn-lit eyes. “Why? Why would your mother do this? And how? And where the hell did she hide your soul?”
“I don’t know. On all accounts.” Kallie paused at the car’s passenger door while Belladonna swung around to the driver’s side, then looked at her friend from over the Dart’s roof. “But I plan to find out as soon—”
Kallie’s cell phone bumblebee-buzzed in her pocket. Slipping the phone free, she noted Tante on the caller ID and thumbed the talk button.
“You all right, girl?” her aunt asked. “You find yo’ cousin?”
“I found where he was buried, but he’s gone.” Hearing her aunt’s sharp intake of breath, Kallie hastened to add, “I mean gone as in not here. It looks like someone dug him up before we arrived. And by arrived, I mean at Doctor Heron’s place.”
“So it was dat fi’ de garce that had Jackson grabbed.”
“Yup. Looks like. But that’s not all.” Kallie launched into a condensed version of everything that had happened since they’d screeched to a halt in the road beside Layne’s unconscious body with her aunt breathing out Sweet Jesus every few moments.
Divinity sighed, a resigned and unhappy sound. “You be doing de right t’ing, Kallie-girl. Given dat de nomad’s injured, why don’t you meet me at de botanica ins
tead, and I’ll look de boy over dere.”
“Will do,” Kallie replied, relieved. The majority of Divinity’s healing herbs and roots and potions, along with her medical supplies, like gauze and needles and thread for suturing, were kept at her botanica in town. She would have easy access to anything she needed to help Layne, and if his injury proved beyond her skills, the urgent care center was just down and over a few streets.
“As for yo’ cousin, maybe we can do another reading to find his location. You sure his dog be with him?”
“I saw paw prints, so I’m pretty sure, yeah,” Kallie replied. “It’s the only thing that makes sense and she is gone too.”
“Dat good,” Divinity breathed in relief. “Dat be real good. At least Jackson won’t be alone. Now hurry, child. I t’ink you need to get out o’ dere before de Baron returns to finish what he started. I wish to hell Gabrielle had never done her invocation.”
“I don’t know if running will do any good,” Kallie said with a calm her pounding heart didn’t emulate. “Baron Samedi can find me anywhere.”
“No, he can’t,” Divinity snapped. “Not if I got any say about it. Don’t you talk like dat, girl. I t’ink prayers be a different kind o’ magic, so say yo’ Psalms and have Belladonna do a blessing, but don’t lay any tricks, hear?”
Remembering how the Baron’s voice had slipped into Cash’s hostile and bitter tones instead of his own, Kallie said, “I hear.”
“Den quit yapping and move yo’ heinie.” A dial tone signaled the end of the conversation. Her aunt’s typical sign-off.
In the car, Kallie shared her aunt’s advice with Belladonna as they drove down the driveway. A sharp pang pierced her heart at the sight of Layne’s motionless body in the grass.
“I’m not sure about that,” Belladonna said, braking the car to a halt. “Prayers and blessings use energy and focus just like spells. Except”—she pondered—“prayers are aimed at an entity instead of a goal. I mean, there’s a goal in the prayer—healing, deliverance from debt, sorrow, trouble, whatever—but the focus is on a saint or loa or Bon Dieu. But since we don’t know what’s causing the problem, we don’t know what’s safe and what’s not.”
“I think it’s me, Bell, I think I might be the cause,” Kallie said, getting out of the car. “Because of the loa. Maybe when Layne and I killed Doctor Heron, the violence awakened it. Divinity mentioned blood and dark-ness—that’s why my goddamned mother did what she did, after all.”
Sorry, baby. I ain’t got a choice.
“I don’t know about that,” Belladonna replied, yanking up the emergency brake. “If the loa was awake, wouldn’t you be … different somehow?”
“I don’t know.” Kallie paused to recline the passenger seat as far back as it would go, then hurried around to Layne and knelt beside his motionless form. The slow rise and fall of his chest reassured her.
Belladonna climbed out from behind the steering wheel of the idling car to join her. “Besides, even if that was true and the loa was responsible for the magic glitches, then wouldn’t it only affect the tricks that you fixed?”
“You would think so, but dunno. Maybe Divinity will have some ideas.”
“Or Gabrielle,” Belladonna added.
Kallie touched her fingers to Layne’s face. He didn’t stir. She eyed his lean and hard-muscled six-two length and realized that even with the two of them, hauling his deadweight, luscious ass to the car and hoisting him inside was going to take every bit of strength they had.
“You want to take his head or his feet?” Belladonna asked.
“His head,” Kallie replied.
“Guess that means I get to feel up his legs. Mmmmmm.”
“You say that like it’s something new,” Kallie said dryly, arching a Fess up eyebrow. “I’m sure you already felt up everything possible when you checked him for injuries.”
“No, but now I wish I had, dammit. I’ll keep that in mind for next time, Shug.”
“Don’t make me start talking with my fists again.”
Belladonna chuckled.
Swiveling around so she could loop her arms under Layne’s and lock them across his leather-jacketed chest, Kallie drew in a deep breath and caught a faint but familiar scent from his dreads—sweet orange and musky sandalwood—and hoped with everything she had that he would be all right. Prayed that Babette would depart without any problems.
Belladonna crouched at Layne’s feet, her hands locked onto his jeans-clad calves.
“Ready?” Kallie asked.
Belladonna nodded. “Yup. On three. One. Two. Three.”
Kallie had been right. By the time she and Belladonna had grunted and cussed and staggered their way over to the idling Dodge Dart, half carrying and half dragging Layne, and had wrestled him more or less into the passenger seat, Kallie was drenched in sweat and utterly drained of strength, her muscles trembling.
She collapsed, panting, against the side of the car. “Goddamn.”
“Jesus Christ,” Belladonna gasped, folding her arms on the Dodge Dart’s roof and leaning against the car. “I never thought I’d complain about a man being long and lean and all muscle, but that was before I had to cart an unconscious nomad around.”
Kallie nodded, wishing for a glass or three of cold water. “Sadly, we ain’t done yet, Bell,” she said, voice thick with exhaustion.
“He’s in the car,” Belladonna protested. “I think that’s mission accomplished.”
“His bike. We need to move it out of the road. It’s too heavy for me to do by myself. We can park it in the driveway until someone can come get it. Hopefully Layne himself or one of his clan.”
“Jesus Christ,” Belladonna groaned, then pushed herself away from the car, staggering for the puddled dirt road. “Let’s get it done, girl.”
Shoving the weight of her wet hair back from her face, Kallie stumbled after Belladonna, joining her beside the downed Harley. Once they’d battled the heavy machine into an upright position with more grunting, sweating, and cussing, they walked it up the driveway, Belladonna steering the handlebar on the left, Kallie the right.
After carefully easing the gravel-scratched and dinged Harley onto its kickstand in front of the house, Kallie and Belladonna headed back down the driveway to the Dodge Dart.
“Hauling nomads, pushing Harleys, shooting at the loa of death,” Belladonna grumbled as Kallie climbed into the backseat. “You owe me the biggest margarita ever made, girl. Two,” she corrected, sliding in behind the steering wheel and nodding in affirmation. “Two big-ass margaritas.”
“Two big-ass margaritas and cake,” Kallie agreed, scooting closer to Layne and stroking a finger along the wet length of one rain-darkened dread. She frowned as she realized her finger was shaking slightly.
Am I that goddamned tired? And realized yes; yes, she was. Exhaustion had filled her bones with lead and transformed her muscles into unlinked pieces of steel; even sitting upright took everything she had.
Maybe I’ll doze on the way back, she thought, but with a glance at Belladonna’s weary face, she realized how unfair that was. She needed to keep her friend company and awake during the drive home. Conversation, that was key.
Something easy. Something without any real thought. Something that wouldn’t tax the test pattern currently posing as her brain.
“So … if you could eat that slice of cake from anyone’s six-pack abs, who would it be?”
Belladonna glanced at Kallie in the rearview, hazel eyes glinting. “Ooooh. I like this game.” Her gaze shifted, caressed Layne’s stretched-out length. “Anyone?”
“Yup. Anyone but Layne.”
“Phooey. Spoilsport.”
“If anyone’s eating cake off his goddamned abs, it’s gonna be me.”
Belladonna grinned. “I’ll be sure to tell him that. I’m betting it’ll please him no end.”
Kallie narrowed her eyes. “You do and I’ll—”
“If you’re gonna eat cake off my goddamned abs, I’d prefer re
d velvet.”
Layne’s whispered voice whipped Kallie’s head around. He watched her from beneath his thick honey-blond lashes, face still drained of color, a faint smile on his lips. “Hey, sunshine.”
And that spark, that electric connection she felt every time she looked into his eyes for the first time after a separation, shocked through Kallie once more.
Layne’s eyes widened and, hearing the catch in his breath, Kallie had a feeling he’d felt the same skin-tingling shock.
“Hey, you,” Kallie breathed. Then heat rushed to her cheeks as she realized what he’d just overheard. “Oh, umm … I suppose you could have a say in the cake flavor.”
Layne’s smile deepened, but Kallie saw pain tightening the skin around his dilated pine-green eyes and creasing the small black fox inked beneath his right eye.
“Buttercream for the frosting,” he said. “Nah, make it chocolate buttercream.”
Oh. Yum. Leaning over to grasp his hand, her fingers folding through his, it was as though his warm lips pressed against hers in a soothing kiss, and all her fears—magic misfires, Jackson, the loa inside and the one hunting her—quieted.
Kallie murmured, “Maybe, if you’re a good boy.”
“And if I’m a bad boy?”
Warm flutters rippled through Kallie’s belly. The bumblebee-buzz vibration of her cell phone put the brakes on her budding fantasy. Holding up a Just a quick minute finger, Kallie fumbled for her phone. The caller ID let her know it was her aunt again.
Kallie thumbed the talk button. “Is something wrong?” she asked. “Something else, I mean?” Layne’s hand went lax in hers and a glance confirmed that he was out again. Reluctantly, she unthreaded her fingers from his.
“Oui, girl, just one more t’ing. And it’s somet’ing I hate to repeat. It looks like de wards might no longer be protecting de coast. We be worried dat dis weird juju backfire might bring de wards down or have dem acting as magnets for disaster instead.”