“Nomad, I don’t care how good you look in wet boxers—or out of them,” Belladonna grumbled, “you puke and y’all are on your own.”
“Ain’t you just an angel of mercy?” Layne replied.
Kallie looked up to see a smile twitch across his bloodless lips. She felt a smile pull at her own when he winked at her.
“Damn straight,” Belladonna affirmed. “Now, move your fine ass.”
Still holding the back door open, Divinity called, “Sometime dis century.”
“Yes, ma’am,” all three replied in unison. Then laughed.
TWENTY-FOUR
UNBROKEN TRUST
Divinity’s consultation room at the back of the botanica held carved oak tray tables, an examination table, and two white-sheeted twin beds. Shelves lined the walls, displaying bottles full of potions and oils, jars brimming with roots and herbs and powders, dressed and undressed candles, along with medical and first aid supplies.
Kallie and Belladonna helped Layne over to the nearest pristine bed, Divinity and Gabrielle bringing up the rear.
“You need to undress, boy,” Divinity ordered. “Yo’ clothes be wet. De girls can take dem upstairs and toss dem into de washer.”
“Wait,” Kallie said, tugging at Layne’s leather jacket. The metal studs jingled. “Let’s get this off first.” Once she’d removed his jacket, she helped him strip down to a pair of black boxers. Blue and purple and black bruises, along with road rash, peppered the skin along the right side of his body, bleeding into his tattoos.
“Ouch,” Kallie sympathized.
“Socks too,” Divinity said.
Layne pulled off his socks, then Kallie helped him ease down onto the bed, the crisp sheets crinkling beneath him and wafting the citrus-and-spice scent of Florida Water—lavender, lemon, jasmine, and cloves—into the air. He stretched out with a soft, pained sigh, then draped his arm over his eyes.
While Divinity covered Layne with a warm blanket, Kallie went over to the dimmer switch near the doorway and dialed down the light until it was just a dim night-light glow.
“Better?” she asked.
“Much. Thanks, sunshine.” But the arm remained over his eyes.
“You go on upstairs and shower, Kallie,” Divinity said. “You look like you been wallowing in a pigsty, you.” She gave Belladonna the critical once-over also. “Mm-hmm. You ain’t much better, girl.”
Belladonna smoothed a hand over her damp, mud-spattered tunic. “Yes, ma’am.” She glanced at Kallie. “You coming? You won first dibs on the shower.”
“Yeah, I just want to make sure everything’s all right first,” Kallie said, returning to the bed and gathering up Layne’s clothes. “You need anything?” she asked him.
“I’m good,” Layne said. “You go.”
“If by good you mean a head full of tiny men with sledgehammers banging at your skull from the inside,” Kallie said, “then yeah, you’re dandy.”
Layne snorted, then seemed to regret it as even his new greenish cast drained from his face and more sweat popped up on his forehead. Kallie grabbed the trash can and held it next to the nomad’s head while Belladonna scurried from the room, hands pressed against her ears.
Layne swallowed hard, then waved the trash can away. “False alarm.”
“For de moment.” Divinity joined Kallie beside the bed, a stoppered green glass bottle in her hands, and eyed Layne. She uncorked the bottle. A sweet aroma curled into the air—allspice, poppies, and cinnamon—along with the sharp odor of alcohol. “Drink dis. It’ll take de edge off yo’ pain and nausea.”
Lowering his arm, Layne regarded the bottle dubiously. “But it won’t put me out, right? I got a battle going on inside and I really need to keep conscious. I need to focus as much as possible.”
Divinity drew herself up to her full, magically looming five-seven. “Who be de healer here, nomad? You or me?”
“Say ‘You,’” Kallie stage-whispered.
A wry smile twisted up the corners of Layne’s mouth. “That would be you, ma’am,” he said, accepting the bottle and drinking from it until Divinity told him to stop.
“Now lie back down.” Divinity took the bottle back from him and worked the cork back into its mouth. “And let me know when de pain starts to fade.”
Murmuring his assent, Layne eased his head back onto the pillow and draped a muscle-sculpted arm over his eyes once more. With a satisfied nod, Divinity walked away, crossing the room to join Gabrielle at the worktable.
Kallie grasped Layne’s hand, gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’ll see you in a bit, okay?”
“Go on, sunshine,” Layne replied, his words soft, slurred, his voice already drowsy. He squeezed her hand back. “I’ll be here.”
Kallie reluctantly released him, then hugged his damp, road-stained clothes against her chest and stalked over to her aunt’s worktable. “Why the hell did you lie to him about the potion?” she hissed, arrowing a furious look at Divinity.
“Because de boy woulda argued wit’ me and I ain’t got time fo’ dat kinda nonsense,” Divinity replied in a low voice, grinding herbs with a pestle. Bundles of leaves and other plants rested on the table, awaiting their turn—bitter weed, boneset, devil’s shoestrings.
“He said he needed to stay awake, needed to focus,” Kallie reminded her in a strained whisper.
“No doubt he do,” Divinity murmured. “But de pain in his head ain’t making dat possible, so de more he struggles wit’ it, de more he drains himself of strength and de ability to focus.”
“She’s right.” Gabrielle, measuring ground herbs and roots into a pot of water on the table, glanced at Kallie. “Layne’s going to lose his fight against Babette if he keeps sapping his will by struggling with his pain.”
“If he’s unconscious, are the ghosts inside of him unconscious too?” Kallie asked.
Divinity shrugged one shoulder. “Yo’ guess is as good as mine as far as Vessels go. I know a little, but only a little.”
Kallie looked over her shoulder at Layne. His chest rose and fell with an easy, untroubled rhythm. She wanted nothing more in that moment than to crawl under the blankets with him and sleep.
As if reading her mind, Divinity said, “Go upstairs, girl. Get cleaned up and catch some sleep. Nothing for you to do here. Not now, anyway. Go on. We’ll talk later—about everyt’ing. I promise.”
“But Jackson is still out there,” Kallie said, voice husky. “He might be hurt, potioned, God knows what. How can I sleep?”
“If you don’t, you ain’t gonna be any good to yo’ cousin or anyone else,” Divinity said. Voice gentling, she added, “Jackson is gonna need you at de top of yo’ game, Kallie. Rest—for his sake, if not for yo’ own. I’m gonna try de shells and see if I can get a fix on de boy.”
Exhaustion smudged Kallie’s thoughts. “Layne …”
“He be fine. I’ll take care o’ yo’ nomad.”
Kallie opened her mouth to protest, to say that Layne wasn’t her nomad, that they’d known each other for just a couple of days and only kissed once—well, okay, and made out a little—but the denial dried up in her throat as she remembered how she’d fought to bring him back when his hex-poisoned heart had stopped, and how he’d fought for her, knives flashing in the moonlight as he sank them into Doctor Heron’s chest.
Remembered the feel of his lips against hers.
A few days that felt like a lifetime.
Remembered looking into green eyes that whispered a promise of always and again into her heart. A promise that might now end—between the hurricane and the loa—before it truly began.
“You do that,” Kallie said, voice rough. Then walked from the room.
In the end, Belladonna beat Kallie to the shower.
By the time she had climbed the outside stairs to Belladonna’s apartment, her friend was stepping out of the steam-filled bathroom wrapped in a plush burgundy bath towel and rubbing her hair with another, smaller burgundy towel.
Tendrils of steam
fragrant with the smells of Ivory soap, Listerine, and jasmine-and-honey shampoo curled into the hall.
“Et tu, Belladonna?” Kallie asked, walking into the hall and tossing Layne’s clothes on top of the white Maytag.
Bending over and wrapping the towel around her hair with a deft twist, Belladonna said, “You were right about me throwing the rock-paper-scissors challenge.” She straightened, patting her turban. “So I figured I’d make it up to you and do the right thing by taking the first shower.”
“Magnanimous of you. I applaud your integrity. Did you leave any hot water?”
“Plenty. But I have a feeling you need a cold shower, not a—” Belladonna stopped talking. A vertical line creased the skin between her hazel eyes. Her amusement wisped away like shower steam. “What’s wrong, Shug?”
“It’s Jackson,” Kallie said, finally giving vent to her fears. “The Baron mentioned that he smelled loups-garous at the grave, hinted that they might’ve taken him.”
Belladonna’s frown deepened. “Loups-garous? Seriously?”
Kallie nodded.
“But why? Why would werewolves dig up and nab Jacks?”
“I don’t know.” Kallie sighed. She tugged her fingers through her tangled, mud-stiff hair. Yikes. I really need to hit the shower.
Belladonna leaned one bare brown shoulder against the bathroom doorjamb. “Do you think loups-garous exist, Shug? I mean, I hear rumors about them all the time, that they live in packs out on some of the bayous, but …”
“When I was little I used to believe in loups-garous, and Jacks and I would—” The words died in Kallie’s throat as memory finally unfolded and drew her gaze inward.
She and Jacks race through the night-cooled grass and underneath the old oak’s thick twisted branches chasing fireflies— mouches à feu —and capturing them in one of his mama’s— Tante Lucia’s—jam jars. When Jacks looks at Kallie, grinning, his mischievous eyes glow with a soft green light. Faerie dust and fireflies and summer moonlight.
“Wanna hear a secret? But you gotta swear never to tell.”
“Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Jacks flops down into the dew-glistening grass, then rolls over so he’s looking up at the stars jeweling the black velvet sky. He folds his arms behind his head.
“My papa be loup-garou,” he announces proudly. “That means werewolf.”
“Are you one too?”
“Kinda. I’m a half blood. I won’t do a big Change into a real wolf, but I’ll do a little Change, me, and be a two-legged wolf someday.”
“I wish I could be a wolf. I’d howl all night and eat up the people I don’t like.” Kallie plops onto the grass beside him. She holds up the jar of fireflies, traces their soft light against the glass with one finger. “Does Nonc Nicolas eat people?”
“No,” her cousin snorts. “But Papa could if he wanted to, him. He changes into a wolf, a big black one, and chases me around the yard and gives me rides on his back and stuff.”
“What about your mama? She a loo gah-roo too?”
“Nope. Just a hoodoo like your mama.”
“How did your papa become a werewolf? Did one bite him?”
“C’est ça couillon,” Jackson scoffs, making their three-month-age difference sound like a chasm years wide. “It don’t work like that.”
Kallie stops tracing light and turns her head to glare at her cousin. “Hey, don’t call me names, booger-brain. It ain’t nice.”
Jackson looks at her, his eyes still glowing faerie-dust green. “Big baby. Now who’s calling names?”
“Ain’t no baby and you had it coming.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Uh-huh. Did so.”
Jackson grins, his teeth flashing white in the darkness, and returns his fairie-dust gaze to the sky. “I guess,” he allows. “But Papa wasn’t bitten or nothing. He was born loup-garou in a town fulla loups-garous called Le Nique.”
“Le Nique,” Kallie repeats, trying out the sound.
“We used to go there all the time when I was real little, but then we stopped.”
“Why?”
“Dunno.”
Kallie holds up the jar. “Wanna let them go now?”
“Sure, we can always catch them again, us.”
Kallie unscrews the jar lid, tosses the fireflies into the night, and they wing away in zigzaggy paths of pulsing light.
“Remember, you can’t tell anyone about this, you. Papa says that people be afraid of loups-garous. That if people find us, they will kill us—all of us. Even baby Junalee. So this has gotta stay secret, okay?”
She feels his gaze on her face and turns her head to look at him. She sees a desperate trust in his glowing green eyes. A trust she’d never break, no matter how many names he called her.
“I’ll never tell. Not Mama. Not Papa. No one. Ever.”
And she hadn’t. At six years old, she’d kept Jackson’s secret; and as she’d grown older and that night of fireflies and wolf whispers had grown dimmer, she’d come to believe that Jackson’s words had been a little kid’s make-believe fable, one she’d been eager to share in during a time in their lives when anything was possible: swamp monsters, giants, dragons, and loups-garous.
After all, their mamas had already showed them that magic was real.
Kallie’s heart pounded hard and fast, stole her breath. Maybe it had never been make-believe. Maybe Jackson had told her the truth that long-ago summer night.
But then, why had he never mentioned it again? Never again breathed the word—loup-garou?
“Shug?” Belladonna repeated. “You fall asleep standing up and with your eyes open? Talk to me, girl.”
“Le Nique,” Kallie said as the resurrected memory receded once more. “Ever heard of it? It’s a place, a town.”
Belladonna considered, then shook her turbaned head. “Nope. Why?”
“I think—thanks to the goddamned Baron—I might have a lead on Jackson.” Hope flickered to life, a soft firefly glow. “I gotta talk to Gabr—dammit!—Divinity and see what—”
“No, uh-uh, you don’t,” Belladonna said, stepping forward and grabbing Kallie by the arms. “Here’s a list of the only things you gotta do: get in the shower, eat something, and catch some sleep. It doesn’t have to be in that order, but each thing on that list will be done. If you want to help Jackson and Layne and the rest of Louisiana, then you need to take care of yourself first.” Belladonna’s voice dropped into a dangerous purr. “You hearing me, Shug?”
“Yeah, I am, but—”
A warning light sparked in Belladonna’s eyes, a challenging Don’t even think about crossing me, I will ruin your day gleam. “I said,” she purred again, “you hearing me, Shug?”
Survival instinct kicked in and Kallie gave the only answer she could. “Yeah, yeah, I’m hearing you.”
Belladonna looked her over, then released Kallie’s arms and folded her own over her towel-draped chest with an imperious ease that Divinity would’ve envied. “Mmmhmm. That’s right. Now, get your fanny in the shower.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Bicycle Cards and Cockleshells
Divinity finished cleaning the last of the gravel from the abraded road rash stretching along Layne’s right side from rib cage to hip—as though his jacket and T-shirt had rucked up as he’d slid down the road. She daubed a salve smelling of lavender, beeswax, and astringent comfrey onto his cleansed skin, then stepped back so Gabrielle could bandage gauze over the rawest sections.
“I t’ink dat’s it,” Divinity said, wiping her fingers on the white cotton towel draped over her shoulder. “No broken bones, no internal injuries, just one serious knock to de noggin. He be one lucky nomad, him.”
“That he is,” Gabrielle agreed. “Good thing he was wearing a helmet. Even though nomads are exempt from helmet laws, they seem to be pretty good about protecting their skulls.”
Carrying the basin of blood-pinked water over to the sink, Divinity snorted. “Dat was major foolishn
ess, de federal government making dat treaty with de clans. Dey should hafta abide by de same laws we do.”
Gabrielle gave a chuckle devoid of humor. “That’s funny coming from an identity thief.”
Jaw tight, Divinity emptied the basin in the sink, set it on the counter, then turned around to face the mambo, arms crossed over her chest. Gabrielle’s red-scarfed head was bent over her task, her hands smoothing and taping squares of gauze intermittently along Layne’s side.
“You were in Haiti. And I had need, me.”
“So you’ve said. You were protecting your niece. I understand all that.”
“Den what do you want from me?”
Gabrielle straightened, then swiveled around, her fingers squeezing around gauze pads and medical tape, her expression composed, her eyes full of icicles. “An apology, to start.”
Divinity met the mambo’s cold gaze and lifted her chin. “I already gave you one. But if you want anudder—”
Gabrielle’s composure gave way to indignation. “You did not. You never apologized. In fact, you said you had no regrets.”
“I be t’inking yo’ ears be fulla cotton, ’cuz I know I told you—” An old-fashioned bring-bring ringtone from the pocket of her skirt cut off Divinity’s scathing retort.
Holding Gabrielle’s narrowed-eye glare as well as serving up one of her own, Divinity pulled out her cell. “Oui?”
“I couldn’t reach you at home,” Addie greeted, her voice wound pigtail tight. “But I didn’t think you’d be at the botanica, what with all the mishaps. Finally dawned on me to try your cell.”
“Well, I am at de botanica,” Divinity said, “taking care o’ someone who took himself a bad tumble. What news you got?”
Addie drew in a deep breath, then said, “It’s been confirmed. The wards have become storm magnets and they’re luring Hurricane Evelyn to the Louisiana shore like those sailor-luring nymphs who tried to snare Odysseus.”
“But didn’t de ward hoodoos undo de wards? I t’ought dat had been decided—”