Two men wearing black ski masks, jeans, and black T-shirts dashed into the living room, shotguns in their black-gloved hands. The ominous shuh-shunk of rounds being pumped into place echoed throughout the room.
Kallie’s heart launched into overdrive, racking a round of adrenaline into her veins. She eyed the cards still clutched in her hands. Welcome to a setback. Hello, delay. Goddamned five of spades.
TWO
HOUSE FULL O’ HOODOOS
“Don’t none of y’all make a fucking move!” The taller of the two men yelled as he halted beside the coffee table, his shotgun swinging between Kallie and Belladonna on the sofa and Divinity and Gabrielle at the cherrywood rockers opposite. Kallie noticed the back end of a blond mullet poking out of his ski mask. “Or I’ll blow your fucking brains out!”
“Cash, man, tone it down a little,” his partner said, voice low and uneasy. “I ain’t real comfortable with that kinda language around women.”
“What the hell have I fucking said about using my name on jobs, asswipe?” Cash grated through clenched teeth. “How many goddamned times do I hafta tell you, Kerry? There. How does it feel, Kerry-Kerry-goddamned-fucking-Kerry?”
“You don’t hafta to be such a dick about it,” Kerry muttered.
Belladonna made an odd snorting sound, like she was choking. Kallie risked a quick glance and confirmed that her friend had clasped both hands over her mouth, trying to trap the laughter inside.
“Cash and Kerry?” Kallie questioned, speaking for them all. “Y’all kidding?”
“Shut the hell up,” Cash snarled, pointing the shotgun’s dark mouth at her. “And sit your ass down.”
Kerry glanced at Divinity and said, “Apologies for the language, ma’am. My mama always told me to be respectful around womenfolk.”
Divinity’s hands dropped to her lavender-skirted hips as she drew herself up to her magically looming five-seven and lifted her chin, the expression on her light cocoa-colored face forbidding.
“Yo’ apologies ain’t accepted, boy,” she said. “Breaking into a house is a sight more disrespectful dan de language. And I’m sure yo’ mama would agree dat aiming shotguns at de people inside dat house be even more disrespectful. And dis ain’t just a house full o’ women. Dis be a house full o’ hoodoos.”
“And mambos,” Gabrielle added, folding her arms underneath the bustline of her carnation-red blouse and giving a curt nod of her red-scarfed head for emphasis.
Kallie glanced at her. Well, one question answered.
Kerry’s ski-mask-encircled eyes widened. “Hoodoos? Mambos?”
Cash snorted. “Hoodoos and mambos. Different names for the same thing—con artists. Kerry-man, if brains were leather, you wouldn’t have enough to saddle a damned june bug.”
“Ain’t true,” Kerry protested, shaking his head. “I ain’t the stupid one here. At least I know that hoodoos handle juju and potions and medicines and mambos are like voodoo priestesses—all about the religion and the loas and shit. You’re the one who ain’t got enough brains to saddle a june bug.”
Kallie offered Kerry a sweet-as-pecan-pie smile and held up the deck of cards. “And y’all happened to interrupt a reading.”
“I don’t think the loa are gonna care much for that, you messing with their gris-gris,” Belladonna said, her voice a soft, velvety purr—a sound as ominous as shotgun shells being chambered. “Especially since you didn’t bring a gift.”
Kerry’s entire body twitched. His gaze squirrel-skittered around the room, darting from ceiling to dark corners as though he expected the spirits to drop on him like a weighted net or a nest of tree-dwelling snakes, and finally coming to rest on Divinity’s herb- and root-cluttered table. His pupils expanded as he took in the jars and bottles, the candles and empty mojo bags, the half-finished poppet with purple button eyes.
“Jesus,” he whispered. And backed up a pace.
“I don’t believe in that juju bullshit,” Cash declared. But his uneasy stance and shifting feet made a liar of him—or at least a partial liar. His fingers white-knuckled around the shotgun’s grip and gleaming steel barrel. “So y’all just shut your fucking mouths and tell me where the hell that bastard Bonaparte hid our shit.”
Belladonna snorted. “Outlaw, please. Which is it? Shut up or talk? Because you sure as sin can’t have both.”
“He’s sounding like an eat-his-cake-and-have-it-too kinda guy,” Kallie said, switching the cards to her left hand and leaving her right empty. If he got close enough for her to throw a punch, she wanted to hit him with her strongest. She might not get a second shot.
Belladonna’s curls bobbed. “Mmm-hmm. That he is.”
“Christ,” Cash muttered. “I got a feeling Shut up is beyond y’all.” He raised the shotgun to chest level and aimed the barrel between Kallie’s breasts. His old-sweat-and-tobacco odor deepened. “You’re that fucking thief’s hot little cousin, ain’tcha?”
“Sounds like you got all the goddamned answers,” Kallie replied, lifting her chin. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Cash’s gaze, burning with a fire stoked by a self-righteous wrath, scorched a path from the top of her head to just past her cutoffs and back up along her snug black tank to her face. A smirk tugged up one corner of his ski-mask-framed lips.
“A pretty little thing with that long, dark hair and them purple eyes, ain’tcha? Yeah, you’re Bonaparte’s cousin, all right.” His smirk vanished. “So sit your pretty little ass down and tell me where the hell the sonuvabitch stashed our shit.”
Kallie narrowed her eyes. “What makes you think I’d know?”
“Ain’t playing games here, sugar,” Cash said, glancing pointedly at the shotgun in his hands. “Y’all live in the same house. Can’t be many secrets.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Kallie muttered, lancing a dark look at her aunt.
Keeping her attention on Cash’s nervous ceiling-scanning buddy, Divinity tsked and shook her head. “Stop yo’ pouting, ungrateful child. I did what had to be done and dat’s de end of it.”
“No, that ain’t the end of it, goddammit,” Kallie said, knotting her right hand into a fist. “We’re just getting started. But later, I mean. Not now.”
Thunder boomed through the house, ricocheting off the walls and Kallie’s eardrums. She winced in pain. Chunks of plaster from the ceiling exploded against the hardwood floor. The pungent scent of cordite peppered the air.
“We are now officially back to SHUT! THE! FUCK! UP!” Cash screamed, neck tendons cording. Smoke curled from the shotgun’s barrel. “If anyone makes a fucking peep, except to tell me where that goddamned Jackson Bonaparte hides all the shit he steals, I ain’t gonna be blowing holes in the ceiling! Y’all got that?”
“Jesus Christ, Cash!” Kerry yelled, hands over his ears. “You trying to make us all deaf?”
“You can shut the fuck up too,” Cash snarled. “You ain’t been no kind of help, you fucking superstitious mama’s boy.”
“Hey,” Kerry protested, yelling, an injured expression on his face. “Ain’t no call to be like that. I’m watching your back, ain’t I?”
“I don’t know—are you?”
“I got a stake in this too, dammit! I just don’t wanna get my ass hexed, that’s all.”
Kallie felt the tap of fingers against her calf. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Belladonna nod at the floor as she mouthed: Look, the urgency in her hazel eyes directing Kallie’s gaze down.
The eight of clubs rested on the hardwood floor between the sofa and the beer bottle and candle-cluttered coffee table, bits of white plaster sprinkled across its surface. It’d slipped free from the deck in her hand. Her heart thumped against her chest.
Go ahead with the situation or person. Take the chance.
From over Cash’s tension-taut shoulders, Kallie noticed her aunt sliding a hand into the pocket of her long, Gypsy-style skirt, her fingers no doubt seeking a powder or potion she’d tucked inside. Anything would work on twitching Kerry. H
ell, baby powder would probably scare the man into a dead run out the front door.
Eight of clubs. Take the chance.
Kallie looked up. Kerry stood on the other side of the table, close to her aunt and Gabrielle, while Cash stood on Kallie’s side of the coffee table, his smoking-barreled shotgun once more aimed dead center at Kallie’s chest now that he and his partner were done quibbling.
“You’d better pipe up with something useful, darlin’!” Cash shouted. “I’m all out of goddamned patience!”
Needing to lure Cash into right-hook range, Kallie decided to go for demure and helpless. She lowered her eyes, then bit her lower lip. “I don’t know anything about my cousin’s doings,” she lied, speaking in a whisper and hoping his ears were ringing as badly as her own. “His business is his own. But … he does have a storage unit.”
“What?” The floor boards creaked as Cash took a step closer. His battered cowboy boots came into Kallie’s downcast view. “Repeat that. He’s got a what?”
Kallie lifted her gaze. “A cousin who ain’t gonna put up with this shit.”
She flipped the deck of cards in her left hand at Cash while simultaneously swinging her adrenaline-cocked right fist into the bastard’s ski-masked nose as he flinched away from the hailstorm of sharp-edged cards. Bone crunched beneath her knuckles.
Kallie grabbed the shotgun barrel, wrenching it free from Cash’s grip despite the pain rippling through her chest from her injured ribs, and aimed it at him as he staggered backward, both gloved hands cupped over his broken nose.
“Fuck!” he screamed.
From the other side of the coffee table, Divinity yelled, “You put dat shotgun down, boy, or I’ll be hexing you and yo’ future offspring down to the seventh generation!”
Kallie heard the clunk of metal against wood as Kerry wordlessly—as far as she could tell with all the goddamned ringing in her ears—rested the shotgun on the floor. Followed a heartbeat later by a jarring thud.
Divinity tsked in disapproval. “Dey don’t make men like dey used to.”
THREE
GATOR CHOW
Not willing to risk looking away from Cash for even a split second, Kallie asked, “Did Kerry just faint?”
“More like a swoon, actually!” Belladonna shouted. “Only thing missing was the hand to the forehead and a gentleman to catch him on his way down!”
“Ain’t no gentlemen here, no,” Divinity grumbled. Kallie could picture her glowering down at the unconscious home invasion terrorist, hands on her curvaceous hips.
“Do you have rope to tie this boy up with?” Gabrielle yelled.
“In the garage!” Belladonna shouted in reply.
Kallie heard the clack of Gabrielle’s sandals against the floor, followed by the thunk of the screen door as she hurried outside.
“We oughta give him to the gators,” Divinity declared. “Boy t’inks he can break into my home, then just waltz away? Well, he can’t. T’inks he can just wave a shotgun around and get what he wants? No, he cannot. He got some hard lessons comin’, him.”
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” Cash hollered, his narrowed and furious gaze still fixed on Kallie. He yanked off his ski mask, revealing a sweat-damp and ruffled mullet and a face that might’ve been good-looking if not for all the bruises, swelling, and blood. “Y’all can’t do that!”
“Sure we can,” Kallie said. “Did anyone else know that your plans for the morning involved terrorizing a household of women with guns and threats of violence?”
Pressing his wadded-up ski mask against his bleeding nose, Cash barked out a rough laugh. “Terrorize? That’s a laugh. I couldn’t even get y’all to shut up. The only person terrorized here is that fucking douchebag, Kerry.”
Belladonna yelled, “Granted, the man’s a bit of a delicate flower, but at least no one pointed a shotgun at him!”
Kallie felt a smile twitch across her lips. Still keeping her eyes on Cash, she said, “You can use your inside voice, Bell. I think we’re all hearing just fine again.”
“Oh? Oh. I mean—I knew that. I was only yelling in case Mr. Hard-Ass there had delivered some concussive damage to his eardrums with that shotgun blast.”
“‘Concussive damage’? Seriously? How much time do you spend on WebMD?”
“I don’t think you’ll be asking that question, Shug, when the time I’ve spent perusing winds up saving your fanny.”
“Enough nonsense,” Divinity snapped. “Are we gonna tie dem boys up or feed dem to de damned gators? I vote for de gators, me.”
“I’m pretty sure that would be considered murder, ma’am,” Belladonna said, then added thoughtfully, “but only if they’re actually discovered in said gator tummies.”
Only Cash’s tensed muscles and the dark patches underneath the arms of his T-shirt betrayed his nervousness. His gaze remained on Kallie, colder than an ice storm in July. “That ain’t funny,” he muttered.
“You see anyone laughing, boy?” Divinity replied quietly.
“Just hold your damned horses for a moment,” Kallie said. She wasn’t sure if Cash and his swooning buddy Kerry had anything to do with Jackson’s disappearance or not, but their timing made her suspicious. They hadn’t asked about Jackson’s whereabouts, hadn’t seemed surprised at his absence—or even concerned by it.
And that scared her.
Maybe they’d noticed that his truck wasn’t in the driveway. Or maybe they’d had every reason to believe he wouldn’t be home.
Pumping a fresh round into the shotgun, Kallie curled her finger around the trigger and aimed the barrel at the crotch of Cash’s jeans.
Cash blinked and swung his hands down from his nose to form a protective, albeit useless, barrier in front of his manhood.
A cold sweat beaded Kallie’s forehead as the past iced her from the inside out.
Mama pulls the gun’s trigger and the side of Papa’s head explodes in a spray of blood and bone. He slumps down in his chair, a bottle of Abita still in his hand.
Mama turns and faces her, aims the gun carefully between her shaking hands. Her hands shake, but her face is still, resigned.
“Sorry, baby, I ain’t got a choice.”
Mama pulls the trigger once more.
Queasiness knotted Kallie’s gut. She thought of Basil Augustine stumbling against her as he took a bullet intended for her. Remembered him dying as she desperately tried to stop the bleeding, tried to fill him with healing light.
Pull it together, girl. If this snake of a bastard sees you wavering, he’s gonna strike. It’s just a gun. A tool. That’s all. And it ain’t currently aimed at you. So goddamned pull it together.
Just as Kallie clenched her jaw and tightened her sweat-slick grip on the shotgun, she caught a faint whiff of patchouli, then a velvet-soft voice murmured from beside her right shoulder, “Let me, Shug.”
Kallie glanced up, surprised. Belladonna’s gaze was fixed on Cash, her plump lips curved into a cat’s smile. She held her hand out for the shotgun. “I’m a much better shot than you are,” she purred.
“Hard to miss with a shotgun. Especially at this range.”
“Don’t spoil my fun, Shug.”
Relieved and grateful—she had no doubt as to why Belladonna had stepped in—Kallie handed the shotgun to the voodooienne, then stepped aside. Belladonna swung the barrel back into place, aimed at Cash’s hand-protected crotch.
Belladonna tsked. “Tiny target.”
“That the best y’all can do?” Cash said, blood oozing from his swollen nose. The skin beneath his eyes was just starting to bruise and puff up. “Small-dick jokes?”
“Nope,” Kallie replied, drawing Cash’s attention back to herself. “We can gris-gris that small dick into reality. Lay a shrivel package trick on you. How about that?”
Belladonna’s cat smile deepened. “Mmm-hmm,” she agreed.
“I figure you and your partner are the reason my cousin’s missing,” Kallie said, holding Cash’s contemptuous gaze
. “And I also figure Jacks wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to know, so you decided to give us a try.” She paused, her heart pounding as the full implications of that statement—Jacks wouldn’t tell you—sank in.
Inhaling, she resumed speaking, voice taut. “If you plan to avoid becoming gator chow and walking outta here a functioning male, you’d better goddamned tell me where my goddamned cousin is.”
Amusement glittered like frost in Cash’s eyes. He lifted a hand and wiped at his nose with his ski mask. “Well, you got part of that right. We ain’t the reason Jackson’s missing, but we knew he was gone, for true. We was about to pay Jackson a little social call, when someone else beat us to the doorstep.”
A cold finger trailed ice along Kallie’s spine. So maybe St. Cyr had been responsible, after all. He’d designed a soul-killing hex for her, and maybe he’d crafted something equally evil for Jackson.
“Who?” Kallie asked. “Who got to Jackson before you did?”
Cash shrugged. “Hell if I know. Two black, one white. And it took all three of them to wrestle that slippery little bastard down, but not before he’d put that baseball bat of his to work. And his damned dog.” Turning his head, he spat blood on the floor.
A muscle flexed in Kallie’s jaw. Right then, she’d have been happy to dish out a few lessons via baseball bat too. She sucked in a deep breath, tried to cool the fire searing her control.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three …
“Do you know where they took Jackson?” Kallie asked, pleased that her voice remained calm, unlike her pounding heart.
Cash gave a little chuckle, but slipped his hand back down in front of his tenders again. “Sure, sugar. We followed ’em, me and Kerry. They drove that thieving sonuvabitch over to Chacahoula. And buried him six feet under.”
FOUR
JUJU BOOMERANG
Cash’s words swept the house clear of sound, like water being sucked back into the sea, before being released again in a surf-pounding rush—a tide of stunned voices.