Black Dust Mambo (23 page)

T
WENTY-NINE
T
HE
V
OICE OF
T
HY BROTHER

Kallie paced the waiting room’s pristine and polished floor, her sandals clacking against the tiles with each step. The air smelled of fresh roses and carnations mingled with the clean scent of lemon—aromas to aid health and healing.

“You’re wearing a groove in the floor, Shug,” Bella-donna said, voice soft.

“Don’t care,” Kallie replied.

She couldn’t believe what had happened to Dallas—stabbed multiple times, his throat cut. No way that was a pissed-off husband. If that guy, Belladonna’s spying Wiccan neighbor, hadn’t walked in when he had . . . Her throat tightened.

“It’s safe to assume that whoever attacked Mr. Brûler is a coconspirator of Ms. St. Cyr rather than the usual disgruntled individual seeking payback,” Layne-Augustine said. “So we shall have to place you in protective custody once more.”

“Great,” Kallie growled. “The last time we did that, you ended up dead.”

“Indeed,” the Brit murmured. He stood beside Felicity’s chair, in damp trousers and shirt, still barefoot.

Kallie shot a glance at the double doors at the end of the hall. “When will we hear something?”

“I don’t know,” Felicity said. “Given the severity of Mr. Brûler’s wounds, I believe the surgeons and healers have their hands more than full.”

Kallie also heard what Felicity didn’t say:
He may not survive. Prepare yourself.
If Gabrielle—or whoever she actually was—hadn’t sent Dallas to spy on her, he’d be in Chalmette right now in one piece. And up to no good with somebody’s wife or fiancée, most likely, true enough—but in one piece.

Yeah, and if you hadn’t gotten all high and mighty and decked him, he’d still be following you around at carnival, safe and sound and annoying, with all of his blood circulating through his veins. He was only doing as Gabrielle asked.

Gabrielle. Mingled pain and fury burned a hole in Kallie’s heart. Maybe Augustine had been right from the start: Gabrielle had set her and Dallas up to be murdered. Although she couldn’t come up with a single reason why her aunt would want either of them six feet under.

Gabrielle was a woman more than willing to get her own hands dirty, and possessed a strong DIY work ethic. If she’d wanted Kallie and Dallas dead, they’d probably be gator food at this very moment.

If
the woman truly was her aunt and not some impostor.

If?
C’mon, Kallie, she
must
be. Maybe Gabrielle ain’t her real name, but who raises someone for nine years, then inexplicably has them murdered—especially when no inheritance is involved?

But the memory of her mother’s voice, her soft words, underscored the power of the inexplicable: “
I’m sorry, baby. I ain’t got a choice.”

Kallie’s chest tightened. The matter of her aunt would have to simmer on the back burner for the moment. She had no intention of allowing Augustine to trap her inside a sigil-warded room, helpless and unable to do anything but wait. She also had no intention of twiddling her thumbs like a good little victim and waiting for the goddamned killer to play his next goddamned hand. No, she planned to find the cold-blooded sonuvabitch and stop him.

Uh-huh. And how, exactly, was she planning on doing that when she didn’t even know what the goddamned bastard looked like?

Her thoughts tumbled through memory’s trapdoor into a storm-lashed night from her past—a night eight years ago.

Wind whips Gabrielle’s long hair into knotted, rain-wet spirals as she stands in a tangle of sawgrass and low-crawling peppervine, her face glistening with rain as she stares at the pitiful form sprawled in the grass beneath a white-blossomed dogwood.

Kallie stands beside a Spanish-moss-draped old oak ten yards back, her heart pounding so hard her entire body rocks with each beat. Rain trickles warm down her face.

Rain also drips from the brim of Sheriff Alphonso’s plastic- protected hat. “Her name is Sandra Findley, and I called you here first ahead of everyone else, Miss LaRue, cuz the sumbitch who snatched and killed this girl is purest evil, for true,” he says, his voice as tight as a coiled whip. His hands grip the gun belt strapped around his hips. “I plan to use every goddamned resource at my disposal to bring this monster to justice. And I’m hoping you can tell me who did this before I take word of her murder to her folks.”

“And before de blood washes away,” Gabrielle replies. “I’ll do my best, Sheriff.”

“I’ll appreciate anything you can give me.”

Gathering her long cranberry-red skirt in one hand, Gabrielle

crouches beside the woman’s head—no, not a woman, she’s probably younger than Kallie, thirteen or maybe twelve, her jeans yanked past her hips, her shirt and bra shoved above her small breasts—a girl who will never draw another breath, let alone become a woman.

Gabrielle murmurs, “Come here, child.”

Even though the rain is Gulf warm, Kallie feels cold down to the bone. She pads across the sawgrass, her sneakers squelching in the mud underneath, and stands behind her aunt. Swallowing hard, her muscles so tight they thrum beneath her skin, she looks at the dead girl. The girl’s blood, black as oil in a stark flash of lightning, glistens in the grass around her bashed-in head and shines in her dark hair.

Delicate white flowers from the dogwood decorate the girl’s body, ghost blossoms in the stormy dark. In the distance, thunder rumbles.

Gabrielle slips a small blue bottle from her skirt pocket, swivels, and hands the herb-filled bottle to Kallie. “Fill my palms, girl.”

Unstoppering the bottle, Kallie does as her aunt requests and empties the bottle into her aunt’s cupped, rain-wet palms. The green and bitter scent of ragweed and vervain wafts into the air until the rain scrubs the scent away.

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,” Gabrielle prays, rubbing the herbs together in her hands, into her skin, consecrating herself as a tool of divination. “Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint Joan of Arc, Saint Gerard Majella, and Saint Moses, I seek de truth in de name of de Father, and de Son, and de Holy Spirit. Baron Samedi, god of the crossroads, please unlock de mystery of dis poor child’s death.”

Gabrielle leans forward and plants one herb-dusted palm in the blood puddle seeping out from underneath the dead girl’s skull, then closes her eyes.

Sheriff Alphonso shifts, his boot soles squeaking against the wet sawgrass—a restless sound swallowed up by the drumming rain.

Twilight-purple light flares around Gabrielle’s fingertips, glimmers
in the pool of blood. “I be asking de same question
bon Dieu
once put to Cain; ‘What have you done? De voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from de ground.’”

Bayou-steeped power shimmers into the moist air, lifting the hair on Kallie’s arms and goosebumping her skin. She hears the sheriff’s boots squeaking against the grass again as he takes another step away from Gabrielle.

“Sandra,
chère ,
show me who did dis awful t’ing to you.”

“Ms. Rivière? Hello? Anyone in? Anyone at all?”

Felicity’s smooth voice hooked Kallie and reeled her up from the past. She focused on Augustine’s assistant, her pulse pounding hard through her veins.

“Ah, there you are,” Felicity said. “I’ve been trying to tell you that I have your cell phone. Lord Augustine told me you needed it.”

“Great,” Kallie breathed, clacking over to where the Bondalicious Babe sat. Felicity handed her the cell, and Kallie tucked it into a front pocket of her cutoffs. She shifted her gaze to Layne-Augustine. “Listen, I need to visit the room where Dallas was attacked—provided that the blood hasn’t been cleaned up yet.”

The Brit glanced at Felicity and arched an eyebrow.

“No, it hasn’t,” Felicity said. “I thought it best to preserve the scene in the event that Mr. Brûler either doesn’t survive surgery or that he survives, but remains unconscious and incapable of providing us with a description of his assailant.”

Kallie blinked. “
Doesn’t survive surgery
. . .” To hear her fear spoken aloud chilled her blood. She rapped her knuckles against one of the wood arms of Felicity’s chair. Just in case. Little Miss Bondalicious regarded her with an amused smile.

“My, my, my. Perhaps I should knock on wood too, since I’m the one who spoke.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Kallie agreed.

Felicity politely tapped her knuckles against the arm of her chair.

Layne-Augustine shook his head. “I’m afraid I must refuse your request. It simply isn’t safe.”

“It wasn’t a request, and you ain’t got a right to refuse,” Kallie replied, shifting her weight onto one hip and folding her arms beneath her breasts. “I ain’t gonna let you lock me up again. Sorry. I’ll sign whatever waiver you want so you don’t hafta worry about being sued, but I’m going to find this asshole before he realizes Dallas
isn’t
dead and before he comes looking for me.”

“I see. And how do you plan to accomplish that?”

“Blood divination.” Kallie decided it was wisest not to mention that it was a method she’d never tried before. “And I need to do it now, before the blood congeals and before that goddamned murdering sonuvabitch gets the drop on anyone else.”

“Hellfire,” Belladonna breathed. “Do you—”

Staring at her, Kallie jerked her head to one side in a little please-follow-my-lead motion. “No, I don’t need any help. You stay here and wait for Dallas, okay?”

“Um . . . good. Okay,” Belladonna said. Slipping her black shoulder bag free, she handed it to Kallie. “Just in case you need anything.”

Kallie looped the strap over her head and across her shoulder. “You never know,” she said, offering her friend a grateful smile.

Layne-Augustine said, “I don’t believe a waiver will be necessary, since you signed one absolving the Prestige and the Hecatean Alliance of any responsibility for injuries incurred due to magic or malice when you registered.”

Kallie blinked. Oh. She
really
needed to start reading the fine print on stuff. “Okay, great. All I need then is the room key.”

“You mean
we
need the room key, since I’ll be accompanying you,” Layne-Augustine said. “And I believe we need to hurry if we’re to get to the blood before it’s no longer readable, correct?”

Kallie nodded. “That we do.” Even though she would have preferred to go alone, this was a compromise she could live with.

Felicity handed the Brit a keycard. “The sixth floor, my lord. And I’ll send a pair of guards to meet you.”

“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Fields. Please keep Ms. Brown company until we return.”

“Of course.”

As Kallie swung around and headed for the elevators at the waiting room’s mouth, dizziness whirled through her, spinning her thoughts like a weather vane caught in a tornado. She stumbled and, throwing out a hand, caught herself against the wall.

Faraway voices, small and indistinct as though shouting into a high wind, buzzed against her mind. One sounded like Augustine; the other was unfamiliar and belonged to a man, a voice that somehow made her think of her long-dead papa.

“C’mere,
chère .
Where you been,
ma ’tit monde?
How was school?”

Her headache returned with a vengeance, throbbing behind her eyes and at her temples with a hard and nauseating rhythm. The pungent aroma of licorice filled her nostrils.

A cold certainty iced Kallie’s mind and rocketed her pulse into light speed. Someone was trying to
compel
her. Working to dominate her.

Electricity tingled beneath her skin, thrummed in her bones. The mojo bag tucked into her bra burned against her breast, its protective magic triggered. Ignoring the pain pulsing in her head and forcing the nausea back down, Kallie concentrated on surrounding herself with glowing white steel.

“Back to you your spell will bounce, my will ain’t giving an ounce,” she whispered. “Compel to your black heart’s content, my will and desire ain’t gonna be bent.”

The dizziness slowed to a stop. The voices vanished—well, the mystery man’s voice, anyway.

“Ms. Rivière? Kallie? Are you all right?”

Opening eyes she hadn’t even realized she’d closed, Kallie looked into Layne-Augustine’s concerned face. She nodded, and immediately regretted it when pain knuckled her temples. “Yeah, but someone just tried to compel me, and we can bet our sweet asses we know who that someone is.”

A hard, cold smile slanted across Layne-Augustine’s lips. “A dead man, I would imagine—as soon as we find him.”

“Damn straight. And we ain’t got no time to lose.” Shoving away from the wall, Kallie trotted to the elevators.

Jean-Julien grabbed the table’s edge to keep from falling from his chair. The Kallie poppet tumbled to the floor, the acrid smell of smoldering paper and Spanish moss wafting from its blackening form.

She’d
rebuffed
him—
refused
his command. Jean-Julien kept turning that thought around in his head, looking for flaws in the realization and finding none. A twenty-three-year-old
girl
had bested Doctor Heron’s juju. Juju he’d honed to a killing edge in the dark and hellish forge known as Angola.

Not possible.

Or it shouldn’t be, but, possible or not, his command had skittered across the surface of Kallie Rivière’s mind like a stone across a winter-iced lake. Gabrielle must’ve loaded her niece up with charms and talismans to keep her safe while in wicked New Orleans. Another thought occurred to him, one that turned his blood to ice.

Gabrielle knew I’d been released. She sent her niece and her former student to carnival as sacrificial lambs to draw me out. She’s watching me even now.