Black Dust Mambo (6 page)

“What are you doing?” McKenna asked. “Ye’d better no’ be doing what I
think
yer doing.”

“And that is?” Layne said, picking up the pillows. “Moving Gage.”

“Gotta be done, Kenn.”

“Well, then, I’m helping,” she muttered, then walked around to his side of the bed. “Yer just gonna hurt yerself.”

“My, my, my. Fascinating.”

Layne wasn’t sure what the Brit found so frigging fascinating—the quibbling nomads, their attempt to move a body, the possibility of more magic carnage—but he decided that if Felicity said
fascinating
or
my, my, my
one more time while they sweated over Gage’s body, he would toss her onto the mattress just to see if the hex was all used up or not.

Handing Mc Kenna one of the blood-spattered pillows, Layne said, “On three.”

Mc Kenna nodded, her elfin face dead serious. “Your count.”

While Mc Kenna climbed onto the bed, kneeling at its head out of hex-touching range, Layne knelt on the mattress at the foot of the bed and pressed his pillow against Gage’s lower back.

The fall won’t hurt him.

And even though he
knew
nothing remained of Gage, that Gage’s body was as empty as a snake’s shed skin, tension coiled around Layne’s spine, knotting his muscles and radiating pain through his chest. Because his heart refused to believe, refused to let go of a breathing Gage.

He’s just out cold. Too much booze. The fall will wake him up. Piss him off.

I’ve gotcha, Gage.

Glancing at Mc Kenna, Layne counted down. “One. Two.
Three
.” He shoved against the pillow hard at the same time Mc Kenna pushed hers against Gage’s shoulders. His clan-brother’s body rolled off the bed, hitting the floor with a heartbreaking thud. Layne released the pent-up breath he’d held.

The fall didn’t hurt him. Can’t hurt him. Gage is gone.

And as bad as that hurt, the death, the loss of his best friend and
draíocht-brúthair,
the knowledge that Gage no longer existed in any shape or form hurt worse.

Dead, body and soul, because someone had intended to kill a dark-haired hoodoo beauty, but missed. He remembered Gage’s parting words before he’d left their shared hotel room: “
Her eyes, bro, you should see her eyes. Purple-blue like hyacinths in sunlight. Fuck, man, she dazzles me.”

The pillow fell from Layne’s hands onto the blighted mattress. He slid off the bed and knelt beside Gage’s sprawled body.

“Well, that was easier than I expected,” Mc Kenna said, tossing her pillow onto the blankets, then scooting off the bed.

Throat too tight for words, Layne nodded.

She dropped to her knees beside Gage’s head. Her hands hovered above Gage’s black curls, yearning stark on her face. Then her hands clenched into fists.

Layne looked away, a lump aching in his throat. He used a blanket to glove his hands, then straightened his clan-brother’s body and smoothed out his limbs.

“Fasci—”

“Don’t fucking say it,” Layne warned. “Or you’ll be trying that hex on for size.”

Felicity’s side of the room fell so silent that Layne imagined he could hear crickets clear from the bayous outside the city. Smart woman.

Layne folded the blankets closed over Gage’s face and nude body, finally able to give him back some dignity.

“Ah, Gage,” Mc Kenna mourned, bowing her head.

“I need you to contact the clan and let them know what’s happened,” Layne said, sitting back on his heels.
Keep busy
. Planning his next moves, thinking ahead, would shift his attention from his grief. “Let them know I ain’t returning until I’ve found Gage’s killer and dealt with him or her.”

Mc Kenna lifted her head. Her dark eyes glistened with unshed tears. The corners of her mouth quirked up into a fierce smile. She nodded. “Aye. As his
draíocht-brúthair,
ye have the right. But you won’t be alone. As his
shuvani,
I have the right too, so I won’t be going back either. Together, we’ll avenge our Gage’s death.”

“Or die trying,” Layne said.

Blinking hard and fast, refusing tears—as always—Mc -Kenna rose to her feet. “I always knew it was more than yer looks and brawn that won me away from Raven clan.”

Layne felt a smile curve his lips. “I thought I snuck into your camp, tossed you over my shoulder, and rode off with you.”

“At
my
suggestion,” McKenna said with a half laugh, half sob. She wiped at her eyes with her knuckles. “I’ll contact the clan, let Frost know what’s happened here.”

Layne nodded. “It’s bad enough that Gage is dead, but if his family knew that his soul was gone too, it’d destroy them. Ask her to keep that part secret.”

“I’ll ask her,” McKenna said. “But I’ll bet it ain’t necessary. Yer mum’s a savvy and compassionate chieftain.”

“I know. But I just wanna be sure.”

“Where will you be?” McKenna asked.

“In my room, preparing Gage for cremation.”

“Nomad funeral rites,” Felicity said. “My, my—”

Layne looked at her from beneath his lashes. “Hex,” he reminded.

Felicity’s sentence remained unfinished.

From out in the hall, Layne heard the sound of wheels squeaking along the carpet. He arrowed a look at Felicity. The Bond-babe Brit, vibrating with enough suppressed energy to make the pearl buttons on her blouse shimmy, met his gaze with a curious lift of her eyebrows.

“If that’s the maid,” Layne said, “you’d better tell her to pass us by. If it’s anyone else, you’d better tell them to fuck off.”

“Ah, nomads. So deliciously feral,” Felicity murmured. She tilted her head, strawberry-blonde locks curving against her face. Freckles were sprinkled across the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks. “I’d think that in your present condition, a gurney should come in handy. It should make transporting the deceased back to your room just a tad easier.”

“She’s got a point there, lad.”

Now that the adrenaline fueling him since he’d walked into Kallie’s room had burned off, weariness morphed Layne’s muscles into lead while pain crackled like lightning along his nerves. He wasn’t sure he could even get back onto his feet, let alone find a way to carry Gage back to their room.

“Okay, fine, a gurney it is,” Layne said.

As if summoned by his words, the metallic front end of a gurney poked in through the doorway. Felicity smoothed her hair back into place, then flitted over to greet the black-uniformed medic maneuvering the gurney into the room.

Mc Kenna walked around behind Layne, then knelt. He felt her pull some of his dreads back and knot them around the rest, to keep them all out of his face. Knowing he’d need them out of the way while he cared for Gage, and knowing the pain tying them back himself would cost at the moment, gratitude poured through him.

“Thanks, buttercup,” he whispered.

“No problem.” She leaned in and planted a warm kiss on his cheek. “How are you planning to start yer search for the killer?”

“By staying close to Kallie Rivière. Whoever wanted her dead bad enough to kill her soul too ain’t gonna give up after just one try.”

“Who says it was the first try?” Mc Kenna said, rising to her feet. “I’ll see if Basil-boy detained her and ferret out the situation. In the meantime you be careful and wait for me.”

“I will,” Layne promised. McKenna’s words rang in his mind long after she’d walked out of the room. “
Who says it was the first try?”
An even darker thought of his own nipped at its heels:
What if she deserves to die?

E
IGHT
T
HE
C
OLD
A
LTAR OF
R
EVENGE

Rosette St. Cyr’s fingers white-knuckled around the handle of her vacuum cleaner. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Didn’t
want
to believe her eyes.

Flanked by black-suited Hecatean security, Kallie Rivière stalked down the hall in pink bathrobe and bare feet, chin up, her long hair a lustrous coffee-black stream down her back, her hands clenched into fists.

Very much alive. And accused of murder.

Lord Augustine paused long enough to help Rivière’s friend haul the unconscious Brûler back inside his room. Then, with a two-fingered salute, he strolled after the hoodoo student and her guards, the towel containing Rosette’s poppet clutched tight in his long-fingered hand and held out at a safe distance.

The chilling conversation Rosette had overheard only a few moments before looped and twisted through her thoughts.

“Seems like someone is killing hoodoos.”

“Trying to, at least. Or perhaps someone is trying to make it
look
that way, yes? So far only a nomad conjurer has died. No hoodoos.”

Rosette’s heart drummed a ferocious rhythm of denial against her ribs. Had Papa’s hex killed an innocent? And worse—an innocent’s
soul
?

Icy bricks of dread plummeted to the pit of Rosette’s belly. If someone else had truly been killed . . .

Rosette shoved the vacuum inside the room she’d been cleaning when that silly Francesca had started screaming, then scooped up an armload of folded white towels from her cart and followed after Kallie Rivière and her forced entourage.

Given that Lord Augustine had mentioned taking the hoodoo apprentice into custody, Rosette felt reasonably certain that he intended to take Rivière to the Hecatean Alliance offices on the fifteenth floor and secure her in one of their magic-warded rooms.

She hurried down the hall, her rubber-soled shoes silent against the burnt-umber-and-scarlet-patterned Persian carpet, the stink of the spilled bucket’s sulfur-and-wormwood-tainted contents fading behind her.

She needed to learn the truth; then she needed to call Papa. Because—for whatever reason—she and Papa had failed. Not only was Rivière alive, but they hadn’t even managed to kill Brûler, the root doctor from Chalmette.

“So far only a nomad conjurer has died.”

But from the sound of things, she and Papa might’ve murdered an innocent man, a completely unintended target.

Innocent. Murdered
. Not good to think in those terms. Because, if you wanted to get fussy about it, Kallie Rivière and Dallas Brûler were also innocents about to be sacrificed upon the cold altar of revenge.

Just like her mama had been.

A cold hand tightened around Rosette’s heart. Tit for tat. This was a war—undeclared, maybe, but a war all the same. But their first bold strikes had failed.

And Papa would be far from pleased to hear the news. He would blame her, at least for Dallas Brûler’s survival.

How in
bon Dieu
’s name had Kallie Rivière known about the attack on Brûler? And she
must’ve
known somehow, because Rosette couldn’t think of another explanation for the hoodoo apprentice’s presence on the sixth floor just in time to save Brûler’s life.

Unless one figured in chance. Or divine guidance. But perhaps another message lurked in their failure—the
loa
disapproved of her and Papa’s actions.

To kill a person was one thing. To murder a soul . . .

Rivière and her black-clad escorts reached the polished steel elevators. She folded her arms over her chest and shifted her weight onto one hip, waiting. The female guard leaned past her and poked the Up button with a black-gloved finger.

A cool twist of relief uncorked some of the tension from Rosette’s muscles, and she slowed her pace. Up was good. While they headed up, she’d head down to Rivière’s room to see what had gone wrong and who had died in her place.

Maybe there would be some way to rectify the situation. She sure as hell didn’t want to tell Papa that
both
tricks had failed. That Gabrielle LaRue was still laughing at him even after all these years. Papa’s voice, deep and musical and burning with a fire banked deep within his soul, sounded through Rosette’s memory.

“I lost twenty-five years in prison to that woman. I lost your mama, my beautiful Babette. I lost my future. I intend to return the favor to Gabrielle threefold. She will lose all she loves,
chérie,
just like we did. An eye for an eye is never enough. Never, never, never.”

“Might I have one of those?”

Blinking the memory away, Rosette looked up into Lord Augustine’s gray eyes. She stumbled to a stop, barely avoiding plowing into the man. He studied her, head tilted, one lock of dark brown hair sliding down his forehead.

“A woman deep in thought,” he murmured. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He held up his towel-wrapped bundle. A faint rotten-egg stench wafted from it. “It’s leaking, so I wondered if I might have one of those?” He nodded at the towels Rosette clutched to her chest.

“Oh,” Rosette squeaked in relief. “
Oui
. Of course.” She grabbed a towel from the top of the stack and handed it to him.

Augustine accepted the towel with a cool smile. “Thank you. Given your French, you must be a New Orleans native,” he said, rolling the fresh towel around the one cradling the dismembered poppet.

“Actually, I’m Haitian,
m’sieu,
” Rosette lied. “But I’ve lived in New Orleans for several years.”

“Your English is excellent,” he commented. “Not even an accent.”

“
Merci
. Your English is also excellent,
m’sieu,
even
with
the accent.”

Augustine chuckled. “Touché.” The amusement faded from his eyes. “Did you by chance notice anyone—aside from your fellow maid—near room 623 this morning? Did you see or hear anything unusual?”

“No. I was cleaning when I heard Francesca’s scream,” Rosette replied. “When I looked out, I saw the man on the floor.” Nodding at Rivière, she added, “Then I saw her and another woman racing down the hall.”

“Ah, thank you,
mademoiselle
. . . ?” Augustine arched a dark brow.

“Rosette St. Cyr.”

“If you should think of anything pertaining to this morning’s incident,
mademoiselle
St. Cyr, please contact the Hecatean Alliance offices.”

Rosette nodded. “Of course, Lord Augustine.”

“
Bonjour,
then.” Swiveling around, the Hecatean master sauntered the remaining short distance to the elevator, joining the black-pink-black trio waiting in various postures of pretended ease and, in Kallie Rivière’s case, impatience.

The hoodoo apprentice stabbed a finger against the already glowing Up button. A musical
ding!
chimed down the hall; then the elevator doors slid apart. Flashing her escort a triumphant look, Kallie stepped inside, followed by Lord Augustine and the guards.

The black-uniformed and -shaded guards turned around in a graceful, almost synchronized movement to face the front of the elevator. The male guard motioned with his brush-cut head for Rosette to take the next elevator. She nodded, smiling. The doors
thunk
ed shut.

Rosette thumbed the Down button; then, sagging with relief, she leaned a shoulder against the cream-colored wall. “
A woman deep in thought.”
More like a woman who happened to be an idiot. Daydreaming when she needed to remained focused. If she was careless, Papa would go back to prison. But not alone, no. She’d go as well.

When the elevator arrived, Rosette hurried inside and punched the fourth-floor button. Her nose wrinkled. A previous occupant’s white musk cologne haunted the air, the smell almost thick enough to be visible.

Slipping a hand into her pocket, she brushed her fingers against her universal keycard. A quick visit to Kallie Rivière’s room to assess the situation and figure out their next move, then she’d call Papa.

Towels hugged against her chest, Rosette marched down the hall toward the hoodoo apprentice’s room. When she was only a door away, a tall man in jeans, a sage-green tank, and boots with painted flames on the sides pushed a gurney out into the hall. Blue-inked tattoos curled in concentric designs from his shoulders to his biceps. Long, honey-blond dreads snaked almost to his waist.

The gurney held a comforter-draped burden. A
body-sized
burden.

Rosette slowed to a halt, her blood chilling in her veins.

“Are you quite sure you don’t need help?” a female and British-accented voice said from inside the room—a voice Rosette recognized. A woman in a rose skirt and white blouse followed the words into the hall, her strawberry-blonde hair glimmering beneath the lights. Lord Augustine’s bouncy assistant, Felicity Fields.

“Nope. Don’t need help. Thanks.”

“Will you want your friend’s clothing and any other belongings we might find in Ms. Rivière’s room brought to you, or would you prefer to pick them up in our offices?”

The gurney stopped. The muscles along the man’s shoulders bunched and rippled beneath his tank. He turned around carefully, one arm slanted and braced across his chest—injured?—his dreads swinging against his back. A gorgeous man, tall and lean-muscled, his whisker-shadowed face in need of a shave. Dried blood smudged the skin beneath his nose, streaked a dark line from his ears down along his neck.

Rosette frowned. What had happened to him? A fight? Then an ice-slivered possibility skewered her thoughts. The aftermath of the hex’s cold and poisonous kiss?

Not possible. He’d be dead. Not standing in a hall talking to Felicity Fields.

“Just leave a message and I’ll come get ’em,” he replied. A small tattoo Rosette wasn’t close enough to make out curved beneath his right eye. Nomad.

“So far only a nomad conjurer has died.”

Rosette’s gaze shifted back to the gurney and its burden, and all her rationalizations about the cost of war unraveled. She felt sick.

“Cheerio, then,” Felicity chirped. “We’ll be in touch.” Without another word, the tall nomad turned around one more time and resumed pushing the gurney toward the elevator. Rosette stepped aside, putting her back against the wall to give the nomad and his burden room to pass.

His gaze cut to her as he pushed the squeaky-wheeled gurney past, his green eyes brushing over her and drinking in details as if by habit. Then he looked away, his attention once more fixed on the elevator at the end of the hall.

Rosette stared after him, pulse pounding in her temples, haunted by what she’d glimpsed in his eyes.

A stone-hard and bone-deep resolve. Unshakable.

A look she recognized, since she’d seen it before—in her own mirrored reflection.

A mysterious wasting disease whittles her mama away a pound at a time, dulls the color of Mama’s dark chocolate eyes into a filmy mud.

Rosette watches as hoodoo root doctors and voodoo
mambos
and
houngans
drape Mama with fragrant charms, bathe her in potions smelling of frankincense and sharp sage, sprinkle her body and bed with magic powders, and oil her up with herbs and flowers and salts. She watches as they wash and ward the house inside and out. But nothing helps.

No one can find the trick that’s killing Mama or discover who laid it. One by one, they shake their heads, trudge down the porch steps, and never come back.

And so, all alone and in a silent house, fifteen-year-old Rosette watches Mama die. But she knows who jinxed Mama even if the root doctors don’t—or claim they don’t: Gabrielle LaRue. The evil sorceress who also stole her papa away from her.

Rosette knew that the nomad would never give up. Whoever lay beneath the carefully wrapped comforter-shroud on the gurney—brother, sister, wife, friend—the nomad would hunt until he’d found and killed the person responsible for their death. The fierce resolve Rosette had witnessed in his eyes, a hard and steady flame fueled by rage and grief, told the complete story—grim ending and all.

“An eye for an eye is never enough. Never, never, never.”

And, one day, he’d find Papa—her too, no doubt. And then Gabrielle LaRue would win the war without lifting a hand. The crafty old spider would laugh long and hard.

Not if I can help it. But time is ticking away.

Unlike the night Mama had died.
That
night, time had simply stopped.

Rosette shoved away from the wall and continued down the hall, her shoe soles padding against the carpet in perfect rhythm with each hard thump of her heart. As she walked past Kallie Rivière’s room, she saw Felicity Fields close and lock the door.

With graceful swirls of the thumb and the index and middle fingers of her right hand, Lord Augustine’s assistant traced sigils in the air in front of the door. Rosette caught a flash of brilliant white from the corner of her eye as Felicity’s seal activated. A pungent wisp of myrrh tickled Rosette’s nostrils.

Felicity swiveled around in her rose-tinted pumps. A sunny smile curved her lips as her gaze landed on Rosette. “Off limits,” she said. “
Oui
?”

“Oui, madame,”
Rosette replied.

With an approving nod, Felicity Fields turned and walked down the hallway, well-rounded hips swaying beneath her tight rose skirt, following the nomad’s path to the elevator.

Rosette pulled her keycard from her pocket and stopped at the first door with a please clean tag, which happened to be the room across and one up from Rivière’s. Unlocking it, she stepped inside. She stood for a moment, mind blank, staring at a wedge of sunlight slanting across the carpet.