Dark Lily: Shadows, Book 4 (10 page)

“Mitchell gave me the code to get into the house. So far so easy. But you locked the bathroom door. I actually did knock, several times. I also called your name. I heard you talking inside. Heard a second voice talking back. Just murmurs, nothing specific. Then I heard you gasp and everything went quiet. I shouted again. You didn’t answer. Door breaking seemed like the way to go.”

“Sounds reasonable. Did you know Leshad put Madeleine’s eyes out?”

“I knew back when it happened. Big glass or small?”

“Medium. She couldn’t describe Leshad to me. She said it all started at her antique shop. He blinded her there twenty-eight years ago.”

“He murdered her just over two years ago.” Ryder poured the drinks and handed one of them to her.

“So there’s a twenty-six-year gap between the blinding and the murdering. The mutilating. Obviously, something about her eyes frightened him. Any theories as to what that might have been?”

He swallowed a mouthful of no-name bourbon, huffed out a short breath. “Cut me a break here, Gaby. I’m still working on the fact that you talked to Madeleine tonight. And that you know Billy.”

She tossed the contents of her own glass back without a shudder. “Do you know Phoebe?”

“No.” He stared at her empty glass, grinning. “Okay, now I buy that you have stuff. And a hell of a lot more than what Desdemona calls the sight. Have you heard the name Crucible?”

“Mitchell mentioned it. He says Crucible’s a shadow, a potentially good one, but I don’t think Mitchell trusts him all the way.”

“Mitchell doesn’t know him like I do.”

“Meaning?”

“He’s right not to trust him all the way. Don’t ask why. That’s my gut talking. As far as I’m aware, Crucible’s goal is to bring Leshad down.”

“Then I’ll have to accept that. For now.” Glancing past him, Gaby let a smile of genuine delight curve her lips. “Perfect.” She pushed off from the sideboard to hook an arm through Ryder’s and turn both of them toward the darkened parlor. “Here’s an opportunity you won’t get every day. Seeing as we both have a stiff shot of bayou bourbon under our belts, what say we be polite and introduce ourselves to Mitchell’s grandmother.”

Ryder slitted his eyes. “Mitchell’s grandmother’s dead.”

Squeezing his arm, she whispered a teasing, “I know.”

Chapter Twelve

It amused Mitchell to discover that Gaby had introduced Ryder, a skeptic at best, to his grandmother’s ghost.

His grandmother had died fifteen years before his grandfather. Mitchell figured she’d probably hung around the mansion to piss the old man off. According to Gaby, she’d done her level best to bump and bang him awake at all hours of the night. And, yeah, he believed it because antagonistic had been the best way to describe his grandparents’ relationship.

As for Gaby’s family issues, Phoebe was still really pissed he’d brought her little girl to New Orleans. And Mitchell had to admit that two days of nothing on the Leshad front didn’t sit as well as it might have without Phoebe’s dire warning clanging like a mission bell in his head.

“I swear to God, Mitchell,” she’d threatened in parting the night they’d met. “If my baby winds up in Leshad’s clutches, I’ll either kill you before I die, or haunt the living crap out of you after I pass. You keep her safe.”

What she’d really meant was that he should take Gaby back to Bokur Island, build a metaphorical tower and lock her inside it. For all her concern, Phoebe didn’t know a single damn thing about the child she’d given birth to twenty-six years ago.

Mitchell had a different plan in mind, an edgier one. Risky on too many levels to count, but preferable in his opinion to towers and locks.

Unfortunately, after two days of nothing more sinister than a visit to Ryder’s wife’s club, the Rose Noire, and a mumbo-jumbo palm reading by her resident clairvoyant, doubts were beginning to creep in. On both sides, he suspected.

He hadn’t touched Gaby again. He’d wanted to, had fantasized about having sex with her day and night, but delving into something that was bound to end badly no longer worked for him. She wasn’t just a woman he could wake up with the next morning, then dust off when the nightmare they were mired in concluded.

If it concluded.

If either of them was alive when it did.

Heavy mist crawled through the garden where he’d settled both himself and a bottle of his grandfather’s ill-gotten bathtub gin. It was whiskey actually, and strong enough to remove lead-based paint. But it would do the job of keeping his hormones in check while he waited for one of his rogue lures to snag something worthwhile.

“Your grandmother told me you were out here brooding.”

Gaby’s voice from the French doors had him directing an ironic smile into his glass. “She’s afraid I’ll turn into my grandfather.” He tossed back the raw hooch. “She warned me before she died that if I started sliding in that direction she’d harangue me day and night. Guess she meant what she said.”

Mitchell heard movement and braced for a good long look at Gaby’s legs.

“Your grandparents were an odd couple,” she remarked. “I sense an arranged marriage.”

“You sense correctly. My grandmother’s people had money. My grandfather wanted it. He worked a deal to get it. Gran lived with the old bastard for fifty-plus years. Then she died and evidently haunted him for several more. I wouldn’t call it an equitable trade, but she got a certain amount of revenge.”

“Your family puts the D, Y and S in dysfunctional big time, Mitchell.” Gaby sat beside him on the sagging back step. She wore black shorts, a red halter and a slim ankle bracelet. Hair loose, no shoes. No bra…

“Shit.”

She grinned as he poured another drink, and then she plucked the glass from his hand while he recapped the bottle. “I want to say the time feels right, but it doesn’t quite, does it? Not yet.” Sipping, she gestured at the overgrown garden. “There’s no one lurking in these particular shadows, but something’s close.”

“And getting closer?”

“Oozing closer.” She handed him the glass. “I saw CJ on CNN today. Mia’s clairvoyant told me he has a cloud of corruption hanging over his head. All I saw was a man wearing a mask that’s going to crack if he smiles any harder.”

“Yeah? Is a smile all you saw? No sense of, whoa, hey, this guy’s my dad?”

“Not from CNN.” She shrugged. “Maybe not in person either. If he really is on Leshad’s payroll, and I believe he is, there’s probably not enough emotion inside him for us to connect. It’s not a big loss for me. I had excellent parents. Tallulah and Twila saw to the adoption personally.”

He opened and tipped the bottle again. “What about Phoebe? Still nothing for her?”

“I don’t…” She skimmed a restless hand over her bare leg. “All right, maybe. A little bit. She asked you to help me. That’s in her favor.”

“Oh, she way more than asked.” He knew he shouldn’t, but he took another long drink. “She promised to haunt me in the worst possible way if my bringing you to New Orleans ends with Leshad sinking his demon claws in you.”

Gaby regarded her fingers. “I can have claws too.” She slid her gaze sideways. “When I want to.”

“You know, honey—” he examined his whiskey glass, “—if I weren’t halfway to being pleasantly blitzed, I might actually worry about a remark like that.”

Head cocked, she sidled provocatively closer. “But now?”

“I don’t much care what you’re capable of doing. Of being. Of causing me to become.”

She set her mouth close to his ear, and the touch of her lips caused his brain to shut down with a resounding slam. “Shit.”

“You said that before.” She played with the ends of his hair. “And here I was thinking—all this moonlight, all these wild flowers, you, me, no Billy. Maybe I was mistaken, and the time’s right after all. Here, now, us, sex.”

Okay, he wasn’t going to swear again, but damn it, he was only human, and, yes, a guy. Catching her hand, he kissed her knuckles and moved to her mouth. Two seconds later, he drew back. “Fuck. My phone’s vibrating.”

“And that matters because?”

“I’ll let you know when the sexual haze that’s temporarily blinding me clears.”

She laughed. He didn’t. Keeping his eyes on Gaby’s, he answered the call with an ill-tempered, “What?”

“Hello to you too,
cher
.”

Phoebe’s sarcastic drawl did nothing to allay his frustration. He banked the worst of it. “Now’s not a good time, okay?”

“For me either, Mitchell. I wangled those invitations you wanted. It cost me four favors and a date with a complete asshole. So now it’s not only your sanity that’s in question, but mine as well for going along with you. Still, it’s done.”

“Great, done.”

“Well, Jesus, you’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” he said belatedly. “Have them delivered to my office.”

“She’s there, isn’t she?”

Even as Phoebe asked the question, Gaby cast him a level look, stood and walked down the stairs to the garden. “Not anymore. Look, seriously, thanks. I’ll take it from here. Sorry about the asshole. Gotta go. Trust me.” Ending the call, Mitchell raised his voice. “Gaby.” He couldn’t see her. When she didn’t answer, he set his glass aside. “Come on, Gaby, don’t do this. You’re not a kid, and I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with a tantrum.”

A wrestling match though, in a bed of rioting lilies, that he could definitely handle.

He spotted her near the rusting back gate. “Gaby?”

“Stay in the shadows, Mitchell.” A cypress tree concealed her from the alley. “There’s a man on the other side of the fence. He’s built like the Hulk. His partner’s watching the front of the house.”

Mitchell drew closer, took her arm. “You had to figure there’d be someone eventually. It’s not a problem. This place has more than two points of egress.”

“I’m not worried about getting out. I’m more not sure about the man in the alley. Billy isn’t here. If he were, I’d feel him.”

“Meaning?”

“He hasn’t been here at all. It was Madeleine who created the invisible wall that Ryder ran into.”

“Okay, Billy’s not now nor has he ever been in my grandfather’s house. Where’s this going?”

She nodded into the alley. “The man out there is sitting in the back of an old Chevy van.”

From the tone of her voice, Mitchell had a feeling the vehicle wasn’t important. “I mentioned other exits, right?”

“You did, but at the moment we can exit quite freely through this rear gate. The man in the van died two minutes ago.”

* * * * *

If Mitchell had theories, wild or otherwise, about what was unfolding outside his grandfather’s mansion, he didn’t burden Gaby with them. He did let her toss some things in her overnight bag and take a moment to say goodbye to his dead grandmother. Then they slipped into the garage where he uncovered a sleek black Harley, one he informed her could not be caught by another damn vehicle in the state.

Gaby figured that might be true as they reached his blues club on the fringe of the French Quarter in a matter of minutes.

A man was pounding thick fists on a freestanding machine when they entered through the side entrance.

Mitchell led her down a poorly lit corridor. “Can you jolt that bastard?”

“I can, but I’d rather make a telepathic suggestion.”

“Fine. Suggest he stop beating up on my slot machines and take his sorry ass to the porn theater two blocks over.”

Gaby slid him a vaguely humorous look before glancing around the corner at the man. “Won’t work,” she told him. “He’s gay.”

Clearly out of patience, Mitchell moved his head. “Jolt him.”

She would have laughed, except, well, there was a dead guy outside his grandfather’s mansion, and neither she nor Mitchell knew how or why that had come to be. Opting for a more passive play, she planted the word
thirsty
in the machine-beater’s mind and congratulated herself when, with one last punch to the slot machine’s belly, he lumbered to a nearby table.

Mitchell opened the door to a steep, dark stairwell. “Is it safe here?” she asked.

“It was supposed to be safe at my grandfather’s place.”

She halted halfway up. “Mitchell, if those were Leshad’s henchmen at your grandfather’s, and we know they were, won’t he also send people here?”

“He might, but only if he realizes we’ve left the big house. Which he probably won’t tonight because I rigged what lights are working to go off and on randomly.”

“What about the dead man in the van?”

“Not as big a concern in my opinion as the live one out front. We only need tonight. Tomorrow at this time, we’ll be in a far more dangerous position.”

Fear spread like splintered glass through her bloodstream. “Do I want to know what that position entails?”

His eyes gleamed in the thready half-light. “We’re going to a party on a revamped riverboat.”

“A party,” she repeated flatly. “On a riverboat. Are you out of your mind? More to the point, because I know you talked to her back at the house, is Phoebe out of hers?”

“Phoebe has faith in me. Do you?”

She descended one step to eye level. “I thought you said she threatened to hurt you if this—whatever we’re doing goes south?”

“Yeah, well, that. Phoebe tends to overdramatize.”

Huffing out a laugh, Gaby regarded the shadowed ceiling. “I’m surrounded by lunatics. No offense.”

“None taken.” Easing her head down, he pressed his thumb to her lower lip. “We’ll be on the riverboat, Gaby, in full gothic disguise. The party’s a masquerade.”

* * * * *

As Crucible’s personal assistant, Miranda Montgomery did pretty much anything that was asked of her. Tonight, she’d been instructed to watch the old Stone mansion in Bywater. She liked to think she was alone, but she doubted it. Leshad must know about Mitchell Stone, or otherwise, why was Patrice, the server from his blues club, dead?

She could have handled a little human company, but Killian had been assigned the task of locating Phoebe Lessard tonight. Which meant he’d be chasing his tail all over New Orleans.

Miranda made her third circuit of the sprawling estate as a jogger out for a late night run with her iPhone and her dog. Voudou, an agency-trained German Shepherd, could sniff out trouble anywhere. She’d have sworn he was a canine-psychic, except…nope, she didn’t want to go there.

They opted for the alley this time, running along the wall that contained the lush rear garden. Three vehicles sat dark and silent to the side. Voudou ignored the first one, but gave a soft woof and stopped to sniff the tires of a Chevy van.

“Good boy.” She patted the dog’s flank. “Now, is it a glitch or big trouble?”

Another barely audible bark told her it was big, or it could be.

Reaching behind her, Miranda drew her gun. “Which door?”

Voudou sniffed and chose the back.

Setting a hand on the latch, she tested it. Locked. Of course. So silencer it was.

She removed a cylinder from her hip sack, clipped it in place and faced the door. She had the trigger half-squeezed when she heard pebbles crunch on the pavement behind her.

Spinning into a crouch, she identified her target. A wiry man with a knife and a 9mm semi-automatic was creeping toward her from the rear. She put a single, silenced bullet in his throat.

When he dropped, she spun back, shot the lock and waited while Voudou nosed the door open a crack. He barked twice. That meant it was safe.

“I’m in so much trouble if you decide to become a double agent,” she said, hopping into the back of the van behind him.

Senses alert, she regarded the huddled mass of man sitting in a chair at a portable computer desk. When Voudou started forward, she closed the door and used her pen light.

One quick look was all it took to confirm that she was staring at a corpse. The takeout coffee on the desk was mostly gone and cool. There were traces of it on his lips and dribbled down his chin. Beyond that and several revolting tattoos, she didn’t see a mark on his body.

“Okay, well. Interesting.” Capping the dead man’s cup, Miranda sealed it inside a bag she pulled from her hip sack. “I think we’ll need to check the house, Voudou. First though, we’ll get the dead alley man outside into the van and contact Crucible.” Jumping down, she exchanged a commiserating look with her dog. “Why do we get all the dirty jobs?”