Kicking It (10 page)

I woke up in a strange bed in a strange bedroom, and it took me only a few seconds to realize I had no idea where I was.

Or who I was.

Heart thumping, mind skittering, I surveyed the closed, heavy curtains and the blazing lights that I had evidently left on. Round me, paintings of trumpets, saxophones, and clarinets hung on the walls. I kept anticipating the numbness of sleep to wear off, yet . . .

No. So I closed my eyes again, giving myself more time. When that didn’t work, my pulse pounded faster, like feet running over an endless street. I sat up in the bed, covers swaddling me to the hips.

Brain. Surely my brain would kick in any moment.

Yet my head was
still
a near blank while I inspected myself: fully dressed, in a tight thin-strapped black tank with a skull and crossbones on the front, cutoff jeans shorts. But then I focused on my legs. They felt heavy, encased, as if . . .

I whipped off the covers, then gaped.

A pair of boots—and not any sort of boots I’d seen before now. (As if I even faintly
knew
what I had seen before now.) These boots came to just below my knees, and they appeared to be made of . . . vines. A dark green mass of attractively entwined strands, wrapping round calves and feet, as if I had just now stepped off nature’s catwalk.

“What the bloody hell?” I whispered, still staring. Was I in an old episode of
The Twilight Zone
? Wait—how did I know what
The Twilight Zone
was when I couldn’t even remember anything about how I had gotten here or where I was or what I was doing in these tarty, out-of-the-ordinary boots?

Slowly, one fact caught up to me: I had spoken with an English accent. Somewhat posh. A touch salty, perhaps. And if I knew it was an English accent, that meant I could at least remember
something
about my world. I knew
things
, but not important things . . .

I rolled out of the bed. The sheets were clean, tidy. Clearly, I was not a restless sleeper. In fact, it was as if I had slept the slumber of the dead.

For some odd reason, that thought weighed on me as I rushed to the window, yanking aside the curtain to discover that I was on the second floor of a house, dusk pressing down on a view of a street decorated with wrought-iron galleries. Below them, people meandered down sidewalks, some wearing flashy beads under the flickering lanterns and carrying plastic cups. A fence enclosed the yard, and across the way a corner market was boarded up.

I sprang to a nearby desk, grasping at a folder, the golden lettering on the front confirming my growing suspicions.

Hanover House. New Orleans.

I allowed myself to sigh. Here was my explanation, right before me. Today I had most likely gotten rat-arsed on the Hand Grenades and Hurricanes I knew they sold on Bourbon Street, and had stumbled back to my bed-and-breakfast room. I was on holiday, out for a good time. Liquor was the reason I didn’t remember a few pertinent details. Evidently I had destroyed key brain cells.

But then, why didn’t I feel as groggy or booze-bitten as I should have?

Instead of asking myself again the reason I could remember big-picture items such as how it felt to be hungover, I stumbled away from the desk, turning round, looking for a suitcase or a bag or anything else I had brought with me. Even a smartphone that could fill in my blanks. I searched drawers, under the bed, everywhere.

Again . . . nothing, unless you counted the unfurled paper clip on my nightstand.

Panic increasingly chipped at me as I told myself to think.
Think hard.

Check your pockets, you git
.

I did, but I didn’t have much luck there, either: merely thirty dollars.

The room was closing in on me. Even those boots felt tight. Too tight, as if they were gnawing at my skin. Unable to stand the sensation, I bent to remove them.

But . . . no zipper, no buckles. I attempted to draw the material away from my legs, but it was as if the boots were leeched on.

That couldn’t be. So I tried to wedge them away from me again, dropping to the carpet this time, pulling forcefully at them. My legs tingled, and I could have sworn the boots were a part of my flesh.

Impossible. Absolutely insane.

Resting my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, I told myself not to give in to the anxiety strumming at my nerves. But I had no name, no clue, no idea what to do next.

After a few breaths, I realized the front desk would have my name. What a fuckwit. So I stood, catching sight of myself in a mirror across the room. I was young, mid-twenties, perhaps. Sandy hair that was straight and cut to the shoulders. And my eyes were a clear green color, my nose slightly tilted, my teeth with a bit of an overbite. I looked clean, as if I had recently showered, so I couldn’t have had
that
rough of a day out on the streets.

At least I didn’t look as insane as I felt. I took a moment to freshen up in the bathroom—the proprietors were kind enough to have toothpaste and other toiletries on hand—then left the room, taking care not to lock the door since I couldn’t find my key.

Just outside my door, I found a middle-aged woman with dark skin and black hair worn short and flipped up at the ends. She sported a print skirt and a white blouse, and carried an armful of those hospitality baskets, as if she were an employee or owner.

At first, her smile welcomed me. But then she glanced at my boots and frowned. When her gaze traveled to the room number on the door, the frown only deepened.

“Hello,” I said, my pulse pounding. I would have wagered she’d never seen me before in her life.

“What’re you doing in that room?” she asked in a thick Southern accent. “It’s unoccupied.”

I recalled the unbent paper clip on the desk. I didn’t have a key at all, did I? I had the feeling that I had picked that lock, showered, then fallen asleep as sweetly as Goldilocks before the Three Bears had come home.
Why?

I knew somewhere deep down that I didn’t want this woman to contact any authorities, so I smiled at her, assuring her that I meant no harm. She dropped one of the baskets and clutched at the other one’s handle with both hands, as if to swing it at me.

“Carlos!” she yelled, obviously summoning an employee. “Call 911!”

I bolted toward the staircase, and she wasn’t far behind me.

“Get back here, little girl! What did you steal?”

No time to answer as I easily flew down the steps.
Very
easily, but that had to be my adrenaline kicking in. I burst through the front door, sprinting out the gate to the street, where people had paused, watching the screaming woman emerging from Hanover House.

“Get back here, you shit!” she yelled.

But she sounded far off in the distance as I gained speed, the sidewalk spinning by under my boots, the buildings a blur as I pumped my arms, going faster, faster,
faster
—

No time to think about how I was managing to move so rapidly, because I heard a siren ahead. The law already?

I skidded, taking a right turn into an alley. Shadows enveloped me as I slowed, then crouched behind discarded crates, at the rear of a restaurant, judging by the seafood aromas coming from the back door.

As the siren faded into the distance, common sense caught up to me, and now I had a moment to wonder how I had been able to run so quickly. I had been literally zooming along.

I glanced down at the boots.

While I brushed my fingers over them again, they throbbed into my skin, as if they truly were a part of me.

I continued inspecting them while also listening for any sign of trouble round me. Soon enough, I was able to relax, but only somewhat, because I was still wondering how I could start backtracking in order to discover how I came by these boots. More important, I had the sense that they would lead to my identity.

Just as I was settling on which way to go next, a prickle of awareness brought me out of my questions. Someone near. Someone . . . watching?

Staying huddled behind the crates, I held my breath. Then I shivered as a shadow appeared across the alley, on the wall. A shadow that was sitting on top of the crates . . .

And it was aiming what looked to be a weapon at me.

It was as if my body took over, and without another thought, my hand zipped up to the shadow’s wrist. I grasped it, yanking it down from the crate with a strength I hadn’t known I possessed. I didn’t even stop to see who my attacker was as I disarmed it, a Taser clattering over the ground as I targeted a kick at the shadow’s throat.

But my attacker was nearly as fast as I was, and it had dodged, flipped to its feet, crouching, its hands in front of it, ready for another attack.

For a suspended second, I saw its entire black form, its electric-red eyes cutting through the falling night.

I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t, and as I automatically spun round and whipped out my leg to catch it square in the head with my boot, the creature did a back handspring.

Fuck this,
said common sense.

I jumped into a sprint, my heart nearly exploding as I zoomed through the alley, took a corner, then began weaving through the drunks on the lantern-lit, karaoke-blaring street, feeling a splash of liquid on my arm when I upset someone’s plastic cup on my way.

What had that been back in the alley? And how could I make certain it didn’t follow me?

Light,
I thought.
Just head for a light
.

I whooshed into the first doorway I could find, slowing down only when I was inside the building and trying to blend in behind what I realized was a rack of herbs and bottles of oils.

My heart was throbbing, my head swimming, my breath chopping when I heard a low, drawling voice behind me.

“Well,
cher
,” he said. “It’s about time you arrived.”

It was as if some sort of power had hold of me. I spun round toward the voice, one of my hands in a bladed position as I slashed at my target.

The man behind me jumped out of the way, as if he had
expected
my actions. But I wasn’t done. I hopped up and kicked out with my right leg, hitting him in the shoulder. He grunted, and when I followed up with a spinning whirlwind of another kick, he ducked, holding up his hands and laughing.

I settled into a knee-bent stance. He was . . .
laughing
?

“Whoa,” he said, smiling at me as if he encountered kung-fu psychos every day. “Didn’t mean to frighten you. Just calm down, darlin’.”

My pulse double-timed as he continued raising his hands in peace. He was no shadow attacker; he was definitely just a man.
Most
definitely. Tall, very tall, with longish black hair that he had pulled into a low ponytail. Gray eyes that burned against the toasty shade of his skin, eyes that pierced me and grinned at me at the same time. A long nose and full lips, broad shoulders and chest. Arms muscled under a black shirt with sleeves rolled up to his biceps. He wore jeans and black boots with silver tips on them and . . .

I stayed in that defensive position as I inspected him even closer. Was there something sticking out of the left side of his waistband, covered by his shirt? A firearm? My gaze traveled back up to his neck, where a leather strap held a pendant—a silver eye that gleamed against his smooth chest where his shirt gaped.

The Eye of Horus,
I thought.
The all-seeing eye
. There went my useless memory again.

He cocked an eyebrow at me and gestured to our surroundings. We were in what looked to be the back room of a touristy voodoo shop, with carved juju masks and magick books on shelves and a ragged table to our right, half concealed behind a purple curtain. No customers round. No red eyes or shadow people to attack me here.

Another niggle tickled the back of my brain—was there something in this shop keeping that red-eyed creature from entering, and that was the reason it hadn’t followed me inside?

“Normally,” the man said, after taking a thorough look at me as well, “I would say that you’ve popped in for a quick reading, but I know better.”

Come again? “What do you know?”

“Quite a bit, except maybe not exactly what you’re searching for.”

I fit a few pieces together: the table to our right, this voodoo shop. “You’re a psychic who works here.”

“Yes.”

No time to waste
. “Then—”

“I’m sorry,
cher
, but I can’t tell you your name.”

His statement was jarringly spot-on, and in more than a psychic way. Something tightened in my throat at this dead end, but I knew that I never cried. So I didn’t. “Then what might you tell me?”

He gestured toward the half-curtained table, inviting me to sit.

I shook my head. “I don’t have very much money.” Besides, New Orleans was full of shams, and he could very well be one. Everyone, even someone as clueless as I, knew that.

Yet something had been chasing me outside, so perhaps a short stay in here wouldn’t be amiss—only until I collected myself and decided what to do next. Wasn’t there a possibility, though, that if this man were a true seer, he might be able to aid me in discovering all that was lost to me? He knew I didn’t know my name, after all.

“The few dollars you might have on you mean nothing to me,” he said, looking me up and down again. He dwelled on my saucy boots before he sent his gaze back up my body, a slow, wicked grin claiming his mouth. “There are other ways to pay.”

I almost planted a boot in his face.

He was already laughing. “No. That’s not what I was saying.”

“It better not have been.”

He bowed slightly at the waist. “My name is Philippe Angier, and, as I mentioned, I have been expecting you.”

Should I trust him? This was a mystical city, full of twists and turns, so perhaps he
could
help. Also, he wasn’t awful to gaze at, so I decided to go with my better instincts and accept his hospitality.

He drew the rest of the curtain aside for me, pulled out a chair, and fixed the fabric so that it would block out the rest of the room.

“No,” I said, gripping his wrist, just as I had done with my attacker earlier. “I don’t want any surprises to creep up on me.”

He tilted his head, giving a long glance to his wrist, grinning that grin. I realized that I was still holding on to him when it wasn’t necessary. With my fingers burning, I disconnected from him and sat, but I did it sideways, in such a way that I could monitor the entrance to this rear room. I also managed to scoot the chair so my back was to a wall.

Leaving the curtain open, he sauntered to his seat. “Still on guard, are you? If you hear anything out front, I have an assistant working the counter there, so . . .”

“Don’t fret. I’ll spare her the karate chops.”

He gave me an entertained, touché nod, not at all fazed by my sharp tongue or my sudden appearance.

“You said you were expecting me,” I said, testing him. “Why?”

“A precognitive vision.”

“Really.”

He leaned back in his chair, surveying me again with that gray gaze. Lovely bumps crept up my arms.

“My visions are very real,” he finally said. “In this particular one, I saw that someday soon I would find a . . . different . . . sort of customer hiding near the love potions and herbs. I had time to come to terms with you.”

“Any con man would claim that.” But again, he had known that I didn’t have an identity.

“What if I told you,” he said, “that I sense these clothes you’re wearing are not your type?”

I glanced at the skull-and-crossbones tank, the cutoffs. The boots.

He laughed. “You had a sort of uniform you always wore . . .” His expression changed, from amusement to something serious. “You’ve come so close to death, more than once.”

I didn’t answer, but I thought of the red eyes outside. Had that been one of my near-death experiences?

He was still being vague, but then he narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re so alone in this world. No one to turn to, no one to go home to.”

It was as if he had punched me square in the gut. “I wouldn’t know.”

He leaned toward me, lowering his voice. “Do you trust me to tell you even more?”

No. Yet I wished to hear what he had to say, more than anything. I didn’t have many other options.

Resting his hand on the table—my, he had nice long fingers, didn’t he?—he turned it palm upward. “May I?” He gestured toward my hand.

Psychometry. Some psychics could get readings off objects or biotic things such as skin or hair. I knew that, too, as if it had been a normal part of my life at some time. I was getting the feeling that far stranger things had been a part of my existence as well.

I placed my hand in his, trying not to think about goose bumps or shivers. Trying not to think of how warm his grip was as he closed his fingers over mine.

A few seconds later, he took in a sharp breath.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Today,” he said, “you woke up just as alone as you have been for a while now,
cher
. In a room you didn’t recognize. You don’t know how you came to be there.”

His gaze softened. Pity. I recognized that well enough, though I suspected I had little tolerance for it.

“And . . . ?” I asked.

“And those boots you wear. They’re especially unfamiliar to you. They make you feel . . .” He seemed to search for words, then only came up with, “Powerful. Is that it?”

I nodded slightly, still reluctant to give too much of myself away.

He gripped my hand harder. “You come from so much darkness. That’s clear.”

“How so?”

“I can’t say for sure, but I see . . .” As he paused, his gaze unnerved me. “Fire. An explosion. Pain. Then, it’s as if . . .”

I must have squeezed
his
hand this time.

“I’m getting a symbolic reading, so you’ll have to interpret the images.” He furrowed his dark brow. “It’s as if you were shut into a coffin—one made of glass. Then you were freed, but there was still containment. Does any of that make sense?”

Not literally. But I felt contained right now by being shut out of the information we all take for granted—information we normally wake up knowing every morning.

“There’s even more fire after the coffin imagery,” he added. “But this time the flames nearly devour you.”

Now I was shaking my head. I couldn’t have lived the life he was describing on a realistic level. So what did it all mean?

He ran a thumb over mine. Comforting me?

Comfort. It might have been the first thing—or last—that I needed at this moment. But before I pulled my hand out of his, he looked grim, as if he had received one more vision.

“You’ve had an interesting night so far.”

“You’re referring to the ‘it’ that was chasing me earlier?”

“I wish I knew what it was. But I saw the burning eyes . . . the black shape. I think you don’t need me to tell you that it was dangerous.”

“Any hints about how to avoid it in the future?”

He nodded toward the shop in front. “Indeed, I know people who can help.”

“But I can’t pay you for any protection items or spells, remember?”

His smile was slight. “You didn’t run in here for the fun of it. And for me to deny you help would be terrible karma. Besides, it’s a slow night, even for March. I’ve been bored until now,
cher
.”

What was he saying? That he had assumed the mantle of white knight for a random damsel in distress?

I was torn. I had the feeling I could take care of myself very well, thank you, under normal circumstances, but someone was after me out there, in the night. I would be foolish to refuse help from the only savior available.

He pushed back from the table and came round to my side. “May I?” he asked, motioning to my boots.

Why not?
I stretched out a leg as he bent down, and I tried like mad to keep those white-knight thoughts from crowding my head. When he ran his fingers over the viny texture of the boot, I restrained a quiver. It was as if I could feel his touch, even through whatever material these boots were made of.

“I’ve never seen anything like these,” he said. “And I get nothing on where you purchased them.”

I frowned at the word “purchased,” and I wasn’t sure why. Instinct again? But if it was instinct, it wasn’t a good one. I had broken into a bed-and-breakfast already. Had I also shoplifted these clothes and boots?

When Philippe smoothed a hand up the back of my calf, further exploring, I went tight between the legs. I almost shifted in my chair. And when he slid a finger into the top of my boot, brushing skin, I jerked away from him.

His gaze was fascinated now. “It’s as if they . . .”

“Are attached to me? I know. I tried to strip them off.”

“They wouldn’t budge?”

“Right.” Then a gobsmacking thought hit me. If these boots were as odd as I believed they were, was it possible that they had led me into this voodoo shop on purpose? Were they voodoo items?

I could tell Philippe was thinking the same. “You ran in here like you were part of the wind, and the way you fight, my darlin’? Are you sure these ain’t superhero boots?”

Gob. Smacked. “I’m not certain of anything.”

He stood, his hands on his lean hips, considering. Behind him and to the left, in another room where a curtain was pulled back from the entrance, a shelf of jujus and gris-gris and dolls stood, timeless, as if knowing the answers that we did not.

“These boots could be the work from an old, powerful woman in the area,” he finally said. “They call her Amari.”

“So I should see her.”

“I would say an unqualified yes, except for . . .” He looked at my boots. “They say Amari doesn’t
sell
any charmed objects.”

At that point, I concentrated only on the “charmed” part. “You think these boots are enchanted? That’s the reason they won’t bloody come off me?”

“I do get that feeling. But you have a bigger worry than that.”

Back to the “sell” word he had used. “If this Amari doesn’t offer charmed objects for sale, then how did I end up with the boots?”

What had I been up to? And, damn it all, was it possible that the red-eyed creature was trying to fetch the boots back for Amari?

Splendid.

“Is there a chance,” I asked, “that there’s another witch round here who sells clingy boots that make a girl run like the wind and sting like a bee?”

As Philippe turned the question over in his mind, I saw something in the room behind him, through the spaces of the shelves between the jujus and dolls.

Eyes. Red eyes.

He must have noticed my widened gaze, and he turned round. But I jumped out of the chair, my body taking over again, as if my mind had no say. I dove for what I thought was the gun in his waistband.

Yet he was no fool—he’d already drawn the weapon, firing at the shelf, wood and cloth flying every which way. A scream came from the front of the shop.

The red eyes disappeared. I felt Philippe’s hand on my arm just as I was about to dart away.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

Trust him? Sounded good at the moment. “Sure. Why not.”

We made a break for the front door, his coworker peeking over the sales counter as we ran outside and he pulled me toward the edge of the sidewalk, where a motorcycle sat dormant. He hopped on, reaching in his pocket for a set of keys, then revved up the bike. I had already jumped on the back of the seat, my arm round his waist.

Shoving the revolver into my hand, he didn’t say a word as we took off into the night and I glanced over my shoulder, swearing that a pair of red eyes was fading into nothing on top of the shop’s roof as we roared away.