Black Dust Mambo (17 page)

But why the attempt on
his
life?

Had Gabrielle been behind the hoodooed poppet? Questions raised by the luscious Felicity Fields drifted through his mind:

“Did anyone besides Gabrielle LaRue know you’d be attending carnival?”

“No. Look, if you’re implying that Gabrielle had something to do with all this, you’re wrong. She’s the one who called me—”

“And did Ms. LaRue’s call lead you to your door and the bucket beyond . . .”

None of it made sense.

Gabrielle was a powerful hoodoo, a woman of strength, but brimming with secrets. Dallas didn’t really
know
all that much about her. But he’d trusted her all the years he’d known her as a student, then as a fellow hoodoo and—he liked to think—as a friend.

And he just couldn’t believe that there was anything wrong with Kallie. He’d never seen any sign of darkness in her. A quick temper, sure, but nothing that would qualify as “
more wicked den long-fallen Babylon.”

He wondered if Gabrielle had misinterpreted her cards, despite her denials, wondered if maybe it all came down to her thinking she saw something of Kallie’s murderous mom inside the girl.
What other seed could she be talking about?

Dallas poured the rest of his beer down his gullet, then ordered another cold one at the next to-go window he came to. He examined that afternoon’s phone conversation with Gabrielle again, twisted it this way and that, looking for rough edges, dangling threads, something not quite right.

“She safe, boy?”

“She is now. I potioned her up, and she’s sleeping. But two people are dead—one of ’em body and soul. The hex on Kallie’s mattress was a soul-killer.”

“A soul-killer? You sure? Not many can shape a black hex dat powerful.”

“True, but you can. And I’m sure about the soul-killing because a nomad Vessel happens to be here too. Which is good, since the Hecatean master died trying to defend Kallie.”

“Sir Basil Augustine is dead? Sweet Jesus, Dallas, where were you during all dis?”

“Sleeping off the effects of a jinxed poppet chained into a bucket of wormwood and sulfur water.”

“I tol’ you to keep yo’ dick in yo’ pants, boy.”

“I did, it is, and this ain’t got nothing to do with my dick, dammit.”

“So you’re saying de death fairy picked you for no particular reason?”

“No, I’m saying someone
deliberately
tried to kill me too, and if Kallie and Bell hadn’t stumbled across me, I’d be dead.”

“Kallie
found you? Did you tell her why you’re dere?”

“Did you hear the ‘someone deliberately tried to kill me too’ part?”

“I heard, boy. You’re talking to me, ain’t’cha? Obviously, dey didn’t succeed.”

“The good news is the woman responsible has been caught. Bad news is she’s been laying the blame for everything at your feet.”

“Silence, then:
My
feet? Who be dis woman?”

“Bell passed this info on to me—the woman’s name is Rosette, and she’s a black chick in her midtwenties with
beaucoup
short platinum-blonde hair. She was working as a maid in the hotel. Know her?”

“Rosette? I know a white girl named Rosalinda, but . . .”

“Well, this Rosette knows
you,
darlin’. She—”

“Don’t you dare
‘darlin’
’me, Dallas Brûler.”

“Sorry, ma’am, no disrespect, just a slip of the tongue. Anyway, she told Kallie that everything came compliments of Gabrielle LaRue. She also mentioned some bullshit about an eye for an eye never being enough.”

“From several thousand miles away, Dallas hears a breath catch in Gabrielle’s throat as though a realization has sparked through her mind—a realization she doesn’t reveal.”

“Bête comme une bête a chandelle,
dis girl. Sounds like she be carrying a heavy grudge, but I don’t know her.”

“She may be crazy as a June bug, for true, but I seriously doubt she has you mixed up with someone else. Do you think it’s possible that Kallie’s mother sent her?”

Silence hangs heavy in Dallas’s ear; then Gabrielle sighs.

“Anyt’ing’s possible at dis point, Dallas-boy. You might even be right about Sophie, but I don’t believe she’d try to snuff Kallie’s soul.”

“Why not? She tried to murder her, for chrissakes.”

“Sophie just wouldn’t and let’s leave it at dat.”

And no amount of persuasion and cajoling on his part had earned him a single word more about Sophie Rivière.

The conversation had ended with Dallas promising—since he was a goddamned glutton for punishment—to shepherd Kallie home as soon as possible and to find out as much as possible about Rosette.

Gabrielle’s words—“
She safe, boy?”
—circled on an endless loop through Dallas’s mind. Odd words if she truly wished Kallie dead and the appropriate ones if she wished her niece protected.

And Dallas wished he knew which way to take them. The only loose thread he’d discovered in remembering his conversation with Gabrielle was that caught breath followed by calm denial. He had no doubt those words—“
an eye for an eye is never enough”
—had clicked into place in Gabrielle’s mind like triple cherries on a slot machine.

What ain’t she saying? And even more important,
why
ain’t she saying it?

T
WENTY
M
AY
M
ADNESS

“You gonna have it out with Gabrielle?” Belladonna asked as they walked underneath the circular arch proclaiming may madness in black wrought-iron ivy leaf letters.

“Yeah, definitely,” Kallie said. She strolled along the crowded fairway, the grass cushioning the soles of her sandals a welcome change from a regular carnival’s playground of hard-packed dirt, dust, and dying weeds. “I can’t believe she sent someone—let alone Dallas, of all people—to spy on me.”

Understanding and sympathy sparked gold light through Belladonna’s autumn gaze. “Me either. I mean, hell, if you’re gonna send a spy, send Jason Bourne, y’know? At least he’s sexy.”

Kallie slapped Belladonna’s arm. “Pure evil.”

“Well,
someone
has to be.”

Game booths—spell a ring around the bottle and win!—and demonstration booths—chakra alignment here—nestled against each other. Drums throbbed and pulsed, a primal and earthy soundtrack against the musical
dings, clangs,
and deep-throated laughter curling into the air from the gaming booths as the women walked past lecture tents—how to use both runes and tarot in your readings—holding experts seated at tables lined with pitchers of water and folding chairs filled with note-taking listeners.

The carnival drums pounded in time with the dull pain throbbing above Kallie’s right eye.
Thanks, Dallas.
She decided to blame the headache on his spy confession—or partial confession, since she remained convinced he had held something back.

“Maybe Gabrielle chose him because she wanted someone she trusted completely to watch over you,” Belladonna said. “I gotta admit her actions surprised me too, but maybe it’s like Dallas said—she was just worried about you.”

“Maybe, but it don’t make it right, Bell.” Kallie shoved her hands into the pockets of her cutoff jeans.

“No argument here. Hey, you want some cotton candy?”

“When in carnival, yada, yada . . . Sure. Purple.” Belladonna perched her hand on one cocked hip. Her scent—jasmine tonight—floated in the air, light and sweet. “Girl, please. You
always
pick purple. You need to expand your horizons. Live a little.”

Kallie shrugged. “What the hell—let’s go with blue, then.”

“That’s what
I’m
getting, so you get pink.”

“What the—? Purple!”

Laughing, Belladonna turned to the booth and placed their order. The guy behind the counter, a skinny teen, red-haired and
beaucoup
freckled, murmured a few words and traced a glyph in air laced thick with the sticky, buttery scents of caramel corn and spun sugar, and two paper cones floated over to the whirling cotton-candy-making machine.

Kallie’s thoughts spun back to Layne and the grief she’d seen in his green eyes the moment his gaze had landed on her bed and Gage’s bloodied body. Spun back to the feel of his hard chest beneath her hands as she tried to summon him back into his lifeless body and siphon the hex’s poison from his soul.

“I
am
fighting, woman. Quit pummeling me.”

And now, like a cherry on top of a nightmare sundae, the nomad had Augustine’s uncrossed-over spirit jam-packed inside of him.

Two people are dead because of me. Gage’s soul destroyed. How do I ever atone for that?

Kallie tugged her hands free of her pockets as Bella-donna handed her a paper cone mounded with purple fluff. “I thought I was getting pink,” Kallie said.

“I decided to have mercy.” Belladonna plucked a strand of blue from her cone and placed it in her mouth. “Yum. Sugar.”

“You just had sugar.”

“I stand corrected. Yum.
More
sugar.”

“I think I want to attend Gage’s funeral. I owe him that much,” Kallie said, pinching a piece of purple fluff into her mouth. It melted the second it touched her tongue. Sticky sugar fuzz clung to her fingertips.

Belladonna crossed her arms over her chest and gave Kallie a long and measured look. “Mmm-hmm. And when the pixie tries to kill you like she promised?”

“I’ll deck her.”

“Y’know, Shug, I hate to break it to you, but slamming knuckles into noses isn’t the answer to
everything,
and it’s far from accepted funeral etiquette. Oh. Wait. It’s a nomad funeral, so maybe it isn’t. And that’s another thing—I don’t think outsiders are welcome at nomad funerals.”

“I know, I know,” Kallie said; then she sighed. She brushed her hair back from her face. “I’m going to see if I can reason with the leprechaun. Maybe I can convince her to call off the ban long enough for me to attend the funeral—then I’ll never bother her or Layne again.”

Belladonna snorted. “Good luck with that, Shug.”

Never bother Layne again. Never see him again.

Well, no big deal, right? Sure, the man was
beaucoup
easy on the eyes, but she didn’t really know him, and he’d be back on the road again soon enough anyway. Yet the thought of never looking into his pine-green eyes again or winning a smile from his lips or catching his sweet-orange-and-sandalwood scent twisted cold around her heart. And even though that puzzled the hell out of her—
do I feel this way because I saved his life?—
she couldn’t help but wonder what tumbling into the sack with him would be like.

It’d be good, I’d bet. Loving each other up from sunup to sundown until he rode away again. We’d have our space, our privacy, and would look forward to the next meeting.

She stuffed another sticky piece of spun sugar into her mouth, perplexed by the direction of her thoughts. She remembered the flutter of Layne’s pulse as it stopped, remembered the feel of his ribs cracking beneath her hands, the hex’s oily taint flowing from him and into her. Remembered the look in his eyes when he’d opened them again—all green heat and light:
I know you.

We’re connected somehow—I felt it the first time I saw him standing outside my door looking all sleep-rumpled. Saw it spark in his eyes too.

“My advice regarding the pixie?” Belladonna was saying as Kallie tuned back in. “Make a poppet of her, and compel it to be nice.”

“I like that idea,” Kallie replied, wondering if she could stop at just compelling McKenna to behave. “But I’ll try talking to her first. If that doesn’t work . . . You got poppet-makings in that mambo-scout bag of yours?”

“Nope, but you can buy them in the dealers’ room.”

“Wonder if they make poppets that small?”

“Girl, please. In
her
case, the poppets are life-sized.”

Kallie laughed, and the pain in her head eased a little.

“Yup, you are pure one hundred percent evil.”

“Kind of you to notice, Shug.” Belladonna stuffed a wad of blue fluff into her mouth. “But before you go look up the pixie or start hexing tiny poppets, there’s something you need to think about—and think hard.”

All the amusement and mischief vanished from Belladonna’s face and her somber expression knuckled a fist of apprehension into Kallie’s guts. “And what’s that?” she asked, keeping her voice level.

“I know you want to say your good-byes to Gage, I totally get that. But you’ve got to look at it from the other side. How do you think Gage’s family will feel about a squatter chick dropping in on the festivities? A squatter chick who also happens to be the last woman their boy slept with and in whose bed he died?”

“Because of a hex intended for her,” Kallie finished. Her appetite for cotton candy withered. She crossed to the trash bin stationed between the bewitch a mole and wheel of destiny booths and dumped her cotton candy into its black-plastic-lined interior.

“Think they’d want to see her?” Belladonna asked gently when Kallie rejoined her. “Think they’d want her to share in their sorrow?”

“No, I guess not.” Shoving the heavy mass of her hair behind her shoulders, Kallie sighed. “If Jacks died in some woman’s bed because of a bullet or spell or whatever aimed at her, I’d fucking deck her if she dared show her face at his funeral.”

“I know you feel bad, Shug, and I know you want to do what’s right, but in this case, staying away
is
the right thing.”

Throat tight, Kallie nodded. “Yeah.”

But she hated to leave it at that. To just walk away from a man who’d made her laugh and whose touch had made her moan. A man who’d died in her place. Her fingers sought out the soothing onyx-and-sterling-silver touch of her pendants and locked around them.

The memory of Gage’s fingers slipping across the swell of her breasts to the base of her throat and the pendants that rested against her skin sparked through her mind.

“What’s with the coffin? You ain’t Goth, so I’m figuring it’s a hoodoo thing.”

“How do you know I ain’t Goth? Never judge a book, yada yada.”

“You’re right, my bad.
Are
you Goth?”

“Nope, and you’re right, it’s a hoodoo symbol. The coffin represents Baron Samedi. He’s the lord of death, and he stands at the crossroads.”

“Is that what the
X
is for? Or is that a cross?”

“Both. It represents the crossroads. The Baron alone decides who crosses over into
Guinee
—the realm of the dead—or doesn’t.”

“‘Or doesn’t?’ What does that mean, exactly? Sounds kinda ominous.”

“Not really. It just means that he’s also the
loa
of resurrection. A lot of times, he’s called upon as a last resort when someone’s near death or dying.”

“And this one? The saint medallion?”

“Saint Bernadette, for healing.”

Gage traces a gentle finger along the scar at her temple: “Healing. Death and resurrection. Sounds like you faced something pretty rough once upon a time.”

“My aunt thought so, anyway. She gave me both of these, and I promised to always wear them.”

“Good symbols to wear, you ask me. I know someone who’d love to have a chat with the Baron about open and instant admission for everyone into the land of the dead.”

Kallie knew now that Gage had been speaking about Layne. Releasing the pendants, she wondered if she’d at least be able to give the nomad a gift to send with Gage without resorting to binding a Mc Kenna poppet.

“Why don’t you help me judge the wet-boxers contest?” Belladonna said. “Have a little fun and get to ogle men’s packages with impunity to boot. I’ll see if you can be the one who hoses them down.”

Kallie felt a smile tugging at her lips. “I hope they plan to use warm water. Maybe. It’d be fun, for true, but first I gotta meet with Augustine and see what he wants.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Belladonna mumbled around a mouthful of cotton candy. “Where did he ask you to meet him again?”

“Some bar on Bourbon Street—The Latex Closet.” Belladonna snorted. “Sounds like a dominatrix fashion boutique.”

Kallie grinned. “Well . . . he
is
British.”

“And he’s in Layne’s hot body. Imagine him all decked out in latex.”

Heat fluttered through Kallie’s belly at the image Belladonna’s words invoked.
Nomad in skintight latex. Yum.

“Go, girl, but make sure you’re here for the wet-boxers fun. Hunky conjurers and illusionists in skimpy underthings, you with a hose . . .” A wicked smile danced across Belladonna’s lips.

“Wouldn’t miss it. I’ll meet you at the contest stage when I’m done.”

“I’ll have a hose waiting for you, Shug.”

Kallie blew Belladonna a kiss before turning around and heading for the may madness arch; the wrought iron glinted like polished black pearl in the sunlight. She headed back across the courtyard and to the hotel, Gage’s words haunting her thoughts.

“Healing. Death and resurrection. Sounds like you faced something pretty rough once upon a time.”

Cold fingers closed around Kallie’s heart. Nothing she’d faced compared to what Gage had suffered alone, and nothing ever would.