Black Dust Mambo (3 page)

“No. He hadn’t fucking crossed over because there was nothing left of him
to
cross over. Nothing remains of him.” Layne’s voice was strained even to his own ears. “The hex not only swallowed his life, it ate his soul. Like it tried to eat mine.”

F
OUR
S
OUL
E
ATER

Fear slicked a finger down Kallie’s spine.
Soul eater
. That kind of evil, that kind of blackest-of-the-black hex, required incredible power and was spoken of only in guarded whispers for fear of calling it down. She stared at her hands, pulse racing.

How the hell did I manage to reel the goddamned hex out of Layne and through me without it killing both of us, body and soul?

“Holy Mother,” the little nomad breathed, distress darkening her eyes.

“Hellfire.” Belladonna’s gaze settled on the floor just behind Kallie. A muscle ticked near her left eye. “Jesus Christ.”

“You sure?” Kallie whispered, meeting Layne’s gaze.

“Wish I wasn’t.” Layne eased up onto his elbows, wincing. He touched his fingertips to his sternum. Winced again.

“I broke a few ribs,” Kallie said. “Couldn’t be helped.”

“I’m alive, so I ain’t complaining.”

“You’re welcome.”

A smile brushed Layne’s lips.

“Stay down,” the little nomad gal said, glaring at Layne as if she were a towering basketball center and not a leprechaun. “Let me check ye over before ye do a man-stupid thing like get up and act like everything’s all rosy and never been better.”

“Hell, woman,” Layne muttered. “You’d think we were still married. You lost the right to boss me around when we got divorced.”

“I
never
bossed ye. Not once. Directed, maybe. Guided, sure. But never bossed,” the black-haired leprechaun declared.

Layne snorted in reply.

“Hush up, you. Just lie down,” the never-bossy ex-wife ordered. “I need to make sure yer all right.”

With a resigned grunt, Layne eased back down onto the carpet. He looked at Kallie from beneath his bloodstained lashes. “By the way, this is McKenna. She’s a shaman. McKenna, this is Kallie. She’s a hoodoo.”

“Charmed,” Mc Kenna said, her tone anything but.

“Be nice, Kenn,” Layne warned.

“Oh, please, not on my account. I wouldn’t want her to strain herself.” Kallie flashed the nomad leprechaun a sweet-as-fresh-baked-apple-pie smile.

“Strain this.” McKenna lifted a hand, then extended the middle finger, an equally sweet smile on her lips.

Looked like the leprechaun had some sass to her. Kallie couldn’t help smiling again—but hopefully not in any kind of way that could be misconstrued as friendly.

“Hate to break up a good catfight and all,” Belladonna said, her voice once again a velvet purr, “but paramedics and carnival security are on their way up. I suggest y’all get your shit together.”

“Lovely,” Kallie muttered.

Mc Kenna bent over Layne and touched her fingertips to his temples. Her eyes closed. Kallie felt power flow from the woman and into Layne, power as deep and strong as an ancient river sure of its course. Power deeper even than Gabrielle’s—and, until now, Kallie had never felt energy as intense as her
tante
’s.

Just who is this leprechaun anyhow?

Kallie studied Layne’s fairy-sized former wife. Her small, sharp features cast the illusion of childlike youth, but now Kallie noticed the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes and the laugh lines bracketing her sensual mouth. Still young and good-looking (okay,
really
good-looking), yes, but definitely older than Layne, maybe even by a good fifteen or twenty years.

Which one of them had ended the marriage? The way the leprechaun kept touching Layne made Kallie think the divorce was still fresh enough to act as an aphrodisiac—
must have you since you’re no longer mine.

Not that it was any of Kallie’s concern. Well, maybe a little, given that she’d just saved the man’s life. She frowned. Didn’t that make her responsible for him? Not that she needed or wanted the responsibility, since she was still trying to figure out how to handle her own life, but still . . .

She remembered the shock that had tingled through her the first time she’d looked into Layne’s green eyes, remembered the inner finger-to-the-lips hush that had followed.

“Here.” Belladonna shoved a wad of pink material that smelled faintly of irises and green-tea-scented body lotion under Kallie’s nose—Kallie’s well-worn and comfy pink bathrobe. “All kinds of officials are going to be here any minute. And you shouldn’t look like the stripper hired for a bachelor party.”

“A
horror
movie bachelor party,” McKenna murmured, opening her eyes and lifting her head. “The stripper of death.” The little nomad’s expression suggested she wasn’t entirely kidding.

“I said be nice, woman,” Layne growled. He sat up, pain crinkling the corners of his eyes and tightening his lips. But his pine-colored gaze held only humor.

Kallie snatched the robe from Belladonna’s hand. She slid her errant bra strap back onto her shoulder again, then rose to her feet. Chin lifted and holding Mc Kenna’s gaze, she belted on the robe. “So how is he? Layne, I mean?”

Mc Kenna shot her a sharp glance. “How do ye mean? In bed, or healthwise?”

Kallie blinked. “Healthwise! I’m sure he’s fine in bed.” When Mc Kenna’s lips parted as though to speak, Kallie hastily held up a hand and blurted, “No. Don’t answer that. Totally not necessary.”

“Hello, I’m right here,” Layne said. “I’m fine. Dandy, even. In all ways. So I’ve been told.”

“He’s good, aye.” A knowing smile curved McKenna’s lips. “Now
healthwise,
I found no trace of foreign magic in him, and everything seems to be in working order. Thanks to you.”

Kallie stared at her, decided the nomad’s words were sincere, then shrugged one shoulder. “Well, okay, you’re welcome, but I didn’t do it for you.”

“And now it’s
your
turn to be nice, Shug,” Belladonna murmured. “Give it a try.”

“I
am
being nice.” Kallie swiveled around to face Belladonna. “I wanna take a look at the bed before everyone swoops in and tosses us out. See if there’s anything to indicate who mighta laid this goddamned trick.”

Belladonna nodded, her curls bobbing. “Okay. And may I point out that we’re dealing with an enemy that wanted Gage
more
than dead—he wanted Gage erased from existence? That’s a very special kinda hating. It also means we’re in
way
over our heads.”

“We need to contact our clan,” Layne said. “This is nomad business. We’ll deal with it.”

“He’s right,” Mc Kenna said.

“No offense, but where’s your clan at right now?” Belladonna asked.

“Florida,” Layne replied.

Belladonna perched a hand on her hip. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot they can do to help you at the moment. And something needs to be done
now
. Given that this is a murder-by-magic, I requested carnival authority, not the cops.”

“Law involvement is the last thing we want,” Kallie agreed. “The switched-off may not believe in magic or the supernatural, but they
do
believe in Manson-style madness, and that’s how they’ll see this. We need to find who did this to Gage and why.”

“Oh, we’ll find the bastard,” Layne said, his voice cold and flat.

“Question is, how did the killer even know Gage would be here?” Kallie asked.

Belladonna tapped a blue-lacquered fingernail against her chin, her gaze on Layne. “If Gage told
you
about hooking up with Kallie, maybe he told someone else too.”

“And the word got to the wrong person,” Kallie said. “But why kill Gage with a potential witness present?”

“Maybe being passed out in the can saved you from dying too,” Belladonna said. “Or maybe it made you convenient to pin the murder on. Did it look like anyone broke into the room? Was the door unlocked?”

Kallie shook her head. “I don’t know. Not that I noticed, anyway. Maybe whoever it was had a passkey. Hell, what a mess.”

“A
mess
?” Layne repeated. He looked at Gage’s body on the bed. A muscle flexed in his jaw. “That what you call murder in your neck of the woods, hoodoo woman? A mess?”

Kallie bit her lower lip, wishing she could take back her poor choice of words. But they were already out there, and she knew from personal experience that more words would only fan the flames into a heart-devouring bonfire.

“
Yo’ mama wasn’t herself, honey-girl. You were de moon at night for her, de sun during the day. Her life done revolved around you.”

“
Maybe it shouldn’t-a. Maybe that’s why she pulled the trigger.
”

“
Kallie, no, don’t even t’ink dat—”

“
No one should ever live for anyone else.”

Nothing anyone could say would stitch together a grief-torn heart. Only time eroded the rough edges and smoothed them away, like a river over rocks. But also like a river, time deepened the crevices carved within by violent loss. By betrayal.

“Sorry, baby, I ain’t got a choice.”

Kallie shut the memory down. Over and done with a helluva long time ago.

“No, I ain’t calling murder a mess, Layne Valin,” Kallie said, uncurling her fingers from her palms. “That wasn’t what I meant, and I apologize.”

She felt Belladonna staring at her. “You . . . what was the word you just used?
Apologize
? First ‘please’ and now ‘apologize’? I think I need to sit down.”

Cheeks heating, Kallie growled, “We’re wasting time here, Bell.” She walked around to the other side of the bed and drew back the stiffening sheets. Underneath Gage’s body and the bloodstained sheets, she thought she saw something dark smeared on the mattress. Soul-eating juju. Her skin crawled.

Belladonna joined her. “How you wanna do this? We can’t touch him without risking the sudden and urgent need for a defibrillator.”

“We can use the pillows to push Gage’s body away. I don’t think we need to move him far.”

Layne rose to his knees. “Let me do it. Hand me the pillows.”

“No!” Kallie, Belladonna, and McKenna said in unison, a sensurround denial.

A hard rap at the door was accompanied by a metal-muffled request of “Paramedics. Open the door.”

“Hurry,” Kallie said, grabbing a blood-spattered pillow and tossing the other to Belladonna. Blue-ink tattoos curled along Gage’s hips and up his back in curving Celtic designs, and her throat tightened as she remembered how she’d traced her fingers along some of them just a few hours ago.

Together, she and Belladonna pushed Gage’s body a couple of feet away from the drying maroon stain beneath him.

“Open the door! Paramedics!” The knocking intensified.

Tracing a symbol for protection in the air, Kallie grabbed one corner of the fitted sheet and pulled it free of the mattress.

“Be careful, girl,” Belladonna whispered.

“Totally my intention.”

Kallie rolled the sheet down until a line of black dust appeared. Her mouth dried. A rotten-egg-and-burned-bone stench wafted into the air, mingling with the fresher odor of Gage’s blood. She pushed the bloodstained material aside, revealing the hex in its blackest-of-black glory: a smudged two-foot-wide
X
traced across the mattress in deadly black dust.

Snake scales glittered in the powder, a powder in all likelihood composed of graveyard dirt, black salt, ground sulfur and bones, and rattlesnake skin with magnetic sand, blood, and, most likely, pigeon shit added into the mix.

Gage’s enemy had been a hoodoo or maybe a voodoo
bokor,
and had laid down the nastiest of tricks using goofer dust—a trick designed to kill an enemy. But not a soul-eating spell, unless something new had been added.

Something that I funneled through my body.

“Layne, did Gage piss off a hoodoo or anyone with ties to voodoo?” Kallie asked, unable to tear her gaze away from the murderous trick dusting the bed.

“Not that I know of,” Layne replied.

“Y’know, Shug, I hate to say this,” Belladonna said quietly, “but I got a feeling that hex wasn’t designed for Gage. It was designed for you.”

F
IVE
D
EAD IN
A
LL
W
AYS
P
OSSIBLE

“What? Me?” Kallie jerked her gaze up from the body-smudged lines of black dust on the mattress and stared at Belladonna. “Designed for
me
?”

“And a good man died because it fooking well missed,” Mc Kenna muttered, her brogue thickening, as she walked to the door and opened it.

Two grim-faced male paramedics in blue slacks and white shirts hurried into the room, carrying a defibrillator and other equipment. They beelined for the bed and the motionless man half-buried in pillows.

“No!” Kallie cried. “He’s dead. Don’t touch him!” She pointed at Layne still kneeling on the floor and looking pale and drawn. “He’s the one you need to check over. He suffered a cardiac arrest.”

Layne’s dreads slipped free of their knot and swung against his back when he shook his head in denial. He opened his mouth to protest, but the paramedics knelt on either side of him and one started firing questions—“What’s your name, podna? How old are you? Any history of heart problems?”—while the other wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Layne’s well-defined biceps.

“Dammit,” Layne grumbled. “This ain’t necessary. I’m okay.”

“It
is
necessary,” Kallie said. “His heart stopped, and he quit breathing. We had to perform CPR.”

The medic asking questions switched his attention to Kallie. “How long before he started breathing again?”

Kallie shook her head. “I’m not sure, to be honest. It seemed like forever, but it was probably only a couple of minutes. Oh, and I think I broke a few of his ribs in the process too.”

Layne arrowed a dark look her way. “I
said
I’m okay. I’ve broken ribs before.”

“Yer being man-stupid again,” McKenna said, joining the small huddle on the floor. “Let them look you over.”

“
You
checked me. I’m fine.” Layne peeled the blood pressure cuff from his arm, the ripping sound of Velcro silencing his ex-wife. “I’m refusing treatment.”

“Man-stupid.”

“That’s right. And proud of it.”

“Kallie?”

“Hmmm?” Kallie pulled her gaze away from the nomad-to-nomad glaring match and looked at Belladonna.

“Nobody sneaked into your room and did this while you were passed out on the floor,” Belladonna whispered. “This was done much earlier, maybe when housekeeping was tidying your room.
Before
you hooked up with Gage. Whoever did this was trying to kill
you
.”

“And Gage climbed into bed while I stumbled off to the bathroom,” Kallie whispered. “Shit, shit, goddamn.” She dropped the sheet back over the hex, then sank to her knees on the carpet, her pulse pounding at her temples. Her headache reawakened. She closed her eyes.

A dark voice, one that sounded like Mama’s, whispered: “
See? I’m not the only one who knows you need to die, baby, and it looks like I’m not the only one willing to do what’s necessary.”

Kallie caught a whiff of patchouli as Belladonna crouched down beside her. She felt the strength in her friend’s slender-muscled arm as it laced around her shoulders.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Belladonna said, voice low, “but security’s pretty tight at Saint Dymphna’s. Your mama couldn’t—” She stopped speaking, and Kallie opened her eyes.

Mc Kenna stood on the other side of the bed, her weight on one hip, her arms crossed over her chest. “So who wants you dead in all ways possible, Kallie Hoodoo?”

Good question, and one Kallie didn’t have an answer for. At least, not an answer she cared to voice aloud. Slipping free of Belladonna’s embrace, she rose to her feet, then offered her friend a hand up.

“What about that ex-boyfriend stalker you laid the shriveling trick on?” Belladonna grasped Kallie’s hand and uncurled her slender and elegant body up from the floor. “Whenever he got within a hundred yards of you, his goodies withered up like old prunes.”

“That trick was better than any restraining order,” Kallie said, smiling grimly at the memory. “Tommy was no conjurer, though. He couldn’t’ve done this.”

“He could’ve hired one,” Belladonna said, squeezing Kallie’s hand before letting go of it. “You don’t mess with a man’s junk like that.”

“You do if he deserves it,” Kallie retorted. “But even so, you hire someone to put a hurting on me, you don’t hire someone to kill my soul along with my body.”

“Most men, aye,” McKenna said. “But I’ve known a few in my time who wouldn’t’ve hesitated to rip a lass’s soul from her body just fer refusing their touch.”

In my time
? McKenna spoke like she truly was an ancient leprechaun and not a woman in her mid-thirties or forties. Kallie shook her head. “Tommy was obsessive, not homicidal, and I doubt he would’ve even known such a thing was possible.”

“Hate to say it, Pix—um . . . Mc Kenna, but it sounds to me like you’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places,” Belladonna commented, her gaze sweeping the nomad from head to foot—a very short trip.

“Thanks,” Layne growled, rising to his feet. He pushed his dreads back from his face—a handsome face, really, with those sharp cheekbones and that mouth made for kissing—with both hands, then turned to face the bed and all that remained of his best friend. Sorrow reawakened in his eyes.

“Excuse me, but what is the situation here?” A plump woman in a charcoal-gray business suit, her auburn hair tucked into an unraveling bun, whisked into the room. A name tag on her jacket read:
Maria Conti, Prestige Manager
.

Rising to his feet, one of the paramedics nodded at Layne. “He refuses treatment. And the other one is dead.”

“Dead?” The manager’s gaze landed on the bed. Her eyes widened. “Holy Mother of God,” she whispered.

“I have a feeling, Mrs. Conti, that the Sainted Mum’s voicemail box is full,” a male voice said, smooth and dry and very British. “And at the very least she and her holy Son are screening their messages.”

A tall man in his late thirties or early forties wearing a pale gray suit and a slim cobalt-blue tie eased past the manager’s motionless form and sauntered into the room, one hand tucked into his front trouser pocket as though he were taking the air during a morning stroll.

For reply, the grim-faced and now pale Prestige manager crossed herself.

The Brit brushed a wavy lock of nutmeg-brown hair away from his deep-set gray eyes with a practiced sweep of a long-fingered hand. His gaze landed on Layne and lingered for several moments before shifting to scrutinize Gage’s body on the bed.

“Wouldn’t you agree, Ms. Rivière?” the Brit asked, lifting his eyes to Kallie.

“Depends on the god,” Kallie said. “Most are pretty damned fickle and more than likely to hit the Delete button instead of returning calls.”

“Indeed.” Something between a smile and smirk twisted up one corner of the Brit’s mouth.

The fact that this official-looking stranger not only recognized Kallie but also knew her name didn’t leave her feeling all warm and fuzzy with joy. She lifted her chin. “Excuse me, you are . . . ?”

“Lord Basil Augustine,” Layne answered in a low drawl. “Master of the Hecatean Alliance.”

One of the Brit’s dark eyebrows quirked up at Layne’s words. His gaze swept the nomad from head to toe. Again. “And here I thought nomads refused to acknowledge any kind of authority. Or even bother to learn what it might be.”

“Ain’t acknowledging,” Layne replied, rolling his shoulders back despite the pain it must’ve cost him. “Just naming.”

“Hellfire,” Belladonna breathed. “Lord Basil Augustine.”

Goddamned hellfire, indeed. Kallie was pretty damned sure Belladonna had the right of it. Gabrielle’s words about the Hecatean Alliance’s so-called master whispered through Kallie’s memory: “
Man’s got horns under all dat dark hair, I just know it. He be too smug and fulla pride. T’inks he knows what be best for all of us—practitioners and switched-off alike. He gonna reawaken the witch-burning days, see if he don’t.”

Shoving her hands into the pockets of her robe, Kallie studied the man who had organized magicians, conjurers, and rootworkers into a connected fraternity guided by laws established to keep magic practitioners safe and secret and the switched-off safe, secure, and unaware.

In theory.

He’d also organized an annual carnival for magical society to unwind, share notes, and hook up, a wild and wicked week to celebrate May and each other. And for the last forty years—
huh, man must be older than he looks
—since it had begun, the May Madness Carnival had been the only opportunity for magic users from all parts of the world to meet in peace, no matter their beliefs or the type of magic they practiced.

“
Carnival of Fools—dat’s what it be. Hoodoos would be wise to keep away. Of all the many t’ings you are, girl, a fool ain’t one of dem. Stay home. Carnival ain’t de place for you
.”

Kallie’s gut knotted. She was beginning to wish she’d listened to Gabrielle. If Belladonna had it right and the hex
had
been intended for her and not Gage, then the nomad would still be alive if she’d only stayed home.

“Excuse me, Lord Augustine,” the hotel manager said, shaking free of her shock and stepping up beside him. “But we need to call the police and report this . . . death.”

“Of course,” Augustine said, voice low, “and we would if the young man was actually dead, Mrs. Conti.” Withdrawing his hand from his trouser pocket, he reached inside his suit and slipped free a silver cigarette case.

Mrs. Conti and the perplexed paramedics stared at the Brit as he opened the case, selected a brown cigarette, and placed it between his lips.

“He appears to be quite dead, my lord,” Mrs. Conti said finally. “His eyes . . . the blood alone . . .”

Augustine sparked up the cigarette with a slim silver lighter. He nodded, then exhaled a plume of pale smoke into the air. The sharp smell of anise-and-vanilla-scented tobacco curled into the room.

“The key word, Mrs. Conti, would be
appears
.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the hotel manager said, a frown creasing the skin between her eyes.

Kallie had to agree with Maria Conti. She wondered if Augustine believed himself a Jedi master using the Force on hapless bystanders.

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

“But this
is
carnival, and these young people are playing pranks on us, yes?” A pleasant smile crinkled the skin at the corners of the Brit’s eyes as he emphasized his words with graceful movements of his hand, the cigarette trailing sweet-scented smoke through the air.

Tracing enchantment sigils. Crafting illusion.

Kallie caught a hint of an earthy undertone in the smoke—frankincense, or myrrh—along with a whisper of gardenia. Power thickened in the air with each twirl of Augustine’s hand, streaming into Kallie’s lungs with every breath.

“That’s why we didn’t want you to touch him,” Layne said, nodding at the paramedics and wading into the lie with all the ease of a longtime pro. “We knew you’d blow the whole prank otherwise.”

Augustine glanced at the nomad, brow arched. “Indeed. The young man is only pretending to be dead. Wine stains the sheets, not blood,” he said, his tone a low and soothing singsong. A soft command. “Please look again.”

A gray veil created by the perfumed smoke descended over Gage’s body, and it seemed even to Kallie that the nomad lifted his head and smiled a
gotcha
grin. Her blood chilled.

Maria Conti studied Gage’s body, the pupils of her eyes nearly swallowing the irises. Relief restored rosy color to her cheeks. “Ah,” she breathed. “I was completely fooled.”

The paramedics, eyes equally dilated, shook their heads, looking unhappy. “Shee-it. Our time’s been wasted,” one muttered. “Y’all can expect a bill for that time too.”

“Of course, and please accept my apologies,” Augustine said, his voice and expression sincere. “Trust me, I’m not pleased with this little stunt either. The perpetrators
will
be disciplined.”

The hotel manager nodded, and another tendril of auburn hair escaped her fraying bun. “As they should be. And we shall leave you to it, Lord Augustine.” Touching one of the paramedics on the forearm and speaking to him in low, sympathetic tones, she followed him and his partner out of the room, closing the door behind her.

“Which one of you bloody idiots called the paramedics?” Augustine asked, stubbing his cigarette out in an empty champagne flute. The illusion of life wisped away from Gage’s body along with the snuffed smoke.

“I’m the bloody idiot,” Kallie said, not sure who had actually called and not really caring. The Brit’s snippy tone stiffened her spine. “And as far as I know, when someone goes into cardiac arrest, doing CPR and calling the paramedics are the right things to do.”

Augustine looked at her, his face cold as marble. “Not when you have the body of a man murdered by magic in the room, Ms. Rivière. Just how had you planned on explaining his death to the police?”

Kallie glanced at the bed, at Gage’s body. “I don’t know,” she admitted. She caught a whiff of tobacco and musky incense as Augustine walked around the bed to stand beside her, his gaze on the black-dust hex on the mattress.

“Looks like a hoodoo trick,” he murmured. “And you
are
a hoodoo, are you not, Ms. Rivière?”

“So? I ain’t the only one here. And I had nothing to do with this.”

“So she claims,” Mc Kenna interjected.

“She’s the intended victim, not the hexer,” Belladonna said, hands on her hips, leveling a Class One Belladonna Brown Death Glare at the leprechaun. “And she saved your ex’s life, by the way.”

“Not just my life. She saved my soul too.” Layne eased down into one of the blue cushioned armchairs near the flat-screen TV at the foot of the bed, one arm angled tight against his sternum. He nodded at the bed. “That’s a soul-killing spell. And it almost had me.” His gaze came to rest on Kallie, direct and intense.