Black Magic Bayou (5 page)

“Yes. I’m Genie. This is my…” I glanced at Wilder. Well, that was a discussion for a different time and a lot less clothing. “This is Wilder Shaw.”

Wilder smiled at her, keeping his charm reined way back upon seeing how upset she was.

“Thank you so much for coming.” She stuffed a Kleenex in a pocket on her dress and extended her hand to me, which I shook. “I know this must seem so strange to you, but…I just…” Her lower lip trembled, and one tear escaped her eye, rolling down her cheek. “I didn’t know who else to ask.”

She opened the door, letting us into the foyer. I could tell by the way she was eyeing Wilder that having a man in the house made her uneasy, but it was clear she had bigger fish to fry at the moment.

“Cash didn’t tell us much about your situation…” My sentence dropped off when it dawned on me I had no idea what her name was. She seemed to realize with a start she had forgotten to introduce herself.

“I’m Tansy Murphy. I’m the chapter president.”

That sort of made her alpha of the house. I had been courted by a sorority during my time at Tulane. It hadn’t stuck, but I still remembered some of the hierarchy details.

I noticed for the first time how eerily quiet the house was. It was a big place, with probably enough bedrooms to house at least ten or twelve sisters, minimum. So why was it so silent? It seemed like the only people breathing were the three of us in the foyer.

Four of us.

Cash appeared from a nearby room and leaned in the wide doorway, keeping his distance from us while also standing close enough to Tansy to be a peripheral comfort to her.

Though it had been several months since I’d last seen him, Cash hadn’t changed much. He was tall, with earthy brown skin and a trimmed black goatee. His hair was still cut short, and the only thing missing was his big, toothy grin. Guess this wasn’t the most ideal scenario to see it in. He watched me carefully, his gaze only briefly cutting to Wilder before coming back to me. Tansy seemed oblivious to the tension in the air.

“Genie.”

“Hey, Cash.”

“Tans, babe, maybe we should show them the room?”

She nodded, but I raised my hand to symbolize a pause in the proceedings. “Could I get like a CliffsNotes version of what’s going on? It’s been a pretty busy morning so far, and honestly I have no idea why I’m here.”

Tansy shot Cash an exasperated glare, but when she looked back to me, it was all apologetic sweetness. “I’m so sorry. I thought you knew.”

I shook my head. “Cash mentioned something to Wilder about a missing girl.”

“Three,” Tansy corrected.

“Pardon?”

“Three missing girls.”

Okay, now that was definitely noteworthy. “Three girls in how much time?”

“A w-week.” Tansy wandered out of the foyer and into the room Cash had come from. Wilder and I followed them into a large sitting room with several couches and armchairs.

To avoid any awkwardness I sat in one of the chairs. Wilder, being Wilder, stood right behind me rather than parking himself on a couch. I suppressed a sigh and leaned forward in the chair, closer to where Tansy was sitting. Cash was next to her, holding her hand.

They seemed pretty cozy. How soon after our breakup had they met? Or had Cash, a fraternity brother, known Tansy beforehand?

Red flag.

She squeezed his hand and grabbed another Kleenex. I noted that in spite of how many tissues she appeared to be going through, the room was spotless. I pictured the perfectly coiffed Tansy making passes through each room as she fretted and cried, making sure there wasn’t a single couch ruffle out of place.

I guess some people dealt with trauma in different ways. I was more of a run-away-to-the-swamp kind of girl, myself. Or failing that, stuffing myself with Oreos and Abita beer. Tansy was a tidier.

Still, it bothered me, the overall neatness of the place. I wasn’t sure what about it rankled me. I wasn’t against cleanliness. My own home was kept orderly and uncluttered, though I could stand to dust a little more. Yet the cleanliness of the room set off an alarm bell.

I ignored it for now but didn’t put it entirely out of my mind.

Maybe I was being extra sensitive because of the way Cash was squeezing Tansy’s hand, and I was hunting for reasons to not like her.

I hoped I wasn’t that petty, but the subconscious had a mind of its own.

“Did you contact their families? Reach out to the school?” I was fairly certain of the answer to this, but I had to ask anyway. “What about the police?”

Tansy shook her head firmly with every new question. “No one cares, Genie. Their stuff is still here, there’s no sign of a struggle or incident. Two of the girls, Alexandra and Heidi, they’re from…well, they don’t come from standard families. Alex was the first to vanish, but her grandmother seems to think she’s off on an adventure, and Heidi’s mother has six other kids at home. Heidi hasn’t spoken to her in almost a year, so her mom doesn’t think this is unusual.”

“And the third girl?”

“Laura. Her family is in Europe right now, and I haven’t been able to reach them.”

Interesting. It could be a coincidence the girls all came from disinterested families who might not notice or care if they went off the grid. I didn’t believe in coincidences though. Usually if there was a connection, it was worth taking note of.

“Okay.” I leaned forward in the chair and fixed my gaze right on Tansy, not letting myself be distracted by Cash or Wilder. I needed to see her honest reaction to my next question. “Tansy, are any of the girls in your sorority werewolves?”

Her right eye twitched, but she didn’t recoil or give me a disgusted look. Points to her. Sometimes folks couldn’t school their feelings about supernaturals. Though I suspected, since I was here, she must have an open mind at the very least.

“No. We don’t have any wolves. One of the other sisters, Cassandra, is a…” She drifted off, like she suddenly didn’t know if she was allowed to finish her sentence.

“It’s okay. Anything you tell me here stays here. And if you have a shapeshifter in the house, even if she’s not a wolf, it might be relevant. You brought me here to help, and that’s all I want to do. What is Cassandra?”

Tansy chewed the inside of her cheek. “She’s a leopard.”

There was only one local leopard pack—or a leap as they were officially known—and I happened to be familiar with their leader, Lola. Leopard shifters, much like the animal they transformed into, were solitary creatures by nature, but they tended to create social groups around an alpha female. They hunted and lived alone but gathered for protection or to make important decisions. This differed wildly from wolf culture, where we tended to remain close to the pack, or at least surround ourselves with other wolves.

The New Orleans leopards were very distinctive in that they were one of only three groups in America who shifted into clouded leopards.

I would want to speak to both Cassandra and Lola, if this investigation turned into anything.

As of right now I still didn’t know why I was here.

“You know I’m not a private investigator, right? I don’t have those kinds of resources or connections to help you find them.”

Tansy went pale, and I thought it was because she was upset by my response, but then she said, “No, you misunderstand why I asked Cash to bring you here. I don’t think the police would believe me—”

Something thudded hard upstairs, and Tansy’s gaze slowly lifted to the ceiling before returning to me. I don’t know how it was possible, but she’d gone even more pale. Next to Cash, she practically looked like a ghost.

“What was that?”

“That was Laura.”

I stared at her. “As in…missing Laura?”

“Yes.”

“Come again?” I was staring up at the ceiling, gripped by a sudden chill.

“It might be easier if I just show you. Then you’ll understand why Cash thought you might be more helpful than the police.”

We left the living room and headed upstairs. As I’d suspected, the place was almost empty, with the exception of a tall Asian girl lying on her bed in one room, wearing brightly colored teal headphones, reading a copy of
Vogue
. She barely glanced up as we passed. I could hear the thump of hip-hop through her headphones.

All the other bedrooms were empty, their doors ajar. Belongings were still in place, but the whole floor felt abandoned. It was the middle of the morning, when most of the girls were probably in class, but this was different. The house felt empty and soulless.

It was incredibly unnerving, given how bright and cheerful the space pretended to be.

“Where is everyone?” Wilder asked. Apparently he was just as put off by it as I was.

“About half of the girls are in class right now. They’ll be in and out through the day. But some of them have decided to stay elsewhere for a while. With boyfriends or in friends’ dorms.”

“Why?” I got the feeling I wasn’t going to like the answer.

A high-pitched, bloodcurdling wail tore through the house. The sound was so infused with terror I froze in place, panic gripping me. Wilder, his protective instincts taking over, moved in front of me. But to guard against what?

He and I could both determine the origin of sounds, especially big ones like a scream. It was how we were able to hunt and track. This hadn’t come from behind us, where the girl was in her bedroom. Nor had it come from any of the other bedrooms we’d passed along the way.

It was everywhere, leaching into the air, but nowhere at the same time.

It was as if the scream were coming through surround-sound speakers, hitting us from every angle at once.

“
Please, please, please
,” came a very small voice, this too echoing from all possible sources.

The hair on my arms and neck stood up, my skin erupting in goose bumps. Whatever was happening here was deeply and completely unnatural. The animal aspect of me was so unsettled she had no interest in hanging around to fight. She was telling me to take Wilder, Cash, Tansy, and the other girl, and get everyone out of this house immediately.

Burn it down.

The rational human part of me also insisted that leaving was the most logical thing to do when the very walls of a house were screaming and begging.

Except Tansy was looking at me like I was her savior. And Cash had believed I could help with this, to such an extent he’d been willing to bring me here to meet his new girlfriend. Something he certainly wouldn’t have wanted to do in any other circumstance.

Somehow, I had become their last and only hope.

Damn, I hated being so reliable.

I did
not
have time to deal with this. Not with a dead body and a pack in danger of media exposure. I had to find out what had really happened to Liam Casey, if I was going to be able to keep Emmett and Mason out of prison and our pack out of the paper.

Screaming walls and missing girls weren’t something I could just pencil in. Mags would tell me as much, and she knew my schedule better than I did.

Yet here I was, not budging.

“What was that?” I asked, coolly as possible. “Laura again?”

Tansy, a fresh crop of tears building in her eyes, shook her head. Her hands were trembling violently, and Cash grabbed the one closest to him, offering her a comforting squeeze. He had always been so good at that, knowing when he was needed and how he could soothe the people around him. If he hadn’t gone into law, he would have made a remarkable nurse or doctor.

“Who?” This time I didn’t bother asking
what
.

“We think it’s Heidi, but we’re not sure.”

“And Alexandra?”

Tansy half-shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. But you hear it, right? You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“I honestly don’t know what to think right now, but you being crazy isn’t even on my top-ten list.”

She let out a tiny sigh of relief and held Cash’s hand close to her chest.

The more I looked at the two of them together, the more it made sense to me. Cash
needed
to play the hero. He loved to be depended on. A suitable partner for him would be a smart woman who leaned on him.

I hadn’t been that girl.

Tansy stared at him as if he could carry the whole world on his shoulders. He was her Superman.

Even though
I
was the one they needed to deal with this.

“Can I see the room over the living room?” I asked.

“I don’t like this,” Wilder warned. “I think we should go.”

I put my hand on his biceps, the hard muscle rigid with tension. “We will. But I want to see what they brought us here for first.”

His jaw, set tight, twitched faintly, but he nodded his understanding. He could hate the situation all he wanted, but when it came down to whether or not we would leave, I was the one in charge here.

Tansy led us to a door at the end of the hallway. It was the only one closed, when all the rest had been ajar.

Someone had put a padlock on it.

With violently shaking hands, Tansy withdrew a small silver key from her pocket and attempted to unlock the door. Her fingers were trembling so badly Cash stopped her and put the key in himself, twisting it to pop the latch on the lock.

“I…” She stepped back from the door. “I can’t go in.”

Meaning she wouldn’t. Because something in there had scared her enough she refused to go inside anymore.

What the hell was happening in this house?

Cash lifted the lock out of its place, then guided Tansy away from the door. Whatever was in there, he was no longer so concerned about my safety to warn me against crossing the threshold. I guess my life was my own to worry about now.

Well, mine and Wilder’s, since he’d designated himself my bodyguard, after all.

He was still in front of me, and opened the door, letting it swing inwards until it bumped against the inside wall.

The room was painted a soft mint-green shade, with light, sheer white curtains obscuring our view out the one large window. It was a lovely, spacious room, similar to some of the others we’d walked by. Two twin beds stood on opposite walls. One had a pretty floral-print duvet on it and a half-dozen throw pillows. A big L, lit with decorative bulbs, was hanging over the bed. Next to the bed was a bricked-in fire place with a large mirror hanging over it, and a picture frame lying face-down on the carpet.