Black Magic Bayou (7 page)

A redheaded girl sped by on her bicycle. Across the street two shirtless guys were throwing a football back and forth, laughing boisterously. Another young man sat on the steps of the house watching as he sipped a pop. Groups of co-eds walked along the sidewalks, clutching books, wearing Tulane apparel. They glowed with youthful innocence and idealism.

And twelve feet above me a demon was holding three girls captive inside their own house.

I’d honestly forgotten all about the dead body and my werewolves in custody.

When Mags called from the police station to give me an update on the legal proceedings, it took me a few seconds to recall what she was talking about.

“Wait, can you repeat that?” I turned down the air conditioning so I could hear her better. Wilder, seeing how shaken up I’d been leaving the sorority house, insisted on driving, and I hadn’t even fought him on it.

“Ben is here,” Magnolia said again, slower this time.

I checked the clock in the dash. It was shortly after ten now. Unless Ben had left St. Francisville at exactly the same time I’d left my house, there was no way he would have gotten to the city by now. Which meant he’d already been in New Orleans.

There was a lot to unpack there.

For one, that meant an Alpha wolf was in my territory without coming to see me first. Huge no-no. It didn’t matter if he was my twin brother. It also meant Ben was hanging out in my territory just waiting for an opportunity to stick his nose in my business.

Which was precisely what he was doing now, if he was at the police station with Emmett and Mason while I was off meddling in human affairs. It didn’t matter that I’d done everything right, by letting Callum know the situation and sending Mags there to oversee things. Ben was making a move anyway.

I wasn’t surprised, which made it hard to be angry. What bothered me more was wondering if Callum knew. Or if he’d sent Ben here to keep an eye on me and intervene if it looked like I couldn’t lead.

Did they have such little faith in me as an Alpha? And if so, why bother making me one in the first place?

“We’re on our way.”

Hanging up before she could say anything else, I scrubbed my hands over my face, glad I hadn’t bothered with eyeshadow or mascara this morning. How had I only been awake three hours when it felt like I’d aged a full decade since my morning coffee?

Wilder, who had heard both sides of my conversation with Mags, automatically piloted us in the direction of the police precinct Detective Perry had mentioned earlier.

Neither of us was too thrilled about the idea of walking into a police station. I could see the apprehension in the tight set of his jaw and the way he gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled determination.

Not even three months ago, before I’d become Alpha, Wilder and I had found ourselves on the wrong side of the law in a very small, very bad town. For a while it seemed certain neither us, nor his brother Hank, would be leaving Franklinton place alive.

So it wasn’t that we didn’t
like
the police, it was more that we had a good reason with historical precedence to not want to walk into a police station. I had always been a little apprehensive about law enforcement. Living with Callum as a child had taught me a certain level of distrust for outside authority, and living in the bayou with
Memere
had shown me there were evils in the world the law had no hope of drowning out.

Sometimes the police were nothing more than a nightlight inside a black hole.

I picked up my phone then set it down again, watching the streets of New Orleans streak past. People went about living their lives. Getting on buses, walking their dogs, sipping coffee on patios. Such mundane, unbelievably normal things. How could all of this coexist beside everything I’d seen today?

This world and mine had run parallel to each other for all recorded time. Monsters, magic, and the really nasty stuff staying in a dark shadow of the bright, shiny human reality. Now those shadows were pouring into human society, and like Pandora’s box, once the bad stuff was free, there was no getting it back in.

Yet these people still walked their dogs, and drank their coffee, and waited for the bus.

I wanted that to be a sign of hope, but all I saw was naiveté.

I’d just talked to a
demon
that was possessing a frigging sorority house.

How do you go back to a normal life after that?

You don’t. This becomes your new normal.

Wilder guided the Dart into a small parking lot next to the police station and killed the engine. He grabbed my hand before I could open the door, tugging my arm against his chest and weaving his fingers through mine.

In this small space his distinct smell was overwhelming. The peat and pine that marked him as a wolf was there, and on top of it was his own unique blend of fresh soap and motor oil. God his scent was wonderful.

He squeezed my hand once. Twice. Then lifted my knuckles to his lips and dusted a gentle kiss over the skin.

“Tell me you’re okay, and I’ll believe you.”

I stared at him, losing myself in those glorious hazel eyes, which were so full of worry. “I’m not.”

Why should I lie? He’d know it in a second. And I didn’t
want
to lie to Wilder. Keeping secrets was the kind of shit that ripped people apart. He and I might not be a couple—I honestly didn’t know what we were—but I wanted to be open with him. I wanted Wilder to know me in a way no one else had.

If he saw all of me and still wanted to stick around, then he was worth keeping.

I desperately hoped he was.

“What do you need from me?” he asked.

Liking the way my hand felt against his chest, I didn’t pull free. I just sat there, in the passenger seat of my own car, thinking about how to answer the most complicated question I’d ever been asked.

What
did
I need?

Instead of answering, I said, “It said my name.”

“I heard.”

“Wilder, what if…?” My words drifted off. I was thinking about something else now, a memory I had kept hidden even from myself for all these months.

A vision of a woman, her skin charred, reeking of death and sulfur, flashed across my mind. She’d followed me for weeks, then vanished almost as quickly as she’d arrived, giving me no indication of who she was or what she wanted.

Because I hadn’t seen her in so long, I’d let myself believe she’d been a bad dream. A waking nightmare.

Only now, with the way the demon had said
I know you
, I started to wonder if she might be the reason why it recognized me. She wasn’t a demon herself. Nor was she a ghost. She smelled and felt real, but she hadn’t been anything I could categorize into something I knew.

Yet whenever I saw her my guts churned with guilt and discomfort, like I ought to recognize her.

I shook off the unpleasant thought, not wanting to add more layers to this disaster than absolutely necessary. We had a death to unravel and three missing girls to free from the clutches of whatever that fucking thing had been. My hands were too full at the moment to mull over bad memories.

Coming back around to Wilder’s question, I replied, “Don’t let me get lost in all this.”

He smiled, a smirk that lifted one side of his mouth and crinkled the skin around his eyes in a much-too-charming way. I wondered if he knew how much he could devastate a woman with one smooth grin.

Of course he did.

“Sweetheart, even if I have to watch you night and day and not leave your side, I’ll make sure you’re all right. And when this is all over, I’m going to take you on a real, proper date.”

“I bet you will.” I wanted to sound unaffected by the flirtation, but the flare of warmth I felt in my belly and chest made my words come out in a husky rumble.

Oops.

He totally heard it too, because his grip twitched for a second, and he squeezed my hand the tiniest bit too hard. Though he tried to maintain his cool smile, I saw the way his expression shifted. His eyes lost their human coyness, and for just a flash of a second it was all wolf. All unashamed animal need.

Fuck.

“Let’s go inside,” I said, not asking but telling.

The car was warmer than it had been a moment earlier, and the wave of pheromones hit me like a slap. I was dizzy with awareness of him, and if we didn’t get out of this car, I might undo his pants and climb on top of him right here in the parking lot of a police station.

And trust me, no one wants to have sex in the front seat of a Dodge Dart.

I let out a quivering breath and disengaged my hand from Wilder’s grip.

As much as touch helped keep wolves mellow and grounded, it could sometimes go too far. Right now we were a hop, step, and a jump away from full-on molesting each other.

Not ideal.

At least not here.

I got out of the car before Wilder could say or do anything to make me change my mind. One wry smile or wink would have totally undone me. I was craving a distraction, because every single aspect of my real life was a total disaster from one end to the other.

I jogged across the lot, a few steps out of reach of Wilder’s casual touches. When we were inside the building, a cold blast of air conditioning took my temperature down both literally and figuratively, dragging me back into the real world.

Magnolia was pacing in front of a small cubicle with wire-laced glass—most likely bulletproof—on all sides and a small opening that could fit a clipboard or personal belongings through. A tired-looking officer sat in a blue plastic chair, filling something out in the newspaper.

“Seven letters.
Isla Española
.” He chewed his pen, barely aware we’d arrived, and erased a letter on the puzzle.

“Majorca,” Mags responded without hesitation.

I could tell this wasn’t the first answer she’d given him.

“May-whata?”

I walked up to the cubicle and said, “It’s an island in Spain.
Isla Española
.”

The guard, who had a thin patch of balding hair on the back of his head but a full black beard that more than made up for the loss, didn’t look at me until he’d finished filling in the boxes. “Thanks.”

“Erasable pen is cheating.”

That got his attention. He lifted his gaze towards me, dark brown eyes shining like he was ready to fight me. Instead he must have seen something he approved of because he smiled thinly. “That’s what the blonde said too.”

Mags was standing next to me. “Brody, can you please give her a pass so we can go through?”

“Everyone has to sign in, Magnolia. I told you that.” He slipped a clipboard through the slot, and I noticed the form was almost entirely filled in already. Probably Mags’s doing. I signed where he pointed and passed it back to the man, Brody.

He removed the paper then pushed the board through once more and nodded towards Wilder. His form, too, was complete but for the signature. He followed suit, and we waited in silence while Brody mulled over a six-letter word for
necklace
.

“Amulet,” Magnolia said grouchily.

Brody gave us two paper badges in plastic holders with metal clips for us to affix to our clothes. A moment later he buzzed us through a door saying, “Don’t go far, blondie, I haven’t started the down list yet.” He held up the newspaper to show her the remaining blank spaces.

“Cassis, macaw, tithe, Lincoln, Hamilton, brusque, Cherokee.” She held the door open for us. “You should switch to the
USA Today
one. It’s easier.”

“But
New York Times
makes me look smarter.”

“No it doesn’t.” Magnolia smirked, and it was only then I realized she was flirting with him.

Interesting. Perhaps I should leave her alone more often.

Once we passed through the door, Magnolia guided us into a large open space filled with desks and fluorescent lights. My only previous experience with police stations—aside from the one I’d been locked up in—had been in New York. I was beginning to see their general layout and design didn’t vary wildly.

Boring, sterile, and mostly unwelcoming.

Detective Perry’s copper hair called to me from across the room. There weren’t many people working in the space, only a few other plainclothes officers at the desks. Perry was on the phone but noticed us approaching and gave a wave of greeting.

Nearby, a man in a sharp black suit whose eyes were as savage and dead as a shark’s, leaned against a desk, speaking on his cell phone. I briefly amused myself by imagining he and Perry were speaking to each other.

The suit was definitely a lawyer. And judging by the quality of the tailoring and how precisely combed his hair was, I’d bet good money he was one of Callum’s, which meant the original three had called in reinforcements already. My uncle spared no expense when it came to protecting the pack’s good name and image.

Lawyer Guy spotted me coming and frowned, glancing over his shoulder to the opposite side of the room. Well, this kept getting more interesting, didn’t it?

Our lawyers were all human, or at least not shifters, so he didn’t owe me any allegiance or typical respect. But I knew exactly who he was looking for when he started to cast his gaze around the room, and it pissed me off to no end.

He was trying to find Ben.

My brother emerged from a small office at the back of the work floor, laughing while he shook hands with a burly, white-haired man wearing a crisp white dress shirt adorned with patches and pins. The older man clapped Ben on his shoulder, grinning from ear to ear like he’d just won the lottery.

My twin spotted me, and his smile faltered. He said something quietly to the precinct captain, and they parted ways. Ben took a deep breath before crossing the room to meet us.

“Nice of you to join us, Eugenia,” he said.

There was a dismissiveness and superiority to his tone that made my blood boil. I balled my hands into fists and focused on the pain of my nails digging into my palms, otherwise I’d punch him.

Ben hadn’t always been this way. When we were younger, and even after I came home from the swamp, he was warm, kind, generous. It was during his time training with Amelia that he’d started to become colder. I don’t know what she’d told him, but it had made him believe he needed to be something else.