Blood on the Bayou (20 page)

He lifts an eyebrow, but says, “Okay,” in a way that makes me believe he means it. That’s going to have to be good enough because we’re running out of time. Today’s to-do list is getting longer by the minute.

“When I’m clean and dressed, we’ll go get your suit.”

“Why?”

“I’ll know more after my shower,” I say cryptically, not worrying about making sense. That’s the nice thing about talking to people who think you’re crazy. It relieves so much of the pressure.

I head toward the bathroom, hoping my captive is still in the mood to bargain. If I can get him to tell me more about the cave of screams, I’ll have a way to keep Hitch distracted while I spy on Cane. And if I promise to leave town as soon as my business with Hitch is through, maybe the old fairy will honor his word and keep me safe from his winged hordes in the meantime. As long as I don’t let him catch on to the fact that my fairy controlling powers aren’t working, I should be good.

Maybe I’ll even buy myself enough time to find Tucker and get some answers and a shot and be back in matter-manipulating shape by the time the moment rolls around for me to break my promise to Grandpa and elect not to disappear.

As I dash into the bathroom—locking the door behind me—and turn to face the rattling trash can, I
actually feel a pang for what I’m about to do. I don’t enjoy making promises I don’t intend to keep. But this isn’t a normal lie; this is a lie to a monster that eats people, tortured me in my sleep, and thinks the human race should be wiped out and left to rot.

“And he pooped on my soap,” I whisper as I reach for the trash can, preparing to make a deal with the devil.

H
itch and I take the back way to Fernando’s bed-and-breakfast, hoping to avoid further interaction with my friends and neighbors. We’ve already received a double humph and a tsk from Bernadette—who responded to my second coupon-stealing threat by announcing that she’s signed up to get her coupons online and “won’t be putting up with any more of my shenanigans.”

Hitch thought this was funny. And smiled at her. And waved. And offered to help weed her flowers and check the oil in her Mustang if he gets the time before he leaves town.

He stops smiling as we’re walking away, when I tell him, “Bernadette thinks I should ask Cane to move in with me.”

“Really?” He shrugs. “Cane seems . . . nice.”

I almost tell him that I thought Cane was a lot more than
nice
last night and explain that, while I’m not engaged, I
am
confused, but bite my lip. Hitch said he loved me, but he’s still engaged
and
confused. I don’t know if he’s planning to call things off with
Stephanie, but even if he is, I don’t owe him any explanations. I don’t know what to do about his confession, and I don’t have time to even
think
about my feelings.

If I don’t get myself sorted, people are going to die. Soon. Maybe very soon.

Grandpa Slake gave me until sundown tomorrow to find the cave, do whatever I’m going to do out there, get my affairs in order, and get out of town. After that, he’s sending an assassin for someone I care about. He didn’t even bother threatening me. He went right for my friends and surrogate family, as if he knew they were my weak spot.

But then, he’s been in my dreams, poking around in my subconscious. He probably knows a lot about me, way more than I want a monster to know, that’s for sure.

It makes me wonder what he’ll learn if I fall asleep tonight. Will he read my intention to stay in D’Ville? Will he learn that my powers aren’t working? Will he begin to doubt that we have that symbiotic relationship he talked about if I can’t control the fairies? Will he decide it might not be a liability to kill me after all?

I close my eyes for a moment, blocking out what sun is getting through my darkest pair of bug-eye sunglasses, and take a calming breath. I won’t sleep. I’ll stay awake for the next forty-eight hours and figure this out and everything will be fine. I am the master of my own destiny.

“Isn’t that your cat?” Hitch stops beside me.

Gimpy’s signature
yeowl
sounds from the other
side of the fence. I slit my eyes. It’s him all right, rolling around between the vegetable rows, wreaking havoc.

Right. Not the master of my own destiny, not even the master of my own cat.

“Gimpy, get
out
of there,” I hiss, motioning him toward the Hogans’ back gate.

My summons is answered with an amorous
preow
as Gimpy flops on his side, nuzzling the root vegetable trapped between his claws. He lets out another husky moan and gives the veggie a love bite, dragging his teeth over the skin. I’ve never seen him so worked up, even about his blue cooler.

“Is that a carrot?” Hitch asks.

“Or a sweet potato,” I mutter. “Gimpy! Here!” I point to the ground at my feet.

“I didn’t think cats ate vegetables.”

“I’m not sure he’s eating it.” As if to emphasize my point, Gimpy hitches his arthritic leg around the carrot-tater and rolls through the dirt, coming to a stop in a row of spinach, where he proceeds to writhe obscenely. “Even if he is, at least it’s not jewelry. Or a fishing lure. Or my bra.”

“Is that what the feminists are doing with their bras these days?” Hitch pokes me in the side with a finger that I brush away with a stabby elbow. I refuse to joke with someone occupying such a prominent place on my shit list.

By the time I came out of my powwow-with-fairy/shower, Hitch had hidden the shots. He says they’re in my house, but that no one, including me, will be
able to find them, and that we’re good to “stick a pin” in that conversation for a while.

Which made me want to stick a pin in
him
. A
sharp
pin.

Unless I can read Hitch’s mind and figure out where he stashed those shots, I’m going to have to tell Tucker that I’ve lost them. Call me crazy, but I don’t think he’s going to be cool and slip me a few extras behind the Big Man’s back. Not after he warned me ten jillion times to keep them safe and secret.

No. I can’t ask Tucker. If it comes down to it, I’ll have to tie Hitch up and stab him with knives until he tells me where the shots are. Or pins . . .

“Gimpy, come on. Kitty, kitty,” I call, but Gimpy only rolls on his back and hugs the large carrot/skinny potato between his legs, licking it like he’s found his soul mate. I resist the urge to flip him off—the Hernandez family next door has kids under the age of obscene-gesture-viewing who could be peeking out a window—and stomp off down Perimeter Road Five. It’s already hot as hell. My head can’t handle standing around in the sun yelling at my stupid cat. Even in light olive cargo pants and my thinnest brown tank top, I’m already starting to sweat.

“You’re going to leave him there?” Hitch catches up to me on the dirt path.

There’s no sidewalk here. The perimeter roads were created right after the emergence, lanes of iron-fortified cabins with oversized backyards for families with gardening skills. The city council hoped these
gardens would provide the town with food we weren’t sure we’d be getting from the outside. The yards are almost an acre each, with a dirt foot path weaving around the edges. Sometimes there’s no path, and we have to pick our way over rock-lined gardens.

“It looked like he was doing some damage,” Hitch adds. For a man with real problems, he’s awfully worried about my cat.

“I’ll send some money to pay for what he eats,” I say. “But he’s probably safer in their garden than at my house. You’re not the only person who likes to drop in unexpectedly, and some of my visitors aren’t as relatively harmless.”

“Like who?”

“You wouldn’t believe me. And I can’t tell you, anyway, so . . .” I sigh, feeling the weight of the day drag at my feet. So many pieces have to fall into place before tomorrow. If they don’t, I’ll have to warn my friends about the danger of a fairy attack, kidnap Deedee from Sweet Haven, and head north. I can’t have any more blood on my hands, especially innocent blood. My part in the deaths of Libby and James is sufficiently haunting, and they were murderers who deserved to die.

I sigh again, and wish I’d tucked more Tylenol in my purse. The two pills I popped before Hitch and I left the house aren’t going to last long. I can already feel the headache creeping up the back of my neck.

“You okay?” Hitch asks.

“Peachy.”

Hitch’s fingers brush my hand. “Stay at the
bed-and-breakfast tonight. The room across from mine is empty. I’ll feel better if I can keep an eye on you.”

Before I can tell him what a bad idea that is, or explain that I’m already risking severe torment from Fernando for walking Hitch into the lobby of the B and B to get his suit, my phone buzzes. I wiggle it out of the pocket of my cargo pants—expecting Cane or maybe Fern if he’s up early and eager to yell at me for standing him up—but the number isn’t one I recognize.

I stop at the end of the path and edge into the shade of an oak at the corner of Perimeter Five and the far end of Railroad. The First and Last Chance Flophouse is catty-corner across the street, and I don’t want anyone overhearing this conversation who doesn’t have to.

What if it’s Tucker or the Big Man? What if they saw Hitch in my house with his hands all over their precious, secret shots, and are calling to tell me to expect a bullet to the brain in the next few seconds? Big Man, at least, would do something like that. He likes to savor a victim’s fear before he kills them.

“What’s wrong?” Hitch asks.

I shake my head and turn my back on him, hoping he’ll get the hint and give me some privacy. With a tremble in my finger, I hit the green button. “Hello?” My voice is tremblier than my hands.

“Hey. What’s up?” I recognize the sleepy—or stoned—voice and my next breath comes easier.

“Hey, Lance. Nothing much,” I say. “Heading to breakfast. Then I figure I’ll go home and change into
my supersecret-life-of-crime clothes, make sure I’m ready for any deliveries that might need to be made.”

He makes a snuffling sound that could be a laugh. “You’re confident.”

“I am. You’re too smart to let a chance like me go to waste. Did you talk to Jose about letting me in on the action?”

“Yeah, he wasn’t into it at first, but I made him see the light. We can move more product if we have someone else doing deliveries while we organize the warehouse. But here’s the thing . . .”

“I don’t like ‘things.’”

He snuffles again. “Jose wants to start you out at ten percent.”

“Ten percent?” It’s easy to sound pissed off. I’m obviously not doing this for the money, but still—they expect me to risk my life for ten measly percent? “That’s bullshit, Lance.”

“You can earn your way up to more. After you prove yourself. And if you
really
need the money . . .”

I grunt. “It still sucks.” I pause, as if weighing the offer. “But I
guess
I can live with it for a while. How long am I going to be at ten percent?”

“I don’t know . . .” There’s a scratching sound and I hear a muffled Lance mumbling to someone else. They go back and forth, and finally Lance comes back on the line. “Twenty deliveries.”

“Twenty?! Fuck Jose in his cheap pink asshole. Five. I’ll do
five
deliveries at ten percent, then you bump me up to twenty five.” Lance makes a skeptical sound. “Or you keep doing the face-to-face
work with scary people on your own. I have other options.”

Hitch, who has circled around and is hovering uncomfortably close, bulges his eyes. He knows I have directions to the cave—allegedly obtained from a secret source I met late last night—but he still thinks we should meet the person delivering the supplies. I’m counting on the fact that he’ll be on his way back to New Orleans before that meeting happens, but he can’t know that.

I pat his arm and turn my back on him again. If I’m too eager to take a crappy deal, it’s only going to make these guys suspicious. “That’s my final offer. Take it or leave it.”

“We’ll take it. Five jobs is fair,” Lance says, triggering some mumbling in the background. But it isn’t angry mumbling, and I get the feeling that Jose would have agreed to 25 percent from job one if I’d pushed harder. “There’s a delivery today.”

Great
. Today. It
had
to be today.

“You ready to jump in and get your feet dirty?” Lance asks.

“I’m always willing to jump in and get my feet dirty. Or my hands dirty and my feet wet, what have you.” Another sound from the background, a real laugh this time. I’m guessing Jose is listening in on another line. “What time do you want me out there?”

“Two o’clock. We’ll have the load ready. Bring your truck. It’s a big one.”

“Where am I taking the stuff?” I lower my voice as the front door to the flophouse swings open. Hitch
and I are still pretty far away, but there’s no need to take chances. “How far from the—”

“We’ll have a map when you get here.”

“Can you at least tell me how long it will . . .” Words escape me as I get an eyeful of the people stumbling out Fernando’s front door. One of them is Tucker.

This would be enough to short-circuit my brain—what’s he doing at Fernando’s? why isn’t he heeding my warning to stay away from my friends?—if he were alone. But he isn’t. He’s snuggled up to a blond woman, his manly arm looped around none other than
Barbara Beauchamp
.