Touch&Geaux (13 page)

know,” Ty said. He frowned as his fingers began working on

the string of the bag. “It’s a religion, Zane. Nothing sinister.”91

“Sure.”

Digger grunted. “You sound like a skeptic.”

“I am a skeptic,” Zane confirmed.

“Well,” Ty murmured as he tried to find a more

comfortable position. He settled on instructing Zane to lift

the head of his bed so he could recline and still inspect the

gris-gris bag without too much discomfort. “You might think

it’s just fairy-tale stuff, but this is serious. Serious business.”

Zane frowned. “So what is that thing?”

“It’s gris-gris,” Ty answered slowly. He was probably

slurring, but as far as he knew he was still making sense.

“Yes, dear, we got that part,” Nick said. He and Digger

came closer, and Digger sat on the end of Ty’s bed, jarring it.

Ty didn’t care.

Zane nodded, glancing at the others again. “You asked

specifically about the color,” Zane prompted.

Ty gazed up at him, wishing he had the ability to convince

Zane to take him seriously. He knew Nick, and probably

Zane, thought all of it was stupid. A least Digger believed.

“He’s so fucking stoned,” Digger said, laughing as he

patted Ty’s leg.

“His mind is processing at turtle speed,” Nick added,

snickering behind his hand.

Zane placed a hand on Ty’s forehead, and Ty’s eyes fell

shut. The warmth of Zane’s palm was like heaven.

“You know about this voodoo stuff, right?” Zane asked.

“Yeah,” Digger answered. Ty felt him shift on the bed.

“The color and material of the bag are just as important to its

purpose as the contents. I’m not an expert, but I’m betting

if we get it open, Grady and I can tell you what it was meant

to do.”

Ty opened his eyes at the sound of his name.

92

“You want me to open it?” Ty asked. Zane and Nick both

nodded. “Are y’all going to freak out if I open it?” He held up

the bag gingerly. He wasn’t an expert by any means, but he

knew enough about the purposes and the ingredients to get a

good idea of what the bag had been intended to do. And what

he didn’t know, Digger probably did.

“Why would we freak out?” Zane pulled the little rol ing

table over to the bedside and turned it so Ty had a flat surface

in front of him.

“You freak out over things like that,” Ty mumbled. He

pulled at the opening to the bag but couldn’t get the string

loose. His fingers weren’t working. Digger finally took it from

him and carefully poured the contents onto the shiny surface

of the table.

Ty looked up and around the room, his mind chugging

to work. Finally he pointed at the boxes of sterile gloves that

were attached to the wal . “Hand me some of those, please.”

Zane amiably nabbed a couple of pairs and brought them

back. “Things like that,” he repeated.

“What?”

“You said I freak out over things like that.”

Ty pulled on one of the gloves. “You just . . . don’t believe

in them.”

“You’re right,” Zane said with a shrug.

“Ty don’t touch home plate before the first pitch,” Digger

added. “He believes in everything.”

“Shut up,” Ty muttered. He poked through the contents

as Digger and Nick laughed at him. He began to separate the

different things, making little piles, forgetting what he was

doing.

“Hey Ty? Buddy?” Nick finally said gently. “Time to stop

organizing and get back on task.”

93

Ty looked up at him. Nick was smiling fondly.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. You can straighten them later.”

Ty nodded. He knew they were humoring him, but he also

didn’t give a fuck. He bent his attention back to the gris-gris

bag. There was a small roll of parchment, a sprig of crushed

juniper, a mossy substance he couldn’t identify, a root of some

sort, what appeared to be iron shavings, and two large teeth.

Ty pushed them around the table, tidying up his little piles.

“How do you connect not believing in something with

freaking out about it?” Zane asked. He’d pulled one of the

chairs over to the side of the bed and was now sitting at Ty’s

side.“I meant, are you going to make me feel stupid for

believing this was put under my mattress to kill me?”

“Is that what you believe?” Zane sat and leaned back in

the chair, right ankle propped on his left knee.

Ty narrowed his eyes, recognizing Zane’s interrogation

posture.

Nick leaned forward. “Is that what he does when he’s

questioning suspects?”

“Yes,” Ty groused.

“Well hello, Agent Garrett,” Nick said, laughing.

“Behave yourself,” Zane grumbled. He looked back to Ty.

“Is that what you believe?”

“Yes,” Ty answered after a moment of thought.

Zane was watching him intently despite his casual pose.

“Can you explain to me why?”

Ty looked back down at the assortment of items that

had been in the gris-gris bag. He was blushing, but during

the course of his time in New Orleans, he’d seen and learned

94

things that made it impossible to dismiss the power of simple

faith.“Ty?” Zane sounded more curious than anything. Not

amused, and certainly not angry or frustrated like he got

when he couldn’t figure out a puzzle by logical means. He was

probably still humoring Ty, but hopefully he wouldn’t dismiss

any of this, thinking the drugs were making Ty goofy.

“It’s about faith,” Ty finally said, looking first at Zane and

then at Nick and Digger. Nick was frowning now, and Digger

was nodding. Ty met Zane’s eyes again. “I’ve seen things I

can’t explain. And I believe in things I can’t see. I believe in

fate and luck and curses.”

Zane crossed his arms. “Really?”

Nick nodded. “Really.”

Digger was nodding too. “So do I. I also know that people

around here don’t take this stuff lightly. And this bag here is

quality work; it’s no tourist prank.”

Ty took a deep breath. “It’s a murder weapon. Just like a

gun or knife. It’s poison. It was put in our room by someone

with knowledge and belief in the power to cause us harm.”

Nick turned to whisper into Digger’s ear, but Ty heard his

words anyway. “Goddamn, I hate it when he uses real logic.”

Digger made a dismissive noise and shivered.

Zane didn’t speak for a long moment as he studied Ty,

and then he abruptly nodded. “All right.”

Ty watched him with narrowed eyes. Zane never agreed

with him that easily. Maybe he was just taking pity on him

since he was in pain and medicated and planned to continue

the conversation later. Ty nodded, though, willing to accept

it for now.

Nick stood again and leaned over him, studying the

contents on the metal table. “Can you tell what’s in it? What’s

it meant to do?”

95

“I’m not sure what this moss is, but the rest . . . This is

juniper, and I think this root is High John the Conqueror

root.”

“What do those things do?”

Ty shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“Dammit, Ty,” Nick grunted.

“The red felt bag is usually used to attract a lover, but the

contents aren’t consistent with that purpose,” Digger offered.

“They’re meant to draw something. Like those iron fil ings.”

Ty sighed. “Yeah. So basically . . .”

“The whole bag is one big-ass hoodoo magnet.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Digger, as always, for

your contribution to the sanity of the group.”

“So it’s a magnet,” Zane said.

Ty nodded. “A bad one.”

“A magnet to draw something bad to us,” Zane concluded.

“A big bad magnet.”

Digger snorted. “That’s where the teeth come in.”

Ty held one up and looked at it critically. “Gator teeth?”

Digger nodded. “They look it. They good luck, though.”

“Not for the gator we ate last night,” Nick said.

Digger waved him off.

“They are good luck,” Ty said.

“But gris-gris bags are only supposed to have one,” Digger

told them. “And they’re supposed to have an odd number of

ingredients. So throwing in an extra tooth to make it even,

I’m assuming, is bad.”

“Or whoever put it together just tossed some things in,”

Zane suggested. “And then planted it to scare us.”

Ty nodded and lowered the tooth.

“The fact they planted it at all scares me,” Digger added.

He looked at Nick critically. “You didn’t hear ’em? See ’em?”96

“I . . . I may have climbed a building last night. I don’t

remember a lot.”

“We think they came in as housekeeping. I heard them

from the shower but didn’t think anything of it.”

“Makes sense,” Digger said. “We had a fuckton of fresh

towels in our room when we got back. Then we had someone

knock again trying to clean the room.”

Nick frowned. “If that’s the case, whoever it was went to

all our rooms, hunting for Ty. That’s a lot of trouble to go to

for a scare.”

Ty bit his lip, wondering if he should even be pondering

this while the cold buzz was still running through his system.

He looked up and winced. “It wasn’t meant to scare us because

it was too well hidden. A tiny bag behind your mattress can

only scare you if you know it’s there. If I hadn’t woke up like I

did, we never would have looked for it, we never would have

found it.”

“A fair point,” Zane said. “I may not believe in this, but I

do believe in you. If you say we should take it seriously, then

we will.”

“I think we should,” Ty said. “I mean, shit, if this can

shake loose a kidney stone, I don’t want to see what else this

guy knows how to do.”

Zane laughed and scooted his chair a little closer so he

could lean sideways against the bed. “First Edgar Al an Poe,

now voodoo. Great.”

“I’m never inviting you two to a party again,” Nick

grumbled.

“You and your goddamn coconuts,” Digger added. He

shifted on the edge of Ty’s bed, jostling him and making a ful -

body shiver run through Ty.

97

“Did you call that detective from last night?” Ty asked as

he continued to push around the little bit of moss.

“No, why?”

“Girl dies with a gris-gris bag in her hand. Next morning . . .”

Zane hesitated, sharing a glance with Nick. “You want to

call the police and report this?”

“Maybe you two can sniff around. See if it’s connected.

But you can’t bring me into it.”

“They’ll boot us out as soon as we show our creds,” Nick

argued. “They were already all over us just for being there last

night.”

“Can you try?” Ty asked.

Nick sighed loudly and looked away.

Ty carefully put everything back into the bag. He picked

up the roll of parchment and pulled it apart, cold settling

in him when he saw “Tyler Beaumont” written in beautiful

cal igraphy.

“Wait, is that like the paper Garrett took a picture of?”

Nick asked, sounding shocked.

Ty nodded.

Zane craned his neck to look at the parchment. His face

clouded over. “Yeah, okay, that’s enough connection for me,”

he admitted. “Was that your alias while you were here?”

Ty nodded, rol ing the parchment up as it had been.

“If that’s bat’s blood ink, you’re fucked,” Digger drawled

with all seriousness.

Ty shot him a glare, careful to leave out the roll of

parchment and one of the al igator teeth as he put the bag

back together. It wouldn’t make it a good luck charm, but it

would lose most of its power. In theory.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. He wasn’t ashamed

of the fact that he put stock in this, but he still felt a little silly.98

Ty pushed the bag away and began plucking at the

fingertips of his gloves. His fingers trembled and he couldn’t

seem to grab the purple glove to get it off.

Zane reached out to still his hands and took over peeling

them off.

“We could just go home,” Ty said. “But now I’m hexed.

It’ll just follow.”

“Ty, you’re not hexed,” Nick said.

“Disagreed,” Digger grunted.

Zane sighed. “We can’t go home. One, you’re in the

hospital with a kidney stone. Two, there is a murderer out

there and we have possible evidence in the case, and I don’t

think any of us could just walk away with a clear conscience.

And three, you really believe in that gris-gris stuff, so there’s

no point in trying to run. Every little paper cut and stubbed

toe you get will be the bag’s fault until we fix this.” Zane

dropped the gloves onto the table and then pushed it out

from between them and away, keeping Ty’s hand in his.

Ty relaxed back into the bed, holding Zane’s hand. He

watched him in open admiration. Not many people would so

easily accept that he was cursed after one little trip to the ER

and because he said so. He was, but not many people would

believe him. Or pretend to believe him. Except Digger, but

fuck, Digger was certifiable so that didn’t make Ty feel better.