Wildfire Gospel (Habitat) (33 page)

MeShack formed his lips into a scowl. “Yeah. I see her. Graham is creeping her out at the bar.”

Creeping her out?

He hooked his arm around mine and guided me that way. “Graham is an interesting man. I got my first day lesson on skin.”

“Aww. Has he tried to pass down his skin business on you? He’s tried with me and I refused.”

“I don’t know. I already owe him skins and XO too.”

The name rang a bell. I remembered an XO who used to come to our house long ago for gambling money that my dad owed him. I would negotiate the amount down if I could. Other times I just gave him what he asked for, which meant rent or electricity didn’t get paid that month.

Where did XO work at though? It does this have anything to do with where MeShack found Zulu’s money?

“XO is fun, but make sure you get him that skin. He doesn’t play.” I pretended like I knew what I was talking about and hoped MeShack didn’t notice. If he wanted to tell me about the ordeal with Zulu’s money, he would have on the phone. Instead, he chose to antagonize Zulu on the other line, which meant MeShack would try to hold whatever it was over his head, play with Zulu for a while, and then strike.

Cats and their games.

“Yeah. I’m not going to play around with XO. I already have to work some money off for him. I killed one of his Spraggins.”

That word perked my ears. Zulu’s longtime friend, Ray had been a Spraggin.

“No way.
You
working for XO?” I shook my head. “Do you even think you can do it?”

“I’m not a bad fighter, but I don’t know. Graham said he’ll help. He’s done it before.”

Fighter? What?

I didn’t like where all of this was going, but I had no more time to break each thought down to analyze it. My dear sweet dad had his hand tight around Angel’s neck as he smelled her skin. Although she sipped a glass of wine and tilted back on the bar, her eyes were wide open. Once she spotted me, she raised her eyebrows in a
what-the-fuck
manner.

“So your dad is into skin?” She gestured to him as he let go of her neck and started sizing up her arm. He spread his two fingers out to the size of an inch and commenced to counting them down the length.

I tapped Dad’s back. “Please, stop.”

“I already told her I won’t take it, but you must understand I haven’t seen her kind in a long time.” He inhaled her again and backed up to the point that Angel exhaled and gulped down the rest of her wine. “That flesh can hold a lot of power. You wouldn’t believe how much if I told you.”

I got on my toes and whispered in his ear so MeShack wouldn’t hear me, “Dad, what did you used to do for XO?”

“I did a lot of things.”

“Did you fight for him?”

He rubbed his beard. “Why?”

“Just wondering.”

He stared at me for a few seconds and then blinked. A confused expression spread across his face. “What were you saying again?”

Memory loss. He’s nervous. What are you two trying to hide from me?

I shrugged. “You were just telling me about how you used to fight for XO.”

He rubbed his beard again. “What did I say?”

“That you won.”

“Of course I won. No one leaves the cage unless they’ve won.” He scanned the area.

Cage fighting? Didn’t Zulu and Nona fight in cages?

My heartbeat replaced the booming song in my ear. My heart was all I could hear as it raced and raced beyond the sound of the music. On the phone, MeShack said that he’d been in Zulu’s old stomping grounds.
So he was wherever Zulu used to fight and found a duffle bag of money. But why?
MeShack had no skin earlier that day. If he found my dad and knowing him as well as I did, the whole day would’ve been about getting MeShack skin. It would’ve superseded everything.

But why go to where Zulu used to fight to get his skin?

Sure there would have been dead bodies after a cage fight I assume, but why make that their main destination? I glanced at MeShack as he talked to Angel. His skin fit perfect. No one would know it wasn’t his. The flesh smoothed against every muscle, defined every subtle detail from jawline to elbow joints. I’d watched many Demons try on various skins in my dad’s back yard long ago, before MeShack came into our lives. There hadn’t been anything to do, but watch. No one played with the kid whose father was the crazy man on the block. What I learned from those boring days of watching Demons try on flesh suits was that skin took hibernation and lots of care before it fit as well as it did on MeShack. But he hadn’t went into the ground yet. Most Demons laid in our back yard for days, sometimes a full week.

“What are we doing here?” Dad interrupted my thoughts.

“Waiting for Kegan Burrows to approach me,” I muttered, trying to put two and two together.

“We’re Vestas. We don’t wait for any Fire Witches to come to us.” He raised his hands and formed two huge fireballs. They were the size of melons and bobbed up and down on the tip of his fingers. The fact that they blazed bright orange told me they were regular fire and not his demon balls, which took him time to create. The people near us screamed and moved away, probably checking Dad’s brand and not wanting to be near a Demon with fire.

I didn’t try to stop him. My nerves flared on edge. Whatever MeShack had on Zulu I wouldn’t like. Even Zulu hinted that he was scared we wouldn’t survive it.

“Sir? You’ll need to put the fire down.” A bulky Fire Witch appeared on our side. A sweating Water Witch stood next to him. “Only night club staff is allowed to use fire in here.”

“We want to see …” Dad turned to me, “What is the man’s name again?”

“Kegan Burrows.” I faced the two bouncers. “Let him know that Lanore Vesta would like to meet him.”

One of them took out their phones, put his back to us, and talked into it.

“Dad?” I tilted his way. By now MeShack and Angel got behind us.

“Oh, sorry.” Dad put away the balls.

“No. I had to ask you a question. MeShack’s skin looks really good. Why?”

“What’s the first rule in demon magic?”

The bouncer nodded and signaled for us all to follow him. We trailed after him, through the dancing crowd, up a flight stairs outlined by copper beams, and up another flight. The whole time I scanned my head on the rules of demon magic. I had to admit. With Dad doing drugs all the time and leaving me home alone, I’d been a bad student and didn’t really care to hear anything he had to say. I knew everything about making fire and forming it. For that I’d been shut mouth, wide eyes, and open ears. But, my blood could trigger no demon spells. We’d tried many times so at nine years old I didn’t see the point of paying attention.

Now I wish I did.

I nudged his arm and whispered, “Is the first rule, ‘A siphon should only require two sacrifices of—”

“Just stop.” His face twisted into disgust. “I don’t even know what a siphon is. Did you just make that up? How do you not know the first rule? I say it all the time.”

“Just tell me why MeShack’s skin looks so good.”

“Why? Do you finally want to take over the business for me? If I had a son, there would be no question. MeShack’s learning. It would make better sense to simply be with—”

“Don’t even think about saying anything related to marriage or giving me relationship advice.”

The bouncer glanced over his shoulder at us. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes.” I checked behind me. It didn’t seem like Angel or MeShack heard our conversation as they continued climbing the stairs with us. I nudged Dad again.

He snarled, “What?”

“Just give me a hint, please.”

“Why does it even matter?”

“I’m impressed.”

His jawline twitched as if he tried not to smile. “I cast an enchantment on MeShack when he was young. It was simply a life force transfer to pass from a breathing creature existing on oxygen, blood, and a small quantity of shifter magic to a being that only needed to live off of magic.”

My body stiffened as we climbed more stairs. On the map it said only two levels were on the top floor. It had been wrong. We were now heading higher. Somehow I would need to tell Zulu. “How many people did you sacrifice in order to do that spell?”

“It called for four lives. I took two.” He looked away. “MeShack’s death would be the third life.”

“Who’s the fourth? You said four.” And then it hit me. “Cheetah?”

“Yes. Once they both died, then the spell triggered and MeShack’s essence entered my world and rules. Which brings us to rule one. The one who sparks the spell?”

I shook my head. “I got it. The one who sparks the spell is a vessel for the one who the spell impacts. MeShack’s skin is the killer from the ball’s skin.”

Which meant they found the killer not in a Vampire compound or something like that. Not that they could go down there anyway. They discovered him somehow where Zulu used to cage fight.

“Mr. Burrows will be waiting for you right in his office.” The bouncer guided us to the top of the stairs and pointed at the door down the hallway.

Did Zulu know the killer?

My feet were stone. I dragged them ahead, barely making it down the hallway with everyone else. MeShack hooked his arm around mine and tugged me forward, whispering something in my ear, but I didn’t hear it.

Whether Zulu knew the killer well or not wasn’t the question I needed to ask. My stomach balled into anxious knots.
A duffle bag of Zulu’s money and MeShack’s killer were all in the same place.
It could have been a coincidence, but with my man there were never coincidences. Zulu didn’t think he was smart, but he was. If he had his money somewhere, it was there by his hands and no one else. And if it just happened to be with a killer one who attempted to murder his theorized competition for me, then that was no coincidence either.

That thought made my chest cave in. I paused in the hallway, letting go of MeShack, doubling over, and holding my stomach, but not letting any sound escape from my mouth. If I did it would be a scream so loud and so filled with sorrow, it would break the foundation.

No. Zulu. No. Why would you do that?

My heart broke into tiny little sharp pieces that scratched against my insides, marred my ribcage, and tore a hole into anything it made contact with. People theorized about love and where it resided in the body, but I knew where we all stored love. We placed it right in our chest, deep within our cores. Not necessarily just in our heart. We spread it all throughout our insides. That’s why when our hearts were broken it was hard to stand or walk or move anymore without a push from another. Because when deceit battered down love there was no defense, it crippled us. It made you not want to eat or talk, just lay down somewhere into the fetal position and cry.

You did it, Zulu? You really tried to kill him? After all the people we’d already been mourning, why?

And when my heart broke, it reminded me of all the other times a man ripped me apart—the first time Dad left me crying and alone when I was a kid, the night I found MeShack in the bathroom having sex with those women. I stood in that hallway like the fool I’d been all those other times before. A pitiful fool being played the whole time.

Hot, rageful blue flames appeared and zipped up the walls. Tiny icy balls more white than blue popped out of my hands. My vision shifted to an angry blue. Pyrobem oil dripped from my pores and coated me.

“Demon fire?” Dad grumbled. “When did you get this?”

“La La?”

“Stay the fuck away from her.” Nervousness laced Graham’s words. “In fact, take the one with the beautiful skin out of here. Now!”

MeShack studied my face. “But—”

I pushed by him. He hadn’t done anything to me in that moment, but he did long ago. I didn’t want to be around any man right now. People needed to die. I didn’t care who. Someone should be crying and in pain like me. Someone should feel like crap. Lists with blurry names formed in my head. Lots and lots of lists. Dead bodies stacked on these lists. Was Zulu’s corpse on there? No. I couldn’t do that, not yet. I was still the fool with the broken heart and hurt feelings.

I can’t kill him, but I can hurt him. I wouldn’t mind that.

“Lanore?” It might have been Angel who said that I didn’t know.

“MeShack, get her out of here. I’ve got my daughter.” Dad came up on my side.

Dad? No more. He’s Graham again.

“You put Ben in a cage?” I marched to the door where Kegan was supposed to be at. It would be wise for him to be on his best behavior this evening. I was no longer in the mood.

“I don’t know what has you upset.” Graham sucked in the demon fire near us and grunted as it entered him. “This stuff is powerful. You better be lucky there’s no elemental magic up here. You’ll blow us all up. Where did you get it?”

I stopped and glared at him. “Zulu contracted someone to kill MeShack?”

“Damn it.” He sucked in most of the flames on the walls and took my icy white looking balls next. It had been no contest anyway, once the demon fire sensed my dad it realized he was stronger and blurred to him.

“Did I tell you that?” Graham’s eyes held confusion. “I didn’t tell you that, right? I don’t remember saying that at all.”

I turned the knob. It didn’t work. I banged on the door. “Kegan! Get your ass out here!”

“Calm down your emotions. Before you kill us all.” Graham wiped sweat off of his face. “Think through this. Why are you here? Remember that. Why did you come?”

I shifted my weight from side to side. “Zulu made love to me like everything was okay. He told me to come to him while I mourned MeShack and the whole time he knew that he was responsible for it.”

“That’s not why you came here. Why did you come?”

My chest rose and fell at a fast rate. My fingers tapped on everything, my leg, the wall, the door. “To get answers to questions.”

“Do you remember the questions?”

“No.”

The door opened. A tall black guy held it to the side so we could get through. “Hello, Miss Vesta, we ask that you don’t bring any combat to our prophet’s door.”