Black Heart Loa (5 page)

Cash laughed—relief curling like Christmas ribbon through his voice. “Protection from what? A household of deluded women who’ve had a couple of sixers of Abita too many and think they’re badass hoodoos?” His gaze shifted
past Belladonna to his buddy sitting cross-legged and tied up on the floor. “You’re an idiot, man.”

Fury coiled hot around Kallie’s spine. She wanted nothing more than to teach this jerk a lesson, but they didn’t have the time. Not now, anyway. But as for later … “We’ll see who’s deluded,” she said, marching past her snoring aunt to the woman’s worktable cluttered with roots, herbs, and candles.

Kallie spotted the scissors resting beside a half-finished purple button-eyed poppet—
that’s supposed to be me
—and a muscle in her jaw flexed as her
ti-tante
’s words, spoken just an hour ago, rippled through her memory.

“When you were born to yo’ mama and papa, yo’ soul was removed to make room for de
loa
placed inside yo’ infant body. Dere ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do to help you, Kalindra Sophia. Teach you. Guide you. Lie to you.
Bind
you, if it be necessary. Because a big wrong’s been done to you.”

Shoving the memory aside, Kallie snatched up the scissors, whirled, and stormed back to where Cash stood, contemptuous smirk on his powdered face. Without a word, she reached up and snipped a lock from his blond mullet.

He jerked his head away—too late—thumping it against the wall again. “Hey! What the fuck!” He grabbed for Kallie’s hand as she stepped back, his hair tucked against her palm.

The shotgun barrel appeared against his temple. Pressed a divot into his skin. “Ah, ah, ah. Hands to yourself if you want to keep what few brains you have,” Belladonna said.

Cash lowered his hand, knotting it into a fist. “What you gonna do with that?”

“What do you care? We’re all deluded, right?” Kallie slipped the damp lock of hair into the right pocket of her cutoffs, then tossed the scissors onto the coffee table. She offered Cash a smile. “Guess you’ll just hafta find out.”

“You can’t do nothing to me,” Cash challenged. “’Cuz I don’t believe—”

Kallie cut him off. “Yeah, yeah, we know, Mr. Don’t-Believe-in-Juju. No need to repeat yourself.”

She went into the kitchen and rummaged through the junk drawer until she found a roll of duct tape, then she turned around to fetch one of the wood chairs from the table. Her heart constricted when she saw the box of Trix sitting on the table, the shoved-back chair, and the purple glass mixing bowl sitting on the floor.

Looks like Jacks had cereal for dinner, then put the bowl down so Cielo could lap up the milk. For a dog, she’s always had a cat’s sensibilities. Then they came for him—whoever the hell
they
are—before he could even pick up after himself.

No way a bowl of goddamned Trix is gonna be Jacks’s last meal. Ain’t gonna let it happen.

Kallie strode back into the living room and thumped the chair down in the middle of the floor. She looked at Cash. “You’re gonna sit your ass down in that chair and I’m gonna tie you up. You put up a fight and we’ll do an old-fashioned sleep trick, one involving a shotgun butt and your skull. Your choice.”

Cash studied Kallie for a long moment before walking over—Belladonna right behind him, shotgun aimed at his back—and planting said ass in the chair as requested. “I ain’t forgetting you, darlin’,” he said, his dark gaze promising things much worse than a kitchen chair, rope, and duct tape.

“You might wanna rethink that,
darlin’,
” Kallie drawled as she took the lengths of rope Gabrielle extended to her and draped them over her shoulder. “You cause me or mine one more lick of grief, I’ll put that lock of hair to work.” She tore a strip free from the roll of duct tape, the sound ripping through the room—nearly silent but for her aunt’s snoring.

“And she can use it in any number of ways: potion, poppet, hex,” Belladonna helpfully pointed out. “She could have you dancing naked but for a tutu in the parking lot of the Z & M truck stop with the words
Kick my ass, pretty pretty please
painted on your scrawny chest.”

“You ain’t scaring me,” Cash said, gaze fixed on Kallie. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about that fucking piece of hair.”

“Duly noted,” Kallie replied, slapping the piece of duct tape over his mouth. She bent and tied Cash to the chair, wrists and ankles, knotting the rope tight enough to earn more than one grunt from him.

“What about your aunt, Shug?” Belladonna asked, lowering the shotgun to her side and nodding her head in Divinity’s direction. “You think it’s safe to leave her alone? We could always lock this asshole in the garage until we get back.”

“I’ll be staying here, so don’t worry about her.”

Kallie straightened, then turned to face the mambo, meeting Gabrielle’s dark and steady gaze. Worry flickered candle-bright in her eyes. But given that the woman had never met Jackson, Kallie couldn’t imagine that her concern was solely for a man she didn’t even know.

“Is there something else we should be aware of?” Kallie asked.

Gabrielle considered, a crease etching the smooth
dark skin between her brows, her fingers gently tapping her lips. “Don’t know yet. But your aunt’s trick boomeranging like that? Worries me. I don’t know if it’s something to do with your aunt or this place or because of what happened with Doctor Heron, but be careful, hear?”

“Double careful,” Belladonna agreed.

Kallie suddenly remembered something the mambo had said earlier, something that had given her pause, since it didn’t match the information she already possessed. “You said that Doctor Heron has a place in Chacahoula. But I found an address for him in Delacroix.”

Gabrielle nodded. “Delacroix is where his daughter moved after her mama died. Chacahoula is where Jean-Julien and Babette lived before he was sent away to prison. But I don’t know if he kept the place or sold it.”

“I have a feeling he mighta found a way to keep it,” Kallie said.

“He might’ve at that,” Gabrielle said. She inclined her head at Kerry. “You girls grab this one and get going. Time is against us, so while you’re driving to Chacahoula, I plan on asking the
Gédé
to intercede on your cousin’s behalf.” She looked at Kallie. “I plan to summon Baron Samedi. If anyone can save your cousin, turn him away from death, the Baron can.”

Hope pulsed through Kallie. The
Gédé
—the
loas
of the dead and keepers of ancestral knowledge—were skilled healers able to keep a soul from entering death’s realm before its time. And presiding over the
Gédé
was Baron Samedi,
loa
of death and resurrection, gatekeeper to the world of the dead.

Kallie’s fingers automatically reached up to curl around the Saint Bernadette medallion hanging around
her throat, the metal cool against her skin. She missed the smooth feel of the little coffin pendant—representing Baron Samedi—that she’d worn at Divinity’s insistence for nine years. She’d given the pendant to Layne as a gift to burn with Gage’s body in the crematorium in New Orleans.

Gabrielle was right. If anyone could help Jackson, the Baron could.

“I appreciate that,” Kallie said quietly, throat tightening.
“Merci bien.”

“No need to thank me, child. I’m a priestess and I think your cousin needs all the help he can get.”

“Do you need help with the invocation?” Belladonna asked. “I’m in training to be a mambo, so I know the rites for invoking the spirits of the dead.”

Kallie nodded. “If you need her, keep her. I don’t need help handling Kerry.” She bent, hooked a hand around Kerry’s hard biceps, and helped him haul himself up to his feet. Straightening, she looked at the rope-bound outlaw and arched an eyebrow. “Do I?”

Kerry kept his attention on the floor and his dusty boots and shook his head mournfully. “No, ma’am.”

“Thanks for the offer, girl,” Gabrielle replied, smiling at Belladonna, “but you go with your friend. I been doing these invocations for years.”

“Let’s go, Bell,” Kallie said, steering Kerry toward the screen door. “Jacks is waiting. Grab your mambo scout bag and let’s keep the shotgun too. Just in case.”

“Right behind you, Shug.”

Kallie stepped out onto the porch and looked up into the darkening sky. Even though dawn was still fresh on the horizon and dew beaded the grass and the petals of her
aunt’s rosebushes, gray swollen-bellied clouds bruised the sky, stealing the morning’s brightness along with its flush of peach and apricot pink.

Humidity thick with the smell of roses, impending rain, and decaying vegetation from the banks of the bayou behind the house drenched the air. Sweat sprang up along her hairline.

Goddamned five of spades. Enough with the setbacks, already!

“Storm’s coming, Bell,” she said, chest tight. As she propelled Kerry down the porch steps, she thought of Jackson in his grave, the weight of rain-churned mud squeezing the last bit of air from his lungs. “And we gotta beat it to Chacahoula.”

Belladonna paused in the doorway, her gaze on the sky. “Hellfire.”

P
anting, tongue lolling and
flecked with foam, Cielo follows her nose down the dirt road, inhaling scent and information with each whiff of air. The damp dirt is ripe with moldering green leaves, sour bugs, cool grass, but the scent she cares about, the scent she follows—the stinky exhaust from Daddy’s Get-in-the-Truck and hot rubber from its round paws—is fading.

Other scents from the still water beyond the road’s sawgrass and vine-choked edge entice her, make her nose twitch: stinky dead things caught in the cattails. And even though she loves stinky dead things, she doesn’t slow or pause. Not even for a drink. Daddy’s energy is nearly gone, his voice a fading whisper cupped within her inner ears.

Here, girl. Here.

Her paws throb, prickling with owies from running along the highway all night. But she didn’t run it alone. Sometime during her run, she became aware that fleet shapes raced alongside her, paralleling her on either side of the highway, black shadows slipping in and out among
the moss- and lichen-draped trees on graceful paws. Radiating curiosity. Play.

But Cielo has no time for play.

She remembers the pungent smell of Daddy’s blood as the men knocked him down in the yard, then threw him into his Get-in-the-Truck. She also remembers the smell and taste of their blood, and their musky, fur-spiking scent.

She growls low in her throat. She will
always
remember.

Cielo pads, limping, beneath the low, grass-sweeping branches of a tree pungent with the smell of spring sap, and into an overgrown yard. A people-den sits quiet in the morning shade, the porch and its swing empty, the windows closed.

She lifts her muzzle and sniffs for threat, for the stink of the men who’d grabbed Daddy. But all she smells is decayed wood, mildew, and termites, and the thunder-and-rain odor of a shadow woman.

Shadow people often drift through
Tante’s
den, wisping through and away like bits of early morning mist.

Dey be traveling, dog, so leave dem be, hear? No growling or barking. No howling or whooing. Deir journey be a long one, for true. Dey don’t need none o’ yo’ foolishness, so be a good dog, you.

Since
Tante
is alpha female of the den, Cielo listens. Mostly. She is, after all, a
very
good dog.

The shadow woman, threadbare body shafted through with sunlight and edged with wagging tails of thick, black night, stands in the driveway just beyond the porch, her gaze on a low pile of fresh-turned dirt. And beyond the
pile of dirt, Cielo sees a Get-in-the-Truck parked beside the empty den.

Daddy
’s Get-in-the-Truck.

Cielo’s blood sings, her heart leaps, and, despite the bad energy crackling around the shadow woman, she races across the yard, aimed for the Get-in-the-Truck. But she slows to a stop beside the pile of dirt, muzzle lifted as she sniffs the air. The mingled odors of roots and green things, slugs and wriggling worms, decaying vegetation, and the cold metal tang of a shovel blade dance into her nostrils.

Cielo goes still. Inhales deeply.

She catches a whiff of the pungent sweat and adrenaline from the bad men. And Daddy. She breathes in blood-smell, and not just Daddy’s. Breathes in sweaty, heart-pounding desperation.

Here, girl.

Like words from a shadow person now, threadbare and shot through with light.

Cielo stares at the pile of dark, moist dirt. Tilts her head. The bad men buried Daddy like he was a yummie to be hidden and savored, like a treasured squeaka, or a squirrel that quit moving.
(No, Cielo-girl, no. Squirrels are
not
squeakas. You can’t squeak ’em and expect them to keep breathin’.)

But Daddy wasn’t a yummie or a squeaka or a non-moving squirrel and he didn’t belong in the ground. Cielo bolts to the long pile of dirt, nuzzles it with her nose. She
whoo-whoo
s.

Daddy?

Here
… Like a final squirrel-squeaka breath.

Cielo starts digging.

Cielo ignores the shadow woman and digs faster, dirt flinging out from under her paws. The thunder and rain scent intensifies and, for a moment, drowns out Daddy’s scent in her nostrils. A cold hand sinks into her fur.

Cielo pauses and growls low in her throat, a deep, warning rumble. The hand vanishes from her fur, but the cold lingers. She resumes digging.

The shadow woman laughs as she drifts away, but the sound is chewed-up butterfly-bitter, not full of warmth and humor like Daddy’s.