Dark Lily: Shadows, Book 4 (7 page)

Chapter Eight

One down
, Mitchell reflected grimly,
and God knows how many more to go
. If Phoebe’s assertions had any merit, Stubbins could probably have retired on the payoff he’d have received for presenting Gaby to Leshad.

Phoebe had given him a cell phone the night she’d come to his club. She’d told him to use it if, and only if, he needed to contact her. She’d said the signal wouldn’t be traced to either of them.

Mitchell resisted a strong urge to call her after Stubbins’s death. He applied himself instead to the little matter of getting the massive body to town, then deflecting Deputy Fred’s questions about why a man who’d surely come to Bokur to work on the hotel renovation now had a fatal knife wound in his chest.

Mitchell went with the standard cliché. “Accidents happen. Guy fell while he was hacking at some weeds—”

“Vines,” Gaby inserted. “You know the kind, Fred. They wrap themselves around your legs and won’t let go. Stubbins nicked his wrist, rammed his shoulder into a pointed branch and got completely tangled up and lost his balance. The knife did the rest.” Wrapping her arms around the baffled deputy’s neck from behind, she whispered a gentle, “Sometimes tragedies are just that. Tragedies. Remember what happened to your uncle after Mardi Gras this year?”

Fred blinked double time. “Yeah, that’s right. Uncle Leonard. He fell off the back of Morgan’s boat. The only body part we never found was his…”

“Yes, that part.” She stopped him with a pat and a steady look for Mitchell as she straightened. “Things go how they go. Bert Stubbins lost his mojo and his life in the swamp today. I think we can leave it to our new police chief to sort through the details of what needs to be done next.”

“Right.” Fred stared expectantly at Mitchell. “What happens next?”

Mitchell thought fondly of the New Orleans Dumpster he’d lived in as a rookie. “Next,” he said, rubbing a tired eye, “we keep Stubbins out of sight until I can contact whatever family he had. My information suggests he came to the island with a friend, a guy named Baxter. Have you heard that name anywhere, Fred?”

The deputy shook his head. “Don’t recall it.” He still looked shell-shocked. He glanced at Gaby, who’d come around to the front of his cluttered desk. “I, uh, guess you’ll be wanting me to have a talk with Harley. About the shed, I mean. Chief here mentioned how it burned down this morning.”

“Did he now?” Amusement marked her tone. She trailed a finger over the clutter. “Maybe it was a lucky thing after all that Captain Morgan pulled out earlier than usual. Not that Mitchell’s being here will bring Mr. Stubbins back or help me recover what I lost—books, flooring, the antique secretary I had sent from Nightshade—but it’s good to know we have someone with experience on the force. Someone who can investigate things, like the cash that was stolen from the Lily last night.”

Mitchell watched her move around in mounting fascination. After her dip in the mud, she’d showered and changed into a pair of white shorts, black wedge sandals and a snug black top with spaghetti straps that exposed far more skin than it covered. Cop things first, however. “Gaby, if money was stolen from you last night, why didn’t you tell me about it this morning?”

“Because this morning you were leaving. Now, you’re not. Apparently.” She laid a hand on his shoulder in passing. “The air outside’s gone still.”

Honest to Christ, keeping up with her was worse than a game of shadow tag. But in terms of the big picture, the more aware of her abilities he became, the better he understood Phoebe’s fears. There was a reason Leshad wanted her so badly. And that reason extended to Stubbins’s conviction that diving onto his own knife was preferable to facing Leshad’s wrath.

“Is another storm coming, Gaby?” Fred fidgeted with his fingers. “Or d’you think maybe Celia’s pissed about her shed, and she’s making the island give me and Harley the silent treatment?”

“Isn’t Celia dead?” Mitchell knew damn well she was, but he wanted the deputy’s take on her current status.

Yet, even as Fred nodded, Gaby shook her head. “You say you believe, Mitchell, but you don’t, not all the way.”

“I don’t believe far enough to accept that a spirit can elbow aside nature to make its displeasure felt.”

Gaby turned her gaze to the station window. “Celia and others like her can do more things than you might imagine. But she’s not the one who’s displeased. I am. It was my stuff that burned today.” She gave Fred’s desk behind her a meaningful tap. “You tell Harley I’m not happy about that. Also mention I know where he keeps his stash of vintage X-Men comic books.”

“Actually, those are mine…” Fred cleared his throat. “I’ll tell him, Gaby. It’s getting kind of dark outside, don’t you think?”

“Clouds are thickening up.”

Mitchell opened the door to look and listen. “You know,” he mused, “anywhere else, brooding black clouds and air that’s not moving would be a halfway cool indication that a storm was about to break. On Bokur, it feels more like a portent of doom.”

“Other things than weather systems break on Bokur.” Gaby came to stand behind him. “What charges the atmosphere changes the sensibilities.”

Mitchell thought he almost understood that, which was damn near as spooky as the spikes of concern currently doing handsprings in his belly.

She slipped past him. “Clouds in any form won’t hurt us. While that’s all we’re facing, we should drive around the island, see if we stumble across a suspicious camper van.”

“Let’s stumble over to the hotel first,” Mitchell suggested. “Eliminate the obvious.”

Fred’s chair scraped back. “I’ll get your badge. I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to wear it, right?”

The phrase “impersonating an officer” sprang to mind, but Mitchell shrugged it off. What the hell. No one on Bokur was likely to arrest him. He took the badge and Gaby’s arm.

“I already talked to Annie,” she remarked as they crossed the weirdly silent road to the hotel. “The workers who are staying with her came down from Shreveport. They’re related to one of the island’s oldest residents. You might meet her at some point. She has a regular corner spot over at the tearoom.”

“Remind me later to ask you why those remarks made the hair on my neck stand on end. What else did you learn?”

“Most of the tourists are couples. Four of them use canes. There’s a family—mom, dad and three kids. The only single, other than the workers, is a woman in her mid-fifties. She came to Bokur to meet and sketch ghosts.”

“Great. We’ll start with the crazy lady.”

“This from a man who admits, however reluctantly, that he has poltergeists?”

“I’ve heard Jasper and Bruce in the storeroom, but I’ve never seen them, and I doubt anyone’s ever tried to paint them.”

“You have a really big push-me-pull-you in that head of yours, Mitchell. Why don’t you give your grandfather’s genes a rest, stop and take in the sound of voodoo drums.”

He shot her a sharp look. “You hear voodoo drums?”

“Not at the moment, but sometimes I do.”

“So if I develop a sudden slamming headache—highly likely at this point—the source of it could be someone sticking pins in my skull?”

“That’s not how poppets are generally used, but it never hurts to keep an eye on your personal possessions. Anything intimate goes missing, you let me know. I’ll send Billy out to find it.” Halting at the hotel entrance, she surprised him by reaching up and kissing him hard on the mouth. “Word of warning. Old Joe works the desk most afternoons. He likes to kick back and play the blues on his guitar.”

Mitchell’s brows came together. “That sounds normal enough. What’s the catch?”

“No catch.” Smiling, she nipped his bottom lip. “Joe’s a real regular guy. Who just happens to have died three months ago.”

* * * * *

CJ Best’s world had been going dark for years, ever since the invisible entity that was Leshad had slithered into it. And God help him, meeting Phoebe years before that fateful—or maybe he meant fatal—juncture hadn’t made the slide into blackness any easier. In retrospect at any rate.

Leshad had initiated their first contact. By phone, because there’d been no Internet in those early days. He’d known from the start about CJ’s relationship with Phoebe, but it hadn’t seemed important then. Or if it had, he’d set the knowledge on a back burner while CJ entered the political arena and began his laborious uphill climb.

CJ’d had the background for politics. He’d also had the main-line pedigree. All he’d needed was some extra monetary clout and to be in possession of as many dirty secrets about his opponents as Leshad could muster.

The man had no scruples whatsoever. No morals, no ethics, no loyalty to anyone but himself. He had a right-hand man—CJ had met the guy once or twice—but the nature of the invisible beast being what it was, he figured Leshad would turn on the bastard in a heartbeat. If Leshad actually had a heart. And if that heart had ever beat.

CJ hated that he owed everything he’d achieved to a fucking lunatic. He would have laughed if he hadn’t felt so sick. So terrified. So sure every shadow held the threat of a slow and painful death.

When his toss-away cell phone rang, CJ took a moment to unclench his fists before regarding the screen.

“Perfect,” he murmured and stopped the ring. “What is it, Baxter?”

“Stubbins is dead.”

CJ absorbed the news like a kick to the stomach. “How?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“He fell on his own knife. I was too far away to help him fight the guy off.”

The tightness in CJ’s jaw threatened to crack crowns. “What guy?”

“The guy who’s with the bitch you sent us to bring back.”

CJ kept his voice clipped, his tone tight. “Give me a name, Baxter.”

“Mitchell Stone. Word around Voodooville is he’s the new police chief.”

Better than perfect. CJ was tempted to pound his head against a wall while he wept, but that was exhaustion, surely. And the prospect of watching his limbs go through a meat grinder.

Baxter went on. “I don’t know if Stubbins fell on the knife or if that’s just a story Stone and the bitch cooked up. But he’s dead, and that’s a fact. Job’s mine now. I want his share.”

CJ dragged himself out of the meat grinder. “You want—what?”

“More money, my friend.”

Anger began to usurp fear. “Why do you think you should get Stubbins’s pay?”

“Because I’m what’s left. Stubbins, he had a line on you. You can deny it, Senator Best, but before you do, let me fill you in on his source. He got a call from Leshad. It wasn’t the first call he’d ever gotten either, because Stubbsey, he was good at what he did.”

“How do I know you’re not making this up?”

“Seven question marks on the screen, Senator, followed by a voice from hell on the other end. Leshad told Stubbsey we’d be taking our orders from you. But only so long as those orders didn’t conflict with his. Am I making myself clear?”

“As Mississippi mud.” CJ’s stomach, already in his toes, ran with loose, slippery knots. “Fine. You want Stubbins’s money, it’s yours. Deliver the girl. I’ll deliver the cash.”

“What about Stubbsey’s body?”

CJ contained a vaguely hysterical laugh. “Let it rot on Bokur Island while his soul rots in hell.” Blackness, thick and viscous, seeped into the crevices of his mind. “Just remember one thing, Baxter. Better to rot in hell than ever disappoint Leshad.”

Chapter Nine

“I don’t actually expect to find any ghosts, you understand.” Tulane University art history professor Emily Dillard waved the absurd notion off. “What I’m hoping is that they’ll find me and reveal themselves in some way.”

She was a stout, sturdy woman who’d paired rubber boots with a drab print dress. She wore a floppy brimmed hat to keep the sun off her face. For some reason, Gaby thought
Mother Nature
, and listened to her prattle while Mitchell went in search of the other guests.

“These certainly aren’t the best accommodations I’ve ever had,” Emily continued. “Why, this very morning I was forced to break into a linen cupboard for fresh hand towels.” She waved her sketch pad around like a baton. “But then efficient staff is difficult to find in top-notch resorts, let alone on remote bayou islands.”

Behind the desk, old Joe winked at Gaby as he strummed his guitar and sang about dead people.

Gaby smiled back. Her comment regarding Joe’s demise had garnered a wry, “Old Joe looks awfully animated for a corpse,” from Mitchell as they’d stepped into the fan-cooled lobby.

She’d shrugged. “I didn’t say he was a zombie.”

“Well, he’s too damn solid to be a ghost.”

At which point, old Joe had chuckled and explained, in his slow-as-molasses way, that he’d had a heart attack three months ago at his daughter’s home in Baton Rouge, and had been pronounced dead for two and a half minutes.

“Smartass,” Mitchell had muttered to Gaby. But he’d grinned before going upstairs to the rooms.

“I’ve never been entirely clear on the subject of animal spirits,” Emily was musing now. “One might postulate that they don’t possess souls, but many who have pets would disagree with that idea.”

Mitchell reappeared and pulled Gaby aside while Emily rambled on about reincarnation, in humans and in animals. “All three kids and their parents were shouting at each other when I went into their room. They were still shouting when I left. Neither of the workers are here, and I interrupted the after-lunch naps of the remaining elderly couple. The other couple left on the morning riverboat.”

“Really? Visitors knew the boat was leaving early, and I didn’t?”

“I’m told they bought the captain several tall drinks last night.”

“Morgan was probably still drunk when he pulled out. His elderly passengers are either extremely brave or they have no more thrills to live for.”

“Maybe they were under the influence themselves when they boarded. Whatever their mindset, they’re out of the picture.” With an absent smile for Emily and a humorous once-over for old Joe, he propelled Gaby onto the street. “Now we drive.”

The air had come back to life. That was something. The town, however, remained unnaturally silent. That Mitchell would rather drive than strategize at the Mud Hole spoke reams to Gaby about the eerie atmosphere that seemed to be wrapping itself, arm by shrouded arm, around the shops and stores.

“If you want to go someplace that won’t take five years off the life of your Jeep, Celia’s plantation house is quiet. The good kind of quiet,” she clarified as she climbed into the passenger seat.

“So follow the smell of old smoke?”

“Unless you’re up for another shortcut.”

“No comment.” He studied the roiling sky through the windshield. “Is it my imagination, or are those clouds getting lower?”

“I wouldn’t say lower, but they’re getting blacker in several places.”

“Is that significant?”

“Only if you believe in voodoo.”

“If I did, I’d swear there was an iron band wrapped around my replica’s head right now.”

“Celia has powders to offset headaches.”

“And if they don’t work?”

“Then you take a handful of Tylenol, go where the clouds are blackest and see what’s brewing underneath them. We should probably move, Mitchell,” she added gently. “At the risk of sounding scarily psychic, the rain is coming back. Not as bad as last night, but there could be lightning.” As he pulled away from the curb, she set her palms on her knees. “I’m going to say something to you now, and I don’t want you to take it personally, or the wrong way.”

“I suck at kissing?”

“What? No. Where did that come from?”

His lips twitched. “Just trying to lighten the mood. You’re going to tell me you think I should leave Bokur when Morgan gets back, aren’t you?”

“You’re a good guesser—and an excellent kisser, if that matters.”

He turned onto a gravel road. “I’m a guy. Anything involving the opposite sex matters. What I’m not is a candy-ass.”

“You’re not the chief of police either,” Gaby pointed out. “It’s probably true that Leshad doesn’t want me dead, but I doubt the same no-kill order applies to anyone else. And you know as well as I do that dead’s easier than alive in most cases.”

“You sound like your mother.” When her eyes all but spat fire at him, Mitchell battled a grin. “All right. Phoebe’s not convinced Leshad’s entirely human.”

“Oh, he’s plenty human.” Gaby folded defiant arms. “No spirit could ever be that vicious. Even the monsters I know have a feeling or two from time to time.”

“Eyes not on me when you say that, honey. I’m trying to help you here.”

“And I’m trying to tell you that helping me could get you killed. Probably will in fact.” She glanced left as she spoke, spied a small movement and, grabbing Mitchell’s forearm, nodded at a vine-covered tree stump. “Billy.”

He glanced over. “Where?”

She regarded the doll’s hand. “He’s pointing at something.”

“Where the hell is he, Gaby?”

“Where I’m looking.” She zeroed in on his painted face. On the fresh blood spattered across his face. And the dead black calla lily in his hand.

Mitchell figured he’d have noticed the lime-green VW van whether Billy had directed Gaby’s gaze toward it or not. He glimpsed the doll, and the wilted flower he held, but a lightning bolt shooting straight out of the slate-black clouds cost him his focus for a moment. When he looked again, Billy had vanished.

The van sat with its ass end up, half in, half out of the murky water. The lightning bolt had gone to ground on the weed-covered opposite shore. Mitchell swore he saw the cattails smoking where it had struck.

Spooky island, spooky weather. This swamp was a world unto itself.

He was scanning the area around the van when his eyes picked out a work boot among the tall weeds several yards from the rear axle. “There’s a body,” he told Gaby, hopping out. “If I asked you to stay here and lock the doors, would you?”

“I can sense gators,” she said simply. “As well as other reptiles. Something’s wrong with this picture. It’s too contrived.”

“If that translates to you think this is a trap, I’m way past that.”

She joined him on the boggy ground. “I can tell from here, the man whose foot we’re looking at isn’t dead.”

“Is he conscious?”

“I’m not sure. Some people are good at shielding their thoughts, and I’m not much of a reader in any case. My senses function better on another plane. I’m not sure I like that Billy was holding a dead lily.”

“But no problem with the blood on his face, huh? At least hang back a step.” Mitchell pressed on her stomach. “I’m the one with the gun, remember?”

“I’m the one Leshad wants alive.”

“We think.”

“We and Phoebe.”

“I’m wearing the badge, Gaby.”

“You’re not a cop anymore, Mitchell. But before we get to the part where I tell you my father can whip your father’s butt in a fist fight, the water’s rippling.”

“Lucky thing our guy’s not in it.”

“Gators aren’t always in it either. You need to be careful.”

The band around his head cinched tighter. Next time anyone, femme fatale or otherwise, begged a favor, he was going to boot her ass into the middle of a busy street and walk. No amount of fascination was worth this shit. Even if the fascination in question tasted like the finest red wine in his grandfather’s cellar.

Keeping a close eye on the ripples, he approached the motionless male, crouched and searched for blood. When he spotted a gunshot wound beneath the man’s collarbone, the scope of his sightline increased.

Leaning past him, Gaby placed a palm on the man’s chest. A final breath rattled out and elicited a sigh. “Now he’s dead. But I don’t think he’s been here long.”

Mitchell was only half listening. Thunder rumbled ominously behind another spectacular lightning bolt. “I hope your unearthly friends are the source of those strikes, because otherwise we’re setting ourselves up to be pan fried.” He shifted his gaze to the van. “Stay with our John Doe. The back door’s ajar.”

She was doing something. He could see her in his peripheral vision. But his mind and his eyes were focused on that partly open door.

“Wait.” Gaby tugged on his T-shirt when he started to rise. “I found a wallet. The name on the driver’s license is Roland Baxter.”

“Interesting.”

“Extremely, since the photo on it doesn’t match the dead man’s face. There’s also this.” She held up a white calling card with a male silhouette on the front.

“Shit.”

Mitchell shoved her down a split second before another man, this one the size of a sycamore, surged from the weeds on the far side of the van. He had a gun in one hand, a bowie knife in the other and a gator-like grin on his bearded face.
Where the hell
, Mitchell wondered distantly,
is Billy when you need him?

“Stay down,” he told Gaby, and pulling out his own weapon, took off at a low run.

He sensed as much as saw lightning sizzle the weeds again. He supposed it would be too much to hope it might strike their attacker—Baxter, he assumed—and make a moot point of this sure-to-be-hellish confrontation.

The man fired his gun. He didn’t miss by much. Wouldn’t have missed at all if Mitchell hadn’t dived and rolled into the underbrush.

Water splashed. Going to one knee, Mitchell fired back. His bullet sliced through Baxter’s right arm. Rather than slow down, the man flung his bowie knife at Mitchell’s head.

“Got more where that came from, asshole,” he said from the cover of dense bush.

His voice sounded like it had been put through a cement mixer. His palms were broader than the paws of a bear and he looked to be relishing every second of this exchange.

Careful to keep out of range, Mitchell eased farther away from the spot where he’d left Gaby. He wanted the big man to reappear. A shot between the eyes from a .38 special would take him down. Any other place on the guy’s body, probably not, so he’d go for the head and hope to hell he hadn’t lost his touch.

“I’m gonna kill your lover, Gabrielle.” Since when could cement mixers croon? “Gonna kill him and cut off his dick. I figure Leshad’ll appreciate that. I know Stubbsey would if he were alive. Could be I’ll get me a big, fat bonus when I hand over the pretty lady Leshad wants together with her lover’s dick.”

Lightning split the clouds. Thunder cracked and the wind swirled up from nothing. As Mitchell watched, the gust resolved itself into a small funnel of black smoke and began to move.

“What the fuck?” Baxter’s head popped up but vanished before Mitchell could take aim. “What’s going on? What the hell’s that?”

Water splashed again. Mitchell glanced at the reeds, but it was the funnel cloud that commanded the bulk of his attention. Something like shocked disbelief gripped him.

Baxter must have felt the same way, because his low-pitched denial emerged with force. “I am not seeing this.”

That makes one of us
, Mitchell thought.

The funnel swirled harder, faster. Suddenly, Baxter burst out of his hiding place. He took aim and squeezed the trigger, first into the funnel, then more randomly into the weeds. His big feet sloshed through the muddy water.

“You’re a doll,” he shouted and shot at the top of the cloud. “You’re a son of a bitching wooden doll.”

Mitchell noted a movement, dragged his gaze away and thought,
Oh, shit.
The real danger wasn’t riding a black funnel cloud. It was running and swimming directly toward his backpedaling opponent.

Water churned around Baxter’s legs. By the time he spied the frenzy of activity below, it was too late for the second knife he pulled to have any effect. One gator clamped its jaw around his thigh. A second snapped his gun hand off at the wrist.

That was when Mitchell saw Gaby. She was several yards away, barefoot at the water’s edge. She’d been wading, he realized, up to her hips by the look of her shorts. And now she stood, watching, absorbing, undoubtedly knowing as he did that Baxter’s death didn’t signify the end of a nightmare. But rather the beginning of one.

* * * * *

Phoebe figured there were worse ways she could have lived her life. But at this moment, walking in stinging New Orleans rain on Basin Street toward St. Louis No. 1, she couldn’t think of many.

She strolled through the gates behind a flock of excited tourists, undaunted by the distant lightning or the peals of thunder that underscored the soulful wail of a saxophone.

The haunting music matched her mood. The dark, rainy setting spoke to the irony of her situation. “Gonna see you again real soon, Mama,” she murmured. “Please don’t be working yourself up to a hard scolding. I’m doing all I can with what I’ve got left.”

She was tired, and the umbrella she carried seemed inordinately heavy. Or maybe it was her heart weighing her down. There was time. She could turn around, walk back past Marie Laveau’s tomb and onto the busy street. She trusted Mitchell to watch her little girl. For how long he’d need to, she couldn’t say, but she’d done her best.

The shabby stone crypts glistened in the early lamplight. Shadows hung everywhere, but they were deepest between the crypts. Phoebe let the sound of the lonely saxophone fill her head and only smiled a little when one of the shadows stirred.

Gazing out over the raised tombs, she asked, “How long have you been waiting, Crucible?”

A low male voice emerged. “Not long, Ms. Lessard.”

“Phoebe,” she corrected. “To please my mama who named me for her mama. You’ve brought companions, men like yourself, and a single woman. Your team is sadly lacking in females, I’m afraid.” She directed her gaze toward a second shadow, this one a loose, lanky silhouette. “You’d be Tom Cutter, Crucible’s counterpart. His counterpoint. This is most interesting.”