Shivers Box Set: Darkening Around Me\Legacy of Darkness\The Devil's Eye\Black Rose (47 page)

Mia’s head throbbed, as if the heart of every creature in the bayou was beating inside it at the same time and in the same off-kilter rhythm. Even more disturbing was the pouch that had materialized in her hand when the woman had clasped her bloodless fingers around it.

“Take what I offer,” she’d urged, “for you are marked at present by more than one man.”

Not the most comforting words she could have imparted. Add in the rheumy eyes, and Mia’s fear factor had bumped up to a level that no bayou-born female could completely discount.

As suddenly as she’d appeared, the old woman vanished. But by then the lights had been flickering, someone was shouting at one of the men Ryder had leveled, and the fiddler was shaking his bow at the bartender for plugging money into the old corner jukebox. Chaos had reigned for several minutes. Plenty of time for one tiny woman to melt away into the night.

“I got us a room.” Mia hadn’t heard Ryder’s footsteps on the stairs, so his voice close behind her had her heart rocketing into her throat.

She pressed a fist to her sternum. “I wonder if Madame Medusa knows of anyone with a decent still.”

“Count on it.” Ryder peered over her shoulder. “What have you got there?”

Amused, she let the small pouch dangle. “Gris-gris. Madame M gave it to me. It’s meant to ward off evil, which is appropriate. On the other hand, I’ve been voodooed, and that’s not generally considered good.”

“Only not good if you believe.”

“I’ll err on the side of caution.” Eyes dancing, Mia tucked the bag that smelled faintly of jasmine and cayenne pepper into her bra.

When she would have turned away, Ryder held her in place and lowered his mouth to her ear. “I wouldn’t be upset if you wanted to try some voodoo on me tonight. There’s only one bed.”

Lips curving, she leaned against the wall and traced the line of his cheekbone with her finger. “Is that your idea of a tempting offer?”

“Call it a statement of fortuitous fact.”

“I have an amulet,
cher
, and in the voodoo world, nothing to fear from you no matter how many beds the room has.”

“You believe in your charm that much?”

“Is there something beyond what I already know that I should be worried about?”

His eyes glinted in the wash of moonlight that trickled through the stairwell window. “Only if you see me as a danger. But if that’s how you see me, you really shouldn’t have mentioned having sex downstairs.”

Her smile widening, she used a light fingernail to scrape his cheek. “Pretty sure the argument I made was about us not having sex.”

“Your argument got me hard. Then and now.”

“In that case…” She touched her lips to the corner of his mouth, hesitated a moment, then tossed caution to the wind and used her teeth on his earlobe. “I need a favor.” Another quick nip, another teasing brush of lips. “Bath, bubbles, music and, unfortunately, time.” She eased back. “I need an hour, Ryder, to settle myself.”

His eyes searched her face. “Talking about danger is one thing, Mia. Flirting with it takes it to a very different level.” Catching her chin, he set his mouth on hers for a kiss that quite literally sucked the breath from her lungs. “You’ve got sixty minutes.”

* * *

She shouldn’t have done that. Deliberately tempted a man she’d met less than six hours ago. Yes, he got her hot and bothered. And she’d certainly given more than a passing thought to the idea of having sex with him. After all: gorgeous, haunted hero—who wouldn’t want sex? But seduce him in the stairwell of a ramshackle bayou bar? She deserved to have her senses thrown into a tailspin for that. If she hadn’t been feeling the heat before, she definitely was now. The heat, the heavy air, and a whip of excitement that slid through her like a snake through still water.

Speaking of which…

The old woman’s words had shaken her almost as deeply as Ryder’s kiss. She’d smelled of bourbon and the swamp. Although she’d tried to rub it away, Mia could still feel the clawed fingers that had clamped around her wrist while the woman herself spoke of snakes and men and deception.

“Spooky,” Mia said aloud. “But, sorry, Madame M, not the real deal.”

Resolved to put the encounter behind her, she skimmed her fingertips through the bathwater. Temperature was perfect. She’d soak in a mountain of scented bubbles for twenty minutes, then call Iona or Henri. Talking business would get her mind off sex and murder, and strange old women who smelled of alcohol, offered a warning about death and told her to pity the snake.

Mia’s eyes slid to the tiny window across the room. Who would issue warnings like that to complete strangers? Why issue them?

Lightning continued to flicker in the distance, and if she listened hard she could hear lingering rumbles of thunder. Or was that her heart beating just a little too fast in her chest? Pumping blood and ripples of fear to her brain.

She stood there on the threshold, unsettled and uncertain. Lightning flashed again, deep in the bayou. When the thunder behind it faded, she thought she detected a small scrape in the corridor outside her room.

She heard it again, below the croaking frogs and the persistent buzz of night flies. Wary of something not quite right, she regarded the narrow strip of light that shone under her door. It held for five seconds. Then there was another scrape, the light vanished, and both the corridor and her room went black.

* * *

The rain moved on, but the heavy air it left in its wake felt like fifty pounds of lead dropped onto Ryder’s shoulders.

He shucked off his jacket and told himself not to think about Mia or a kiss he’d started that had made him so damn horny he’d been forced to sweat it out in the stairwell for several painful minutes before returning to the bar. Two bottles of beer later, he couldn’t say he felt a whole lot better.

Hoping what passed for fresh air would help him there, he stepped outside and closed the door with his foot. He breathed in as he stared into a cluster of trees laden with Spanish moss and rainwater. And was only mildly put out when a familiar voice whispered, “You’re a deception, a lie.”

The old woman—Mia’s Madame Medusa—spoke from a long wooden bench that spanned the entire side wall of the bar. “You think I don’t recognize you,” she said, “but I do.”

Ryder glanced at the bathroom window above them. Mia would be up to her breasts in bubbles by now. Should he stay and listen, or get the hell away from the old spook?

Manning up, he crouched to regard a person he’d never laid eyes on before tonight. “How is it you recognize someone you can’t possibly know?” he asked. “I’m not famous or infamous, and I’m not public, not really.”

She stared sightlessly into the night. “You’re your father’s son.”

“Only in name, old woman.”

“Name’s some of what defines us. Name has weight. Your father…” She shook her head. “Not a good man.”

Ryder felt his teeth grind. “You can’t possibly know that, but even if you’re bluffing or, God help me, psychic, I’m not my father.”

More disturbing than when she stared at nothing, the old woman turned her white eyes to Ryder’s face. “You lie to her. You place her in danger. You serve yourself as any reptile would, yet as humans tend to, you do it with great deliberation. A snake doesn’t deliberate; it acts on its instincts. Being human, you ignore your instincts. You think because she’s a stranger, you won’t care. You’re torn, Rick Ryder. And a man divided cannot live.”

“Then I’ll die.”

“If that’s your decision, so be it. You’ll die, and take Mia LeMay with you. But only to the grave. From there, you’ll part ways.” Her milk-white eyes rose to the bathroom window. “She’s not alone…”

Okay, crazy, Ryder reflected, a wannabe clairvoyant whose mission in life was to levy guilt trips wherever she could. She might have hit pay dirt with him, but damned if he’d let her know it. One good guess didn’t make her any less fraudulent. Besides, from the smell of her, he hadn’t been talking to the woman, so much as the drink she’d consumed.

Giving the bench a tap, he pushed off. He was halfway to his feet when the lights went out upstairs, something crashed, and he heard Mia scream.

* * *

A hand snagged the belt of her robe. Big hand or small—in the dark, Mia couldn’t tell. Was it one of the men from the bar, or had Helene’s killer followed her to the bayou?

Unable to free herself, she plunged an elbow into flesh and heard a low growl.

“That hurt, bitch,” her attacker snapped. “You’re gonna pay for jerking me around.”

She already was, Mia realized when his other hand sank into her hair and yanked.

“First installment.”

She smelled whiskey and wrenched her head sideways to avoid his mouth. Using the heel of her hand, she punched his ear. He swore and stumbled backward into the sofa.

Because they were still tangled together, Mia fell with him. Fell
on
him, in fact. Her butt landed on his stomach. He whooshed out a breath, and then reared up flailing as he struggled to wheeze air back into his lungs.

The terror that numbed her mind threatened to consume her. It might have succeeded if anger hadn’t been vibrating beneath it. Ryder had gone for the throat downstairs, and she could see just enough of her attacker to take similar aim. Until a thrashing arm knocked her sideways.

She hit the floor hard and scrambled to her knees. Recalling a large lamp on the desk, she went for it.

In a dim corner of her mind, she knew the door burst open. She heard rather than saw the edge of it slam into the man’s skull.

The hands that had closed around her ankle froze, then went limp. Mia immediately snatched her leg away.

Strong fingers gripped her arms and hauled her to her feet. “Did he hurt you?” She felt different hands now, in her hair and on her face, as Ryder inspected her for injuries.

“I don’t think so. He wasn’t—He’s not the killer.” She bunched the front of Ryder’s T-shirt. “I thought he was, but it’s Bo, the guy from the bar who wanted to dance.” She pried her fingers free. “How did you know to come back?”

“I saw the lights go out. I figured it was the murderer.”

Mia firmed up her trembling legs. “Can you make this creep disappear?”

“Gonna try.” Going to one knee, Ryder grabbed the groggy intruder by the hair, hauled his head from the floor and stuck the barrel of his gun under his chin. “You either stand up, get out and don’t come back, or I squeeze this trigger. Your choice, Bo.”

The big man’s mouth opened and closed like a codfish. “I’ll go,” he finally managed.

“Question first.” Ryder gestured at the corridor. “That spooky old woman we met in the bar. Who is she?”

Bo gave his head a short shake. “Wasn’t no spooky woman downstairs—unless you mean Lorri. She paints white streaks in her hair, tells fortunes sometimes and sleeps with whoever when no one’ll listen, which is most of the time. She ain’t got the sight, just likes to pretend she does.”

“How old is Lorri?”

“Hell if I know. Fifty maybe.”

“Anyone older who’s blind?”

Bo stared. “You got a movie star, and you want an old blind woman instead? That’s just plain screwy.”

“We both want her,” Mia told him. “You must have seen her. She’s tiny, very frail and thin. She has white hair and eyes.”

Bo’s genuinely startled expression didn’t calm her leaping nerves one bit. “You met that one, you met what none of us in Blackwater ever want to. Swamp witch doesn’t show herself to many. When she does, you best be getting your headstone ready.”

Mia made a wary circle. “Are you saying your swamp witch foreshadows death?”

Bo swallowed around Ryder’s gun. “Lady, the swamp witch
is
death. You don’t believe me, go on down the road another twenty miles. You spot a falling-down shack, you stop and go around back. That’s where what’s left of her is.”

“What’s left of her?” Mia repeated, but she already knew. “The swamp witch is dead, isn’t she?”

Bo’s chin shook. “Dead and buried for more than a hundred years.”

Steam rising in delicate wisps extended deep into the bayou. It would burn off, Mia knew, as soon as the first rays of sunlight broke through the canopy of trees and moss.

She estimated she’d gotten about two hours of sleep, most of it filled with dreams of voodoo queens, snakes and one dead swamp witch with opalescent eyes. She’d dreamed about Ryder as well, but going there would take her into territory she wasn’t prepared to explore right now. Better to stick to the occult and snap the lock on any sexual frustration.

Ryder was gone by the time she dragged herself out of bed. Taking that to mean there was no rush, she showered and dressed in faded jeans, a black tank and boots better suited to the area than last night’s high-heeled shoes. Ryder came in as she was snapping the lock on her suitcase.

“Don’t start.” He held up a hand in warning before she could speak. “I have bayou connections, but I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. No way do I believe in encounters with dead swamp witches.”

“Leaving us with only a card-carrying Jack the Ripper-like killer to worry about.”

“It’s enough.” He swung her case from the bed. “Jesus, Mia, did you actually bring a headstone with you?”

“Jack the Ripper-like killer.” She reminded him and shouldered her overnight bag. “I hope you have a breakfast stop in mind, or I might just die of hunger and save whoever—killer, witch, take your pick—the trouble.”

He said nothing to that and in doing so set the tone for the morning. They ate flapjacks smothered in raspberry syrup at a café in Blackwater, then drove with the windows down, bluesy country rock blasting into air that grew increasingly muggy as the miles slid by.

“Are we going in circles?” Mia used a road map to fan her overheated face. “If we are, and it’s because your GPS gets persnickety in the bayou—not an uncommon occurrence by the way—I still know how to read one of these.” She wagged her impromptu fan. “If it’s deliberate, forget I spoke, and go back to brooding.”

“We are circling, it’s deliberate, and I’m not brooding.”

Her fanning motion grew more thoughtful. “You know, Ryder, not everything in life has a logical explanation. Some people swear that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly, but they can.”

“So it naturally follows that if bumblebees can fly, swamp witches can rise from the grave to spout nonsense at us.”

“Something like that.” She waited a beat before stage-whispering, “It’s a myth, actually. Bumblebees only look like they shouldn’t fly, when in fact their peculiar physiology is what makes flight possible.”

“Is that a long-winded way of saying looks can be deceiving?”

“Think about it.” She kept her tone practical. “That old woman didn’t do anything a decent psychic couldn’t pull off. Yes, she knew my name, but she said it herself, she heard you talking to me when we came in.”

“I had a second chat with her outside, Mia. She knew your surname, too.”

“Making her better than Iona, but not necessarily a ghost. We signed a room register, remember?”

He frowned. “You grew up in the bayou. Aren’t you honor-bound to believe?”

She cast him a mysterious smile. “Oh, I’m not telling you one way or the other what I believe, I’m just rationalizing so you’ll feel better. You ask me, there are a lot of dead people walking around this world. Some die and don’t leave. Others die and move sideways. Still others move in.”

“Squatter spirits?”

“Exactly. Is any of this helping?”

“Not really.” He eased his truck through a puddle that spanned the entire road. “Look, I told you, I have bayou relatives. My mother was born here. Unfortunately, like Lorri with the white-streaked hair, any second sight she thought she possessed only manifested itself when she was drunk or stoned.”

Touchy subject, Mia realized, and possibly part of the reason for the broody mood he had going.

“I’m sorry, Ryder,” she said when he didn’t continue.

“Don’t be.” The look he shot her could have cut glass. “She wasn’t a mean drunk, just a careless one. She drove her car off a bridge when I was ten.”

“Were you an only child?”

“No, I have a sister. She drinks more than my mother did. My father doesn’t drink or do drugs. When my mother died, he carried on. Pillar of a man, I thought. I was in my first year of college when he got fired for screwing his boss’s wife, and heading into my second when a decade of embezzlement finally caught up with him.” He glanced over. “Want to bail out of the truck yet?”

“Hardly.” She adjusted her sunglasses before reaching down to pat his knee. “My daddy was a good man, but he had one truly disastrous vice. He gambled. Lost his shirt—and everything else—at least seven or eight times. Always scraped enough together so we got by, plus my grandmother, who lived with us, had money of her own that she never let him touch. But still.”

Although Ryder’s expression altered, she couldn’t read it. “I had a grandmother,” he said softly. “She drank, gambled, smoked and still managed to be there whenever I needed her.” They bumped along a rough, sun-dappled road beneath a cluster of weeping willows. “Is your mother alive?”

“Very.” Mia grinned. “She moved to the west coast when I was a kid and became a lesbian. Her brother, my uncle, was mortified. He took his wife and my twin cousins, Jimbo and Jessabel, to Atlanta so they wouldn’t be branded.”

“With names like Jimbo and Jessabel, they’ve been branded from birth.” He glanced in both mirrors. “Have you noticed anyone behind us?”

“Are you serious?” But she turned to double check. “If I’d known what you had in mind when we left Blackwater, I’d have brought along a ten-pound bag of breadcrumbs.” She ducked to peer through the rear windshield. “Those clouds to the west do not look promising.”

“Clouds are the least of our problem, Mia.”

“Why?” Swinging back, she followed his gaze to the dash. Fuel level was good. There was no oil light. And the engine temperature gauge was… “Ah, right, see it. Very hot. And we’re in the back of beyond, sans breadcrumbs.”

“Belle Font’s ten miles from here.”

“Which is good news since it means you have some vague idea where ‘here’ is. You do know we could have hidden just as easily in Bayou Mystère, right?”

“Mystery Bayou?” He checked the mirrors again. “Wonder what the swamp witch would say about a name like that?”

“Probably welcome home.” Mia kept an eye on the rising engine temperature. “I spent seventeen years of my life there. I could run an outboard through the local waterways blindfolded when I was a kid.”

“Mia, the murderer you saw would’ve had your background memorized before you met Crucible.”

“So better to break down in a place neither of us actually knows in a parish we…” She straightened. “Is that a gas station?”

He eased them onto the shoulder. “Could be. I see pumps.”

And derelict vehicles scattered among the trees and bushes in the adjacent lot.

To the right of the auto graveyard, Mia spied what might loosely be called a diner, and behind it, a huge shed that leaned to the left. Directly ahead stood a lopsided sign with two words hand painted across the face.

ALLIGATORS BEWARE!!

“Perfect.” She hopped out when Ryder braked near the oversized shed. “Either they’re warning the alligators to stay away, or warning us about the alligators. I see a camper van with Oklahoma license plates parked in front of the diner.”

Before she closed the door, Mia checked her iPhone for a signal and discovered the battery was dead. “Figures.” She shook it, sighed. “Ryder?”

But he already had the hood up and his head under it.

Reaching into the truck, she grabbed his phone. “I hope you’re a mechanically inclined rogue,” she murmured.

“Radiator’s leaking,” he revealed while she swung back and forth searching for a signal bar. “Clouds are moving in fast. Do you see anyone, hear anything?”

“No one and nothing except frogs and crickets.” Giving up, she dropped the phone in her purse and turned for the diner.

A rattling sound behind the shed had Ryder pausing to look and a smiling Mia reaching for his hand. “Not what you think, city boy. Remember the sign and bear in mind, alligators can’t read.”

When he narrowed his eyes, she laughed and drew him forward.

“That van’s been Frankensteined.” He switched his gaze to the building. “Diner’s no better. Windows are cracked, door’s warped.”

“Doesn’t bode well for us scoring a cold drink, does it?” As the first cloud brushed the edge of the sun, Mia glanced up and around. “Very weird. It’s ninety plus degrees, and I swear a chill just ran down my spine.”

“Yeah. Felt it.”

“Maybe we should…” She pointed at the truck.

But he shook her off. “Better to tough it out. Unless you have a torch welder in that suitcase of yours.”

She summoned a smile. “No welder, no kitchen sink. Sorry.”

Pushing through the door, they stepped from fading sunlight into a fifties-style diner crisscrossed with long shadows. The walls were greasy, the linoleum floors dingy, and the smell of old burgers and gumbo hung in the thick air. The man behind the counter wore a stained white T-shirt. His hands and fingernails were filthy, his brown hair stuck up at odd angles, and Mia would have bet money his weasel-thin face hadn’t seen a razor for upward of two weeks.

“Hey, ya’ll. You lost, too?” It wasn’t the counterman who greeted them, but a thirty-something man wearing blue plaid shorts that rode dangerously low on his hips.

He stuck out a hand. “I’m Bud. This here’s my wife, Tina. We had a mind to do some camping in the bayou near Frog Lake, but we got ourselves turned around.” He fluttered the edge of the map he’d spread out on the table. “These damn things don’t do squat unless you know where you are to start with. Fella back of the counter owns the place. Claims him and his wife can’t read, so Tina and me, we’ve been scratching our heads and thinking we might have to spend the night in that big old shed at the edge of the swamp.”

Behind them, the counterman’s eyes darted from person to person, but always, Mia noticed, returned to Ryder.

She nudged him with her hip while Bud rambled on about pesky bugs and heat so wet a body could drown in it. She whispered, “Am I the only one who thinks something’s not right here?”

Ryder nodded. “Menu’s written in chalk. You don’t read, you don’t write.” He placed himself between her and the counter. “Now might be a good time for you and Tina to visit the ladies’ room.”

“Visit the…Why?”

“Do it, Mia.”

His tone warned her not to argue. She tapped Tina’s arm. “I think we should…”

Ryder’s hand pushing down on her head cut her off. “Under the table,” he shouted—a split second before buckshot sprayed the wall in front of them.