Flesh Circus

Chapter Eleven

This is getting seriously weird.” I crouched on the cellar stairs, easily, running my smart eye over the candle-lit walls. “The wife had no idea?”

“She was adamant.” Eva, behind me, was round-eyed. “I didn’t think to look in the basement.”

“Don’t worry about it. You did exactly what you should have. There was no indicator the guy was into voodoo.” The candles were arranged on an altar draped with green and gold, novenas flickering, a crudely done painting of the Trinity fastened to the concrete wall. A brass dish of sticky candy, a bottle of rum, and a few other implements, including wilted bunches of chrysanthemums. It was thick down here; the padlock on the outside door leading down to the cellar was new, and this whole thing was beginning to take on a shape I didn’t like at all.

“Well, there was the chanting. But I didn’t twig to it.” She folded her arms.

I decided there were no traps lying under the surface of the visible and rose, stepped down another stair, and crouched again, watching. “I said you shouldn’t worry about it. This guy wasn’t anything more than a low-level novice. Any serious practitioner would have some defenses down here.” Though I’m not sure yet. Slow and easy and by the book, Jill.

Saul was outside smoking a Charvil. If Eva felt bad about not checking the cellar, Saul probably felt just as bad for letting the victim—or whatever was riding him, to be precise—get away.

To be even more precise, I knew what was riding our victim, but I didn’t know why. I had a sneaking suspicion I’d find a connection to whatever was happening out at the Cirque, though.

I hate those kinds of suspicions. I moved down another stair, scanning thoroughly, but I found nothing that would tell me our victim was anything more than a secret follower. A complete and utter novice who shouldn’t have been able to fling curses while under a loa’s influence—who shouldn’t have even been able to be ridden.

It’s called “being ridden.” Like a horse. The loa descends on one of the followers during a ritual, and gains certain things from inhabiting flesh. Having it happen to a solitary practitioner isn’t quite unheard-of, but it only happens where the practitioner has sorcerous or psychic talent to burn.

This guy had no markers of initiation, intuition, or sorcery. At all.

I stepped off the last stair, boots clicking and my coat weighing on my tired shoulders. I really wish I wasn’t getting the feeling these things are connected. The cellar was narrow, meant for nothing more than storing a lawnmower or two, and the candles made it hot and close. The guy was lucky his house hadn’t burned down. But if the loa were taking such a particular interest in him, his house was probably safe.

They do take care of their followers, mostly. If you can get their attention. But the trouble is, once you have their attention, it’s the scrutiny of creatures without a human moral code. Capriciousness might not be cruelty, but when wedded to power it gets awful close sometimes.

The altar looked pretty standard. Twists of paper and ash half-filled a wide ceramic bowl, used for burning incense for communications, or the names of enemies. The only thing that didn’t fit was a cup.

It was an enamel camping-cup, a blue speckled metal number that looked easily older than I was. The blue sparkled for a moment, something running under the metal’s surface, and my hand arrived to scoop it up with no real consideration on my part. It was a reflex, and one I was glad of, because one of the candles tipped over and spilled flame onto the altar.

“Oh goddammit,” I yelled, and yanked the cup back, tossed it into my left hand, and jabbed the right one forward. Eva let out a short blurting cry as the fire ate into dry wood—he had his altar sitting on fruit crates, for God’s sake.

Smoke billowed. Etheric force pooled in my palm, and the sudden blast of heat against my face stung both smart and dumb eyes. “Fuck!” I yelled, and snapped my right hand back hard, the scar singing a piercing agonized note into the meat of my arm as I yanked.

The flames died with a whoosh, all available oxygen sucked away. I backed off in a hurry.

“Jill?” Eva sounded about ten years old, and scared. Of course, producing flame is one of those things that tells a regular exorcist to call me in a hurry, but we weren’t dealing with Hell here.

Or at least, we weren’t dealing solely with Hell.

Huh. “Everything’s cool, Eva.” The cup was a big chunk, and my pockets were on the full side already. But I now had a good idea where I could go to find out more about all this. “We’re going to clean up here, then I want you to go check on something for me, and I’m going to do more digging.”

“More digging? Do I even want to know?”

Smart girl. “Probably not. I have to go out and visit the bitch of Greenlea.”

“Great. I’ll just let you do that, then. What am I checking on?”

“You’re going to call Avery and check on another victim.” One that we’ve got in the bag, thank God.

Greenlea is just north of downtown, in the shopping district. If you’re really looking, you can sometimes catch a glimpse of the granite Jesus on top of Sisters of Mercy, glowering at the financial district. But Greenlea’s organic froufrou boutiques and pretty little restaurants don’t like seeing it. Sometimes I think it’s an act of will that keeps that particular landmark obscured from certain places in the city, especially around downtown.

Saul waited until I set the parking brake. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I peered out the window, scanned the avenue.

This district is just one street, with two high-end bookstores, vegan eateries, a coffee shop, and a couple of kitchy-klatch places selling overpriced junk. A few antique stores cluster down at one end, and a fancy bakery and two pricey bars at the other. It’s the kind of well-fed, quiet little upwardly mobile granola enclave you can find in pretty much any American city. Sometimes you can find two or three of them in the same metropolis.

Two blocks off the main avenue—Greenlea itself—the crackerbox houses are pushed together behind their neat little gardens. They’re old houses, on prime property, and people who have an address out here are jealously proud of it.

On the corner of Eighth and Vine, two and a half blocks away, is Sunshine Samedi. I’m sure some of the trendoid yuppies think it’s a Buddhist term, too.

“He got away.” Saul’s face was shadowed in the half-light. “I thought—”

I didn’t want him to keep going with that particular mental train. “Don’t worry about it. He didn’t come downstairs, right? We didn’t have to peel him off Eva, and we’ll find him soon enough.”

“Still.” He even sounded upset. I glanced at him. He looked haggard in the half-light, and I wished I had time to sit him down for a good talking-to. Only what would I say?

“Don’t, Saul. You’re my partner, and a good one. You did fine.” Did he really think I was going to yell at him for being concerned because I’d been knocked right through the ceiling?

But it wasn’t like him. He was my partner, and he knew better. Whatever knocked me sideways wouldn’t put me out of commission; I was just too tough and nasty. He should have stayed where I put him.

But maybe he wasn’t able to. Like he’s not able to touch you anymore without flinching.

I looked away and unlocked my door, hoping he couldn’t read my expression. “Come on, let’s go see if she’s in.”

Of course she’d be in. She never left the house.

A little coffee-shop and bakery with carefully watered nasturtiums in the window boxes sat in a brackish well of etheric depression, congested like a bruise. It wasn’t the congestion of Hell, but it was thick and smelled rancid—not truly smelled, but more sensed with that place in the very back of the sinuses where instinct lives. The closest I can figure is that the brain has no other way of decoding the information it’s being handed, so it dredges up smells out of memory and serves them up.

In any case, it was more than strongly fermented here, just on the edge of turning bad. Etherically speaking.

The coffee here was horrible and the baked goods substandard, but that wasn’t why people came. It most definitely was not why the place was still open, especially in a neighborhood where people were picky about their shade-grown espresso and organic-flour croissants.

Chalked signs writhed over cracked concrete, a ribbon of walkway and a naked patio holding only a terra-cotta fire-dish and chimney on three squat legs. To get back here, you had to lift the iron latch on a high board gate and wriggle past some thorny sweet acacia that hadn’t been cut back. The smell cloyed in the nose, curdled and slipped down the throat, and I gapped my mouth a little bit to breathe through it. I’m sure Lorelei left the acacia there deliberately, and coaxed it into growing large enough to pick people’s pockets—or rend their flesh.

The backyard was cool, holding only a ghost of the day’s heat. There was no moon, and the porch light buzzed a little, illuminating nothing. The garden pressed close, far too humid for the desert.

Her water bill must be sky-high, I thought, just like I did every time I came here. Which wasn’t often. Once every three years or so is often enough for me to keep tabs on the bitch of Greenlea, as Mikhail often called her. Lorelei kept her nose clean and wasn’t directly responsible for any murders, so all things considered she was a minor irritant in a city filled with major ones.

I wish prioritizations like that weren’t daily occurrences.

“Smells bad.” The words were just a breath of sound. Saul wrinkled his nose.

I nodded. This spider has the bad business in this whole neighborhood and a few others coming to her door. And I’m sure she helps it out quite a bit. “Lot of people around here like to double-deal their neighbors. They come here for help.”

“Hanging around with you always an—” He stopped short, his sleek silver-starred head coming up in a quick, inquiring movement. He looked more catlike than ever when he did that.

I heard it too. A skittering, like tiny insect feet.

Oh, shit. My left hand closed around the whip handle, my right touched a gun butt. Saul dropped back, melding into the shadows, and I listened intently. The scar turned hot and hard, and I wished I had a spare leather cuff. Still, superhuman hearing is far from the worst ally in a situation like this.

Skittering paused. The scar turned hot and flushed, a hard knot of corruption snugged into my flesh.

A small creak sounded from the hinges as a random breeze wandered through the garden.

The back door was slightly open.

Motherfuck. I eased forward, the gun slipping out of its holster and into my hand like a lover’s fingers. The garden behind me exhaled, and I caught a thread of another scent, fresh and coppery under the reek of the acacia. What the—

I toed the door open, the hinges giving out a loose moan. Shadows fled aside, dim light spilling across yellow linoleum. Runnels of smeared blackness dragged their way down the back hall toward a shape in a blue housedress, pink fuzzy slippers decked with gore at the end of indecently splayed legs.

“Oh, fuck.”

“What is it?” Saul, behind me.

“Lorelei’s dead,” I informed him grimly. “And I think—”

Whatever I thought was cut off as a living carpet of shining, multilegged things scuttled and swarmed from the gloom, their backs marked with pinpricks of red laser light, and raced toward me. It was a wave of black cockroaches, and the skittering of their tiny feet stabbed my ears as my smart eye pierced the etheric veil over them, catching a glimpse of a swirling, ugly intent.

Oh, holy fuck. The gun would be useless on a swarm like this. I skipped back twice, almost running into Saul, who let out a short unamused sound and faded away. The gun went back, the scar running with heat under the wristcuff, and I jabbed my hand forward, two fingers out. Etheric energy ran crackling over my fist, sorcery rising to my lips, and the living tide of darkness scrabbled against my will.

It felt like tiny hairy feet running over my body, bristly little things poking at my mouth and eyes, scrabbling for entrance. My skin literally crawled before my aura flamed, bright spikes jabbing through the darkness in points of brilliance. A wet salt smell—ashes doused with rum and stale cigar smoke—thudded down over us, and the garden whispered uneasily to itself. Branches rubbed against each other and the flood of acacia scent didn’t pierce the other reek.

The bugs imploded, darkness shrinking into tiny red pinpricks that glowed like cigarette cherries before green smoke puffed out of the place in the world they had occupied. The vapor thinned unnaturally fast, leaving only acridity.

“Jill?” Saul’s tone was neutral, leashed impatience.

“Goddammit.” I let out a short, sharp sigh. “I think we can cross normal homicide off the list for this one.”

“You think?” Sarcasm turned to curiosity. “What was that?” His eyes sheened with gold-blue briefly, rods and cones reflecting differently from a human’s.

“Don’t know yet. Could have been one of Lorelei’s defenses.” Although it didn’t do her much good, if that’s her. “Could have been the same thing that tried to strangle the hostage.” Much more likely, but anything’s possible. I eased forward, my left hand still playing with the whip handle. It was the equivalent of a nervous flinch. “I’m gonna check the scene, then you can call Monty and have him get Forensics out here. I’ll meet you at home—”

“No dice. I’m staying with you.” He sounded like he meant it, too.

“I can’t wait for Montaigne here. I’ve got other shit to do.” I took another step forward, doing my best to avoid the claret spread on the floor. Blood looks black at night, even human blood. Hellbreed ichor is always black, but it’s thin and doesn’t splatter the same way human fluid does.

You have to see a lot of both before you can tell the difference with a glance, though.

“Goddammit, Jill.” He sounded upset. It was so unlike him I paused and glanced over my shoulder. His eyes were orange-tinged; they get all glowy when he’s excited, like a ’breed’s. But Weres are as different from hellbreed as it’s possible to be. “I’m not a cub.”

You just look tired. I’m trying not to burden you more. “You’re right, you’re not. You’re my partner, I need you here.”

“Jill—”

I edged forward another step, every sense alert. “You can wait in the car if you’re not going to help.” Might even be the best thing, the way this is going.

It was Lorelei. Her black dreadlocks lay in fat limp ropes, soaked with clotted blood and daubed with bone beads and bits of glittering onyx. She hadn’t been dead long, I was guessing. There wasn’t much insect life.

Except for the cockroaches. Each with a pinprick of red light on its back, coming out of the gloom and vanishing into smoke.

This is not good.

She lay between the back hall and the kitchen. There was something bubbling on the stove. It didn’t smell like spaghetti. In fact, it was a thin brew with nameless chunks of something stringy floating in it, and the remnants of sorcery popping and fizzing on the water’s surface. I flicked the heat off, examining the brew.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. I should have left it on, but who knew what would happen when it finished cooking, especially in a house full of forensic techs? And contaminating the scene was a small thing compared to the fire risk, especially when I was sure this was one of my cases.

How about that for ironic? If this was a regular garden-variety murder I wouldn’t be touching anything.

I passed my right hand through the steam, greasy moisture scumming my palm. Sniffed deeply. It smelled like greedy obsession and musk, sex-drenched sheets left to rot in a dark hole.

Ugh. Nasty, nasty. What were you doing, Lorelei?

Three good Cuban cigars lay on the clean counter, next to a bottle of Barbancourt rum. The charms in my hair shifted uneasily. Right next to the unopened rum was a fresh bottle of Florida water and a jar of cornmeal.

She’d been preparing to do something, and the longer I waited the harder the traces would be to decipher. My right palm skipped through the steam once more, and yet more grease-laden steam touched my skin. My blue eye was hot and dry, the right watering from the smell. Cool air touched the rest of me, air-conditioning working overtime—Lorelei liked it cold as a tomb in here.

Get it, Jill? Cold as a tomb? It wasn’t funny, and I’d given up wondering why people who liked it freezing had moved to the desert, for Chrissake.

Probably no shortage of people who wanted her dead, for one reason or another. But she hadn’t survived this long as a black sorcerer by being careless or weak, and there was nobody I could think of with usable psychic talent and a vendetta against her.

And there was the slight matter of loa in a young man who shouldn’t have them, the very same loa in an older man who shouldn’t have had them so strongly, and a series of attacks on a hellbreed and a Trader hostage.

The commonality was voodoo, but I couldn’t assume they were all directly linked—or could I?

Hunters are trained pretty thoroughly not to make assumptions. But we’re also trained not to discount the thing that’s staring us in the face. It’s a fine line to walk.

My concentration narrowed. One thing at a time.

Poking, probing, my hand motionless in the steam, the rest of the world shut itself away. Saul had gone quiet and quiescent, watching my back. Intuition flared and faded, trying to track the traces of sorcery through a shifting mass of intention and weird, sideways-skipping dead ends.

It faded and flared maddeningly, and I came back to myself, exhaling a short dissatisfied huff of air. “Goddammit.”

“Nothing?” Saul asked cautiously.

“Nothing I can see from here. I’d have to go between to track this one.” Goose bumps crawled over my arms as I said it, and I hurried to give him the last half of what I was thinking. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning on doing it unless it becomes necessary.”

“It’s not necessary?” He sounded dubious, but the relief of knowing I wasn’t going between probably made him sound that way.

“Not at this point. I still have a couple other things to track down, like our other victim’s other address. And I’m going to go see Mama Zamba. If it’s a voodoo feud, she’ll know about it. If it’s not, she’ll want to know someone’s messing around on her turf, and she’s far from the worst ally in a situation like this.” I backed cautiously away from the stove. The surface of the water still roiled greasily, but the sorcery was fading. It hadn’t been completed, so all the work and effort Lorelei had put in it was bleeding away, blood from a wound. “If nothing pans out with her, I’m going to have to go see Melendez. Jesus.”

“You’re not going to either of them without me.” Flat and quiet.

I turned on my heel and opened my mouth to tell him I’d go wherever I had to, but the look on his face stopped me. Saul looked worried, dark circles under his eyes and his mouth a tight line. His hands had curled into fists—shocking, first because he was a Were, and second because he was always so even and steady. He was too calm to be believed most of the time, and I didn’t realize how much I depended on that calm until he was gone.

Or until we hit a snag like this.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” I didn’t mean it to come out so harsh. Christ, Jill, his mom just died. Give him a break. But the words spilled out. “We’ve got a couple of really serious problems here, and I need you firing on all cylinders. I count on you, Saul.”

Great. Well, I suck at giving breaks. But Jesus…

“I know.” His dark gaze slid past me, as if he couldn’t bear to look. “I just…”

“You just what? I know—look, I really know you’re suffering. Your mom… I mean, you’re grieving, I understand. I’m trying to give you space, you know. It’s just hard when I’m running to solve a case. I don’t have a lot of time. I’m sorry.” The tangle of everything I should have said instead—beautiful things that would help him feel better—rose to choke me, and I swung away from him, looking for a phone. “I’m going to call Montaigne. Take the car and go home, I’ll wait for them to come secure the scene; I’ve got a couple things I need them to take samples of for me. Then I’m going to check out our first victim’s address, and visit Zamba. I’ll be home when I can and we’ll hash this out.”

He wasn’t having any of it. “You think this is about my mother?” He sounded shocked. “So you’ve been—”

“Trying to give you some space. Which I’m going to keep doing. I’ve got shit happening here, Saul. If the hostage ends up dead or we’re looking at a voodoo war, all fucking hell is going to break loose.” And I’ll be on the front lines trying to deal out enough ammo to keep it from killing more innocent people.

“Jill—”

I cut him off. I had to. “Saul. Go home. I’m sorry, I’m a hunter. That comes first. I love you and I’m going to give you the space you need to get your head clear. Go the fuck home.” I took two steps toward the phone. They were hard—every inch of me wanted to turn back, grab him, and hug him and tell him it was all going to be okay.

But I had more than a sneaking suspicion that something was about to break over my city. If the hostage ended up dead, there went the Cirque’s promise of good behavior, and I’d have a hell of a time getting another hostage out of them and making sure they didn’t step outside their boundaries and go hunting instead of just luring the suicidal, desperate, insane, and psychopathic in to play their games. And if a voodoo war broke out at the same time… it didn’t bear thinking about. There was only one of me, and a lot of uppity assholes to kill to keep the peace once chaos was on the loose instead of still mostly contained.

If the two things were connected, someone was making a lot of trouble for me, and I needed to get a handle on it yesterday.

“Jill—” Saul tried again.

“Go on.” I didn’t want to sound harsh. I really didn’t. I tried to take a gentle tone. “Go home. Really. I’ll be along when I can. I love you.”

Lorelei’s phone was at the end of the kitchen counter. I picked it up and dialed a number I knew by heart. Saul’s footsteps were heavy. He headed for the back door.

Don’t go. Come here and I’ll hug you. Everything’s going to be okay. I love you, I can love you enough to make the hurt go away. Come back.

“Montaigne,” the phone barked in my ear.

Saul pulled the back door to but didn’t close it. I felt him, each step taking a lifetime, sliding away around the corner of the house.

“Hello?” Monty bit the word like it personally offended him.

I came back to myself with a jolt. “Monty, it’s Jill.”

“Oh, Christ. What?”

“I’ve got a body I need taken care of, and I need a scene gone over. I also need Avery to meet me here.” I gave Lorelei’s address. “Get them here now—I’m on a schedule.”

“When are you not?” He didn’t ask any stupid questions, at least. “Are things going to get ugly?”

God, I hope not. The pressure behind my eyes wouldn’t go away. Neither would the stone in my throat, but I sounded sharp and Johnny-on-the-spot. All hail Jill Kismet, the great pretender. “Time will tell. Get them out here, Monty. I’ll be in touch.”

“You got it.” He hung up, and I did too. Thank God police liaisons don’t question a hunter’s judgment, even if they don’t know what we’re dealing with most of the time. Those that do know—and Monty had brushed the nightside once or twice—have a better idea than most, and leap to do what we ask.

The alternative really doesn’t bear thinking about, but I’m sure they do.

I turned in a complete circle. I heard the Pontiac’s engine purr into life outside. Oh, Saul. Jesus. I wish I was better for you.

I had work to do, not the least of which was sweeping the scene so I was sure it was safe for the forensic techs who were about to descend. Time to get cracking.

But oh, my heart hurt.