T
rying to act normal with all her senses on high alert, was like trying to shove an elephant into a linen closet.
Hopeless.
Shauna felt certain a were was in trouble, but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. She had no idea who the were might be or what kind of trouble he or she might be in. Intuition was usually a given for a Keeper, but she hated when it didn’t provide enough details for follow through.
She had to do something besides pace, though. For her own sanity and to reassure Fiona, who kept looking over at her every couple of minutes from behind the register.
Fortunately, Caitlin had been too busy to notice how fidgety she’d gotten. Unfortunately, her sister’s heavy
workload came from picking up Shauna’s slack. She had managed to help the spike-haired couple Caitlin had directed her to earlier. Thankfully they hadn’t asked about pulverized bats’ wings or hogs’ hooves, as Shauna had suspected. They’d wanted gum mastic and dried anise, the first to snort, the second to smoke. All because a friend swore both gave quite the buzz. She’d been slightly abrupt with a response, stating that if they considered death a buzz, then they should go for it. That had certainly sobered them up.
Once she was rid of them, Shauna had tried helping another customer or two, but she’d been unable to concentrate on their questions long enough to answer them. She felt useless.
That horrible, mournful keening sound haunted her. It wasn’t as loud as it was earlier, but it was still there. No less distressing, so painful to hear. Stabbing her repeatedly in the heart. It seemed to call to her. Beg for her…
She considered talking to Fiona about it. Since she was the oldest and the most experienced Keeper, Fiona might be able to tell her what she should do, if anything, about what she heard. Then Shauna reconsidered. The wolvens were her responsibility, and if she was so certain it was a wolven’s cry, she wanted—needed—to handle it on her own. Just because she was the youngest didn’t mean she always had to run to her big sister for help. If she was ever to fully understand and trust her instincts,
she
had to work through them. Right now, though, instinct was telling her to get the hell off her butt and do
something.
She just wasn’t quite sure what that ‘something’ should be.
As if hearing her thoughts, and it wouldn’t have surprised Shauna if she had, Fiona signaled her over. Shauna reluctantly headed her way. If her sister asked her what was wrong, she couldn’t lie to her, no matter how badly she wanted to work things out on her own.
Just before she reached the counter, two middle-aged women dressed in expensive linen suits walked up to the register, wanting to check out. Shauna offered a silent thank-you to the universe for the reprieve.
“Hey, where the baby at?” Lurnell asked, while chewing on yet another piece of king cake. She hadn’t moved from her spot at the counter, the one nearest the cake platter. The baby she referred to was the pink, plastic, one-inch doll always hidden in a king cake. Tradition had it that a year’s worth of good luck and fortune belonged to whoever found the doll in their piece of cake. To keep that luck rolling, that person had to buy another king cake and share it with friends and family.
“If you didn’t find it,” Shauna said, “there must not have been one.”
“Girl, you crazy. You know they all got babies.”
“Well, if it did, you would have found it, since you ate most of the cake.”
“Huh?” Lurnell glanced down at the platter…of crumbs. “Uhh…” She dusted the crumbs off her hands. “Yeah, guess you right. Probably had a machine broke down to the cake fact’ry or somethin’. They bes’ hurry up
and fix that. People gettin’ kings with no babies like that, they ain’t gonna know what to do. It could get nasty.”
“Excuse me…” One of the women Shauna had seen standing near the register a moment ago now stood beside her. She held up a hand, pinky and forefinger slightly extended as if preparing for high tea. “I could not help overhearing your conversation, and my curiosity simply got the best of me. Would you please explain what a baby has to do with a cake?”
Lurnell snorted. “You ain’t from here, huh?”
High tea became a small, dismissive wave. “Heavens, no. I’m from the Valley.”
“Where that’s at, the Valley? Out by Shreveport?”
The woman rolled her eyes. “It’s in California, dear. San Fernando, to be exact.”
Lurnell’s educational background might not have been extensive, but she didn’t need a Harvard degree to know she’d been talked down to. Her nostrils flared, the first sign that Mount Lurnell was about to blow.
Fiona must have realized the same thing because she suddenly appeared, holding a small, pink, plastic doll. “Look what I found,” she said. “Probably fell out of the cake when I was slicing it.” She smiled, then handed it to Lurnell. “You’re the one standing closest to the platter, so I think you should have it.”
“For real? Me?” Lurnell said, eyes wide as she took the doll. Her notion to teach Ms. High Tea a few manners had obviously taken a backseat to more important matters.
Lurnell held the plastic luck charm up for everyone to see. “Look here, y’all. I got me the baby!”
A handful of customers applauded, and Lurnell did a little jig and a booty-bump.
As Lurnell carried on about the luck coming her way, which, of course, included getting the man of her dreams, Fiona tapped Shauna on the shoulder. “You okay?” she whispered.
Relieved her sister hadn’t asked what was wrong, Shauna said truthfully, “Just antsy.”
“Too much noise?”
Shauna nodded. That was the truth, as well. That constant keening rising and falling in volume
was
upsetting her. She knew Fiona meant the noise in the shop, but who was she to split hairs?
“I know we’re busy,” Shauna said, “and I feel like a heel for asking, but would you mind if I went out for a while?”
“Not at all.” Fiona gave Shauna’s shoulders a little rub.
“You don’t think Caitlin will care?”
“Why would she?”
“Because she’d be stuck doing work I should be doing.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. I planned on closing early anyway.”
“Early? Why, when we’re so busy?”
“Keeno’s, you know, the place in Lake Charles where we get our herbs, essential oils, specialty soaps, stuff like that? They can’t get a delivery here until next week, and
we can’t wait that long. I was thinking maybe we’d take a ride out there and pick up the order ourselves. The way I see it, we either lose a partial day’s business today or lose a lot of it the rest of the week because we’re out of stock. Besides, we can use the breather before all hell breaks loose this weekend anyway.”
Really feeling guilty now, Shauna said, “I can just go out for a short walk, then come back and watch the shop, if you and Caitlin want to drive out there.”
Fiona smiled. “I said
we
could use the breather. All of us. That doesn’t mean you have to come with us to Lake Charles, though.”
Shauna held back a sigh of relief. “Won’t you need help when you get out there? You know, loading—”
“Will you stop worrying? Go, take a walk. Better yet, go for a run. I know how much you love running. It might help burn off—”
“My word! What is that?”
Shauna and Fiona turned in unison.
High Tea was pointing at the large display window at the front of the shop, her expression sour, as if she’d just bitten into a persimmon. Shauna didn’t see what was so appalling until she looked through the window with the eyes of a tourist. Then it became obvious.
An extremely thin woman, wearing faded red Daisy Dukes, a dirty, pink T-shirt and black stilettos, was pacing the sidewalk in front of the shop. Her stringy brown hair had been corralled into a crooked ponytail, and she held two lit cigarettes, one in each hand. She
puffed on one then the other in rapid succession, all the while talking to herself.
“You allow homeless people to stand in front of your store that way?” High Tea asked. “Don’t the police do anything to keep them off the street?”
Now Shauna wanted to teach the woman a few manners herself. “And where do you suggest the police take them? Their high-rise on the back forty?”
Fiona tugged on the back of Shauna’s T-shirt, her signal to back off.
Shauna caught the message but couldn’t help adding, “For all we know, that woman might not even be homeless. Maybe she’s—”
“Nah, that ain’t homeless,” Lurnell said, making her way to the window. “That’s trash.”
“Don’t say that,” Shauna said. “Maybe she’s just down on her luck. That doesn’t make her trash.”
Lurnell batted a hand at her. “Girl, they trash if they out runnin’ a line of blow while they babies at home alone with no food and in stinky diapers. Oh, yeah, that’s trash. That be a whole damn trash truck if you ask me.”
“You know her?” Shauna asked.
“She ain’t like my friend or nothin’, but, yeah, I know her. She works in one of them bars over at the casino. They call her Mattress Mattie, ’cause she always spread in’ them skinny legs so she can make that green. She got two babies—two, you hearin’ me? And what you think she be doin’ with that little extra somethin’ she makin’ on the side?”
“Buying drugs,” High Tea said, her tone definitive.
“See that?” Lurnell said. “Even Miss Thing got the set up, and she ain’t even from around here.”
High Tea beamed as if she’d just won a prize.
Lurnell tapped on the window, apparently to get Mattie’s attention. The woman kept pacing, smoking, talking to herself.
“Yeah, she hurtin’ right now. Needin’ some blow. Bet she out there waitin’ for her dealer.”
High Tea gasped. “You allow them to deal drugs out there?”
“Of course not,” Fiona said sharply. “We can’t control what people do on the street, though. Did you see a drug deal take place in front of this shop? If you did, please tell me because I obviously missed it.”
With a haughty lift of her chin, High Tea tsked. “Well, if I owned this establishment, I would—”
“Now what you think that piece of shrimp bait’s doin’ out there?” Lurnell said, planting a fist on a hip. “That boy is trouble all by his ownself.”
Mattie had company now. She was talking to Banjo Marks, a young vampire who came from an old bayou family. Shauna knew he
was
homeless
and
a junkie. The guy eagerly swallowed, snorted, or injected, anything and everything he got his hands on. His weekly regimen consisted of LSD, pot, crystal-meth and cocaine. Whatever he scored in between those primers, Banjo considered lagniappe. He was tall and lanky, and had thin, scraggly blond hair that hung in greasy strands
down to the middle of his back. Most of the time he smelled like wet, soured towels.
As if life hadn’t piled enough on Banjo’s plate, he didn’t fit the standard vampire profile, even for this area. He ate and drank like a human. Shauna didn’t know if the years of drug use had caused him to mutate, which in turn allowed him to digest food, or if he was the byproduct of an accidental cross-breeding. Either way, it was strange to see. He came to the shop often, always looking for a handout. And Fiona, being the Keeper of the vampires and the kind-hearted mother hen that she was, never failed to give him food and something warm or cool to drink, whichever the weather dictated.
As for Shauna, she never liked being around Banjo, and it had nothing to do with his drug use or smell. He had a high-pitched voice and an odd, twittering laugh that sounded like a hyena mating with a screeching macaw. It sawed on her last nerve.
Mattie and Banjo were yelling now, standing almost nose to nose. Although Shauna could easily hear their conversation, both were so hyped up that most of it came across as gibberish.
“—today, asshole, you said today!” Mattie jabbed Banjo’s shoulder with a finger. “You said—I been waitin’… Where’s at? Where?”
As Mattie poked at Banjo, he shuffled left a few steps, then turned about and moved up one step in the other direction, as if he were square-dancing alone. Then came that horrid, twittering laugh.
“Swear, swear to Gawd, gonna be here,” he gibbered.
“Little problem, gonna be here, though. Yeah, you gonna see—fresh, fresh, fresh. Gonna come, swear to Gawd.”
Mattie shoved him, and Banjo stumbled backwards, his arms pin-wheeling for balance. She trapped him against a nearby light pole, jabbing a finger at his chest this time. “You—shit…sonofawhore! You promised, you motherf—”
The twittering laugh—that God-awful twittering laugh…
Their fight grew so intense people crossed the street to avoid them.
“Enough’s enough,” Shauna said, and headed for the door. She really didn’t care if they pulled each other’s hair out. What she’d had enough of was Banjo’s laughter.
“Shauna wait,” Fiona said. “I’ll call—”
“Yeah, you best hold up, girl,” Lurnell called after her.
Shauna glanced back at her, then returned her attention to the street in time to see Mattie throw a punch at Banjo’s face. To her surprise, he ducked in time to avoid getting hit. Instead of his face, Mattie’s fist connected with the light pole—and dented it.
Shauna gaped. Every light pole in the city was constructed of heavy metal due to the narrow streets, heavy traffic and drivers with little to no peripheral vision. No way a skinny woman with bad aim would be able to do that much damage.
“Whoa! You see that?” Lurnell said.
Just then the keening sound that had kept Shauna on edge for the last couple of hours grew in volume. Within
seconds, it was all she heard. She saw Lurnell’s mouth moving but heard no words.
Only that pained, mournful cry…loud and long.
It sank deep into Shauna’s chest—threatened to yank out her heart.
She had to find the source.
No doubt in her mind…something was happening…had happened…would happen. No doubt in her mind, it was bad.
All of it very,
very
bad.
He ran.
Hard, fast…
Breathless…
Mindless.
It was all Danyon knew to do.
Act on instinct.
After Andrea left to find Andy, he and Paul had moved Simon’s body into the thicket. He’d ordered Paul to stay put and keep watch. If anyone came into the area, he was to steer them away from the thicket, by any means necessary. Paul, who’d puked his guts out the entire time they moved Simon, had all but burst into tears, not wanting to be left alone with a dead body.