Black Magic Bayou (30 page)

Gamigan stopped wriggling and heaved several mighty breaths, while cursing a blue streak in a language I’d never heard before. I didn’t need to be fluent to know it wasn’t apologizing for my arm and wishing me a speedy recovery.

“Get it off,” I whispered. The creature’s weight grew heavier as the fight leached out of it, and with my arm out of joint there was no way I could shove it off on my own. “Get it off.” Tears were flowing freely down my cheeks now, and I could tell I was on the precipice of a total meltdown. The panic attack was building inside me, and I needed this demon’s body off me before I started to freak out.

Cash had staggered backwards out of the circle to get away from the sound of Gamigan’s screams.

Wilder was the one who came to my aid this time. He’d been the farthest away when everything went down, and it had all happened so fast it was no wonder he hadn’t been the first into the fray. I was right in the midst of it, and my brain was only now starting to catch up with all the action of the last minute.

He rolled Gamigan off me and, careful to avoid my injured shoulder, scooped me up like I was weightless and held me in his arms. I wrapped my good arm around him as he stepped back over the salt line. “You’re okay now.”

The demon was bleeding profusely, moaning and writhing still, but with most of the fight gone out of it. “I’ll go back,” it promised, trying to kick itself away from the chalk line. “I’ll go back.”

“Santiago,” I barked hoarsely, pointing to Tansy with my bad hand.

“Fuck.” He paused, a lit match in his fingers, then snuffed out the flame. He rounded the inside of the circle, sidestepping Gamigan, and lifted Tansy forcefully off the ground.

Which was the precise moment she bit him in the neck.

Santiago bellowed, shoving her mouth away while trying to get her out of the protective circle. This was one last hurrah from Gamigan, using the hold it still had over her to try and save its own hide. Tansy bit him harder, blood dribbling down her chin, further staining her pretty blue sweater.

I acted without thinking.

One minute I was in Wilder’s arms, watching a sorority girl try to bite out Santiago’s throat, the next I had my one good arm around her midsection, yanking her off him.

I didn’t even recognize the ferocious growl that came out of my mouth as a sound I was capable of making in human form. It echoed off the walls and up into the night. A moment later a coyote called back, a long, mournful wail mingling with my own enraged cry.

Everything hurt.

I was on fire down to my very cells, and beyond that my atoms might as well have been exploding. It was agony to even think of moving, and yet I used what strength I had left and pulled Tansy off of Santiago, throwing her onto the dusty ground, where she immediately fell limp, as if she’d been nothing more than a doll the whole time.

I collapsed, landing hard on my ass, staring straight ahead of me but focusing on nothing.

“Genie?” Santiago had his hand on his throat, and when I glanced down, I noticed I was covered in droplets of it.

“Finish it,” I breathed, wiping blood from my cheeks.

He nodded, and with his hand still on his throat he kicked Gamigan onto the chalk line, then lit a match using only his teeth. He tossed it onto the herbs, and within seconds the entire pentagram—blood, piss, demon, and all—was up in flames.

Santiago hopped over the line, staggering a little, and plopped down next to me in the dirt. We watched in dizzy silence until the flames hit the salt line and the heat made the small hairs on our face and arms curl.

In the distance I heard sirens coming.

By the time the police arrived, the fire had dwindled away to embers, and all signs of the demon were gone. Tansy was sobbing, trying desperately to get Santiago’s blood out of her mouth, and Cash was sitting on the farthest bench from all of us, saying nothing, just holding his phone in his hands with 911 still showing on the screen as the last call dialed.

Wilder came to stand behind Santiago and me, putting his hand gently on top of my head.

“Is it over?” he asked.

“This? Yes.”

But I thought of what Gamigan had shown me, and what it had said, and I knew that we weren’t out of the woods yet. At least I wasn’t.

Not by a long shot.

A week later, I was with Detective Perry when the forensics unit exhumed Alexandra Walker’s body from the basement of the Delta Phi house.

My nose was still bleeding from the dimensional rift I’d needed to open to help them locate what was left of her corpse.

That demon sure liked hiding shit in the folds of space-time.

“Just…explain it to me one more time,” Perry asked.

We were sitting on the hood of his shitty sedan, watching as the coroner’s van took Alexandra away. Police tape stretched across the front of the Delta Phi house. A notice of chapter closure was posted on the front door. Looked like sisterhood could survive a lot, but not dead bodies, a murder arrest, and girls being trapped inside the walls.

And here I’d just avoided sororities because the fees seemed ridiculous.

“I’m not sure I can help make it make more sense, Bryce.”

“Try me.”

So, for the third time, I went over the whys and hows of Tansy’s demon possession, though even I couldn’t help him with the dimensional-folds thing. Santiago had shrugged when I asked him to clarify it for me, so I had nothing to draw from to explain it to Perry.

He was writing down what I said, but I still wasn’t sure he really
got
it. There was a lot to absorb. At the very least he seemed to get that there was a big difference between Alexandra’s murder and Liam’s, as far as Tansy’s guilt went.

Overall, it was going to be an exciting new chapter in a paranormal law book someday. She’d probably be the first person who got to use a possessed-by-demon defense and have a hope of it actually working.

I hadn’t spoken to Tansy or Cash since that night at Fort Pike. If Tansy’s lawyers needed a witness, I’d be there, but other than that I’d wiped my hands clean of the whole thing. Laura and Heidi were alive, and Gamigan was trapped inside a small gold statue somewhere in Beau Cain’s house, hopefully never to be heard from again. Mason and Emmett had been cleared of all charges, and Liam’s family had an answer—if not a very satisfying one—about what had happened to their son.

As far as solutions went, it was pretty tidily wrapped up.

“You know, you’re really good with this stuff,” Perry noted, hopping off the hood of the car. “You think you might be interested in taking this special-investigator thing full-time? We could use someone in the paranormal case unit who knows what the hell they’re talking about.”

I scoffed and slid down the hood, landing on my feet. “I’m already a pack Alpha. You’ve seen firsthand how much fun
that
is.” I was flattered all the same. I’d had fun—in a roundabout way—solving Liam’s murder. Not the outcome, that is, but the part where I had to figure out what had happened to him. If my situation were different, I might have taken Perry’s offer more seriously. “But you know where to find me if shit gets too weird.”

“Just no memory spells, right?” He smirked.

I thought of the smell of elephant brain that had lingered on my skin for days. “Not in a million years.”

I started to walk across the street to where Wilder was waiting with one helmet in his lap and another on the seat behind him. Perry shouted, “Hey, Genie, I don’t think I thanked you.”

“You didn’t,” I replied without looking back. “But don’t worry. You’ll make it up to me one day.”

Wilder tossed me the spare helmet, and I caught it one-handed, still enjoying the novelty of my non-dislocated arm even a week later. I’d forced him to high-five me every day because I wanted to show off how non-dislocated it was.

I climbed up behind him, burrowing my face against the back of his neck and giving the skin at the nape a little bite. Wilder gave a shiver and squeezed my thigh with his hand as I set my legs alongside his.

“Tease.”

“It’s only teasing if I don’t put out,” I reminded him, kissing the spot I’d just bitten. “Now drive, before you convince me we need to stop at home first.”

“We
could
.”

I put my helmet on. “I can’t hear you, sorry.”

“You’ll pay for that later.”

“Promise?”

“Oh sure,
now
you can hear me.” He rumbled with laughter, and I wrapped my arms around his waist, snuggling against him for the long ride to St. Francisville.

Two hours in a full-body hug with a guy who smelled like masculinity incarnate.

How terrible.

Night had fallen, leaving most of Uncle Callum’s property in a state of inky blackness, like the inside of a velvet bag.

I’d left Wilder at The Den, drinking with some of the other guys in the pack we hadn’t seen in awhile. He knew what I’d come here for, but the pretense was that we both needed a short break from the city to rest and recharge after a difficult week.

Callum was away in Shreveport visiting one of his packs, and Ben was still in New Orleans—with my permission—meaning there was no one here to ask any questions about what I was doing.

I walked between the cabins behind The Den, a series of small houses for guests, or pack members who lived on Callum’s estate full-time. They were brightly colored, consisting of two small rooms: a bedroom and a living space, with a bathroom tucked in as well. Most sat empty at the moment, and those that were occupied had their lights off—either the tenants were asleep or at the bar.

I padded barefoot past them until I reached the back edge of the property, where the lawn gave way to woods. That was when I started to run. I ran straight ahead for half a mile, until I crossed a small stream, and stopped. The water was cool under my feet—almost cold as it lapped at my ankles. Now we were in the latter half of October and fall was creeping in, insinuating itself in all the places summer had held her long, sticky reign.

Aunt Savannah had said it would be around here.

Instead of lying to her when I’d called, I’d tried a weird approach.

Honesty.

I’d admitted to my aunt I’d made arrangements with Beau Cain that would help save a pack member’s life, and the reputation of the pack as a whole, but in return he wanted Mercy’s head. I wasn’t sure what possessed me to do this, but something in the back of my mind had insisted bullshit wasn’t the right technique with my aunt.

Turned out, my intuition was sometimes right.

“Well, I guess it’s not doing anyone any good where it is, though what that man wants with it, I’m not sure I want to know.”

That was all she’d said before giving me detailed directions on where I could find the burial site.

I crossed the creek and started looking for two birch saplings that had fallen in an X shape. She’d been very specific about the marker. I had to walk another quarter mile before I found them, bowing one over the other like they were genuflecting to their monarch.

Pushing aside the layers of leaves on the ground, I found a piece of limestone in an almost perfect square. In the surface, Savannah had scratched the letter M. No birth and death dates, no full name, just my mother’s initial. I ran my fingers over it, tracing the shape of the letter, and debating—not for the first time—if I should really go through with it.

I replayed Savannah’s words in my head.

It’s not doing anyone any good where it is.

It also helped some to remind myself my mother had been a horrible killer who abandoned Ben and me and tried on repeated occasions to murder Secret in cold blood.

Keeping that cheerful thought at the forefront of my mind, I started to dig.

The dirt was cold and hard, making the exhumation a bit of a process. After thirty minutes I was sweaty, dirt-stained, and grouchy from the exertion.

I had also found the box.

Savannah had buried Mercy’s head in a square wooden box, but she hadn’t put a lot of effort into sealing it. The thing opened with a hinge and didn’t have even a basic padlock to keep it closed.

I steeled myself, ready for either a skull or something a bit more grisly to be staring back at me when I opened the makeshift coffin. When I got it open though, what greeted me was so much worse than bones or rot or decay.

The box was empty.

My heart stopped, my pulse stuttering in my neck, then speeding up to a breakneck pace.

This was impossible. The box was here precisely where Savannah had told me it was, still bearing the grave marker. Nothing had given me any indication the site had been visited or tampered with before I’d found it.

Where was the fucking head?

A twig snapped behind me, so close the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

I clambered to my feet, spinning around to put the crossed birches at my back, offering me a tiny amount of coverage from behind.

More branches snapped, and a figure emerged from the shadows, shuffling stiffly through the dried leaves and debris on the forest floor.

“Hello, Genie,” said my mother, whose head was very much unblemished and attached to her shoulders. “You’ve been a naughty, naughty girl.”

Keep reading for the original Secret McQueen short story “A Harmless Little Secret.”

A Harmless Little Secret

Killing vampires was hell on my hair.

As Eduardo—my Bolivian government liaison and driver—navigated our jeep through the lush South American jungle, I plaited my outrageously frizzy blonde curls into a thick braid.

The jeep bumped and jostled over something that might loosely be defined as a road, and I took in our surroundings.

Eduardo had explained we’d be driving into the Amazon in order to find our target, and like a moron I’d been confused because the Amazon was supposed to be a Brazilian thing, right? Nope. Turns out when a rainforest is as insanely huge as the Amazon, it actually spreads out over
several
countries.