Black Magic Bayou (6 page)

Laura’s space.

On the right-hand side of the room, the other bed was unmade, a rumpled yellow coverlet pushed back and a dent in the pillow like someone had only recently roused themselves from slumber. The air in the room was stale though, nothing to suggest anyone had slept here in several days.

The room’s other occupant wasn’t as tidy as Laura. There was a dress in a puddle of fabric on the floor, and the desk beside the bed was a clutter of notepaper and a used cereal bowl. But the girl’s space was otherwise orderly, with small Instax photo prints hanging from a string above her headboard, showing her with her Delta Phi sisters—I assumed—at various events. The beach, parties, formal gatherings. Every single one showed a beautiful, tan, blonde girl in the frame somewhere. She was the absolute textbook epitome of
sorority girl
. Gorgeous, with a big, toothy smile, looking as if she’d never had a single thing of substance to worry about in her whole life.

For a fraction of a second I envied her.

I pointed to the bed and glanced back through the door to where Tansy and Cash were standing, both wearing identical nervous expressions.

“Let me guess. Heidi?”

“Yes.”

So Heidi and Laura had been roomies, and now both of them were missing. The house was screaming, things were being knocked to the floor in empty rooms, and no one had a clue what was happening.

To an outsider, unfamiliar with the paranormal world, they’d probably immediately assume the girls were dead and haunting the place. And sure, this had all the hallmarks of a classic ghost story. With one notable exception.

Ghosts couldn’t scream.

Ghosts couldn’t even talk.

One of the side effects of being dead was you no longer had any lungs. You were ephemeral. Non-corporeal. And without lungs it was pretty goddamn hard to say
please, please, please
.

Had it just been the items knocking around, I might have bought into a haunting.

Not now, though.

I sat on Heidi’s unmade bed and took in the room, wondering what it was about the space that made Tansy so afraid to step inside.

Then I looked up to the ceiling and saw
it
staring back down at me.

I suppressed a scream, and instead stayed absolutely still, not daring to move a single inch.

Wilder, sensing the change in my demeanor, came a step closer, but I hissed, “
Stop
.”

Wilder continued to come in my direction until I held my hand up, never shifting my eyes from the ceiling, only tracking him peripherally.

The thing over my head looked down, all eight eyes blinking simultaneously.

It had a spider’s face but the body of a sexless human. With an extra set of arms and legs, that is. The spider creature had waxy white skin so translucent I could make out a patchwork of blue veins all over its arms and torso.

With all its eyes focused on me, I was barely able to breathe, let alone move. Eight glassy black eyes blinked. Its mouth pincers worked methodically, as if it were imagining chewing on me. I swallowed hard, cold sweat beading on the back of my neck.

Goddess, hear me.

I dared not speak the words aloud, terrified that if it had an idea of what I was up to, it would drop down on me and chew my face open before I had a chance to complete my incantation.

The nice thing about magic—something my
Memere
had taught me during my early teens in the bayou—was that spells are about intention more than words. It was will, and not language, that created a successful incantation. A skillful witch could be deaf, blind, or mute. Senses didn’t factor.

I built a protection spell with the threads of my fear, weaving them as tightly as the web the monster over my head might have been able to spin. I prayed for Wilder. For Cash and Tansy. For the girl down the hall.

“Back out of the room slowly,” I told Wilder.

For the first time since I’d glanced up, he followed my gaze to see what had me so transfixed. That’s when I realized this whole ordeal, which felt as though it had been going on for hours, hadn’t even lasted a split-second.

He held his breath, choking on a growl.

The gurgling sound it made grabbed the spider thing’s attention, and it skittered across the ceiling towards Laura’s bed.

Though its limbs
looked
human, there was nothing natural about the way it moved. Arms and legs bent at angles no human being—no matter how limber—could have managed, creating articulation where no joints should have existed.

“
Please, please, please
,” whispered the disembodied voice of Heidi. It trembled with a fear so pure it made the predator inside me hungry. “
Please, please, please
.”

I had to get out of this room.

My hands tingled from the power of my incantation. The cool feel of magic flowing over me bolstered my confidence, and I rose to my feet, trying to go cautiously but quickly. Wilder hadn’t moved yet, still tracking the thing’s movements with a keen eye.

“Wilder,
go
.”

He didn’t budge, and of course he wouldn’t leave until he knew I was with him. I appreciated his devotion to protecting me, but I’d never forgive myself if something happened to him. What if my spell wasn’t enough? If I’d only cast it over myself and not him and that thing did something to him?

No.

It hissed, baring pincers and a mouth like an open grave.

I hit Wilder at a run, slamming myself into his bigger body and shoving with all my might, knocking him through the doorway and into the hall. I scrambled back a second later, yanking the door closed and fastening the padlock with a
click
.

When I sank to the carpet, my back to the door, I was panting. Sweat now dripped down my spine, and I braced one hand on either side of the doorframe, continuing to mutter incantations under my breath. My fingertips glowed blue, a faintly shimmery manifestation of my power that looked like sparkling flame. The false fire traced its way up the frame and all the way around, until the entire door glowed cerulean.

When the flame vanished, I was left staring into three wide-eyed faces.

Wilder had seen me use magic before, but up until now Cash had believed the only supernatural thing about me was my werewolf blood. He’d had no clue I was also a hereditary witch on my grandmother’s side. That power had skipped my mother, Mercy, and bypassed Secret as well, but I’d gotten it with the force of a Bruce Lee punch to the sternum.

When I turned thirteen, I came into my witch power and my werewolf birthright at the same time. I hadn’t been able to control the magic when I shifted, and after leveling several of Callum’s buildings, I left. I retreated into the bayou with my great-grandmother, in order that I might learn to harness my powers without harming anyone.

As it turned out, I did learn to control myself, but I also learned more efficient ways to hurt others.

Or, like now, how to protect them.

I was powerful in ways I didn’t like to let people see, because being a wolf made me target enough. Having the public know I was a were-witch would not help make us seem less scary to humankind.
Have you met Genie? She can turn into a wolf and also explode things with the power of her mind
.

Yup, no one would be scared of that or anything.

The expressions on Cash’s and Tansy’s faces told me I’d been right to keep the witch part of myself on the DL. Wilder, who knew what I was, only looked impressed. And a bit unnerved, but I figured that had more to do with what we’d just seen than my use of a little magic.

“What the hell, Genie?” Cash demanded. He’d pushed Tansy behind him, and she was peering around his back at me like I’d grown horns.

“You didn’t think some warning would have been useful?” I snarled back. “I might have reconsidered going in there if I knew a fucking
demon
was crawling around.”

Tansy went ash gray, her fingers balling in Cash’s shirt. “D-did you s-say…” Her voice drifted off into nothing, as though she couldn’t manage to say the dreaded d-word.

“Demon,” I said for her.

I had no doubt whatsoever that’s what had been staring down at me from the ceiling of Laura and Heidi’s room. I’d never actually seen a demon in person, and there were a bunch of things in the world scarier than vampires and werewolves, but even I knew that monster wasn’t a fae.

Fae had a particular smell to them, something like magic and fear all wrapped up in one.

The creature in the bedroom hadn’t smelled like anything.

It would have slipped away unnoticed if I hadn’t looked up.

Whatever the demon was, it was something I was wholly unprepared to deal with.

So naturally, I was the only one who could help.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tansy said.

I looked at Cash hopefully, but he was shaking his head. “Are you sure it’s not a ghost? How can you know it’s a demon if you can’t see it?”

“Can’t…” I tried to process what he was saying. They’d been standing outside the doorway, and they had a clear view right into the room. Yet they were both acting like
I
was the one overreacting. “You guys seriously didn’t see anything?” I was shifting my attention between Cash and Tansy, wondering who was crazier, because frankly I didn’t know how they had missed the giant spider person crawling towards Wilder and me.

Sure, I’d missed it too when I walked in, but the thing got kind of obvious when it started moving.

“Nothing,” Cash said.

I glanced at Wilder, pleading with my expression for him to confirm I wasn’t imagining things.

“Big pale guy. Spider face,” he said without me needing to ask.

“You locked the door because you thought it was a ghost?” I asked incredulously.

Tansy flushed. “It was throwing stuff at the sisters.”

I let my breath out in an exhausted whoosh.

Down the hall, the only other girl in the house had come to stand in her door, watching us with something between curiosity and fear.

“Tansy?” She pushed her black hair over her shoulder and stared at the door behind me, clearly wondering why Wilder and I were both still on the floor.

“You need to get everyone out of this house.” I got up, rubbing my sweaty hands on my pants. “Now.”

The girl down the hall only had eyes for Tansy, staring at her intrepid leader, as if hoping the curvy blonde would contradict me. “What’s she talking about?”

“Genie, I didn’t see anything in there with you,” Cash said. “Are you sure?”

“Big. Pale. Spider. Guy.” Wilder said each word slowly, as its own statement, trying to get Cash to understand him. I nodded along with each word.

“Why was the door locked if you didn’t know what was in there?”

Tansy went from ashen to furrowed-brow annoyance in a heartbeat. “You heard the voices. The things falling on the floor. It was all coming from that room. What would you have done?”

“I can tell you what you
should
do,” I countered. “And that’s get everyone the hell out of this house. You have a goddamn demon in one of your bedrooms.” Then, upon hearing myself say
goddamn demon
, I tittered openly at the absurdity of it.

Clearly I was toeing the line of becoming hysterical, but who could blame me? An eight-eyed demon had been chasing me. I was amazed I hadn’t wet myself.

The door thumped loudly behind me, and the wall rattled so hard a framed photo crashed to the carpet, the glass smashing in spite of the padding.

Tansy and Cash stopped doubting me.

The other girl ran back into her room, and the sound of a suitcase zipper followed.

At least someone in this house had some common sense.

Tansy’s eyes were wide, fixed on the door. “What was—?”

“A
demon
,” I finished for her.

Wilder was standing now, and the wolf aspect of his personality had started sneaking into the foreground. He was edgy, with barely constrained energy that caused him to shift from one foot to the other. He wanted to bolt.

So did I.

“Will it get out? I mean, the thing you did to the door, what was that?”

“It’s a holding charm. It should keep the thing in that room, but—” The door thumped again, and I felt the rattle inside my bones.

A creaky voice, not human, not a whisper like Heidi’s, said, “
I know you
.”

We all went still. The girl in the other room came back into the hall, her eyes huge and wide.

“Believe me now?” I asked.

No one replied.

“I know you, Eugenia.”

Oh, hello. That was unexpected.

“Did it just say my name?” I asked Wilder.

Tap, tap, tap
. The sound of a fingernail on the other side of the wood door called my attention back.
Tap, tap, tap
. I was already listening; it didn’t need to keep doing that.

“I can smell you, wolf. I can smell your fear, and your desire, and your guilt. I know you.”

“Sorry, wrong number.”

I ushered Tansy and Cash towards the stairs, neither of them letting my hands rest on their skin for long. I noticed the way they twisted and hustled to get away from me. I would try not to take it personally if it meant getting them away from the door, and me along with them. If they were freaked out by a demon whispering my name, it had nothing on the way it made me feel.

“
Please, please, please
,” Heidi’s disembodied voice begged.

“I’m sorry.”

A deep chuckle that sounded more like branches being pushed into a woodchipper than it did an actual laugh rumbled through the door. “
Please, please, please
,” it mocked. “
There’s no saving you, filthy creature. You’re mine now
.”

I bristled, suddenly flushed with anger. A girl was terrified, without hope or a way to flee, and this monster-faced motherfucker was baiting her, laughing at her.

I’d never met a demon before, but I was already wondering what was the best way to kill one.

The other girl was staring past me, frozen. I grabbed her by the arm, and she went without resistance, following me down the stairs and straight out the door. On the lawn, we all gazed upward, looking at the window to the bedroom I’d just been in. The curtains were motionless, and the whole house was pristine and idyllic.