Chapter 5
Dima
Ipick my way through the debris that surrounds Glenn Leggat’s nightmare house, trying to push the last time I was here from my mind. Those three little girls have a long way to go before they heal, but at least they are now home, safe and sound, but forever changed.
I nod at the old woman, the one person who sees me when others don’t.
Her lips lift in an almost smile as she rocks back in her chair.
I huff, shaking my head as I follow the overgrown path to the back door.
In my vision Glenn was sitting on the couch watching some anime porn crap, his limp cock in hand.
Walking in through the back door my silent footsteps bring me to the shadows of the living room.
“I know you’re there, Witch.” His head tips to the side.
“Or is it Ghost?” I remain silent, not giving him the answer he wants.
“Either way, I don’t give a shit,” he takes a long pull from his beer.
“I know who you are. I know what you do.” He turns, looking directly at me, like he did when he drove past, holding my gaze.
“We’re the same, you and me.” He grins, his yellowed teeth crooked and broken in his mouth.
“We are nothing alike.”
“Oh? We don’t both use our gifts to find people?
” He stands, his gaze holding mine, never wavering.
He moves closer, his heavy footsteps silent on the wooden floor until we’re standing almost toe to toe.
“I use mine to find the purest little souls before I dirty them all up.” His smirk morphs into a chuckle and then a full blown laugh.
His head tipped back, his jowls vibrating at the unhinged laughter coming from him.
He’s grotesque, evil in all ways. Heat rushes through my body, as if I’ve been stabbed, it burns in my head, behind my eyes and my hands as they lash out, hitting him square in the throat, cutting his windpipe off abruptly but not enough to kill him.
With another hit he crumples to the ground like the sack of shit he is.
I open and close my fists, breathing deeply for four, exhaling for four. Shaking out my hands I calm myself as much as I can, not wanting to scare the little witch waiting for me outside. Not that she probably would be. She’s brave and strong and yes, possibly a little unhinged.
Bending, I drag Glenn up off the floor enough to get my shoulder in his gut, fireman lifting him so I can get him outside. Leaving the way I came I kick the back door open, moving down the crappy steps to the side alley of the house.
“Crack me open like a crawfish and suck me dry,” she whispers to herself, her hazel eyes snapping to mine.
“Kristiana Ferone!”
“Uh oh.”
La Strega’s eyes grow wide as saucers, the hazel orbs slowly glancing toward the voice before she spins on her Docs, hands on her lush hips.
“Mama Celene! What are you-”
“Ah ah, chile, wha’ I tell ya bout dat mouth?”
My punk pixie’s shoulders droop slightly, “That my mouth has the power to bring men to their knees?” She glances over her shoulder at me, waggling her brows up and down.
“No chile! Don’ make me come down dere, ya hear?”
“Fine! You told me not to talk like a gutter snipe. I’m a well-bred woman and I should speak like one.”
The dark woman’s gaze flicks to mine over La Strega, no, Kristiana’s shoulder. “You gon make him pay, witch?”
“Yes.”
La Strega’s gaze snaps to mine as we answer in unison. My lips twitch at her annoyed gaze.
“Look, hot guy, there’s only room for one witch, so you’ll have to answer to another name.”
My shoulder sags under Glenn’s weight, so I move toward her, dipping enough to be able to whisper in her ear, “I’ll answer to ‘my love’, if that’s any better.”
Her hazel eyes narrow as I pass by her. “Anyway, Mama Celene, I have a bone to pick with you. Why are you here and not at the cottage I bought you? This place isn’t safe.” She huffs. She plays it off that she’s untouchable, but I know my woman has hidden depths.
The old woman waves a hand at her as she shuffles back to her rocking chair. “Dat place all frills, cher. Dem kids? Dem gifted like you an’ dey need me right here in da dirt.” She nods once, sitting and crossing her arms over her chest.
“There’s more?”
“Don’t you ‘member? Dere’s always more, chile. They need me to guide em.”
Kristiana blinks once, twice, her gaze moving to mine then back to the woman who helped her when she was young and lost. “You need help, you call me. Promise me, Mama Celene.”
Mama Celene’s gaze finds mine and she lifts her chin in my direction, “I gon’ call da Ghost.” My little witch growls, and it’s fucking adorable, the only thing stopping her is Mama Celene’s raised hand. “Shadows moving cher. Ghost gon keep ya safe.”
Kristiana glances at me, her earlier annoyance gone as a smile plays on her lips. “Looks like I get to keep the name Witch, Ghost.”
She stalks toward the fenceline, clumsily climbing over in her haste to get to the woman who trained her.
Stomping up the porch steps, her lips move, but I can’t hear what she’s saying.
Whatever it is, it’s a private conversation between her and Mama Celene.
I turn with my cargo and make my way to the pavement, waiting for my Witch there as people go about their daily lives, not taking notice of me or the fat kidnapper over my shoulder.
The two women embrace and I get a very real glimpse of someone who has used her myth as her armour. Here, in the arms of the woman she loves like a mother, she seems young, carefree, unburdened by her fate. My chest aches. I want to be that for her too. Her shelter in the storm.
Looking lighter, she skips down the porch steps, dancing her way toward me. “Come on, let’s get this fucker all loaded up,” she slaps Glenn’s unconscious ass and prances to her little mint green Beetle.
I follow her because there is no place I’d rather be than in her shadow.
La Strega
Alright, I admit that perhaps I got a little pushy making Dima bring my car to this kidnapping.
I should have thought the logistics through, or at the very least asked what size our victim was.
The VW Beetle has a reasonably sized trunk for the size of the car, however a tall, fat man is perhaps a slightly bigger cargo than intended.
After watching Dima carrying him over his shoulder like a lumberjack carrying a felled log, I then got a front row seat watching his muscles bulge and flex as he turned Glenn this way and that way to maneuver him into the trunk.
In the end we forced the trunk closed, and probably caught some skin in the latch but who cares? He’s not long for this world anyway.
“Next right,” Dima says in his smooth voice. God, what I wouldn’t give to hear that voice call me a good girl.
I squirm in my seat at the thought, peeking at him through my lashes. He’s staring out the window, jaw clenched. I’m not sure what all went on when he was inside the house, but between that and Mama Celene talking shadows, he’s been all squirrely.
“So, you gonna tell me where we’re headed? Or is it a surprise?” I side eye him. “I don’t like surprises.”
He turns to look at me thoughtfully. “Why don’t you like surprises?”
I chew my lip, then shrug. “People die from surprises.”
Dima snorts. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Trust me.” I give him a bored look.
“When I was nine the aunt I was living with threw a big surprise party for my uncle. Massive cake. A full live band. A balloon arch with paper streamers everywhere.” He stares at me, unsure where this is going.
We pull up behind some traffic at a red light, so I turn to look at him.
“My uncle walks through the door, we all jump out from behind the couch, hooting and hollering Happy Birthday. The man throws his hands back in surprise, the cigar he usually had in his mouth is between his fingers. The lit cigar touches one of the paper streamers he’s standing under.
The whole thing goes up at the same time my cousin pops the cork on a bottle of champagne he’s just shaken.
The spray hits the flaming streamers and my uncle dies in a fireball. ”
“Jesus Christ,” he whispers, looking horrified.
“Yep.”
“How many more of those stories do you have?”
I shake my head. “More than you’d expect.”
“Surely it’s just a coincidence?”
I shrug, “Or it’s a curse. You and I both know there is some weird woo woo shit out there.”
He huffs, a small smile playing on his lips. “Is that the technical term for it?”
“Yup.” I pop the “p”. I hold his eye contact, mesmerized by the bright blue of them until some dickhead honks his horn behind me. “ASSHOLE!” I yell out hoping he can hear me through my closed window.
I follow the rest of the directions Dima gives me until I’m pulling up outside of the cutest little cottage I have ever seen. And the complete antithesis of the man sitting next to me.
“This is where you live?”
“Da, why?”
I look at him as if he’s lost his mind. The 6’ Russian god, decked out in black tactical gear apparently lives in a sage green chocolate box cottage.
It has gables, peach colored shutters and a large wooden door that just screams “influencer house”.
There’s a sweet picket fence and there are flowers in the small but tidy front garden. Fucking. Flowers.
“Oh, no reason, just expected a studio apartment in an old factory or something,” I mumble, unclipping my seatbelt and exiting the car.
I walk up the cobblestones, shaking my head.
Surely he’s pranking me? He has to be. We’ll go in there with flabby old Glenn and it’ll belong to some kindly grandmother type or something.
The slamming of a car door has me turning in time to see Dima, once again carrying Glenn as if he weighs nothing.
This bodes well for me and the wall sex I keep imagining.
He moves past me, walking up the steps light as a feather as my boots thud up behind him.
He uses a normal looking key in his normal looking door and I look around for facial recognition scanners or cameras or some type of security and see…
none. At all. How the hell is this man still alive?
He has a weird and dangerous job, lives in the French Quarter and has no form of security.
Shaking my head I follow him into the house.
The one that is impeccably decorated with a sectional couch facing the fireplace and floor to ceiling bookcases filled with books.
I turn a circle in the living room, in awe.
It’s like a library. There are a couple of comfy looking armchairs and I can imagine myself curled up in the corner, reading OH MY GOD HE HAS MC ROMANCE BOOKS!
Michelle Dups, Nat Logan, some of my absolute faves.
I gape at him as he reenters the room, a small smile on his lips and the tips of his ears pink.
“Ah, yeah, so you found my book collection.”
I squeak at him, too awed to use real words, then I hit him in the stomach before gripping his forearms and shaking him. “I live here now,” I rasp out.
A grin breaks out over his handsome face, “OK,” he beams at me. “Do you want to get comfortable while I get Glenn sorted?”
I wave my hands at him, shooing him so I can enjoy this room in peace and quiet.
I mean, it’s been a hella eventful day and it’s not even dinner time.
Speaking of, my stomach grumbles and I know with the work Dima and I will be undertaking soon we’ll need sustenance.
I myself would have shot him in his house and staged it as a robbery, but I have a feeling Dima takes things slow. Good for me.
Taking my phone from my pocket I order way too much food for the two of us, pluck a book off the shelf and dive in.