Juju very bad juju and a black hex that was meant for
murder, a soul eating hex that was meant for Kallie. Only
Kallie wasn't in the bed, Gage was. Waking up from a night
of drinking far too much and enjoying the talents of Gage,
Kallie finds nothing but a dead body in the bed. Someone
was murdered in her room, in her bed while she slept it
out on the bathroom floor. This is not just any murder,
but a murder unlike any other murder, where not only has
the victim died, but his soul has been killed along with
him. The body, just an empty shell, shouldn't be able to
harm anybody, right? Much to the surprise of Kallie
Riviere, she's just been proven wrong. But this is only
the beginning of the chaos that has become
Kallie's "vacation" at carnival.
Kallie Riviere, hoodoo apprentice, decided to attend this
year's annual Hecatean Alliance carnival for magic users
all over the world, just to simply get out of the bayou,
experience some of the world, and have some fun. Little
does she know that's all about to change. When three
different attempts at murder, that all seem to be aimed
around Kallie occur, it appears that someone is out for a
little more than blood.
Recently saved from death, gorgeous nomad Layne Valin is
out for revenge on whoever destroyed his clan brother.
Caught between the living and the dead, Layne finds
himself only half in the game and half hearing about it
from his new 'buddy', Augustine Basil, the recently
deceased Lord of the Hecatean Alliance. Being a walking
vessel for the dead has never been easy, but this time it
is strangely working out. Layne is determined to explore
the strange connection he felt from Kallie, and find an
answer as to why has she become so important to him?
With spells as powerful as soul eaters and attempts as
weak as guns, Kallie will need the help of all her friends
to find out who is ultimately responsible and better yet
why do they seem to be targeting Kallie? The clues keep
pointing back home toward Bayou Cypres Noir and Gabrielle
LaRue, aunt, protector, and mentor. Kallie is forced to
question everything she knows, face some old pain, and use
every scrap of hoodoo she possesses to clear her name,
save herself and save those around her.
Black Dust Mambo provided everything it was meant to be
and more! I really enjoyed this beginning for the new
series it gave me a whole new depth of writing for Adrian
Phoenix as an author expanding her horizons. I thought
that Black Dust Mambo started with a bang and kept on
going with intrigue, family secrets, double lives,
mystery, murder, and a little bit of romance. This book
was packed from cover to cover that kept me turning the
pages and craving more, Phoenix really did her homework on
this one. For a first book in a new series, writer Adrian
Phoenix brings it to the reader with a punch!
Fresh from the bayou-soaked imagination of Adrian
Phoenix, author of the critically acclaimed paranormal
fantasy series, The Maker's Song, comes Black Dust Mambo, a
fast paced and sexy story brimming with mystery, magic,
conjurers and root doctors, nomads and loup garou, hoodoo --
and a wet boxers contest chockful of stripped down men.
Mmmm. Oh. Was murder mentioned? And vengeful nomads? And
soul-eating spells?FIRST IN A NEW SERIES! “There will be times, girl, when all your magic ain’t
going to be enough, times when it will seem to dry up like
mud under the noonday sun, or even make matters worse. . .
.”
Kallie Rivière, a fiery Cajun hoodoo apprentice with a
talent for trouble, finds herself smack-dab in the middle of
one of those times her mentor warned her about when she
visits New Orleans to attend the Hecatean Alliance’s annual
carnival: her hard-bodied conjurer hookup ends up dead in
her blood-drenched bed. And he was killed by something that
Kallie would never dream of touching—the darkest of dark
juju, soul-eating juju—a black dust hex that may have been
meant to kill her.
Now Kallie has to use every bit of hoodoo knowledge and
bayou-bred mojo she possesses to clear her own name and find
the killer—even as that dark sorcerer hunts Kallie and her
friends. But Kallie’s search for the truth soon leads her in
a direction she never anticipated—back home to Bayou Cyprés
Noir, and to Gabrielle LaRue, Kallie’s aunt, protector, and
hoodoo mentor . . . who is looking more and more like she
just might be the one who wants Kallie dead.
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1—CROSSED DEAD
“C’mon, scoot your gorgeous ass over, Gage,” Kallie Rivière
whispered, climbing onto the shadowed bed. Pain hammered at
her temples with hundreds of too-much-fun mallets. “I feel
like shit. How much goddamned champagne did we—” She froze
when her fingers touched the hot, wet sheets.
She blinked in the dawnlight filtering into the New Orleans
hotel room. Not shadows. She caught a faint whiff of coppery
blood. Something else altogether darkened the sheets.
<
Nausea flipped through her belly. Swallowing hard, she
lifted her hand and forced herself to push the blood-soaked
sheets back from the man they covered. Gage. The
good-looking and hard-bodied nomad conjurer she’d hooked up
with last night after the May pole dance.
Playing with him had been a bend-y, bouncy, naked trampoline
act; a freefall into pleasure. One part Gypsy-styled outlaw
biker, one part pagan conjurer, and one part hot-blooded
explorer—all sexy nomad. Man was beaucoup skilled.
Or had been.
Kallie stared at the dead man in her bed. He lay on his
belly, his face turned to the side. Blood masked his fine
features, glittered in his black curls. It looked like blood
had poured from Gage’s eyes, nose, mouth, and—given the
blood staining the sheets beneath him—from elsewhere, like a
spigot turned on full-blast. All color had drained from his
espresso-brown skin, leaving his swirling blue-inked clan
tattoos stark on his muscular
Kneeling on the bed, Kallie reached over, intending to touch
her fingers to his throat and check his pulse, but her hand
stopped just a few inches above his blood-streaked neck.
Just a few hours ago, he’d devoured her lips with rough and
hungry kisses as they had tumbled together on the carpeted
floor, her legs wrapped around his waist—so white against
his dark skin. The thought of his skin cold and lifeless
beneath her fingers kept her hand in the air, motionless.
His empty, unblinking eyes told her he was dead. Gage was
gone. She didn’t need to touch him. Kallie stared at her
trembling hand, wondering if she even could.
She’d seen plenty of dead things at home in Bayou Cyprés
Noir, but never a dead person, let alone one she knew.
Well, hey, Kallie-girl, that isn’t quite right, now is it?
Shouldn’t keep lying to yourself like that.
Memory tugged at Kallie, spun her like the pointer in a game
of Twister, reminding her of another morning nine years ago.
Mama pulls the gun’s trigger and the side of Papa’s head
explodes in a spray of blood and bone. He slumps down in his
chair, a bottle of Abita still in his hand.
Kallie stands in her bedroom doorway, frozen—just like now.
Mama turns and faces her, aims the gun carefully between her
shaking hands. Her hands shake, but her face is still,
resigned.
Sorry, baby. I ain’t gotta choice.
Mama pulls the trigger again.
Traced the lightning stroke of the bullet’s path, just as
her gaze traced the contours of Gage’s face. Pain and shock
had widened his hemorrhaging eyes, had twisted his fingers
into the sheets.
How had he died? When had he died? While she lay curled on
the bathroom floor, sick on too much wine and champagne?
She hadn’t heard a goddamned thing.
Kallie reached up and closed her fingers around the pendants
her aunt had hung around her neck nine years ago—a tiny onyx
coffin marked with a silver X and a medallion for St.
Bernadette—and closed her eyes.
It was too late to call 911, but she needed to contact
someone. Report this. Maybe the coordinators of the oh-so
exclusive May Madness Carnival would know what to do,
especially when it came to dealing with a dead member of one
of the free-wheeling ain’tbound-by-your-squatter-laws nomad
clans.
Maybe, yeah, but she thought a friend’s calming advice might
be the way to go first. She gave her pendants a quick
squeeze for luck before releasing them, then opened her eyes.
Kallie’s gaze fell on the little stylized fox black-inked
beneath Gage’s right eye— the tat naming his clan. She
wanted to grab a clean section of the sheet and wipe the
blood away, wanted to smooth his eyes shut, but her hands
remained knotted on her thighs.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, the sound of her words hollow
and inadequate even to herself. “Eternal rest grant unto
him, O bon Dieu. And let perpetual light shine you blot them
out. Baron Samedi, I ask you please to accept this man into
Guinee. Guide him safe from the crossroads and from the land
of the living.” Course, it might be nice if God and the loa
actually listened to prayers without needing a rum-soaked
bribe first. Kallie sighed. Still, old habits and all that
bullshit. Kallie scooted off the bed and, not sure where her
cell phone was, grabbed the room phone. Her finger shook as
she punched in the number to Belladonna’s room. “Whazz?”
Belladonna slurred, her voice thick with sleep. “It’s me.”
Kallie cupped her hand around the receiver’s mouthpiece like
she was trying to keep her conversation private or trying
curl her fingers around something normal and real.
“Something bad’s happened . . . beaucoup bad, Bell. I need
you to come over right now.”
All the sleep evaporated from Belladonna’s voice. “I’ll be
right there. You alone?” “Yes and no.” An exasperated snort.
“Which is it, girl? Do I need to bring muscle or a spell?”
“Just you, dammit. Please.” The line went dead. Kallie
re-cradled the receiver, then sat down on the carpet, amid
the wreckage of her clothes and Gage’s, her arms wrapped
around her bare legs.
She shivered, teeth chattering, caught in a cold trembling
that vibrated up from her core. Mama’s hands shake, but her
face is still, resigned. Sorry, baby. I ain’t gotta choice.
Kallie thought she’d put all that aside, all the darkness
and fury and tight-throated goddamned mama steal another
moment of her life.
Looks like I just broke that promise.
Knuckles rapped against her door and Kallie’s heart jumped
into her throat. “Hold on,” she said, unfolding her shaking
limbs and climbing gracelessly to her feet.
Belladonna must not’ve even bothered to dress, must’ve just
thrown on a robe and hustled her ass into an elevator.
Padding to the door, Kallie unlocked it and eased it open.
“Thanks for getting here so—” The words withered in her
throat.
Not Belladonna in a robe, but a tall and fine-looking guy
wearing a hastily tugged-on sage green tank, jeans, and
scooter boots with painted flames licking up from the soles.
Blue-inked Celtic tattoos swirled from beneath the shoulders
of his tank and down his arms. Thick, honey-blond dreads
coiled nearly to his waist and sideburns, stiletto-thin and
sharp, curved along the lines of his jaw.
A shock went through her as she met his pine green gaze. For
a second, everything quieted inside of her as though he’d
pressed a soothing finger against her lips and whispered,
Shhh. His eyes widened a little as though he felt the
strange connection too, then Kallie noticed the small black
fox inked beneath his right eye and her heart sank.
“Hey, you must be Kallie, Gage’s hoodoo honey, yeah? Sorry
to bug you so early, but is he still here?” the nomad asked.
His gaze slid past her and into the room. “I really need to
talk to him.”
“Now?” Ice sheared off from the glacier encasing Kallie’s
heart and flowed into
On pure instinct, she stepped into the hall, pulling the
door shut behind her. Too late, she realized she wore only
her red lace please-undress-me bra and bikini-cut panties.
Face burning, she pulled one dangling strap back up onto her
shoulder.
An appreciative, but teasing smile curved the nomad’s lips.
“Rosy cheeks to match the undies. You wear ’em well,
sunshine. I’m Layne, by the way.”
Kallie opened her mouth, unsure of what to say, but knowing
she needed to say something, anything. But before a single
word could emerge from between her lips, the nomad’s gaze
locked onto her hands. He sucked in a sharp breath. She
looked down. Blood smeared her fingers. Her pulse thundered
in her ears.
“I don’t know what happened,” she stammered, lifting her
gaze. “He was dead when I—”
Layne stared at her, all expression gone from his face. “Dead?”
Temples throbbing with insistent put-us-back-to-bed hangover
pain, Kallie nodded, holding his blue-green gaze, unable to
think of a single worthwhile word to say.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“I wish I was,” Kallie said.
Shoving past her, the nomad pushed open the door and walked
into the sunlight-laced room.
“Wait, hold on.” Kallie hurried into the room after him. Her
belly knotted as she drew in a breath of air tainted with
the coppery scent of blood and, underneath, something she’d
missed earlier—the faint brimstone stink of discharged
magic; scents that seemed to register on Layne too.
He swung left and stopped in front of the rumpled and
blood-drenched double bed. The color drained from his face.
“Gage. No. Oh, shit. Shit.”
The shocked grief on Layne’s face tightened Kallie’s throat.
“I’m so sorry.” She desperately wished her hungover brain
would toss her words a little less trite, give her a verbal
lifeline. But no. The only other thing it coughed up was:
Sorry for your loss.
“You’re sorry,” Layne repeated, voice flat. “My draíocht
brúthair—my brotherin-magic and my best friend—lies dead in
your bed. And you’re fucking sorry?”
“Look, I had nothing to do with Gage’s death.”
Layne spun around and grabbed Kallie by both arms, his
road-callused fingers clamping around her biceps. “Nothing?
Ain’t that his blood in your fingers?”
“Get your goddamned hands off me before I forget you’re
grieving.” Kallie met Layne’s gaze, glare for glare, her
hands knuckling into fists.
“Or what? You’ll hex me to death too?”
“Too? Oh, hell, no. Is that what you think? I told you—I
found him like that. I sure as hell didn’t kill him!”
“I smell spent magic. If you didn’t kill him, who did?”
“I don’t know, dammit!” Kallie wrenched free of Layne’s
grip, suspecting—given the strength of his hands—that he’d
let her go. Chin lifted, she held his gaze, and pulled her
bra strap back onto her shoulder again.
Layne folded his arms over his chest. “So where the hell
were you when it happened, anyway? The only blood I see on
you is on your hands, so you couldn’t have even been in the
goddamned bed with him.”
“We never made it to the bed, per se, not together, because
we downed a ton of champagne and wine, and I passed out in
the bathroom. When I woke up . . .” “Passed out. Pretty
damned convenient, huh?” “A damned relief at the time, truth
be told, considering all the puking.” “You okay, Shug?”
another voice said, all purring velvet tones; a voice Kallie
knew well. “Or am I looking at a soon-to-be-dead nomad?”
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