“I’m too … tired.”
The thin voice interrupted Jax’s chanting. He dropped beside the body on the bed.
“Come on, baby. You can do it.” He poured more of the dark liquid in the jar between the lips of the pretty, buxom blonde he’d found lost in one of the crew’s alleys. Streetlight lit up her pale face. Blue eyes were dazed, her features clammy.
“Jax …” Therese’s voice was distant, fading.
“No, baby, no,” he whispered urgently. He tossed his head back. “I command you, Baron Samedi! Bring her spirit to me!”
The blonde’s body bucked in response, and the woman cried out. Blood streamed from her nose and ears, joining the rivulets he’d caused earlier when he cut her for the rite. She shuddered and fell still suddenly, her eyes closing.
Jax felt as if he’d been punched harder than ever before. He struggled to catch his breath and steady his shaking hands. Each time he performed the rite, he lost a little more of himself. If he didn’t work out for two hours a day to stay strong, he’d have been dead years before from the toll the rite took on him.
“Therese?” he called, straightening. “Are you there?”
“I … can’t do this any … more,” her faint voice told him. It came from the body of the stranger on the bed. “Can’t … keep running from … him. Need permanent host.”
“You can do it. Come on, baby, just … focus on tonight. Focus hard. We worked too hard for you to give up now.”
The blonde’s body went limp.
Jax uttered the foulest curse he knew and threw the clay jar against a wall. It shattered, and what remained of the blood-based spell slid down the wall.
He sank against the bed, reliving the emotions from the night Therese died, the way he did every time he performed the rite.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, as much to Therese as the woman he’d accidentally killed this night.
Every once in a while, the rite failed to bring Therese’s spirit back from the purgatorial place between life and death where she dwelled. He’d gotten good at the monthly ritual. His first year attempting to bring her back had ended in nothing but failure, but he’d figured it out soon after. it wasn’t the first night recently where he’d been unable to pull her spirit into the token body of a woman he’d chosen for her. The rumors about the serial killer were back on the streets. While their friends in the police force were suppressing them, Jax knew he could only fail so many times before people started asking too many questions.
Jax’s head spun. He sagged against the side of the bed, waiting for the dizziness to pass. It wasn’t normal for him to feel weak during a rite. Then again, he had never performed this particularly powerful rite two nights in a row.
He shook his head and wiped his face. There were tears on his cheeks. Every month, he brought her back, only to lose her when the rite was over. Every month, he mourned her again, and every month, it hurt more.
Resting his head against the mattress, his thoughts drifted once more to Adrienne. He was usually careful with the women whose bodies he claimed for the sacred ritual. They were, after all, the embodiment of his love for twelve to twenty four hours. They deserved his respect and care. He didn’t want to hurt the women permanently, only to borrow their bodies so he could pull Therese back from wherever her spirit was. If they were to avoid the Red Man, she couldn’t stay permanently, no matter how much he yearned for her.
Seeing Adrienne again today, however, made him want to ask Togoun for the magic he needed to give Therese a new body. Forever. But how was it possible, when the Red Man always came for her?
Jax pushed himself up with effort. He was exhausted.
His eyes traveled over the woman. He checked her pulse, not surprised to feel there was none. When he failed to bring Therese back according to the stages of the rite, he ended up losing both spirits.
Was it better in the long run for everyone if he did find a permanent host for Therese’s body? Someone who looked like her? Someone with silky blonde hair and clear, green eyes, whose soft voice reminded him of the few months he’d spent with her?
Who better than her sister?
“No,” Jax said firmly. Adrienne deserved his protection, not to be turned into someone else or worse, to have the Red Man hunt her down, too. Therese would want her sister safe.
Distressed by the weakness and pain he’d heard in Therese’s voice, Jax snatched his knife again and gazed at the dead woman. He had half a notion to go back to Togoun for a new spell, to find a new woman and summon Therese again. Just to be sure she was okay and the Red Man hadn’t gotten her. He might be able to use this body again, if he hurried. Black magic zombie spells were complex, but the body didn’t have to be fresh to be brought back, just recently dead.
A knock at his bedroom door jarred him.
Who was in his house? Had the Red Man sensed Therese enter this world and come to claim her, the way he had a few other times?
Jax readied his knife and yanked his door open.
“Jax, we been looking for you,” his brother said.
Rene’s jaw dropped at the sight of the girl on the bed. Jax glanced around his room, aware of how unnatural everything would appear to someone else. Veves in blood covered the walls and floor, and he’d built a shrine in each corner to a different god or goddess. The room smelled of herbs from the rite and death. The blonde was bound spread eagle on his bed in her underwear.
“What happened?” Rene managed, his voice hushed. “Is she alive?”
“No.”
Rene stared at him, his shock rendering him frozen.
If he was any other member of OL, Jax would kill him where he stood. But he couldn’t, not his brother. He’d already lost the love of his life. He’d never hurt Rene, aside from their occasional scuffle over the crew’s business that ended in a fistfight.
“It’s not what you think,” Jax said. He was almost too exhausted to care that the person he trusted most in the world had found out one of his secrets.
Rene was gazing at him, waiting for an explanation. Jax knew he could lie, and Rene would choose to believe him, even if they both knew it wasn’t the truth.
When had his brother turned into a man? Jax didn’t recall seeing Rene grow. His little brother had been under his guardianship since he was ten, when their father ran off and their mother’s illness constrained her to a wheelchair. Rene dropped out of school when he was thirteen, and Jax had taught him to survive on the streets.
Jax still saw the little boy Rene had been, every time he looked at his brother. But Rene wasn’t a boy. He was a man who had done his fair share of killing and stealing to keep their community and House safe.
“Will you say the dessonet prayers with me?” Jax asked, referring to the final set of prayers meant to help the spirit leave the body for good. “Whatever you think of me right now, she deserves that much.”
Rene said nothing, but Jax knew his brother wouldn’t turn him down. It was a miracle he’d managed to hide what he did for five years from Rene.
He pulled a squeeze bottle of herbs and powders mixed together then drew the veve of Baron Samedi and his family’s guardian, Ogoun, on the woman’s body. When he finished, he knelt beside the bed and bowed his head.
After a moment, Rene joined him.
They murmured the final prayers quietly, asking their ancestors and hers to help the woman’s spirit transition out of her body as gently as possible.
The woman sighed suddenly in death, a sign her spirit was leaving her.
Jax rose. Freeing her spirit was the least he could do for the woman he didn’t mean to murder.
“Will you call Deputy Brannon?” he asked Rene, who hadn’t said anything yet.
“Yeah. Tell him the usual? Drug overdose?”