Page 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

V elina…

The gumbo and the salad paired with it were both pretty good. We were silent for the majority of the meal when Saint cleared his throat and asked me, “Ever tried gator?”

“Can’t say that I have,” I answered him honestly. My thoughts had been on my little brother, lost again after having been barely found. I wondered why he had been willing to tell me so much about himself and yet hadn’t told me his tale of his brush with the supernatural, which, to be honest, I didn’t ordinarily believe in those kinds of things. But something about the repeated tale of his encounter had sent a shiver down my spine. Enough that I believed him, even if I hadn’t heard it directly from his lips to my ears.

“Here.” He held out his fork with what looked like a fried chicken nugget dashed with hot sauce.

I made a face. “I don’t like to taste my endorphins,” I reminded him.

“Fair,” he said, pulling the chunk of tender meat off his fork with his teeth and chewing, spearing another smaller piece without any of the spicy taint on it. He held it out, and I eyed it warily.

“What’s it taste like?” I asked.

“Try it and find out,” he challenged.

I plucked it off the end of his fork, tossed it into my mouth, and chewed. The breading itself was some type of spicy with the seasoning mix they used, but it was the kind of spicy that was just this side of tolerable. The taste of the tender white meat was akin to chicken… but not. Earthier, somehow… fishier… it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all.

I made a face like I was impressed, because I was, and nodded. “I would eat that,” I said, and he gave me a crooked grin.

“Ain’t good like this just any place. This place is the best around,” Collier said.

“Noted,” I said dryly, and still, I struggled internally with all I had learned and all I had yet to learn about my little brother.

I didn’t want to alienate these guys. They were my only tenuous link to Garnett. Likewise, I was still pretty damn unsure about them all. It was a cognitive dissonance that left a bitter tang in my brain and the discomfort of it was real.

We finished up eating, the banter and further discussion kept to a minimum as the food sank into our systems and we all calmed down just shy of a food coma. The place had been good, like, really good. When I went to pay my share, Saint waved me off.

“You’re a cheap date,” he grated non-committedly, and I frowned.

“Thanks,” I said curtly, and he nodded tersely. I didn’t like not paying my own way, but I also had to admit to myself, my budget was fucking tight, and I needed to take it where I could get it.

As for the cheap date comment? He wasn’t wrong. I tended to eat like a bird. Partial holdover from when I had an eating disorder, thanks to the kids at school and my own family constantly calling me fat.

Had, at one point, half-starved myself to death while everyone complimented how good I looked. I hadn’t had a period for like three months and ended up collapsing at school.

Mom and Dad had been furious with me, and I hadn’t been allowed to get up from the table until my plate had been clean. Although, thankfully, Mom hadn’t overloaded it.

For their part in it, my siblings hadn’t been allowed up, either, which had been both a blessing and a curse.

I shoved the uncomfortableness of my broken childhood back in its battered toybox at the back of my brain.

I hadn’t had it half so bad as Louie, so who was I to bitch?

We went back out into the muggy, oppressive heat of the late afternoon, and I made the comment, “Whew, I can’t wait until the sun sets around here and it cools off.”

Saint and Collier barked a laugh, and both looked my way, amusement sparkling in their eyes. “Never been to Louisiana before, have you?” Collier asked.

I made a face. “It doesn’t cool off after dark?” I asked, and they both shook their heads.

“Not really,” Collier said.

“Peachy,” I shot back flatly, the word laden with every ounce of sarcasm intended.

“You’ll feel better on the bike. Get some wind moving,” Saint said, and I sighed.

Something was better than nothing, I guessed.

We rode back to the club, and like before, I wasn’t sure why he thought that riding would somehow make things cooler. The airflow did help make things a little drier, the wind moving past and over us, drying the sweat against my skin. But it honestly felt like the girl at the salon had her blow drier set to high and was blasting me in the face with it, letting it carry all the humidity of my wet hair into my face.

There was just no escaping the uncomfortable mugginess of it all.

When we rode up back outside their club, my poor car still sat where I’d parked her, hood up and lonesome on the side of the empty road. The sun was making its way for the horizon, and the light would only be good for a little while longer, which bummed me out. I liked taking still-life photography in my spare time. Had myself a nice digital camera. Had found I’d had an aptitude for good, clean, and focused shots when we’d been in the photography phase of learning for forensics.

I even managed to sell some shots on the side in some coffee shops around my city that I’d framed up nice.

My thoughts wandered from good light to photography, to the thrifting I did for a lot of my frames and the time I’d spent stripping, sanding, polishing, re-painting, and gilding to get them just right for a particular photo I had in mind for them. I wished I could take some time for myself and go wandering. Maybe do some thrifting. Who knows what treasures I could find in a place so rich with history.

From there, my thoughts drifted back to my brother and all of the promises he made, of the places we would go and where he would take me. He would always talk so big about the adventures we would have and of the hidden beauty in this city and her surrounding swamps and I just… I guess I would never know now.

Shit.

“Come on inside,” Saint said as I worked the chin strap of the borrowed helmet and stared across at my forlorn car. “Cool off a minute before you pass out.”

I scoffed at that and shook my head. “I’ve only ever passed out once in my life, and it wasn’t from overheating,” I declared.

“Must be nice,” Collier said, eyeing me, and I felt like a privileged ass all of a sudden for saying it.

I shrugged. “I know, it’s a flex,” I said casually, attempting to deflect like I always did with sarcasm and humor.

I got a bona fide chuckle out of Saint and had to work harder than you’d expect to not smile.

Looks like you finally scored a point, Velina, I thought to myself. Saint was a stoic motherfucker and a tough nut to crack. That lone little chuckle was, for sure, the ice starting to crack and the iceman starting to thaw. I felt it in my bones.

I passed him as he held open the door to the clubhouse for me and slipping past him, I murmured a “Thank you.”

Inside was cooler, for sure, the air conditioner working overtime to combat the oppressive heat, and likely drowning in the humidity it was pulling out of the air and dumping… well, somewhere.

Collier and Saint led the way, and I followed, going past the barroom and down the long hallway, past a room with what looked like a long table and chairs all around it – an altar of some kind at the end all aglow with those church candles in glass cylinders. The door to that room hadn’t been open the first time I’d passed by it earlier in the day. As much as I wanted to, I didn’t linger to look more fully, as the guys were walking with some purpose. After they passed the room, Saint looked back at me specifically to make sure I was keeping up.

At the end of the hall was a metal door that had been spraypainted in the club’s colors to resemble a purple and green flag with a golden fleur-de-lis, the artwork really well done, the flag rippling in an imaginary wind. There was a tall, narrow window with the diamond pattern of chicken wire in the glass set to one side, and without breaking stride or hesitation, Collier hit the crash bar in the middle of the door and stepped through, holding it for both Saint and myself.

“Thanks,” I said, slipping through, my view obstructed by Saint’s broad back. What lay beyond was still just as unexpected as the first time I’d been back here just a couple hours or so ago. But with how fast life was coming at me at the moment? Felt like eons had passed already.

I knew the club was two stories from the outside, but in here, there was no second floor. The room just opened up huge to chains hanging from big thick steel girders high up above. It was… creepy, eerie, and made all the more eerie by the dim natural lighting coming through the high, high, dirty windows up near the ceiling and a couple of opaque off-white skylights set in the metal roofing.

“Creepy,” I muttered, looking at the still, hanging chains and their hooks.

Saint chuckled again, a low, dark, and oily sound that sent shivers down my spine in such a way that I couldn’t decide if I liked it.

“Hurricane proofing for the bikes,” he said. “We pull ‘em in back there.” He indicated an open roll-up garage door, with a view across a short lot backed up against the next building over – some kind of a warehouse, maybe with a jazz mural painted on its uniform cinderblocks to liven it up.

“Hoist ‘em up, and it don’t matter how much it might flood. They’re good to go until the water recedes,” he said.

“And the power comes back on,” I said dryly. I mean, how else would you get them back down?

He pointed along a wall in shadow at a metal staircase and catwalk against it, a generator of some kind sitting squat and waiting at the end of the walk like a toad.

“Gassed up and ready to go at the first reports there might be trouble,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows. “You all are real Boy Scouts,” I said, impressed. “Prepared for anything.”

“I guess that would make me Scout Master Hex,” a voice called from nearby.

I turned, and Hex stepped out from the same pillar he’d been leaning against the first time I’d seen him.

“How was the ride, sugar?” he asked.

“Hot,” I said.

“Well, hopefully, we’ll get you squared away here and back in your cage in no time.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, unsure what he meant.

“Your car,” Collier said. “We call ‘em cages.”

“Ah, gotcha,” I said, and my eyes flicked back up, unbidden to the hanging chains up above.

“Cypress!” Hex hollered, and I jumped at the unexpected boom of his voice. It reverberated off the ceiling and sort of echoed back at us as a shadow fell into the doorway of the open garage door at the back of the big space.

Cypress came trotting up and threw some chin at Hex. Hex looked to Saint.

“Where’s it at?” he asked.

“Left saddlebag,” Saint called to Cypress, who nodded and walked out toward the front.

On this side, the door into the club was just a flat black, as though waiting for an artist to shake a can and depress the nozzle in its direction.

“Can I ask who’s your artist?” I asked, dragging my eyes away from the door and back toward Hex.

He huffed a bit of a laugh and said, “Saint, why don’t you give her the ten-cent tour of the place while she waits for Cy and Col to get done with her car, yeah?” Hex winked at me. “You know the art and the stories behind it better ‘n anyone around here.”

Hex held up his phone and said, “I’m fixin’ to make some calls before the day is done. If y’all will excuse me…”

He wandered away a few paces and, after touching the screen a few times, raised the phone to his ear.

Saint grunted and said, “This way. We’ll start outside first.”

“Uh, okay…” I said, and fell into step beside him, heading into the back lot, shading my eyes against the setting sun to have a look at the big mural of the jazz artist on the wall up over the fence on the neighboring building first.