The Book of Bart Read online

  “Bless it all.”

  “What?”

  “Bless it all.”

  “Don’t you mean damn it all?”

  Great. To top it off, nobody brought this sugar cane up to speed on the lingo. “No, I mean bless it all. I’m a demon. I live in Hell. Why would I say damn it all? Damning is a good thing to me. Try to keep up.”

  Samantha seemed to shrink a few inches. “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  “Clearly.” I finished the cigarette and flicked the butt onto the hood of a parked Chevy. Sam rushed over and blew on it. I watched it roll off the hood and onto the ground.

  “That’s dangerous,” she said.

  “Is it? I had no idea.” I pulled out the kid’s wallet. The Velcro screeched as it opened. I found a sales receipt inside and handed it to Samantha. “The kid went here this morning.”

  Sam read the receipt. “The House of the Rising Sun? I thought that was just a song.”

  “Where do you think the song got its name?” This wasn’t rocket science.

  “But that’s in New Orleans. According to the song.”

  I sighed. “I guess they franchised.”

  Samantha and I found a cab, then went back to my place to pick up my ride. I yanked the blue tarp off and smiled. My baby. A silver Mercedes SL-Class. She still looked as beautiful as the day I’d bought her.

  “Do you have any idea how stupid we’re going to look riding around in that?” she asked from behind me.

  “Stupid?” My jaw hit the floor as I turned to her. “How dare you. Nobody looks stupid riding around in an SL-Class. You’re stupid. This is classy.”

  “We look like teenagers. You think this won’t draw attention to us?”

  I looked at her for a few seconds before saying anything. “It’s a Mercedes. That’s the point. To draw attention and say, ‘Look at us. We’re awesome.’ Now get in.”

  Ten minutes later, after driving at an average speed of eighty-two miles per hour, we stood in front of a rundown storefront with green storm shutters around the windows. The House of the Rising Sun.

  “And to think, if we’d taken your Jetta we’d have had to ask for directions instead of using my baby’s built-in GPS.”

  “Yes, yes… and the Jetta doesn’t have seat warmers, Dolby Digital audio, cruise control or any other fancy toys. I know,” Samantha said with a sigh.

  “It’s okay to be envious.”

  “Not for me.”

  I opened the door for Samantha and let her enter in front of me. Demon or not, manners are still manners.

  The strong smell of funky incense hit me like an unwilling co-ed as I walked into the store.

  “Wow, this place smells great,” Sam said.

  “That’s one way to put it.” I took shorter breaths, trying to keep the stench out of my nose.

  “Welcome to The House of the Rising Sun,” the man behind the counter said. An African-American in his late thirties with closely-cropped hair, he wore a faded blue wife-beater that showed off his athletic arms, and had one entirely white eye. “It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, but hopefully you two won’t be one.”

  “I hope they make you say that,” I said, looking around the store.

  The man scowled at me.

  I searched for a shrunken head section but didn’t see one. Must be in the back. “You have a shrunken head section? I want one for my office. I think it would make a hilarious paper weight.”

  “What do you think this is? Some silly tourist spot?” the man asked. He smiled at Samantha. “What brings you youngins around here anyway? I know you ain’t lookin’ for no shrunken heads. I don’t get too many of your type, especially you,” he said, winking at Sam.

  I didn’t like the look he gave her. “You mean white girls?”

  The man focused his icy glare on me. His Casper eye made me shudder. There had to be something special about it. Nobody walked around with a Ping-Pong eyeball like that for the fun of it.

  “No. I get plenty o’ them. Talkin’ ‘bout young ladies like this one, so righteous and pure. Now, what do you two want?”

  I peeked at a row of different types of bird bones. “Love the selection, by the way. Do you have that one trick where you make the quarters disappear?”

  “This ain’t a magic store, man. We sell mystical items. Magic ain’t real. It’s just shit we don’t know how to do.” His forehead flattened as he narrowed his gaze. “Last time I’m askin’. What do you want?”

  I slid the receipt across the counter. “I found this on a kid who exploded into a black cloud a short while ago. What did you sell him?”

  The man slapped my hand away. “Get that out of my face. You ain’t a cop. If you ain’t here to buy somethin’, you best leave before somethin’ bad happens. Got better things to do than waste my time with you.”

  Anger pushed my horns against the inside of my skull. Any angrier, and they would start to peek out of my forehead a little. Demons hid their true appearance well enough, but if we ever got angry, things became a bit more iffy.

  “I love it when they don’t cooperate.” I kept my hand behind my back as the claws extended.

  Sam gave me a pleading look. “Maybe we should just go.”

  I turned to her, steeling my jaw so she knew I meant business. “No.”

  I looked back at the clerk. “Tell us what the kid bought or I take that tongue of yours. Maybe your freaky eye, too.”

  “Think you can scare me? I know what you are,” he said, pointing at his blank eye. “I see your true nature.”

  “Then you know I’m not joking.” I reached for him, but the man sprayed a foul-smelling mist in my face, freezing my body. I fought to break free, but this guy had used some potent and disgusting stuff.

  He pushed me down onto the brown carpet.

  Samantha leapt out of my peripheral vision toward the man, who sprayed her with the mist, freezing her mid-stride. She fell to the floor in an awkward, tangled position.

  The man laughed as he disappeared into the back. When he returned, he held a foot-long Bowie knife in his hand.

  “Best thing about this store? We get most of our stuff on consignment.” He lightly traced two circles on my forehead with the knife. “Like demon horns.” The turd’s gaze fell on Samantha. “And angel hearts.”

  The man took out his cellphone and dialed a number. “Hey. Yeah, it’s Marvin. Get on over here. A nice shipment just came in.” He closed his good eye. “Got ourselves an angel and a demon. Yeah, together. I know it’s crazy.”

  I tried to listen to the other end of the conversation, but I couldn’t understand the garbled audio. All the while, I fought to regain control of my body. If I didn’t find a way out of this, not only would I be back in Hell, but hornless to boot. A demon without horns is like a quarterback without an offensive line. He had the skills, but no back-up, making it possible for who-knows-what to wreak havoc. Screwed with a demon’s equilibrium too, from what I understood.

  My body tingled a little, telling me that whatever Marvin used on me finally began wearing off. He sat on top of the cashier’s counter, picking at his fingernails with the knife. When I regained movement, I might have to use that knife to remove his fingernails one by―

  A bell behind me dinged. Someone entered the store. All I could make out as the person walked past me were black sneakers, thin blue jeans, and a Drew Brees Saints jersey. Tacky. Very tacky.

  Marvin smiled as he hopped off the table and shook the stranger’s hand.

  “Remy,” he said.

  “Nice haul, Marvin,” Remy said with a slight Cajun twang.

  Did I mention he also had a peppery beard, wavy black hair, and big muscles? I’m sure the girls in Raleigh found him dreamy when he made an effort not to dress like a bum. They certainly did back in New Orleans.

  I tried to speak but only muffled grunts came out.

  Remy moved to stand over me. “This one’s the demon?”

  “Yeah,” Marvin said. “Got some lip on him, too.
”

  “Well, once you take his horns he’ll be as limp as a ninety-year-old without Viagra.”

  I tried to speak again. “Wha?”

  Marvin knelt down and laid the knife sideways across my mouth. “You give me any lip and I’ll take that as an invitation to cut them off. Got it?”

  I looked over at Samantha, who was also paralyzed. Her terrified wide eyes spoke for her. I raised my eyebrows at her, trying to calm her a little. Instead, it only confused her.

  Remy grabbed my feet. “Grab the other one,” he said to Marvin. “Did you clear a table in the back?”

  “Course I did.”

  Remy dragged me into the storage area of the store.

  “What…” I said, trying to get out what I needed to say. Next time, Marvin would be wise to wait before shooting that mist in someone’s face. “What street… you got… shoes on?”

  New Orleans residents loved messing with tourists by asking that question. The correct answer was always “this street.” Say that, and they believed they were talking to a local and not some tourist begging to be made a fool of.

  Remy stopped dragging me. “You know New Orleans?”

  I shook my head about an inch in each direction. “Know… you.”

  He dropped my feet and stood over me. “Who are you?”

  “Katri… na.”

  Remy narrowed his gaze as he looked at me.

  “Bartholomew?” Recognition spread across his face. “That you? Unbelievable. That is you. You look completely different when you’re not covered in feces.”

  Um, yeah. I don’t look like shit.

  Marvin pulled Samantha past us. “You coming? You can fool around with him later.”

  Remy held up his hand. “Stop! I know this one.”

  I looked at Marvin, forcing a smile. “Ha. Ha.”

  Marvin threw the bottom half of Samantha to the ground. “Fine. We still got the angel. Not a total loss.”

  “With me,” I said, not taking my eyes off Marvin and forcing myself to show off as many pearly whites as possible.

  Remy seemed to think over the idea for a moment. Angel parts were very valuable. Way more valuable than anything on my person, except for my privates.

  “Leave her,” Remy said. “I owe him that much.”

  “Hell no,” Marvin said. “You know how long it’s been since I’ve had an angel heart? One bite adds fifty years to your life.”

  Remy balled his hands into fists. “I’m not asking.”

  “Yeah, Marvin,” I said, mustering the strength to sit up. “Do what he says. Or, you know, freeze us again with that stupid spray,” I said with just a little sarcasm.

  “Shut up.” Marvin waved the knife inches from my face. “Remy, why you owe this cat so much?”

  “He’s the reason New Orleans didn’t get overrun by zombies during Katrina.”

  Marvin’s eyes went wide. “Huh? The city flooded, man. You know that. You were there. There weren’t no zombies.”

  Remy pointed at me. “Who do you think flooded the city? If he hadn’t, there’s no way the zombie outbreak would’ve been contained.”

  It was true. My hunt for the Shard eventually led me to New Orleans. Unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina followed a few days after and, somehow, a zombie outbreak happened right as the hurricane hit. Someone caused the outbreak by deflowering a witch doctor’s daughter, angering the mother, who then went on a bit of a rampage. No idea who did the deflowering, though. Wink wink.

  Faced with no other choice, I flattened the levees to slow the zombie infestation to a point where they could be killed faster than they could kill people. Remy was part of the group that helped stem the outbreak. The whole Saving-New-Orleans-From-Zombies thing might seem a little contradictory―what with me being a demon and all―but no way I’d let a bunch of mindless corpses kill people I could kill. Or maim. Or corrupt. Or, at the very least, reduce to tears.

  “Damn it all.” Marvin grabbed an empty glass jar, then flung it against the wall.

  I glanced at Samantha. She mouthed, “Thank you.”

  I gave her a slight nod.

  What she didn’t realize was that, like Remy back in New Orleans, I had her in my pocket now.

  emy Broussard might have looked twenty-six years old, but in actuality he was more like ninety-six. The son of a white doctor and a black voodoo priestess, Broussard acted as a sort of middleman in matters of “anonymous dealings” between humans and us otherworldly folk. Trafficking in the body parts of said otherworldly folk wasn’t exactly condoned but, hey, the man had to make a living. He used to own this exact type of store in New Orleans. Same name and everything.

  He helped Samantha sit down in a chair next to a box of voodoo dolls. “You okay?”

  She gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Can I get you anything? Water? I can whip you up something that will put you in a state of euphoria for an entire week.” Remy kept his gaze on Sam a second too long. I reminded myself to ask him if he felt awkward hitting on girls almost eighty years his junior.

  “I’m fine. Thank you, though.” Samantha smiled weakly. Guess she’d taken getting shot in the face by Marvin to heart as well.

  “I’d say the lady deserves an apology from Marvin. Wouldn’t you, Remy?” I asked, leaning against the wall. I stretched my arms so my muscles could loosen up.

  Marvin walked into the back room, holding the receipt. I saw his jaw move, an obvious attempt to keep his temper under control.

  “I think you owe the girl an apology,” Remy said. He rested his hand on a skull next to him.

  Marvin laughed. “No. You wanted to cut into ‘em much as me, ‘til you realized you knew the demon.”

  “True, but I do know him, so apologize.”

  Marvin waved him off. “Forget this. I’m outta here. You can fire me if you want.”

  He stormed toward the main area of the store.

  Remy moved lightning fast and stood in front of him, blocking his way. “You’re not leaving here with your head attached to your body if you don’t.”

  Marvin stood for a moment, his chest heaving. I guessed he’d never seen Remy move like that before. Eventually, he turned to Samantha, though he kept his gaze on the floor, as if too ashamed to look her in the eye.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For?” I prompted.

  “I’m sorry I wanted to cut you up and eat your heart.” His voice sounded soft and meek, a far cry from the offensive attitude he’d taken earlier.

  Samantha tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Apology accepted.”

  Remy clapped his hands. “Great. Now let’s get down to business.”

  Marvin clenched the receipt as he leaned against a storage case holding several bottles of snake poison. “Okay. This kid came in here this morning.”

  “Duh,” I said. “That’s why we’re here. What did he buy?”

  “He was real nervous. Pale. Shaking a lot, like he was trying to hold somethin’ back. I thought maybe the dude was going through withdrawal or―”

  “Don’t need a literal blow-by-blow here,” I said. “What did he want?”

  Marvin sighed. “He bought a potion called Shah Babette, which rids someone of a powerful spirit.”

  “Like if they’re possessed?” Samantha asked.

  “Right. It’s supposed to be like Ipecac for the supernatural.”

  Remy put his hands in his pockets. “Guess it didn’t take. Up here, the ingredients just aren’t as good as they are in New Orleans.”

  “So you’re selling knock-off voodoo products?” I raised an eyebrow at him and tsked. “Remy… you’re better than that.”

  “Hey,” he said, his body stiffening. “I stand by my products.”

  I snorted. “Shame you had to leave after that whole zombie mess.”

  Remy scowled and flipped me off. I smiled. To save a nurse he cared about during Katrina, he’d broken a few rules… and lost everything. Including her. The voodoo people he ran with disapproved of
him risking his life to save a Christian. They also didn’t approve of his association with me, and exiled him. Why else would someone practice voodoo in Raleigh?

  “Anyways,” Marvin interrupted, “if the kid blew up or whatever, the spirit that possessed him had to be mighty strong.” He glanced at me. “It’d take someone stronger than you to do that.”

  “That’s preposterous,” I said with a condescending laugh.

  “Did he say anything?” Samantha said.

  Marvin shrugged. “Said he had to get this bitch out of him. That’s it really.”

  My ears perked up. “So he said it was female?”

  “I said bitch, didn’t I? He was shakin’ and sweatin’ like he needed a fix. He was in bad shape.”

  Remy paled. “That is bad.”

  Samantha glanced around at us, a confused look on her face. “What’s bad?”

  I walked over to her. “You know that saying, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where do you think that saying originated?”

  amantha burst out of The House of the Rising Sun, trying to catch up to me. “Wait. Where are you going?”

  I waved her off. “You’re on your own, kiddo.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Wherever the day takes me. Disney World. The moon. I don’t know and I don’t care.” I lit a cigarette and took a drag. “I’m not messing with a female demon, or whatever it is,” I said, exhaling through my nose. “You think I’m bad? I at least have fun when I’m working. Those harpies just… they take things way too seriously.”

  Female demons are the worst. So insecure. One look at another woman and next thing you know, the Titanic is sinking. Believe me, I know from experience.

  “How can I stop one of them from getting the Shard?”

  I stopped and turned around, moving within inches of her face. “They probably already have it. Why else would Pierce have attacked me? Why do you think we got jumped at the museum?”

  Samantha shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “Right,” I snapped. Lies. Or as angels call it, distortion of the truth. Anger boiled in my veins. I considered letting my horns out to play. It would be nothing to ram them through her chest, ruining her perfect C-cups. “So tell me, little miss angel face, why should I help you when you won’t tell me what you know?”