Black Dust Mambo by Adrian Phoenix

as Felicity’s seal activated. A pungent wisp of myrrh tickled Rosette’s nostrils.
    Felicity swiveled around in her rose-tinted pumps. A sunny smile curved her lips as her gaze landed on Rosette. “Off limits,” she said. “ Oui ?”
    “Oui, madame,” Rosette replied.
    With an approving nod, Felicity Fields turned and walked down the hallway, well-rounded hips swaying beneath her tight rose skirt, following the nomad’s path to the elevator.
    Rosette pulled her keycard from her pocket and stopped at the first door with a please clean tag, which happened to be the room across and one up from Rivière’s. Unlocking it, she stepped inside. She stood for a moment, mind blank, staring at a wedge of sunlight slanting across the carpet.
    With Kallie Rivière in Lord Augustine’s custody and soon, no doubt, Dallas Brûler as well, she needed to find a way to get them both away from the Hecatean master before the nomad started his hunt. Walking across the room, Rosette swung open the slender French doors and stepped out onto the black wrought-iron-bordered terrace.
    The early-morning air smelled fresh, laced with the sweet perfume of the jasmine and carnations growing in baskets along the lips of the railing and the moss-and-fish odor of the Mississippi. The diesel roar of buses and constant honk of horns told a tale of frantic morning-rush-hour traffic on the streets below.
    Once she’d loved New Orleans. But now it only reminded her of dimming chocolate-dark eyes, of the vinegar and garlic stink of protective floor washes, of the murmur of useless prayers.
    She’d grown up listening to Mama’s stories about the tall and handsome Creole she’d loved and married, the papa Rosette had never known, each word woven into the fabric of her being by Mama’s smooth and nimble voice.
    “Oh, baby-girl, people came from all around the country to seek your daddy’s counsel and potions. They called him Doctor Heron because he could find and solve any problem, any jinx, just like a long-beaked heron spearing a fish. No better root doctor existed anywhere on earth.
    “But one dark, dark day, a jealous and wicked witch named Gabrielle LaRue fixed her evil eye on your daddy and worked morning, noon, and night to destroy him.”
    And had succeeded.
    But Mama would’ve been appalled to know what they’d done—Rosette and Papa—in their efforts to settle the score. They had murdered an innocent man—a civilian and not a part of their war—body and soul. How could they ever atone for that?
    “An eye for an eye is never enough.”
    Remembering the tight-jawed grief on the nomad’s blood-streaked face, the unshifting granite of his eyes, green and hard, as cold as a winter-frosted tomb—Rosette had a feeling that, for him, no atonement would be possible except through shed blood and stilled hearts and dead souls.
    It was a sentiment she understood. One she shared.
    And even though Papa had laid the trick, Rosette had been just as culpable. She’d traded floors with another maid and had sneaked Papa into the hoodoo apprentice’s room. Then she’d stood watch as he’d stripped the bed and shaped the hex on the mattress.
    Rosette knew she had to keep the nomad away from Papa, put an end to his hunt before it even began. Her pulse slowed as a clear light poured through her like molten sunshine, wisping away all shadows, all doubts.
    She knew what she needed to do.
    Rosette drew in a deep breath, then pulled her cell phone from her dress pocket and hit the speed dial. Papa answered on the first ring.
    “Everything went wrong,” Rosette said. “The root doctor’s still alive, and someone else died in Kallie Rivière’s place.”
    “‘Went wrong,’ chère ? Sounds like it musta gone to hell in a huge goddamned handbasket if both still be breathing. Sounds like you screwed up. Were you spotted?”
    Not one question about who had died, not one word of regret. “No, Papa. But Lord Augustine’s got possession of my