Southern Spirits by Edie Bingham

criminal fronts. Businesses like her father’s club. Daddy was a good man, but a bad gambler, and the takeover had been as swift as it had been merciless. And though technically he still owned the club, he ran it in their name – on the condition that Val accompanied them back north for the weekend, singing for them.
    She wasn’t naive enough to think that was all that they might want from her.
    In fact, with regard to the capo, the man in charge of this crew, she was counting on it.
    Then a new voice spoke up from behind the screen, a man’s voice, low but dampening the noise around the card table like a bucket of iced water. ‘Send our guest in here.’
    Baldy grunted, puffed his cigar back to consciousness. ‘Well? You heard.’ His words were poisoned with that petty, now-you’re-gonna-get-it tone most people left behind in the schoolyard.
    So she left him with a final, ‘Good luck with that pair of deuces,’ then slid the door aside and entered the private area, as Baldy lost his hand. The door, now shut, muted the sounds from the other side. It was a darker, more intimate area in here, with leather-backed chairs grouped in pairs around tiny round tables, and thick verdant potted plants providing token cover. It was a place for private conversations, for making deals.
    This suited Val just fine.
    â€˜At the end.’
    She walked along, seeing his polished black shoes and the legs of his immaculate black silk trousers. Her heart was fluttering and her legs were turning to jelly. She was afraid. She was excited. She adjusted her breasts inside her dress, her hands shaking.
    Mickey was there, on his own, reclining in a chair, a brandy snifter at his side, studying a small chessboard. His hand reached out, almost touched a knight, but then withdrew again. The image had thrown her; she’d expected to see him counting his ill-gotten gains or polishing guns.
    He didn’t look up, and Val took the opportunity to compose herself, study him again. He was a young man, shockingly young for someone in his position, a man of distracting good looks, dark and smooth, with swept-back jet-black hair, an aquiline nose and chiselled chin which seemed to dare the world to take a swing at it. His jacket was off, and the cuffs of his white silk shirt were undone, the gold cufflinks sitting on the edge of the table.
    This man had overturned her life, hung a sword of Damocles over it.
    Sweet God, she wanted him.
    â€˜I hate cigar smoke,’ he said suddenly, softly, as if she’d asked him something. He never raised his voice, ever, hence his crew’s nickname for him: Mickey Whisper. He indicated the board. ‘And I can’t study this in front of them without getting ribbed.’
    She nodded, in lieu of any other response, loving the surprisingly cultured, educated smoothness of his voice. She’d had a plan – sort of – but on standing here, it seemed to have deserted her. She kept staring at him, and it was melting her insides more than she’d wanted.
    He reached out suddenly, almost impulsively, moved a white knight forward, and then turned the board around so that now he could see it from the black side. Except that now he leant back, regarding her directly as he reached for his snifter. ‘What’s that around your neck?’
    Val’s hand reached up to her charm. ‘It’s a family talisman for our Guédé loa.’
    â€˜â€œGay-day lawa?” You mean voodoo? You believe in that stuff?’
    She’d asked herself that, more than once. Her mother’s family had, for generations, and her mother herself had been a mambo, a priestess. When Mama died, Papa had tried to raise Val as strictly Christian, but she had learnt on her own. And though she still didn’t quite know if she believed, she was prepared to respect the beliefs of the maternal side of her heritage. ‘I don’t know if I believe, but I . . . I