The woman broke into a huge smile the moment she spotted Shauna.

“Girl, whatchu doin’ here?” the woman asked. She disconnected herself from the man and planted both hands on her hips. “Since when you be out partyin’ like—? Whoa, uh-uh, hol’ up…girl, who that good lookin’ hunk you got wit’ you? That’s your man?”

“This is Danyon Stone. Danyon, this is Lurnell Franklin. She’s a regular at the shop,” Shauna explained.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I is a reg’lar. I goes there all the time, sugah. See her? That’s my people right there, that be my girl.” She waggled her head at Shauna. “Now what be up wit’ you? All the time I go down to the shop, and you never even told me nothin’ ’bout no Mr. Hunky. Where you been hidin’ him, girl?” Lurnell’s eyes suddenly widened. “Hol’ up. Looka here…”

Lurnell turned, grabbed the arm of the man she’d been standing next to, and pulled him up alongside her. “See here? This be my man, Tyree Johnson.” She leaned closer to Shauna. “He’s pretty, huh?”

“He sure is. You might want to hang on to this one.”

Lurnell snapped her fingers. “Girl, that ain’t nothin’ but a thing. I gots that man on lock.” Grinning, she straightened and tugged on Tyree’s arm. “Look here, Tyree, this be my girl, Shauna, from down to the shop on Royal, and that be her man, Darrin.”

“Dan-yon,” Shauna said louder, enunciating his name.

Lurnell’s brow wrinkled. “What’s wrong wit’ you? You los’ you hearin? That’s what I said—Darrin.”

Shauna glanced over at Danyon and winked. Then she turned back to Lurnell. “We’re looking for Banjo. Have you seen him around here?”

“Whatchu want with shrimp bait?”

Shauna shrugged, as though it really didn’t matter to her if they found him or not. “Just want to talk to him about coming into the shop all drugged up, like he was the last time he came in.”

“That boy went down to you shop waxed?” Lurnell asked. “I didn’t see nothin’. Where I was at?”

“You were on the phone, remember?”

“Oh…yeah,” Lurnell said, then grinned up at Tyree. “I was on the flip talkin’ to you, baby.”

He smiled and rested a hand on her shoulder.

Lurnell shivered hard, like a dog shaking off rain water. “Lawd, look at you givin’ me the want-tos like that.” She fanned her face with a hand and refocused on Shauna. “So what shrimp bait do to your store? Mess it up?”

“Not really. Freaked a few customers out, though.”

“That little, scrawny motha f—” Lurnell slapped a hand over her mouth, then dropped it and said to Danyon, “You gots to ’scuse me, Darrin. Sometimes I get a bad case of potty mouth when I has too much to drink. Know what I’m sayin’?”

Danyon grinned. The woman was loud and brassy, but he couldn’t help but like her. “No problem,” he said. “So have you seen him? Banjo?”

“Oh, hell no. With all the people trashin’ ’round here, that piece of shrimp bait could of run up my damn nose, and I wouldn’t have knowed it.”

“Any idea where we can find him?” Danyon asked.

Lurnell blew out a raspberry. “Piss-ants like him they stay over to the weird-ass bars down to the other end over there. They got Under the Stairs—that be on the other end of Bourbon, then they got a place called Rush. That one’s a couple more blocks down the same side of Bourbon. If shrimp bait ain’t in neither one of them, then he probably be stuffin’ his beak wit’ batter, you know what I’m sayin’? Either that or the po-po done got him.”

Danyon leaned over to make sure Shauna heard him. “Batter? Po-po?”

“Cocaine,” Shauna explained. “And po-po means the police.”

“Oh, uh-uh,” Lurnell exclaimed. “You don’t know what batter and the po-po is? Don’t tell me somebody pretty like you is slow on the uptake, huh?”

Shauna intercepted quickly, cocking a finger at her. “Girl, he’s not slow on nothin’, you hear what I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah, you right!” Lurnell said, with a huge grin and slapped her hands together.

The two women laughed, and Danyon had to smile at how easy it had been for Shauna to fall into rhythm with Lurnell’s street talk.

“Hey,” Lurnell said. “We goin’ down to the Cat’s ’cause I got to do me some karaokin’. Y’all wanna—what the hell…?” She suddenly stood at attention on tiptoe, gawking at something over Shauna’s shoulder.

“Well, I’ll be damn. Looka that sumabitch.”

Danyon and Shauna turned and looked in the direction she indicated. All Danyon saw was a sea of people.

Shauna evidently caught sight of what Lurnell was talking about, because she glanced back and shouted over the crowd noise, “I’ve never seen him out at any of these things. You?”

“No, me neither. But that dog sure steppin’ out to night.”

“Who are you talking about?” Danyon asked Shauna.

She took him by the arm and pointed straight ahead.

“See the man in the purple shirt?”

“Yes…”

“And the woman to his right dressed all in red?”

“Yeah?”

“Look between them and to the right a little. See the big guy standing a few feet in front of them, the one in the white shirt? He’s got a—”

“The heavyset guy with the boa constrictor hanging around his neck?”

“Heavyset?” Lurnell said. “That man be dressin’ four-fifty on the hoof for sure.”

“Right,” Shauna said to Danyon. “That’s Papa Gris Gris. He owns the voodoo shop next to Sistah’s, which is Lurnell’s store. They’ve been competitors for years.”

“Any idea what would make him come out tonight?” Shauna asked Lurnell, who was now standing beside her.

“Hell, yeah, I got a idea. Look at that skank rubbin’ up against him.”

Next to the man Shauna had identified as Papa Gris Gris, Danyon saw a very skinny younger woman rubbing her nearly exposed breasts across the fat man’s left arm.

Shauna must have spotted her, as well, because she asked, “Who is that?”

“Girl, that be Trish I-gots-the-crabs Deveraux. She work down to the Hustle Club, and that skank be heavy on the batter. She out there doin’ the nasty wit’ Gris Gris ’cause he gots some blow, you know?”

“You mean he deals cocaine?” Shauna asked.

“There be only one reason why she’d be be hangin’ on that fat man. He either got the blow or the dough. She tryflin’, that’s what she be doin’. Now that’s said, yeah. She already don’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.”

It was easy to see that the woman was putting the moves on Gris Gris, and that all four hundred plus pounds of him thoroughly enjoyed it. She was playing the tease, and he had jumped into the game with both feet.

Danyon turned away. He needed to get out of here. Not that any place else would be any less crowded, but at least moving would help circulate the air around him. They needed to move on with the night and find Banjo.

He inched forward through the crowd with Shauna still holding on to his arm and glanced back over his shoulder just long enough to say, “Nice meeting you Lurnell—Tyree.”

“Oh, you, too, baby. When you down to Rampart Street, you come to Sistah’s and see me. I’m gonna give you a good discount to whatever be up in my store.”

Danyon gave her an obligatory thank-you, waved, then pushed ahead through the crowd. Shauna was evidently still watching Gris Gris because her head was still turned in that direction and she hadn’t said goodbye to Lurnell.

Inching ahead, he detoured around a guy in a clown suit and was about to detour left, when Shauna suddenly dug her fingernails into his arm.

Something in the way she gripped him told Danyon that it had nothing to do with controlling the direction he was heading or stopping him.

It felt more like a reflex, and judging by the look on her face, what prompted it was fear.

Chapter 15

“Digging your way to China with those nails?” Danyon asked, patting Shauna’s hand.

She threw a quick glance his way. “Huh?”

He motioned to her hand on his arm.

“Oh…sorry.” She released the pressure, but didn’t let go.

She hadn’t realized how tightly she had been gripping him because her complete attention had been on Papa Gris Gris and Trish.

Not long after Lurnell had pointed them out, Shauna found herself being slowly sucked into a weird sound tunnel, something she had never experienced before. It happened gradually at first. So gradually she didn’t notice.

She remembered asking Lurnell if Gris Gris was a cocaine dealer, but not much more after that. For some odd reason, she became fixated on Gris Gris and Trish’s mouths, watching them move whenever they spoke. Before long, she started to pick up a word or two that fell in sync with the movement of their lips. When that happened, Shauna took notice of what had changed and was changing around her.

The jumble of faces that belonged to the mass of people crushing them from all sides had grown blurry, while Gris Gris and Trish remained sharp in her line of sight. The noise that had reached inhuman levels had lessened a little in volume. It was still earsplitting to her, but it had dropped enough so that if she turned just so, she was able to hear a few more words.

And what little she had picked up so far was scaring the hell out of her.

“You okay?” Danyon asked.

“I’m…not sure.”

“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

Shauna hitched a thumb in Gris Gris’ direction. “See the man and woman Lurnell was talking about a little while ago?”