Out of Mind coa-2

  Out of Mind

  ( Court of Angels - 2 )

  Stella Cameron

  Willow Millet longs to deny her family's exceptional gifts— paranormal talents known to few, shared by even fewer. Benedict Fortune is one such— a connection that should have strengthened the undeniable bond between him and Willow. But her self-doubt has driven them apart.

  Married instead to her business, Willow's concierge we-can-do-anything service is thriving until it is hit by a string of bizarre and fatal accidents— every victim a client. Now her livelihood depends on two enigmatic socialites and their notoriously decadent parties. In this anything-goes atmosphere, Willow and Ben are thrown together again and their need for each other is as strong as ever, but they are challenged at every turn....

  For dark forces are stalking Willow— coveting her gift as a means of cheating death...and ruling New Orleans forever.

  Out of Mind

  (The second book in the Court of Angels series)

  Stella Cameron

  In loving memory of Suzanne Simmons Guntrum, the sister I wish had been my own.

  Prologue

  Two hundred pink, spun sugar pigs.

  Billy Baker ripped off the top copy of the order and put it with the others on a counter behind him.

  The bell still jingled a little on the bakery shop door. Willow Millet had just closed it behind her as she left. Working on her catering jobs—the unusual stuff of course, because that was his specialty—never bored him.

  It was almost time to shut the place for the night. He bent over to slide a tray of napoleons from one of the glass cases.

  The bell jangled again and the door slammed.

  Billy popped up, smiling, always ready to serve a customer. “Hey!”

  The shop was empty.

  Someone had changed their mind about coming in. Shrugging, he looked down at the confections he had to get put away for the night. Many of them would go for half price in the morning.

  Click.

  The neon open sign in the window went out and the chain that turned it on and off swung a little. He hadn’t touched it.

  A sharp sliding sound made him jump. A snap followed and he jumped again. And felt slightly sick.

  The long bolt on the door had slid down and seated in its hole in the floor. A sliver of shadow in the rim of light along the jamb showed him the door was locked.

  Billy’s rubber-soled shoes squished on the linoleum when he could finally make a move to go around the counter and see who was playing tricks on him.

  A needle-sharp prick into the flesh between his eyebrows stopped him where he was. He muttered, “Ouch,” and touched the spot. It left a tiny speck of blood on his finger.

  Bees?

  Not in his shop.

  But there it was, a buzzing sound. Where… “Damn!” The thing jabbed him again, and again and again on his forehead.

  Each time he swiped at his face, more blood smeared his skin.

  His heart sped up.

  This was stupid. He was panicking over a bee. And the thing was so small he couldn’t even see it.

  A jab to his neck all but buckled his knees. It was a sharp, throbbing bite.

  Every breath he took got shorter.

  He broke out in a sweat. Another poke stung the soft tissue beneath his left eyebrow. His ear was the next target.

  Whirling, he flung up his arms, beat the air, blinked while the left eye began to swell. “Get out! Go! Fucking bees!”

  “Simone!” He yelled for the girl who did the light, late-day cleanup in the kitchen. “Simone.”

  She didn’t come.

  Thwack. A hard thing smacked the back of his head. He spun around, but there was nothing to see.

  He wanted out of the shop and headed for the door to the kitchens. A broad wing, with spines he could see inside its transparent gray skin, slapped Billy’s face, knocking him backward behind the cases.

  Then the poking came in a flurry, thrust knifelike points into his face and neck, his scalp, in rapid succession.

  Not a bee, a bird. A bird with a bloated body, wings like spined webs, and no eyes.

  Billy got to his feet and reached for the broom. A blow to his head made him giddy and the handle fell from his grasp.

  Again, there was no sign of the bird.

  The lights went out. It wasn’t dark in the shop yet, just dim. Bile rose in his throat. He had never seen such a creature before and now he couldn’t tell where it had gone. But he could still hear its buzzing noise, or its whirring. The wings set up a roaring and a great current of air swept over the room.

  Louder and louder it roared.

  From behind the case, rising, came a swift surge of darkness and two black and shining globes. Eyes that must have been shut before they bored into Billy. Talons sprang out, and the beak snapped, shooting out a long, black tongue each time it opened.

  And the eyes came straight at Billy, straight at his face, eye to eye.

  He opened his mouth to shout again, but a deep, dull pain flowered in the middle of his back. Gasping, clutching at the end of the nearest display case, he saw his cell phone on the counter and reached for it. His fingers slipped on the glass.

  He stumbled, gagging.

  The tips of two sets of talons embedded in his face, fleetingly.

  Back came the bulging eyes and this time they didn’t stop. They collided with his face, and the foul-smelling tongue swiped across his mouth. The beak emitted a harsh, howling caw.

  Billy grabbed at his neck and jaw, he pounded a fist into his chest, clawed at the racking pain.

  His heart?

  Blackness spread from the edges of his vision.

  It was done.

  Chapter 1

  Willow walked quickly along Chartres Street.

  Her breathing grew shallower, and the space between her shoulder blades prickled.

  Don’t look back. Keep going.

  Jazz blared from bars and clubs. People spilling from doorways onto New Orleans’s crowded sidewalks jostled her in the throng. They danced, raised their plastic cups of booze and wiggled the way they never would at home. Colored metallic beads draped necks and more strands were thrown from flower-laden balconies overhead. Laughter and shouting all but drowned out the noise of passing vehicles.

  Another French Quarter evening was tuning up.

  Her new enemy clawed at the pit of her stomach: panic. Until a few days ago she had been a completely in-charge, take-on-the-world woman. Then she had become convinced she was being followed.

  Whenever she left her flat in the Court of Angels behind her family’s antiques shop, J. Clive Millet on Royal Street, someone watched her every move. They were waiting for the right moment to grab her—she was certain of it.

  Don’t run.

  Sweat stung her eyes, turned her palms slick, and her heart beat so hard and fast she couldn’t swallow.

  If she didn’t prefer to ignore the paranormal talents she had in common with the rest of the Millet family, she could come right into the open and ask some or at least one of them for advice. But how could she ask Uncle Pascal, her brother, Sykes; her sister Marley; or even one of her other sisters in London if they would help? Despite some recent slips, she continued to insist she was “normal,” and so were they.

  Willow suspected her family watched her more closely these days, which meant they had figured out that she was stressed. Keeping anything from them for long was impossible. She felt the smallest twinge of guilt for enjoying the comfort that gave her.

  Why was she only feeling someone shadowing her rather than actually seeing a face? That was one of her talents—she saw the face of a negative human force, sometimes a long time before meeting the person.

  This time she
couldn’t pick up any image.

  Darn it that she was burdened with the Millet mystique. She saw the looks she got. Every New Orleans native knew about the family, which she didn’t think helped her business, Mean ’n Green Concierge, all things domestic, nothing too large or too small. She only mentioned her concierge services in ads she placed for personal assistant services.

  The sun was lower, a red ball that seemed to pulse in a purpling haze. And there was no air—just tight, wet pressure. Willow had grown up in the city and loved it, but heat did add to the sense of doom she felt.

  Even the scent of flowers cascading from the scrollwork of black iron galleries was too sweet. That didn’t make any sense. Willow loved to smell scented petunias and jasmine, and the rich floral brew that almost overcame the aroma of hot grit and used booze. Not today.

  She cut a left onto St. Louis Street. Usually she rode her green-and-white scooter with its little equipment trailer around town, but since she’d only been going to discuss an order with Billy Baker, the specialty baker she used, she’d decided to walk instead.

  Being on the scooter would feel safer—even more so when she got her new helmet with large, rearview mirrors.

  Two blocks and she turned right onto Royal Street. A cop listened distractedly to a ranting drunk and his gesticulating buddies. For an instant Willow considered asking to talk to the cop, but what would she say?

  She didn’t run, but she did speed up.

  Her hair lifted a little on one side, as if blown by a breeze, only there wasn’t one. Softness brushed her neck, then something tiny and sharp.

  A scream erupted; she couldn’t stop it. Willow stood still, forced the sound from her lips and then spun around, searching in every direction. Nothing. There was nothing but people, people everywhere. She touched her neck but there was zero to feel.

  She got stares, and more space to herself on the sidewalk.

  The shop sign, J. Clive Antiques, shone gold against black paint and she did run the final yards until she could get inside. The doorbell jangled, and she jumped, despite expecting the sound. She closed herself inside and bowed her head while she marched purposefully toward French doors leading out into the Court of Angels at the back of the shop. Her flat was there among those belonging to other family members. She wanted to get to her private place and lock herself in.

  “There you are, Willow.”

  Uncle Pascal. Current family head since Willow’s father had abdicated his responsibilities—more than twenty years earlier—in favor of running after family secrets in various parts of the world, Uncle Pascal had a penchant for stating the obvious.

  “Here I am,” Willow said and thought, and here I go, as she carried on past gleaming old furniture, glittering glass and finely glowing paintings, toward her goal: the back door.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” Uncle said, moving into her path. “I say little about you continuing with this silly, mundane business of yours when you should be honing your natural skills, but I do expect you to check in with me more regularly than you do.”

  “Sorry, but I do make sure you see me in the mornings.”

  She dodged to one side.

  So did Uncle Pascal—the same side. “I want to talk to you about your future,” he said.

  She looked at him, big, muscular, shaven-headed and handsome…and really irritated right now.

  “Futures take care of themselves if we let them,” she said, instantly wishing she hadn’t said anything at all. “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. You have buried your head in the sand and you continue to pretend you can avoid who and what you are. We all know what you are, Willow. And now you are needed to play an active part in the very serious situation we’re all facing in New Orleans.”

  Very serious situation? Do you know exactly what’s been happening to me?

  What she must not do was lead the potential witness, her uncle. If he knew something that would impact her, let him spell it out on his own.

  “You don’t intend to come clean with me, do you?” Uncle Pascal said. “Despite everything, you’ll go on pretending everything is what you call, normal.”

  She raised her chin. “What makes you so sure it’s not?”

  “We have our ways, and we already know it’s not,” he said, his brows drawn ominously downward over a pair of the very green eyes common to all Millets, except her brother, Sykes, which was a great concern to some members of the family. “But this delivery proves we aren’t the only ones aware of a threat.”

  He went behind the shiny mahogany counter and hauled an open cardboard box on top.

  “Who are we, Uncle?”

  He scrubbed at his bald scalp. If he didn’t shave it, there would be a thick head of red hair, but for reasons they all tried to ignore, he had first shaved it when he took Antoine’s place as head of the Millets. Uncle Pascal didn’t want the job, or so he said, and since the red hair was one of the major attributes that qualified him, he chose to get rid of it in defiance.

  “Who?” Willow repeated, growing angry at the thought of the others huddling together to discuss her—invading her privacy, as usual. “Have you been in my head again? You know it’s against the rules unless you ask permission to enter my mind.”

  “Rules?” Pascal said, his brows elevated now. “What rules? You don’t believe in the Millet rules, or anything about the paranormal talents with which we are all blessed—so why would you care or acknowledge the rules? Or are you finally accepting them?”

  She closed her mouth and crossed her arms. There would be no winning an argument with Uncle Pascal.

  “Even if we didn’t know something unusual is going on with you, this would make sure we suspected as much.”

  He lifted a crash helmet from the box. White with Mean ’n Green’s lime-green insignia that looked a bit like the wings on the Greek Hermes’s heels, it was the twin of the one she already used, apart from rather large rearview cycling mirrors mounted on either side.

  Willow gaped. “You opened my stuff!”

  “It wasn’t shut. It was delivered by a messenger from the place where you bought it. I thought it was something for the shop. Aren’t these mirrors interesting?”

  “For safety,” she said, glowering. No way would she admit she wanted eyes in the back of her head these days and mirrors were the next best thing.

  “And what about this?” He placed a smaller, oblong box beside the bigger one. “I suppose this is for safety, too.”

  “That’s my business.” She scrambled to excuse that second box. “It’s something I’m going to give Marley and Gray for their kitchen.” Her sister Marley and Gray Fisher were recently married, or Bonded as the Millets preferred to call it. There had also been an actual wedding to please Gray’s dad, Gus, who was one of Willow’s favorite customers.

  “I know what’s in this,” Uncle said.

  She snatched it away and turned it over. It was unopened. “No, you don’t. You’re trying to trick me into telling you.”

  “Why do you think I need to open a box to know what’s inside?” he said. “Don’t you think a Beretta PX4 Storm is a bit overkill for a first handgun?”

  Chapter 2

  Ben Fortune also saw the gun inside the package and couldn’t imagine Willow being able to hold the thing steady. This was a very small woman. He knew well that she was strong, but could she hit what she wanted to hit with the weapon?

  He saw Willow’s back stiffen. That didn’t have to be because she had sensed him behind her, standing near a Napoleonic desk he had been examining when she hurried into the shop. But given the long pause after Pascal announced the gun, he didn’t think she was reacting to that. She should have responded to her uncle by now.

  Odds were that she did sense Ben. His own fault since he should have made sure that was not possible until he wanted it to be. From Pascal’s behavior he must have assumed Ben would mask his presence until he was alone with Willow. Pascal had promised to leave them once he�
��d had his say with his niece.

  Too bad one glimpse of her and Ben had forgotten to do what should come naturally—reveal only what he must until he found out exactly how the land lay with the woman formerly pledged to become his lifelong Bonded partner.

  That was a pledge he had never given up on, regardless of how Willow thought she could call all the shots. Despite sending him away—for good, she had insisted—she must have expected him back eventually.

  Ben smiled slightly. A few experiments, really touching experiments, would prove if they still had what it took to send each other into pain and ecstasy at the same time. They had never actually made love—Willow had seen to that—but the foreplay was explosive, unforgettable. He heated up from the inside out thinking about those incendiary sensations. That electric, erotic pain between two of their kind was considered proof of preordained Bonding with a Millet. Somewhere in the mists of that family’s founding, a brilliant elder must have thought such intense feelings would test the loyalty of a male’s prospective mate and protect their women’s honor.

  Apparently, the founder responsible for the concept had not taken into account that irresistible stimulation could become addictive.

  There would be a test between Ben and Willow, but he had no doubt the compulsion would be as strong as ever.

  He hadn’t seen her in two years since she told him they weren’t meant for each other. After that she wouldn’t see or speak to him.

  Ben had left New Orleans, and ran the family business—a very successful club, Fortunes, and other enterprises around the city—from his retreat on the island of Kauai.

  “You can see inside closed packages?” Willow said to Pascal.

  “That surprises you?”

  She muttered something, but she wasn’t concentrating on her uncle. Instead Ben could see her struggle not to turn around. Her shoulder blades pressed together, then released, as if she were trying to relax.