Page 14 of Ride Me

She didn’t say she was fine, just that she would be. This incident had Michelle more on edge than ever, and she’d already been walking the line.

When Allegra had first met her, Michelle admitted she’d only gone away to college to escape from a town full of interfering family and bead-craving tourists while she worked on creating the perfect masterpiece. Now she was a leader in the education community of the very town she’d run away from. Allegra couldn’t be prouder of all she’d accomplished. But it didn’t seem to satisfy or center her.

Nothing did.

All those defense classes. Kickboxing. Karate. She’d even been learning capoeira, a Brazilian form of martial arts that looked like dancing. She envied Michelle’s energy, but she barely saw her.

She studied the wall lined with Michelle’s canvasses. The nearest and most recent was disturbing. Three men, their features distorted and grotesque, their faces covered in blood. All three had ghostly figures behind them, figures whose arms thrust inside the men’s bodies, as if guiding them toward the screaming woman curled up against the alley wall.

It was a dark piece. A scary piece. Especially since the woman with the dark silky curls, brown skin and stunningly fearful eyes looked an awful lot like Michelle.

Now that she thought about it, what was happening to the men looked a lot like possession to Allegra.

Rousseau.

Promising herself to have a serious conversation with Michelle about her concerns as soon as she got home, Allegra picked the book up and rolled onto her right side, propping a pillow beneath her arm so she could read. It was a well-loved book, the cover lined with ragged threads and so worn she could barely make out the title, but inside was everything she could ever want to know about voodoo.

An idea for a lifestyle article came to mind, and she pushed it aside. She couldn’t think about her old job now, her old life. She was too distracted by the people in her new one.

She flipped the yellowing pages until she found the right chapter and read. The researcher in her was fascinated with all the information. Some of it new, some eerily familiar.

Voodoo was a merging of Catholicism and tribal ancestor worship. Loas appeared to be similar to saints or angels, intermediaries with the divine, but unlike the winged cousins that lacked free will, these all had their own unique personalities and some less-than-angelic cravings and desires.

During rituals, the priests and priestesses of the religion—houngans and mambos—were “ridden” by a Loa. Possessed for a short time, giving body to the spirit and allowing them to revel in the joys of the flesh. Food. Drink. Sex. In return the Loa would heal, advise, and carry prayers with them when they returned to the other world.

Allegra sat up, wincing at the pain that ran like a current down her leg. How did any of this connect with Rousseau or what happened to her last night? She turned another page and saw writing in the margin beside a long list of Loa names and descriptions.

Bone Daddy.

First arrived at peristyle, the ritual space, in the eighteen hundreds.

Associated with sexual satisfaction and desire.

Origin: Unknown.

Family: Unknown

Mischievous and magnetic. But based on his questionable behavior and

uncertain loyalties, wariness is recommended.

Bone Daddy. There it was. Seeing it written in Mambo Toussaint’s hand gave it weight and the ring of truth. At the very least, Michelle’s mother believed this being existed. She wouldn’t have gone to this trouble if she didn’t.

Despite all she’d witnessed in her travels and what she’d experienced last night, Allegra couldn’t allow herself to fall down that rabbit hole. She believed in what she could see. What she could prove.

You saw his eyes change. You felt the difference in him.

What she’d seen and felt was Rousseau turning the tables on her after months of hesitation. He’d been the aggressor, and the new approach had thrown her.

That was all.

Her nipples scraped against her tank top as she remembered what she’d seen last night. Real or imagined, the erotic experience had revealed aspects of herself she hadn’t been aware of. Cravings she hadn’t known she had. Voyeurism, exhibitionism, even a small streak of masochism. It wasn’t like her, but she couldn’t deny she’d been tantalized by the visuals before her guilty conscience—in the form of Michelle—had ripped her away.

That look into the inner fantasies of others had been one fantasy she’d always been aware of. And some part of her must have known, subconsciously, that the tension between Michelle and Ben was sexual in nature. She’d seen enough romantic comedies to fill in those blanks. It wasn’t like Rousseau had read her mind and given her what she wanted.

Not Rousseau. Bone Daddy.

The air in the apartment grew warm and heavy, her skin tingling with sensitivity. Sexual frustration, she recognized. Thankfully it was something she could easily fix.

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