Chapter 1

Thirteen hours prior

Kahllah sat at her desk, reading over her story for the fifth time. She had been working on it for weeks to make sure it read cleanly when it was published in Real Talk.

Real Talk was her dream, a magazine geared toward urban and working-class people. It was fast becoming one of the hottest magazines on the stands, but it had originally been little more than a blog started by two college girls, Kahllah and her best friend Audrey. The blog had gotten so big around campus that the two girls, years later, decided to test it in print. With Kahllah’s savings, they ran off five thousand copies and took their show on the road, pitching to every independent retailer they could reach in Kahllah’s beat-up Honda. Just a couple years after their first road trip, the magazine was now carried by over one hundred retailers in several states, and boasted an impressive online readership. Not bad for two orphans.

When the letters on her computer screen started dancing around, Kahllah knew it was time to take a break. She stood up and stretched her five-nine frame, trying to relieve the stiffness in her back. She flinched as she felt the tenderness in her shoulder. Instinctively her hand went to the spot, fingers tracing the raised scar beneath her shirt. Had the bullet struck her three inches higher, it would’ve likely taken her head off. The shooting had happened six months ago, but the incident remained fresh in her mind.

She ran her fingers through her jet-black hair and rubbed her scalp, feeling the resistance of tangles. It had been awhile since she treated herself to more than a wash and set. Kahllah rarely bothered with primping. Unlike Audrey, who refused to leave the house without at least a light face beat, Kahllah was simple. A little lip gloss and a ponytail and she was ready to tackle the world.

Kahllah possessed a natural beauty—bronzed skin and an angelic face. Her eyes always danced between butterscotch brown and a dull hazel. Guessing her ethnicity was nearly impossible. Some mistook her for an Arab, others saw a touch of Caribbean in her. She’d been born in a small Middle Eastern village that sat on the edge of a city so ravaged by war that she doubted it still existed. Not that she cared either way. Her native land held nothing for her but the horrible memories of what she once was.

While most American children were fortunate enough to have childhoods, even those born to less than favorable conditions, Kahllah had no idea what it was like to be a kid. She lost her mother at six and her father at nine. Before her eleventh birthday, she was the property of slavers and placed on loan to whoever had enough coin to purchase a night with her. When she thought life couldn’t get any worse, she was sold to a wealthy Nigerian man. He was as rich as he was evil, and subjected Kahllah to atrocities far worse than anything she had endured previously. Those were dark years. Often she prayed for death to take her away. Then came the night when God finally answered; the Nigerian was murdered.

Kahllah slid her desk drawer open, in search of her planner. She had quite a few things to do today, including lunch with Audrey. She found the leather-bound booklet under a stack of mail that she had yet to open. They were mostly bills that she’d get around to later. But she noticed something else tucked into the drawer: a copy of the Village Voice. She was sure it hadn’t been there when she left last night, which meant someone had come in. It appeared locking her office door each night wasn’t enough.

Her first instinct was to toss the weekly newspaper and be done with it. She already knew what would be inside—the same thing that had been inside the last two that had turned up. One in her locker at the gym where she worked out, the other in the bathroom of the shop where she enjoyed her morning coffee. She wasn’t sure if it was out of curiosity or habit that she flipped through the pages. Her finger surfed the classifieds, skipping through the white noise. She was looking for something in particular.

It didn’t take long to find it. The headline had been carefully placed among the advertisements of people seeking companionship. “Must Love Flowers.” To the casual reader it was no different from the other queries from desperate souls looking for discreet encounters. Kahllah knew better. The headline was a coded message. Someone was trying to contract the Black Lotus.

A soft knock at her door startled Kahllah. She shoved the newspaper under a stack of folders and straightened. She hoped it wasn’t their editor, Mrs. Jones, pestering her about the story again. She had a lot of love for the woman, but she could be a pain in the ass. Mrs. Jones was incredibly old-fashioned in her thinking, but had a very keen eye, which was why they hired her. Before coming to work at Real Talk, she had spent twenty years as an English professor at Rutgers University.

“Come in,” Kahllah said, a little annoyed. The door creaked open, and Kahllah relaxed her defenses when it was Woody who walked in.

Woody was one of the young neighborhood men she provided with work. When she and Audrey had first met him, he was an around-the-way knucklehead who lived in one of the neighboring buildings. You could usually find Woody posted on the corner, trying to rap to girls and hustling twenty-dollar bags of weed. He’d attempted to push up on Audrey once, but she hadn’t given him the time of day. This was fortunate for Woody; his flesh was too tender for her fangs. He was a nice enough young man, but he couldn’t seem to keep out of trouble. Kahllah had gotten wind that his probation officer was planning to hit him with a violation if he didn’t land some sort of steady employment, so she stepped in and offered him a job. It didn’t pay much, but it kept him from getting sent back to jail, so he was grateful.

“’Sup, baby girl?” Woody greeted as he strode into Kahllah’s office. He rubbed his hands down over his fade, trying to look sexy. He was young, broke, and thin as a rail, but you couldn’t tell him he wasn’t God’s gift to women.

“I’m kind of busy, Woody. What do you need?”

“It ain’t about what I need. It’s about what you need.”

“Woody, I can’t think of anything I might need from you.”

“C’mon, baby. Stop acting like that, smelling all good and shit.” He sniffed the air around her. “What kind of perfume is that?”

“Jasmine,” she answered, the same as she had at least five times since he’d started working there. Kahllah had never been into perfume, but jasmine was a favorite scent of hers. Something about it brought her peace. She made it herself from the plants she grew in her greenhouse. Botany was something she’d studied since she was a little girl, and she had a working knowledge of hundreds of species of plants and their properties. Extracting different fragrances and selling them to tourists as perfume was how she’d fed herself in her early years of bondage.

“Well, it smells like a snack to me.” Woody licked his lips.

“Woody, your young ass needs to quit. It ain’t gonna happen.”

“Why you be trying to play me? You act like you’re crazy old. You only got me by like five years, if that. The important thing is that we’re both grown, right?”

“Woody,” she said, bumping him off the desk, “just because you smell grown, doesn’t mean that you are. Now, what do you want?”

“Okay, I can take a hint. I was about to go to lunch and I wanted to know if you needed anything.”

“I’m fine, thanks. But could you run this to Edna for me?” She popped a flash drive from her computer and handed it to him. “I need it proofed and uploaded to our site ASAP.”

“New story?”

“Yeah. It’s the interview I did with Jerome Yates.”

“Ain’t that the cat that killed all those people?”

“Allegedly,” she corrected. “He’s still fighting the case.”

Everyone knew the story of Jerome Yates. He was arrested in connection with a shooting at a basketball tournament that left five people dead and at least a half dozen injured. The details of what went down were sketchy, but the police claimed to have his prints on the gun and a witness who placed him at the scene. To this day he proclaimed his innocence, but nobody would listen, except for Kahllah. She knew the real shooter was already dead, yet the problem she faced was proving Jerome’s innocence without incriminating herself.

“He did it,” Woody said matter-of-factly. “You can tell by looking at that crazy muthafucka.”

“Woody, you can’t judge people based on appearances.”

“Bullshit, Kahllah. When the police found him, he was living in his mother’s basement, collecting snuff porn. That shit screams serial killer to me.”

“So, those are the facts your argument is based on?”

“Damn right!”

“Woody, if I recall correctly, you still live with your mother. And I’d be willing to bet a month’s salary that you own a porno or three.”

“Man, I don’t need no funky movies or books, I gets mine. A real player knows what to do with a woman.”

“Is that right?” She moved closer to Woody. “So, what would you do with me?” Her breath brushed across Woody’s neck.

“I . . . I’d make you cum like you never did.”

She stroked his cheek gently and smiled. “Woody, baby, if you go outside like that, the police might arrest you.”

He glanced down and noticed the bulge in his pants, then turned his eyes away in embarrassment. “You ain’t right, Kahllah!”

“And neither are you. Now go and do what I asked.” She laughed as he slunk from her office.

Kahllah waited until Woody had gone before retrieving the copy of the Village Voice from beneath the folders. She gave it one last hard look before tossing it in the trash. Whoever the client was could find somebody else to do their dirty work. Her days of dealing in blood money were over.