“Excuse me?”
She hung her head, avoiding my eyes. “You should go now.”
“Felicity…”
“No,” she choked. “Go. Please.”
It took a pair of minutes before I could bring myself to rise from the chair. Felicity still hadn’t lifted her head, and it became obvious that she was done with the visit. No amount of pleading was going to bring her back into the conversation, not right now anyway. Her stubbornness would see to that.
I was worried, angry, hurt, and confused all at once, but there was nothing more I could do here. I just kept telling myself that she was safe and that Helen would take care of her. Maybe tomorrow she would be ready to talk again.
I leaned forward and kissed her on top of her head.
“I love you Felicity Caitlin O’Brien,” I whispered, lingering for several heartbeats before turning and walking to the door.
It took a moment before the attendant answered my knock and unbolted the barrier. On my way out I paused, looking back toward my wife. She had drawn her legs back up and was sitting again, just as I had found her when I walked in, although this time she was no longer watching the window.
“Dammit, Helen, she thinks she’s insane!” I almost spat the comment across the desk. My pain and confusion had given way to anger before the elevator doors had ever closed. Now that I was standing in the office she kept at the hospital, it had begun to boil over.
“Rowan,” she replied calmly. “I told you that everything we had accomplished thus far was completely negated by the incident this morning.”
“But she thinks she’s insane!”
“She thought she was insane the day you admitted her,” she replied matter-of-factly. “She simply had not told you as much.”
My cell phone chirped again. My awareness of the tone had been drifting in and out, so I’d lost count of how many times it had reminded me to pick up my voice mail. I snatched it from my pocket, angrily stabbed some buttons to silence the annoyance, and then shoved it back into the darkness from whence it came.
“Well, there’s got to be something you can do,” I demanded.
“Yes, Rowan, there is. Continue her sessions and keep her safe and comfortable until you find the rogue spirit that is causing her this strife. Then, and only then, real healing can begin.”
“Dammit, Helen, this is fucked up.”
“Yes, it is.”
I rubbed my hand across the lower half of my face, pinching my cheeks together and pursing my lips as I contemplated the situation. Stubble had already begun to sprout around my goatee, and it made a soft swishing noise as it dragged against the ridges on my fingertips.
“I’m sorry,” I finally muttered.
“I understand, Rowan,” she replied. “And, apology accepted.”
We sat in silence for a long while. I could feel the ever-present throb in my head beating out a rhythm all its own. I’d grown used to it these days. Enough so that I pretty much ignored it unless it got worse.
“I guess I’d better go home,” I finally said.
“That would probably be a good idea,” Helen replied. “I would not normally do this, however, under the circumstances I am willing to make an exception. Would you like for me to prescribe something to help you sleep?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ll be fine.”
I hadn’t been in my truck for more than five minutes that my cell phone began to ring. I finished backing out of the space and levered the vehicle into drive before fishing around in my pocket for the device and pulling it out. Stabbing it on, I placed it against my ear, holding it tight as I swung my gaze left and right before pulling out of the parking lot.
“Rowan Gant,” I half-barked into the device. Right now I didn’t care who I alienated.
“Rowan, it’s Velvet,” a Southern drawl rolled into my ear. “Did you get my message?”
“No,” I returned, fighting to soften my tone.
“Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, actually. Felicity experienced another possession by the Lwa this morning,” I explained. “It wasn’t good.”
“Did anyone get hurt?” she asked, genuine concern in her voice. I had confided everything in her to date, so she was well aware of how bad things could get.
“Physically, no, but my wife is now convinced that she is insane.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks, but I don’t intend to let her travel that road for very long. But anyway, you said left a message? Tell me it’s good news.”
“Yes, I think it might be. I just might have found something.”
“If you did, I’ll put you on my goddamned altar as my personal Goddess.”
“Let’s not go that far just yet,” she replied. “I put some feelers out in the Vodoun community and started getting a few interesting calls. But, one that came in yesterday really stuck out, so I ran it down. There’s a tomb in New Orleans that has been having offerings placed on it on a fairly regular basis starting a few years ago. Not unusual in itself, but none of the locals were familiar with the ancestor, so that was curious. Still, not that big a deal, but then over the past year, they noticed that the activity had increased significantly.”
“Did this tomb survive Katrina?”
“Yes, it is in a part of the city that didn’t flood.”
“Has there been activity there since the disaster?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Okay, sounds promising. So, in your opinion do you think this might mean someone has made this ancestor a personal Lwa?”
“It’s possible, but let me finish because here’s the interesting thing. The tomb had been damaged at some point, so the name was only partially legible, but it started with an M and an I…”
“You’re getting damn close to a place on that altar, Velvet.”
She ignored the comment and rushed into an explanation. “Just to cover the bases, I went ahead and got the location for the tomb and had a friend with the Louisiana Division City Archives look into it for me. Listen to this. The remains interred in there are of one Miranda Blanque, date of death on or around September fourteenth, eighteen fifty-one.”
I felt the thud in my skull ramp up a notch then send a hard stab of pain lancing beneath my scalp. A wave of gooseflesh followed it as the hair along the back of my neck rose to attention. I knew then that this wasn’t a case of finding some thing.
This was the thing.
It was she.
“How does it feel?” I asked.
“How does what feel?”
“To be a Goddess,” I replied. “Because you just got a promotion.”
Wednesday, November 30
7:17 P.M.
Lambert Saint Louis International Airport
Concourse C, Gate C3
