forehead to mine. Something seemed to pass between us-not magic, not spirit, but understanding. And grief.
“Go,” the rider said. “I will clear your way.”
And the world stopped.
Silence rushed in where the roar of flames had been. The roiling smoke stilled. Amelie Glapion’s body nodded toward the front room, and I rose. The air seemed to tingle, but the heat wasn’t unbearable. I walked toward the front room and its ongoing conflagration. Bright flames hung in the air, still as stone but glowing. I brushed one with my hand like I was petting a cat, and it felt like velvet.
The street came more clearly into view with each step. The blackened shell of a car lay on its side in the middle of the pavement. Men and women were crowded on the sidewalk across the street, and down far enough that the heat of the flames was bearable. Two policemen stood like temple guards, keeping the crowd back.
I wondered how long it had taken-five minutes? ten?-to go from the sense of power and freedom and safety of Legba’s ward-breaking dance to this. I caught a glimpse of Aubrey near one clump of people, his arm raised to shield his eyes. He didn’t react as I came near, not even to breathe.
I turned back toward the fire.
“Okay,” I said, my voice no louder than a conversation between friends. “Thanks. I’m clear now.”
A breath later, the world turned back on. The roar of the fire, the distant sirens, the assaulting smell of burning wood and spent explosives. I felt a tug at the back of my mind, like a kid yanking on her mother’s sleeve, and I knew that Legba- the Legba that had lived in Amelie Glapion-was gone. Aubrey shifted to the side, squinting into the fire.
“Hey,” I said.
He yelped, whirled, and then scooped me up in a bear hug that made me yelp right back.
“Ribs! Watch the ribs!”
“Right,” he said. “Sorry. But you’re out. You got out. Daria, she collapsed. I mean, I think she’s okay now, but I had to carry her out. I saw you going after Amelie, and then I didn’t see you go past, so I thought you were still… I thought…”
“Guess that was kind of dangerous,” I said. I felt disconnected. Like the world was still at one remove, and I was still moving through the crossroads. “I didn’t really think about it.”
“What about Amelie?”
“She didn’t make it,” I said. “She’s gone.”
Aubrey didn’t answer. At the far end of the street, a fire truck arrived, its lights flashing and its siren clearing the path of onlookers. Another police cruiser was behind it, then two, then five and an ambulance. The city of New Orleans had arrived at the crisis. They were on it. I crossed my arms and watched, unable to offer anything but moral support. Slowly, like I was waking from a dream, human concerns started to occur to me.
“Chogyi Jake,” I said. “He was…”
“He’s down there with the others.”
I looked where he pointed. Down the block, a small cluster of people had set up a kind of ad-hoc relief station. Two people lay on the sidewalk, three others standing or squatting beside them. Chogyi Jake was sitting on the curb, someone’s jacket wrapping his hips. Daria Glapion stood beside him looking back at us. Even from half a block down, the fire reflected in her eyes.
“Come on,” I said.
The police, reinforced by the newly arrived squad cars, pushed the crowd further back and the firefighters rushed in. Chogyi Jake looked up at me and smiled wearily.
“Not the evening we had in mind,” he said.
“No joke,” I said and sat down beside the girl.
Daria didn’t turn toward me. Her eyes were fixed on the pyre, tears flowing down her stark, impassive cheeks. I sat with her in silence for a minute. The firefighters pulled a long hose that looked like canvas up to the fire. With shouts and hand signals, the water started, spraying out into the flames. The smoke thickened.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
The little girl nodded.
“I would have saved her if I could,” I said. “But your grandmother was already gone when I got to her.”
“I know,” Daria said.
The matter-of-fact tone of voice together with the pain in her eyes, the bravery of her composure, was heartbreaking. I wanted to put my arm around the girl, to scoop her up and hold her and let her cry, but her dignity seemed to forbid it. Here was a child not even in high school. She had seen her city assaulted, had lost her mother, her brother, now her grandmother, and all she had left in the world was a sister who…
A sister.
“Where’s Sabine?” I said, my voice sharper than I intended. “Who’s got Sabine?”
“I couldn’t find her,” Aubrey said, shaking his head. “She was already gone.”
Chogyi Jake and Daria turned to me in silence.
“Well, fuck,” I said.
“SHE MAY be with Mfume. Or Inonde, wherever he is,” Aubrey said. “We don’t know for certain that Karen got her.”
I’d rented us a room in the same hotel we’d stayed at when we had first come to New Orleans. Chogyi Jake was in the bathroom, showering off the last of the voodoo markings from his skin. Daria was sitting on the crisp, white linen sheets looking out the open French doors to the patio and the darkened courtyard beyond it. Aubrey couldn’t stop moving, pacing, rapping his knuckles on the walls and tables as he passed them, and I was sitting in a deep, cream-colored oversized chair. My hair smelled like smoke.
“I don’t think we can assume she got away,” I said. “If she’s not with us, we have to act like Karen got her. Hoping for the best isn’t really an option here.”
“Call him again,” Aubrey said. “Maybe he’ll be there.”
I didn’t fight him on it, but I didn’t expect anything to come of it. I dug through my pack, pulled out the cell phone, and pulled Ex’s entry out of the contacts list. As I listened to the phone ring, the shower water stopped. By the time Ex’s recorded voice said he was away from his phone and to leave a message, Chogyi Jake stepped out of the bathroom wearing a fresh pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt.
“Any word?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“Okay,” Aubrey said. “Let’s take stock here. We don’t know where Sabine is-”
“So we have to assume Karen’s taken her,” I said.
“Right,” Aubrey said. “So Karen’s taken her. Mfume and Inonde are MIA. Ex isn’t answering his phone.”
“Does she know we broke the wards?” I asked. Chogyi Jake’s brow furrowed for a moment.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If she didn’t specifically check, she might not. And unless she’s been listening to the message we left for Ex, she may not know we’ve come back at all.”
“Oh, I never told him we were coming back,” I said. “I never told him Karen was possessed. I just said he should call us.”
“In that case,” Chogyi Jake said, sitting on the bed beside Daria, “I can’t see how she’d know we’re here.”
“Okay, so we’ve got something in the plus column,” I said. “What else?”
“We probably know where she is,” Aubrey said. “And if we can find Mfume, we can be sure.”
“If her intention is to pull the rider out of Sabine, that will take Ex some time,” Chogyi Jake said. “Two hours. Perhaps three.”
“Giving us maybe an hour to figure out whatever we’re doing, and then do it,” I said. “I don’t think we’re in the plus column anymore, guys.”
The sense of despair was seeping in at the sides like ink soaking a sheet of paper. The last time I’d faced Carrefour, it had almost killed me and I still hadn’t recovered. Aubrey had been on the edge of freaking at least twice already, not to mention his wounds from exorcising Marinette. Chogyi Jake had been the focus of a ceremony already. We were tired, and we were hurt, and we were going to go to the safe house and confront Karen Black and the thing inside her. I didn’t like our chances.
Daria shifted. She looked empty. Shell-shocked.
“Hey,” I said gently. She turned to me. “How’re you holding up, kiddo?”
“You can’t take it on,” she said. “You should call for help.”
“I would,” I said with a sense of growing loneliness. “I don’t have anyone to call.”
Daria’s expression became quizzical.
“I do. I’ve got lots of people,” she said and started ticking off fingers with each name. “Aunt Corrie and Uncle Bo. Aunt Sherrie. BP and Omar.”
“Wait, who?” I said.
“Legba’s community,” Chogyi Jake said, his voice chagrined. “The ones that aren’t being treated for smoke inhalation.”
“They’re going to know what happened by now,” Daria said. “Somebody would have called somebody as soon as they got out from the fire. They’re probably just trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“How many people were in your grandma’s… group?” I asked.
“A hundred,” Daria said without pausing. “It’s always a hundred. Ten tens give it power and strength. Grandma said we needed that.”
“And you can get ahold of them?”
Daria held out her hand. She couldn’t have been more than twelve, and I had the feeling she was more in control of the situation than I was. I gave her the phone. Her small fingers traced a number. I heard the distant ringing as she held the phone to her ear. Then a click, and a woman’s voice.
“Auntie Sherrie? I’m with someone you need to talk to. She’s going to help Sabine, so be gentle with her, okay?”
Without waiting for a reply, Daria held out the telephone. Her expression was eerily mature and more than a little pitying.
“You
I put the phone to my ear.
“Hi,” I said.
