“I’m going in,” I said. “I’ll get the others out if I can. Just stay clear until I give the high sign.”
Sherrie didn’t seem to like the idea, but she nodded.
“Your funeral,” she said, and I stepped up to the shed door and knocked.
“Ex! Karen! It’s Jayne! We need to talk!”
I waited for a hail of gunfire, but all I got was a stream of invective from inside the shed. I heard men and women scattering in the thick, wet darkness and held myself steady. When the door swung open, the light was blinding.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Karen said, and for the first time I recognized the deepness and power in her voice as a rider. Carrefour was speaking through her, and the mask was beginning to slip.
“I need to talk to Ex,” I said.
“Jayne?” he said from within. He’d stopped his chanting, but Sabine’s keening cry didn’t falter.
“Hey,” I said. “Sorry for the shitty timing. But… I tried calling your cell phone.”
“I lost it,” he said.
My eyes were adjusting. Karen was more than a movement within the brightness, and Ex had come to her side. The shed was lit by four halogen work lamps, hissing and hot as a furnace, and the gloom around us seemed deeper by contrast. Ex looked exhausted. His skin had a gray undertone, and his hair hung in his eyes, limp and greasy. His clothes looked like he’d slept in them. He held a crucifix in one hand and a book bound in black leather in the other.
Karen, on the other hand, almost glowed. Her eyes were bright as a fever, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, with only one stray lock to soften her face. She was wearing what looked like military surplus gear-thick canvas pants and jacket over a ribbed white T-shirt. There was something inhuman in the way she held herself. Carrefour was so close to winning that it could taste the victory, only here I was interrupting the party. Once the young Legba was plucked out of Sabine’s body, Carrefour could turn on us all, but until then it had to keep the masquerade going.
I smiled as if I meant it and walked up like I assumed they’d let me pass. Karen almost held her ground, then with a growl like a dog ready to bite, she took a step back, and I went in.
The shed had seemed bigger when it was empty, but it was still a wide, high space. The halogen lamps burned in three corners, fed by bright-orange extension cords. A matte black shotgun lay against the wall like a presentiment of doom. The dirt floor was covered now with symbols in paint and earth like Amelie Glapion’s cornmeal veves. The designs seemed to move in my peripheral vision, and they filled me with a deep unease. In the center of the floor, a black iron ring stuck out of the newly poured concrete. Sabine was chained to it, bright steel links going to manacles at her wrists and a tight leather collar at the throat.
Her clothes, ripped and bloody, were the ones she’d worn at the ceremony, the ones I had seen her in only hours before. They were almost unrecognizable. Her eyes were puffy and closed, and she rocked back and forth on the ground, whispering to herself.
How had I ever believed this was a good idea?
“What’s going on,” Karen said. “Why are you here?”
“We got back this morning. I needed to see Ex,” I said.
“He doesn’t answer to you anymore,” Karen said, moving to him in a fair imitation of protectiveness. She took his hand, and he let her. The confusion in his expression hurt to see.
“You fired me,” he said, which wasn’t exactly the same as Karen’s statement.
“Yeah, I know. Look, could I just talk to you for a minute? Alone?” I gestured toward the door. If I could get him outside and out of the line of fire…
“No,” Karen said. “We’re in the middle of a ritual cleansing. Every minute we let it rest, the rider gets its control back over the girl. We have to get her free.”
I nodded and smiled as ingratiatingly as I could. It was a doomed effort, but I tried.
“It’ll only be-”
“What’s going on here?” Karen said. Her eyes swept the door and walls like she could see through them. “Where have you been? What do you want?”
“It’s okay,” Ex said. “I can handle this.”
She turned on him faster than a human could, a hand pressed to his sternum.
“Don’t you fucking move,” she said. “Something’s wrong here. Are you alone? Did you bring someone here?”
“Aubrey and Chogyi Jake are outside,” I said, nodding to the door. Karen lifted her head, sniffing the air like an animal. Ex stepped back from her, crossing his arms and frowning.
“I’d love to talk,” he said, “but I can’t.”
Sabine’s litany trailed away into a low keening. She looked up, her eyes no more than slits, as if she was seeing me for the first time.
“Jayne?” she said.
The silence that followed was like a thunderclap. The fear tasted like pennies and tinfoil.
“How,” Karen said, her voice low and dangerous, “does it know your name?”
“You’ve got the wrong rider,” I said. “Ex, get outside now.”
Before he could move, Karen dove, scooped up the shotgun, and whirled. The barrel was pointing at my head, and it was big as a tunnel. And then Ex was between us, shielding me with his body.
“Karen!” Ex shouted. “Stop it! What are you-”
“She’s with them,” Karen said. “She’s been taken over by them. Don’t you get it?”
Ex looked at me, fear and pain in his eyes, and I knew he thought it was true. He had walked away from me, and I had gone and gotten myself possessed by a rider, and it was his fault for not protecting me. Months of living in close quarters made every nuance of his expression legible as a book, and I felt a surge of desperate impatience with him.
“Ex, you need to get out of here right now,” I said. “Karen lied to us. She’s possessed. She has been from the beginning. It’s called Carrefour, and it’s the exiled rider. The thing in Sabine never left New Orleans.”
“But the girl’s possessed,” Ex said. “I know she is.”
“Yeah, that’s true. But it’s not as bad as you think.”
“Move aside, Ex,” Karen said. “She used to be Jayne, but she’s the enemy now.”
“I can save her,” Ex said. “I got the thing out of Aubrey, I can get it out of her too.”
He believed her. He thought I had a rider. Karen chambered a round, and Sabine screamed. I tried to step around Ex, but he shifted, staying between me and the gun. Some flying insect found its way into the furnace flame of the lamps and popped as it died.
“You can’t kill her,” Ex said.
“Oh,” Mfume said from the doorway, “I think she can. The beast within her is quite capable of murder.”
Karen turned, her face going pale as bone. Mfume didn’t flinch when the shotgun pointed at him; he raised his chin in defiance. I had never been so glad to see someone ignore my instructions.
“You can fight it, Karen,” he said. “I believe in you. I know that you can fight it.”
The blast of the shotgun was deafening. One of the halogen lamps burst in long, streaming flames. The doorway where Mfume had been was empty, and I couldn’t tell if he’d dodged the blast or been knocked back by it.
Karen screamed, a sound filled with rage and violence and joy. And like I had turned a switch, my body moved into action. I pushed Ex out of the way gently as lowering a baby into a crib, then hammered out one leg into the shotgun. Karen staggered back, trying to turn the gun toward me, and I kicked it again. I felt the mechanism buckle under my foot, and Karen slammed into the wall like a cannon shot, the wall actually cracking like something out of a cartoon.
Surprise widened her eyes, but only for a moment. Karen launched herself off the wall, swinging for me. I spun back as Ex tried again to put himself between us. Karen’s open hand drove into my side, and I felt the snap of my weakened rib even before I felt the pain. I landed hard on my ass at Sabine’s side. Ex was yelling something about being reasonable; Sabine was shouting desperately for Legba. Karen and I might almost have been alone in the room.
Her eyes were hard as marble, the little smile at the corner of her mouth ticked up a degree. Pale hair framed her face and made her beautiful. I knew that beside her, I must look like a drowned rat-fogsoaked shirt and jeans, black hair sticking to me like ivy on bricks. I had a hand pressed to my broken ribs. Every breath hurt like a bitch.
“You can’t have them,” I said, not knowing quite what I meant by it, but absolutely clear on my sincerity.
Karen snarled and brought her foot down hard. She was aiming for my knee, but only scraped along my shin as I rolled. Another blow landed on my shoulder, shaking my balance but not badly enough to keep me from regaining my feet. I was going to lose. I was hurt and comparatively weak, and Karen had years of training and a supernatural serial killer. I faced across the narrow space, and I knew that I had no chance standing against her alone.
I also knew there were thirty plus people just outside the shed. I hadn’t managed to talk Ex out to safety. I hadn’t managed to get Sabine free.
But I had gotten Karen’s undivided attention, and that was going to be enough. I bolted for the door.
The air outside was cool, the fog thicker than when I’d gone in. The house glowed, twenty feet away, and distant as a vision of elfland. I ducked by instinct and something whizzed past my head to thud against the wall. I skidded to a halt, the grass slick under my feet, and dropped to one knee. My side was on fire, my breath short. I was pretty sure nothing had punctured a lung but I wouldn’t have put a lot of money on it.
After the brightness of the halogen lamps, the world was a tissue of shadows and mist. Karen roared out from the lit doorway, murder in her voice, and three dark forms tackled her. She went down, twisting like a cat. I heard a soft impact, and one of the bodies rolled free as two more piled on. Someone shouted, and a volley of answering calls came from the distant trees. My little army charged.
Ex appeared framed in the light, his crucifix held loosely in his hand, his mouth open in confusion. Chogyi Jake stepped out of the shadows, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t kill her!” Mfume called out as the cultists of Legba descended on Karen. His voice was strained, but not weak. “Hold her down, but do not kill the horse!”
They piled on her like a football team, and Karen, screaming, went down under the sheer weight of bodies. I let myself sag a little. I’d gotten a cut on my neck, but
