Page 8

A n earthquake snapped me out of a dead sleep, and I clutched the headboard like that might protect me from the rattling thumps jostling my bones. As my vision cleared and I spotted the cause of my shakes, I asked myself for the umpteenth time if it was too late to become an only child.

Then the reality of my situation, what had brought me to New Orleans, sank in, leaving me tasting ash.

“Rise and shine.” Josie bounced up and down at the foot of my bed. “You’ve got to see this.”

“See what?” I released my death grip on the headboard. “What time is it?”

“Come on.” She tossed me a pair of wrinkled jeans. “Move it.”

I missed the leg hole on my first try, and it was a near thing on the second, but I got it in three. As much as I wanted to know what had put a bounce in her step this morning, in light of everything, I couldn’t shake a sense of unease that whatever had her in such high spirits couldn’t be good.

Before I could pull on a bra, brush my teeth, or comb my hair, she yanked me stumbling into the hall.

“Is that safe?” Rollo’s voice rang out from the living room. “Are we sure that’s safe?”

“It’s a baby.” Pascal, still in Matty’s body, sounded delighted. “What harm could it do?”

“You ain’t got much sense, do you?” Jean-Claude clucked his tongue. “You see them teeth?”

“Oh, God.” I lengthened my strides until I rushed past Josie. “None of that sounds good.”

We stumbled into the living room to find everyone already there.

“What’s going on?” I checked the time. “It’s four in the afternoon.”

“I have a new host,” Anunit announced from nearby. “Perhaps this one will be more to your liking.”

There was no sign of Harrow, which I took to mean he was in a bedroom recovering from his possession. I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. Maybe I could let Josie do the honors? She would love the horror sure to splash across his face when he woke in New Orleans with no memory of how he got here.

“I’m afraid to look.” I sought out Kierce, who was the center of attention. “You found a host that fast?”

“A willing one.” His expression turned thoughtful. “More or less.”

That was the type of logic that led Anunit to believe she could borrow Harrow.

“Your man is as crazy as you, maringouin .” Rollo recoiled from Kierce’s general vicinity. “Who in their right mind sticks a dead god in the body of a…whatever the hell that is?”

One of the big touristy items on sale most anywhere in Louisiana were alligators. Parts of them, anyway. Taxidermized, I guess you would call them. Most with the dark, bumpy skin left intact. Feet glued on the end of a stick as a backscratcher or claws strung on a keychain. Leathery heads were popular. Bare skulls too. But this…

I understood why Rollo couldn’t put a name to it despite knowing it had started out life as a gator.

This was my first time seeing a preserved hatchling. The miniature cowgirl hat was an interesting choice to complement the baby pink feather boa wrapping its neck. The bedazzled bikini top was eye-catching and drew attention to the small tiara glued to the front of the hat. Its matching chaps were held in place by a rhinestone belt. A scaled-down cigarette stuck between its teeth finished the look.

“I was searching for options when a man approached me with several of these.” Kierce held his selection out to me, clearly proud. “Since it was alive at one point, I hazarded a guess Anunit could reanimate it.”

“And since it was already dead, there was no pesky soul to shuffle aside to give her an avatar.” As soon as I held out my hand, Anunit leapt onto my palm, ran up my arm, and sat on my shoulder, the feathers of her boa tickling the side of my neck. “Well? What do you think? Will this work for you?”

“I like this body’s teeth.” She snapped her jaws, and the cigarette tumbled out. “I can manage.”

“ I’m glad that’s settled.” I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye and spotted Badb hiding in the jackets hung on a vintage coatrack in the corner and asked Kierce, “Can Badb handle this arrangement?”

“Anunit chased her around the living room for a solid five minutes.” Josie flapped her hands. “That gator can move .”

“Poor Badb.” I flicked the brim of Anunit’s hat, but it didn’t budge. “Don’t torment the crow.”

“She is plump and slow.” Her reptilian skin brushed against my throat. “I could not help myself.”

Fear forgotten, Badb burst out with an ear-splitting caw and flew at my face—no, at Anunit.

Apparently, even though the others couldn’t comprehend her speech in this form, the crow understood Anunit just fine.

“She says she’s the ideal weight for a crow of her height,” Kierce translated for the rest of us, “and she is faster than the pathetic excuse for—” He shut his mouth. “The rest is difficult to translate.”

“You’re a terrible liar.” I swatted at Badb, whose claws passed dangerously close to my eye. “Please, call off your attack crow.”

“Come with me, cher .” Jean-Claude held out his arm to Badb. “Let’s get you some of that bread pudding you like.”

Certain Anunit was about to zing Badb about Jean-Claude fattening her for the kill, I set her on the floor before she got me flogged. Call me a chicken, but I didn’t want to lose an eye from their petty squabble.

Quick as a blink, Anunit scurried out of the room and down the hall. I was too glad for the ensuing quiet to call out and ask for her plans. I would probably sleep better not knowing them.

“We’re all awake,” Rollo grumbled, “we might as well seize the day, yeah?”

From the rumpled state of him, which I was just noticing, I was convinced he hadn’t been to bed yet.

And, recalling that I hadn’t seen him before I fell asleep, meant I had an unenviable task ahead of me.

Josie, stretching her arms over her head, nodded. “I’m game.”

“Might as well,” I agreed, and the four of us sat across from one another on the crushed velvet couches.

For the next half hour, Kierce and I updated Rollo on what we had seen and learned so far.

Minus one key discovery I couldn’t quite figure out how to word without sending him into a tizzy.

Buying myself time to woman up with the bad news, I fielded questions about why Harrow was sleeping in a guest room down the hall. Josie almost wet her pants recounting how Pascal told her Anunit had worn Harrow like a Halloween costume. That segued into Kierce filling in more details about how he aided Anunit in the transference of her essence into the hatchling, and its reanimation, leaving off with a quick update on Harrow’s current condition.

Jean-Claude returned for that part, reassuring us that Harrow was fine. Tired, but fine. He ought to be awake in a few hours, and then we could send him home. Hopefully without him pressing charges.

“Folks rise from the grave for parades all the time.” Rollo scratched his jaw. “That’s nothing new.”

“These souls are tethered to living bodies.” Kierce stared off in the direction of the kitchen. “We couldn’t touch them. We couldn’t affect them.” He angled his head like he did sometimes when Badb was communicating with him. “They have no idea who they are, as far as we could tell, except for Vi.”

“What do you mean except Vi ?” Rollo’s expression twisted. “What does he mean, maringouin ?”

So much for breaking the news gently. “You weren’t here?—”

“All of a sudden, you don’t know my number?” He shot to his feet. “What did you find?”

“We located Vi’s soul.” I stood too, uncomfortable with him looming over me. “She’s trapped in the Midnight Parade, the same as Matty. She’s still got some sense of self. Either because she hasn’t been there as long or because of her power. She’s used to astral projection. She’s spent a lot of time outside of her body. That might be the difference.” I held up my hands in a placating gesture. “She’s our top priority. She’s the only one lucid enough to help us figure out how to break the enchantment.”

“I don’t know how, but this is your fault.” He stabbed the air in my direction. “Yours and your man’s.”

Ah, yes. This was more like it. This felt normal. This I could handle.

For as long as I had known him, Rollo could only last for so long without blaming his woes on me before I worried his head would explode.

“Rollo, are you half parrot?” Josie squawked. “It’s Frankie’s fault. It’s Frankie’s fault. It’s Frankie’s fault.”

The impression ripped a snort out of me, but Rollo looked ready to spit nails.

A faint static sensation lifted the hairs down my arms, and I knew without checking that lightning arced in the palms of Kierce’s hands. I didn’t want this to get ugly, so I backed up and invited myself to sit in his lap. He was so shocked by the move, he lost his focus on Rollo—and his lightning—and fixated on me.

“I’ll take my share of the blame,” I said, accepting it was probably all my fault, “but Kierce has nothing to do with this.”

“The crazy didn’t start until he got here,” Rollo protested. “He brought these damn gods into our lives.”

“I have a divine parent, so, no. I brought these damn gods into your life. We just didn’t know it at the time.”

“Gods are everywhere.” Jean-Claude stood in the entryway to the kitchen. “All the time.” He cocked one bushy eyebrow at Rollo. “You’ve met Papa Legba how many times? He and other loa are in and out, and I never once heard you raise your voice to them, to disrespect them, the way you’re doing now.”

“That’s different,” Rollo gritted out. “Mamaw?—”

“—loves Frankie like a daughter.” Jean-Claude kept pressing on that sore spot. “I hate to tell you this, but it’s a damn fool thing you do tempting the wrath of a demigoddess. She might walk, talk, and look like the girl you grew up with, but she is a force of nature, and she has to be as tired of your shit as I am.”

Without another word, Rollo turned and left, but I knew better than to think I had heard the end of this.

A sharp jab in my thigh brought my attention to my chair of choice, and I cleared my throat. “I’ll just…”

But I didn’t get the chance to finish the thought as Kierce lifted me, readjusting his bony knee, then set me higher on his thighs. He looped his arms around my waist, securing me in place, and a flush crept up my throat into my cheeks for no good reason. Unless you counted how he was looking at me. Really looking at me. With the edge of hunger he had concealed from me since Matty…

And just like that, my lustful thoughts evaporated into thin air.

“We have eight hours until midnight.” Josie broke the awkward silence. “What do we do until then?”

Most of our contacts wouldn’t be awake until dusk, which didn’t leave us with many useful pursuits.

“We track down every person in the city whose symptoms match Matty and Vi’s, and we figure out what they have in common.” I puffed out my cheeks. “We need to pin down what, exactly, is happening to the victims, why it’s affecting a specific demographic, and who is responsible. What they stand to gain from it. Then we can work on reversing it.”

“Rollo has a list of folks we know from the Quarter who’ve been afflicted by this soul sickness. He’s been working on it since Vi took ill.” Jean-Claude ducked into Vi’s room and returned with a notebook Rollo must have left in there earlier. “These ones would rather die than go to a hospital.”

“This will help.” I read his notes on their condition. “He even marked their faction.”

Odds were good victims hadn’t been chosen based on their paranormal heritage, judging by the small sampling we had already, but more information was always better than less.

“He’s got a good head on his shoulders.” Jean-Claude clucked his tongue. “Most of the time.”

“I’ll start calling the hospitals, see if there are more cases outside the Quarter.” Josie climbed to her feet. “New Orleans has a large private hospital network for paras, so I’ll begin there then check to see if any got lost in the human medical system. We can cross-reference for matches after we get names and birthdates.”

From her tone, I could tell she wasn’t expecting much to come of it, but she was eager to contribute.

“I have patients to see.” Jean-Claude grinned when Badb sailed in from the kitchen, breadcrumbs stuck to her beak with sticky sweet bourbon sauce. She lit on his shoulder, and he scratched her head with a gnarled finger. “I’ll keep my eyes and ears open while I make my rounds.”

Folks were more likely to confide in him than the rest of us, given his profession and his deep ties to the community, making him the ideal candidate for canvassing the neighbors for any details the locals might have seen or heard. “That would be amazing.”

“Pascal can help me run through my calls,” Josie decided after the scope of her task sank in. “He’s good with people.”

With the work split between the two of them, we would have our answers that much faster. “Okay.”

That left Anunit, who hadn’t returned since sprinting from the room earlier, unaccounted for.

As much as I wished I could skip her and lower my stress threshold, I had to locate her for my own peace of mind. I was about to wriggle off Kierce’s lap, which could have been all kinds of interesting under different circumstances, when a distant yelp shot us all to our feet.

“Harrow?” I scrambled toward the noise. “Harrow?”

“Frankie?” He appeared in the open doorway of a guest room, his eyes wide and red-rimmed. “What the hell?”

“It’s a long story.” I cringed at the explanation about to tumble out. “Maybe sit first?”

“Fuck no.” He shuddered from head to toe. “There was something in bed with me.”

Striding past us, Kierce entered the bedroom, gripped the edge of the comforter, and yanked it off.

There, next to the pillow, sprawled Anunit with her little hat knocked askew.

“That…” Harrow scooted closer to me and away from her, “…is an alligator.”

“Yes and no.” I stomped over to the mattress and spoke out loud. “What are you doing in here?”

“I miss that body. It was warm.”

Translating for her was a mistake. I realized that the second the words passed my lips.

“What does she mean she misses that body ? Me? She misses me ? Why? I’ve never seen that thing in my life.” As if his situation had just registered, he froze on the threshold. “Where am I?” He swung his head toward me. “What the hell is going on?”

For Harrow’s sake, I hoped Jean-Claude had some bourbon left.

The truth of what happened to him wasn’t the kind of story anyone believed sober.