23. You’ve Been Consorting with Them
It wasn’t until the next day that I dared to look next door. I was alone when I walked by the mansion after a morning at the food bank and noticed that candle burning and the window open wide. A bottle had been left on the sill and I knew it was for me. It made me queasy to be so near to that house after being chased out of it. Each time I felt myself falling for Lucian, something happened, a hiccup in our plans to leave me questioning him all over again. I couldn’t afford to be reckless, especially when it came to love. Had he set me up, stationing Wylie there to attack me? I wished that I could just walk on, leaving that bottle there and not giving another thought to what might be in it. But I just couldn’t. I reached in the open window to retrieve it and stuffed it in my bag. I knew what would happen when I opened it and I had no intention of doing that yet. I was due back at the library, which had just reopened after the grisly discovery of last week, but I called Connor asking for a reprieve in order to help Mariette with a project. That excuse wasn’t entirely true . . . yet. I headed off to Rampart Street.
I know you’ve been consorting with them,” Mariette said gently, the way girlfriends confront each other when one is truly concerned, as soon as I stepped into her shop. Her eyes fixed on me with an intensity that made me feel she had instantly read my entire soul.
“Not them, so much as him,” I clarified, guiltily.
Now, as she looked on, I shattered the glass bottle directly into a stone basin on the table of her altar room. She had covered it with a black velvet cloth that she said would help absorb some of his essence before the message and its vessel disintegrated. She read aloud from the note in my hands, as we sat opposite each other on a silk tapestry. It sounded even more mysterious in her hypnotic voice:
H—
Forgive me for last night. I was detained unexpectedly. If there had been any way for me to get back to the house, I promise I would have been there. I don’t have the freedom that I would like these days. I heard that Wylie was there, though, and that he encountered someone, but he didn’t see who. I can only imagine it was you there to meet me, and it sickens me to think I put you in danger.
I’m hoping we can try once more. We should wait a few days. I want to be sure we won’t have any uninvited guests again. Wednesday, midnight. I should be able to slip away then without a problem. The door will be unlocked, but, to be safe, don’t come until you’ve seen me signal you with the light. I don’t ever want you in that house unless I’m there.
Yours,
L
I dropped the note as soon as it began to spark and Mariette quickly folded up the velvet, smothering the flame.
A dish of red dust sat between us on the tabletop. She dipped her long fingers into it, extracting just a pinch, and sprinkled it into the velvet, closing it up again, and onto her palm. She rubbed her hands together and held them out to me, wordlessly asking me to give her mine. I did and she closed her eyes. Holding my hands in hers, she sat perfectly still for a few long seconds, then opened those piercing eyes and speared me with that look once again.
“You think he can help you?” she asked, finally.
“My gut tells me he’s trying to help me rather than hurt me, but I just don’t know.” As I said it, I hoped I didn’t sound as naïve as I felt right now, with this wise woman staring me down. “I know that may not sound so convincing but—” She pulled her hands away for a moment, holding them up to stop me.
“Your markings . . . what do they tell you? Tell me honestly.”
“My scars?” I thought about it now, taking stock of every interaction in the past several weeks. “I don’t know, some mixed messages, I suppose. There was one time I was reading one of his notes at the cemetery and got a sharp twinge, but it’s not always that way.” Then I thought some more and it dawned on me: “But the one night I spent a lot of time with him, I felt nothing.” I meant, of course, that I had felt nothing from the scars, but in my heart? In the pit of my stomach? In every nerve ending? There I had felt a lot, but it seemed best to keep that to myself.
“Then let that be your guide,” Mariette said with a serene, assured air, surprising me.
“Really?” It seemed too easy.
“You know best your skin, your own radar. You are an illuminator, am I correct?”
“Yes.” I was proud to be able to say that, even if I wasn’t always so sure of my abilities.
“That is a strength to be reckoned with. Trust yourself. Your instincts are only growing sharper.”
“Okay . . . thanks.” Her words were reassuring.
She held up the black cloth now, the red powder gone. “This is clear for now. True evil would not have absorbed the dust. It would have shown its true colors, you see. But don’t become complacent,” she warned, her tone suddenly darkening. “It can change in the blink of an eye. We have to beware, and keep that at the back of our minds: they can win our trust and lose it again so quickly.” She spoke as if she knew this from experience. “Have you had much more interaction with the others?” she asked. “The Krewe?”
“I’m worried that a friend of mine has already fallen in with them and another of our housemates has definitely become one of them.” At this, she hung her head, as though grieving at the news. “I watched their gathering at the cemetery a few nights ago. It looked like some sort of voodoo ritual.”
“I’m afraid I do know a bit about their rituals,” she said with gravity. “But that isn’t what voodoo is about. Voodoo can heal. My great-great-great-grandmother Marie Laveau was a nurse, you know. She saved so many who would have died of yellow fever. And others who would have died a spiritual death. What those creatures practice is not our voodoo. That is the devil’s work. You must be careful if you happen upon such an event again.”
“So that was a regular sort of thing?”
“When they take a vaunted soul, for instance, one of yours, an angel’s soul, they rejoice.”
This landed like a lead weight in my heart. She continued. “But when you are immersed in extreme evil like this, you can fight this cancer from within.”
“But . . . how?”
“With your will for good. With your essence. It’s that simple. Each of you angels has the ability to fight off an attack from these creatures, but it requires a tremendous strength of the spirit. A commitment to the role that’s been thrust upon you. It’s not something that can necessarily be taught.”
“So are you one of us then?”
“I’m not. I’m just a guide. Dante is my first charge. But if you and he survive, then he will be my greatest accomplishment. The two of you, your fates are linked. He’s destined to be much more powerful than I could ever dream of being. It’s an honor for me to teach him.”
As if on cue, a knock came at the door.
“Come, Dante,” she called. My eyes bulged. He wasn’t supposed to be here today.
He entered holding a golden tray of three thimble-size vessels, each bearing a different powder, a tiny flask of azure liquid, a translucent pouch large enough to hold no more than a single marble, and a silver plate.
“Haven?”
“She came for guidance.”
One by one, he set the items on the table and took a couple steps back, pausing for further instruction, as though he were a waiter. Mariette looked at these items and then over to Dante.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked him with a bright smile.
“Who, me?” he blurted out, caught off-guard.
“Who else?” She moved aside to make room for him behind the table. He took her place, sitting on his knees and looking tentative, like he would rather be standing in the corner again.
“But this is a big one,” he whispered, as though not wanting me to know this was important and he didn’t want to be the one to foul it up. “Are you sure?”
“We have to begin testing you, Dante. Otherwise we’ll never know if you’re prepared for the challenges you and your friends are going
to face.” She nudged him. “So, go on now.”
He looked at me quickly, almost apologetically, then flexed his fingers. Carefully, he tapped out a dash of each of the powders—white, yellow, brick red—into the silver dish and stirred them together with what looked like a chopstick. He whispered a few unintelligible words. Then, with a trembling hand, he let a single drop fall from the flask. The mixture flared, igniting the dish for a second. I jumped on reflex. But it burned out immediately, leaving the powder mixture just as it had looked before, not the least bit charred, nor with a hint of ash. He poured the mixture into the bag, tied it up with a piece of silky string, placed it on the table, and looked to Mariette.
“That was perfect,” she praised him. “What should she do with it?”
Dante looked at me solemnly. “So this,” he said, holding up the small bag, “is for you. Or, I guess, it’s more for Sabine.” I took it from him. It felt warm in my hands, perhaps from the fire. “Can you take an item of hers, like a T-shirt or something that we can keep and cut up?”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Good,” Mariette said. “Put it in a bag and pour this onto it and shake it around. Let it sit. Dante will bring it back tomorrow.”
“What exactly will this do?”
“With any hope, it will break the hold they have on her. Disrupt the spell strongly enough to send her back into the light, away from them,” said Mariette.
“There’s a chance it won’t work,” Dante said, defeated.
She rested her hand on his arm to comfort him. “If that’s the case, it’s likely that they have her too tightly in their grip. It won’t necessarily be a fault of your skills,” she said to him. “Doubting yourself will do you no good.” She turned back to me. “We’ll look forward to receiving that article. We will root out this evil together.”
Back at the house, I flipped through those photos again, finding everyone’s glow still intact, with the exception of Jimmy—who was, of course, going to remain in a grotesque state now. And Sabine. Hers had begun to dull, her eyes deadening, lesions forming, her skin taking on a sallow, leathery quality.
I climbed down, studying the closet. It didn’t even matter to me what garment I took. I just wanted this to work. I rummaged through her dresser, sorting through T-shirts and camisoles. But I stopped when I found something more interesting: a picture of her and what looked like her parents and a boy—she had never mentioned a brother, so I imagined this had been a boyfriend. The foursome were all dressed up and seated around a table at a restaurant. The guy looked as movie star perfect as I would expect and the more I stared at the picture, the more I realized he resembled a preppier, less dangerous version of Wylie. He could’ve been Wylie’s little brother. Another picture had the same boy in formal attire with his arms around Sabine, who wore a satin evening gown. He planted an adoring kiss on her cheek. It had to have been prom or maybe homecoming; they both wore crowns. He looked so much like Wylie, no wonder she hadn’t been able to stay away from him. I sorted through the drawer again, hoping for more photos, but found none. Instead, I grabbed a black tank top. I found a plastic convenience store bag under my bed, placed the shirt inside, and emptied Dante’s mixture into it. After I tied it up, I shook it over and over again.
A knock came at the door. I felt like I’d been caught. I shoved the bag inside my backpack, hoping it would somehow work its mysterious magic, and opened up to find Emma in the hallway.
“Sabine isn’t here, is she?” she asked. I shook my head no. “She texted me to meet her tonight,” she said, fear shading her voice. “Corner of St. Peter, near that bar, where we first met all those guys in the Krewe. Ten o’clock.”
“You can’t go,” I snapped.
“I know. I told Connor. Haven, what’s going on with her? What is she doing?”
I didn’t know, but I was determined to find out.
24. I’ve Been Flying
At ten o’clock, St. Peter Street was awash in excitement and drunken revelry. Midblock, a crowd swelled outside that bar, waiting to be granted access. Connor had drafted Lance to join me, not seeming to have noticed that things were a little rocky between us these days. We did a walk-by, slowly wandering past the bar as though we just happened to be out and deciding where to park ourselves for a carefree evening in the Quarter. Our eyes sized up the crowd in a flash. No. They weren’t here yet.
Looping back around, we reached that street corner again. This was technically the meeting place, and we needed a spot to be able to watch for them. So we ducked into a restaurant—an expensive one by the looks of the opulent white tablecloth–covered tables, white-gloved waitstaff, and dressed-up diners—and milled around in the empty entranceway, pretending to read a menu on display nearest the window overlooking the corner.
“Can I help you?” the hostess asked us, with a smile that was kind enough while still telegraphing her doubt that Lance and I, in our beat-up jeans, really belonged here.
We looked at each other. “I’m suddenly not so hungry,” Lance said, ushering us back out into the night. The sign for the antique jewelry shop across narrow St. Peter Street seemed to be out, but inside lights were still on, and the place had a ton of windows, giving us a perfect view of our target spot. We crossed and found the front door locked, but spotted a white-haired, mustachioed older man behind the counter, polishing a silver watch. I knocked and he unlocked the door.
“Is there any chance we could just take a quick look around?” I asked in my sweetest voice. He looked skeptical.
“I, uh, promised I’d get her something. It’s our anniversary,” Lance piped up. I shot him the quickest surprised glance, impressed with his cover.
The man sighed and then gave us a bright grin. “Well, who am I to stand in the way of young love.” He opened the door wide.
Display cases and glass shelves bearing all manner of shiny gold and silver chains and trinkets and an array of colored gemstones and pearls lined the walls.
“Oh, these are pretty,” I said glancing at some bracelets in the case that were made of turquoise stones. Really, though, I gazed out the window, my eyes set on that spot. Lance, on the other hand, had become fixated on a rack on top of the case. Hanging off its spokes were a tangle of thin leather strips bearing brushed nickel charms, all featuring either letters of the alphabet or astrological signs.
I kept my eyes focused out the window for several minutes, neither of us saying a word. And then, at last, I saw them. I grabbed Lance’s forearm and he stopped looking through the rack. Wylie appeared across the street, hands in his pockets, smiling and laughing with one of his cohorts. A woman strolled up to them, the tall golden brunette from the night of the ritual. She wore tight denim wrapped around her mile-long legs, and had a wide smile. She threw her arms around Wylie’s neck, kissing him. I hoped Sabine would appear, if for no other reason than to see this spectacle.
We stayed glued to that spot studying them, every once in a while saying something about the jewelry—“I like this one,” “What about that one?”—just in case the shopkeeper was wondering about us.
The members of the group had slowly cooled to one another. They hadn’t spoken for a while now. Wylie, arms folded in front of his chest, leaned against the façade of the restaurant, looking at his watch, for the tenth time, it seemed. I checked mine too. It was nearly 10:30. The girl touched his arm, as though to comfort him. She said something and looked like she was pleading with him, but his face was set firm. Then, from the direction of the bar, Clio, in another micro-short dress and a tight jean jacket, burst out, yanking the woman by the bicep to turn her around. Arms in the air, Clio shouted something so loud, we could just about make it out: “So where the hell is she? She should be here!”
The brunette hung her head, fingers fidgeting, mumbling something. Clio kicked her cowboy boots against the wall. Wylie simply took out a cigarette, gave a look around, and, seeing no one approaching, held an index finger to it and lit it. My blood chilled. From the corner
of my eye, I saw Lance’s head jerk back in shock. The cigarette end burned red and Wylie put it to his lips, blew a smoke ring, then pulled it out and placed it in Clio’s mouth.
She took a puff then pointed at the brunette, barking something else. The brunette pulled a phone from her bag and began furiously keying in a text message. Clio looked at her watch, then stormed off in the direction she had come from. After a second or two, the trio followed slowly behind her. We watched them head toward the bar, focusing on them until they disappeared out of sight.
“Should we try to get into the bar? Maybe Sabine is already in there.”
“I bet she’s at the house. Let’s get outta here,” Lance whispered, more optimistic, heading out.
Peeking back over my shoulder, I noticed the shopkeeper watching us. I flipped through the rack in front of us ready to take the first thing I saw, but then something special shimmered at me. It was buried in the back and I had to unloop a slew of bracelets to liberate it, but finally I did: four leather strips were joined by a chunky silver clasp, the size of a small dog tag. It featured a raised fleur-de-lis. I had to buy it.
As I jogged to catch up with Lance, I tapped his arm with the bag.
“Here,” I said flatly. “You should have this.” He peeked inside the bag, pulling it out.
“Thanks,” he said sincerely.
I awakened to a steady and rhythmic pulse I couldn’t quite place, a beating against my window like fingertips knocking softly. I opened my eyes and found the glass streaked with rain. I had somehow managed to forget what rain sounded like. We had encountered mostly sunny skies since arriving in New Orleans and to see the gray overcast now didn’t seem to fit. I also couldn’t help noticing that Sabine’s bed was still made. Perhaps she was in Lance’s room again.
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