When I thought about facing the next ten minutes alone, it occurred to me that with a plastic garbage bag and some duct tape I could make a gas chamber off my old Beemer’s exhaust pipe. The only reason I didn’t walk downstairs to the garage right then was, I knew it was very unlikely that anything could kill me.
I’d already had enough sick tonight.
Veek was in charge of harvesting and drying our weed. Maybe he had some ready.
I knocked.
“Come.”
I let the door swing open. The room was dark except for the candles lit at the shrine on the far wall. I’d glimpsed it over the years but never got a close look. Pillar candles, a big, gilded, empty picture frame, bunches of flowers, a couple of stuffed birds, a black top hat on the table—I’d noticed it before and figured that was left over from his vodou days.
I was wrong.
“Come in. I’ll show you,” he said, as if sensing my curiosity.
As I entered I realized he was in at least as shitty a mood as I was. That brought me up short.
“What is all this?”
Veek sat backward on a chair, his arms folded in front of him, looking at the shrine. I sat on the bed. In the candlelight I saw fresh tear tracks on his face.
“This is Montmorency.”
“That place in France?”
“Yes. Home of my ancestors. I was born there. See.” He pointed. “A top hat, such as my father wore. Beside it, my mother’s wedding ring.” He pointed at a potted plant with cup-like red flowers. “This frog orchid is the real thing.” He pointed to a stuffed bird clinging to a reed, all iridescent blue and green. “Here, a martin-pêcheur, a kingfisher. You’ve seen my tattoo of this little fellow.”
“What about all the photos of buildings?”
“Ah.” He showed me the pictures cut out of magazines and books and taped to the wall inside the picture frame. “It’s in the Vendée Département on the Marais Poitevin, how you say, a great big swamp. But beautiful. I can reproduce the sights here, but not the sounds of birds, the frogs and insects. And the smells. I may never smell it again,” he mourned. He didn’t have many pictures of the house. Mostly the pictures were of gardens. I thought they looked familiar.
“Isn’t that part of Versailles?”
He nodded, then shook his head. “It’s a copy of the Petit Trianon. A little pretend-farm for the lady of the house to play in. I like to think ours is more lovely.” Veek’s gaze took it all in, the pictures, the flowers, the hat and ring, and I looked away. “I am told it is my spiritual home as well.”
That lifted the hairs off my arm. “How do you figure?”
“Madame Vulcaine, she who is mambo of my mother’s house now, she thinks so.”
He sounded so defeated that I went on the attack. “That’s you all over. Somebody tells you anything and you swallow it. No wonder Jake did whatever he liked with you.” Maybe I could annoy him out of his depression. “Have you ever looked yourself in the eye and decided who you are for yourself?”
He turned his head on his folded arms and looked at me. “Have you?”
Okay, that didn’t work. I laughed. “What makes you think she’s right?”
He went back to staring at the shrine. “I hardly know how to describe it. When I was a boy. At night, mostly. I would imagine I was . . . guarding something. I guarded some place. On all sides I sensed mighty forces, but they stayed on their side of the . . . fence? I was like a dog running tirelessly all night along the fence, barking, ever watchful, my hackles up. Or perhaps lying down, half sleeping, my eyes half shut, with one ear cocked and a drowsy growl in my throat. Sometimes it seemed I was the fence, that somehow I created the fence as I ran—so I had to keep running. It went on, whether I was awake or asleep. Sometimes I feel it still,” he said dreamily. “I never told anyone but Jake.”
“Were you supposed to guard Jake?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. I clung to him in part because I wanted to resist this force, this pull. Jake kept me occupied. We moved about constantly. I longed to go home to France, so much that I ached inside, but I couldn’t.” Veek tipped his head over, resting his cheek on his arms, showing me one eye. “They literally paid me to stay away.”
I made a face. “Because you’re black?”
“They wanted me to stay away because I am black. I had to stay away because Samedi had made me—like this.”
“Samedi? The top hat guy?” I’d never paid any attention to those gods.
He nodded. “The fact is, I’m a coward. I wanted to go home, and nobody there wanted me, so I stayed away. Samedi made me imm—like this.”
I noticed him not-saying immortal. I understood.
“And though he walked with me all those years, possessing Jake whenever one of them saw a chance to make trouble,” he smiled, “I never, ever dared to ask him why. I think I knew. I was afraid that he would want me to go home.”
That made a lot of sense, not. He wanted to go home. This Samedi guy wanted him to go home. He wouldn’t go because Samedi wanted him to? Veek, you contrary fuck.
I was pretty contrary myself, so I could kind of relate.
I remembered something he’d said recently. “But that French lawyer—I thought you wanted to fight him for your title.”
He laughed shortly. “I am about to pass a DNA test that will prove my claim.” He changed the subject. Boy, he really didn’t want to talk about going home. “Today I spoke again with Mme Vulcaine. She thinks I am jam bois, a spirit of the forest. That is, a particular forest, my own place, my birthplace, where I was once happy. As soon as she said jam bois, I knew. My whole soul wants it,” he said tightly, as if the words were being yanked out of him.
“Can’t you go to court and show ’em the DNA test?”
“Can’t you go to Assyria and demand your throne back?”
I conceded his point. “So it would take you some fancy legal footwork.”
“Mais oui. I’ve been researching European case law since magic began to creep across the Continent. Here in the States, the law is hiding like the ostrich, hoping magic will go away. But over there, the courts will admit evidence pertaining to magic. If enough cases are tried, there will be precedent. With enough precedent, I might win.” He nodded at the foot of the shrine, where his ubiquitous titanium briefcase leaned. “In another two years—or ten.” He gave that fatalistic French shrug. “But I have two weeks.”
“Wait, that’s what you have in that briefcase? European case law? I thought, I dunno, platinum condoms or lunch.”
He smiled. He looked sad and sweet and resigned, like a kid brother in jail. I wanted to smack him upside the head.
I had always known that Veek was less of a slacker than the rest of us. While I had sulked and screwed women for money and waited for Aphrodite to notice me, he had been fighting for what he wanted.
Well, getting ready to fight.
I saw very clearly how that wasn’t quite the same thing.
That was sort of the definition of slacker demon. We were all in hiding from ourselves.
I’m a coward, he’d said. I could relate to that, too. All I wanted was the girl, and I wouldn’t even fight for her.
I decided to leave the girl thing alone.
“It’s this bullshit about being immortal,” I said, poking him in another sensitive spot.
“Sucks,” he agreed.
“There’s just the two of us left,” I said, voicing a nagging sadness I hadn’t had much time to think about. “Last puppies in the window. All the others are gone.”
He put out a finger. “Archie, married.”
I put out two fingers. “Lido, domestic partnered, or whatever the fuck.”
He showed three fingers. “Kamadeva, married.”
I waved all my fingers. “Those two hoseheads who roomed with us for a couple of days this summer. And every other angel and demon on their task force.”
“Married,” he said.
I swallowed. If I wait until her family is al
l dead, maybe Yoni will consider taking me on a trial basis. Cabana boy. Booty call.
Unless she got fed up and married some other guy first.
Who would die on her eventually.
Would I wait that long for her? I’d waited nearly three millennia for Aphrodite.
That thought made me shudder. I turned my thoughts to Veek, who had lost his best buddy. Veek was too young to take that kind of thing well.
“Look,” I said roughly, “I’m sorry about Jake. It’s really hard when the last person who knows you croaks. From that day forward you feel like you’re always lying about yourself. That’s why,” I admitted, descending to the maudlin, “why I’m glad you live here. It’s been good to live a little truth. At least there’s somebody I don’t have to lie to about the big stuff.” I was getting so choked up, I had to blink and wait for the lump to go down.
He put out a hand and we did a sad fist bump.
We sat quietly until both of us had stopped sniffling.
“That’s why.” He paused. “I sent her away tonight.”
“Who, the kid?”
“She’ll die,” he said simply. “I can’t take it.” He glanced over at me. “Did you never marry in all those centuries while you were waiting for Aphrodite?”
I shook my head. “I wanted her or nobody. Hah. I didn’t even really want to marry her. I wanted to be her only worshipper. I was such a dumb fuck. Every guy wants to be her only worshipper. They don’t want a human being. I was so used to being the big stuff, I figured I could put dibs on her, the way I put dibs on lion hunting and purple silk and lynx fur and all my other royal privileges. Nobody would be allowed to worship love except me.” I laughed. “By the time I noticed how dumb that was, it was too late.”
“You were too old?”
“What’s too old? Too fucked up, maybe. Besides, the past millennium and more, if I screwed anybody more than a couple times, I’d be risking making her into something like me.”
He gave me a funny look. “What?”
“You know,” I said. “Like Archie.”
“Why? What happened when Archie screwed more than twice?”
I clicked my tongue. “Archie stuck to one-night stands for centuries. Then he did Chloe and he couldn’t let her alone. He did her again. He started rubbing off on her. By the third time, he got her motor running. Her—her mana,” I said, remembering how Yoni talked about it. “And she started turning into something extra herself.”
Veek turned away from the shrine and faced me directly for the first time. “I didn’t know this.”
“Sure. Every woman has the potential to become like us, just as every man does. It takes a kick in the pants, energywise. You and me, we’ve had our kicks in the pants.” I leaned back on my elbows on his bed. “At least I didn’t mess Yoni up that way. She was already cruising toward divinity when I met her.”
“You said, she turns into something extra?” he said. “What kind of extra is Chloe?”
“Honestly, I didn’t inquire too closely. Archie and I both have an iffy relationship with Aphrodite—he pissed her off, and I guess I did, too, in my own way. He says the goddess had Chloe tagged to become what Yoni is someday. Now I ask you. Would you wish that on another human being?”
He was very quiet for a moment. “To become an avatar, a god, a sex demon, a lwa, even a jam bois?” He pursed his lips. “Absolutely not.”
I nodded. “It’s the central fact of my life, and I would do anything to change it,” I admitted. I was gonna have to drink a whole lot to forget this conversation.
“If I’ve had sex with Sophie more than once,” he said slowly, “might I have already done such a thing to her?”
“How should I know?” I wished I hadn’t said anything. “Is she showing any signs of, well, magical powers?”
His shoulders came up and stayed there while he frowned. Then he sighed and dropped them. “I don’t know. To be truthful, I have difficulty separating myself from her—no, I have difficulty distinguishing our senses. My English.” He shook his head. “When we are together, we mix it up. I just assumed it was my magic that mixed us up.” He hesitated. “We want to be . . . with each other.”
I had a stab of envy so deep that I had to look away. “So go be with her. Quit waffling. What’s the worst that can happen?”
He snorted. “I could make her into something like me, wreck her relationship with her family, and ruin her life for all eternity.”
Upon reflection, I nodded. Yup. That about covered it.
“What about you and the singer?” he said. “If she summoned you before, she’ll summon you again.”
“Why should she? She’s a goddess already. She doesn’t need my help.”
“Bull’s shit, mon frère,” he said. “You are a god at twenty-seven hundred and you still can’t handle it. Don’t condemn her to live alone, as you have lived.”
Ouch. “Don’t hold back, Veek, say what you think.” I sighed through a hot, tight throat. “She’ll find somebody else. Somebody less of a dickhead and a failure.”
“Somebody immortal?”
“If she loves him, she’ll make him immortal,” I said stubbornly. “Same as we could.”
“And you want this?”
I said with difficulty, “I want it for her.”
He snorted. “That’s not how magic works, my friend. If you want something, you have to want it for yourself.”
I gave him a cranky look. “Back atcha, buddy.”
VEEK
That night I had a dream I had nearly every night for my whole life. As usual, I was running along a fence, baying at great and fearsome shapes outside, warning them away, running tirelessly. Only this time that woman was there—the mambo. In the dream she was as fierce as ever, but here, with the detached compassion of dream, I could see why. She was full of many colored lights, all trying to burst through her from every direction, light that hurt the eyes and penetrated the heart. It was breaking me down. I could see that normally she struggled to hold it in. That was why she held herself so still and tall all the time. She mustn’t let the lights out and blast some innocent person.
I wasn’t innocent. I was failing. She put her hand on a gate I did not know was there, and she opened it in spite of all my threatening and guarding.
Suddenly Jake was beside me, his hand warm on my back, I’m here, brother, and he brushed past me as easily as a wind, and she led him out of the gate and straight into the arms of those I had kept at bay so long. I fell to my knees howling, covering my face, although I could still see him greeting and embracing them all. The mambo put her hand on my shoulder and said, you did well, but I lifted my covered face to the sky and howled louder.
Jake was there again. He raised me to my feet and he was again my big cousin who comforted me in the nights of my exile. We embraced. A hole opened in my heart. Even with his arms around me, somehow he slid out of my heart, leaving it sore and hollow and burning like the wind which roars through the Grand Canyon. I clung hard to my cousin. He was leaving me anyway. He slid out of my arms with a kiss on my breast that distracted me, setting the wound in my heart to opening and closing like a jellyfish.
Pulsing with pain, I moved slowly away, while he turned and entered the embrace of those shining enemies who had crowded round us every night for so long, and the waves closed over his head, and he was gone.
When I awoke I lay thinking a long time about the meaning of this dream, as is the custom of my mother’s people. I had never understood that dream. Jake had declined to say what he thought of it, though sometimes I thought he was biting his tongue in exasperation.
Now I wondered. Those I had sought to keep away seemed in this dream to be the ancestors, the lwas, all the spirits of this living world who crowded around his head like moths battering against a window. Was I the window then, the barrier keeping them out? Was I somehow inside Jake’s enclosure, under his protection but guarding him? Was it even Jake who protected me?
That thought
gave me a shiver.
o0o
The next day, I went to the botánica again. My deadline in France had become critical. I had to choose between honoring Jake and getting to that courtroom on time. It tore me in half to walk away before his obsèques were complete, but then, telling his stories to that woman was tearing me in half, too. And I had no time.
I decided I would tell her one more story of Jake and then be on my way.
But the mambo was not there when I arrived. I began packing up a few things that I didn’t want to send with her to New Orleans, things Jake had kept for me when I moved into the Lair.
I needed an hour or two of absolute privacy with the contents of my briefcase. To meet and defeat Henri de Turbin in a French court, I must have my geese in a row, as Baz would say. Maybe an online search for more case law would distract me from the knowledge that Yoni’s last concert, and my last chance to see Sophie, would take place tonight.
Baz had been sure that Sophie was magically affected by having intercourse with me. But how? Assuredly, our lovemaking had power. I wondered if I’d have noticed magical events in bed with her.
The sex had been magical to me because she was there.
Remembering her anguished, rageful tears as her father forced her to crawl to his feet, I wondered, why couldn’t I stop him? How had he made me helpless? I’d believed in the navel string—but I had still tried to fight it—and I’d failed.
Then I remembered Sophie speaking of a birth caul, another potent relique in her father’s possession.
Baz had said scornfully, Somebody tells you something and you swallow it. No wonder Jake did whatever he liked with you.
Perhaps I had only imagined that Jake’s commands had been reinforced with magic. But I hadn’t known about the caul in Henri’s coat pocket. I’d strained every muscle against an invisible hurricane while Henri jeered at me and humiliated my woman.
Where does power come from? I had handled my power all these years the way a fastidious woman handles a dirty diaper, at arm’s length, with tongs. Slowly my fears had eased but never passed. I never seemed to stop gaining powers. At first I was so frightened, I gave my navel string into Jake’s keeping. Don’t let me do anything terrible. He’d laughed.
Walking on Sunshine Page 26
