Royal Street

by Suzanne Johnson

  I drove through Uptown one neighborhood at a time, beginning at the big bend in the Mississippi River at the triangular area called Black Pearl and moving outward in a widening arc. I had twelve names on my list, and none of them were in town.

  I found the first address, parked the Pathfinder, and walked the block end to end, both sides of the street. Only the wizard’s house, a small pink shotgun with ornate gingerbread trim, had been marked with the symbol, spray-painted in white at the foot of the stairs leading to the front door.

  The pattern held throughout my list, and I headed home with the beginnings of a headache. It didn’t matter how long it took. I would find the meaning of that symbol today. If all wizards’ houses were marked with the same symbol we found at Gerry’s, that made Gerry a potential victim, not a rogue. A rogue wouldn’t target his own house.

  Alex probably wouldn’t get finished with his list until noon, so I had an hour to kill. I pulled out a few references I thought might help in researching the symbols, then did some necessary domestic chores I’d been putting off, namely laundry, which had to be hand-washed in a sink full of questionable water and hung around the bathroom. I really missed electricity.

  No point starting my research till Alex came back, so I decided to sweep off the leaves and branches from the hurricane that still littered my porch. In front of my house, traffic had started picking up on Magazine Street—mostly construction workers and soldiers. That, plus the fact that my parking space was in back, meant I rarely used my front door. I sure hadn’t used it since it got covered in plywood after Jean Lafitte’s visit.

  Manual labor distracted me from Gerry and wizard conspiracies for a few minutes before I saw it: the symbol of rectangles and stars, painted on the sidewalk in red at the foot of my front steps. I sat hard on the top step, staring at it. I hadn’t seen any other red symbols today—they’d all been white. The only other red symbol had been at Gerry’s.

  I’d been sitting there several minutes when from behind I heard Alex walking through the house. “I’m out front.”

  “You were right about the—” He stopped, then sat on the step next to me, deflated. “Shit. How long has it been there?”

  “I don’t know. I never use the front door, so it could have been here since right after Lafitte came to visit. Did you see any red symbols today, or were they all white?”

  He thought a moment. “All white, I’m pretty sure. And you were right. It’s only wizards’ houses that are marked. And now this.” Alex looked worried. Enforcers shouldn’t look worried.

  “We’ve got to find that symbol.”

  We grabbed a quick MRE for lunch, then settled on the living room sofas with all the reference books I could find on voodoo history and symbology. I’d been going through the largest dictionary almost two hours before I found a similar mark. Instead of the cross and rectangles, it was made up of two large intersecting Vs, with stars coming off it at six points. I held the book toward the window to more easily read the small text: Vévé or symbol of Ayizan, the voodoo goddess of commerce.

  “Holy crap. I think it’s a symbol for one of the voodoo gods, not one of the rituals. We should have thought of that.” I slammed the book and ran upstairs to the library, Alex following close behind.

  “New Orleans voodoo wasn’t based on the traditional African religion, but a version that developed in the West Indies,” I said, scanning the assortment of books on deities until I found one on the Haitian Vodou pantheon. I settled on the love seat and started flipping through it. “They have a different set of gods.”

  Now that I knew what to look for, the search took less than five minutes. “Here it is,” I said, reading. “It’s the vévé, or symbol, of the Haitian Vodou god Baron Samedi, and is used to invoke him or offer sacrifices to him.”

  “Is there a chapter on Samedi?” Alex looked the name up in the African book, but it wasn’t there. “We need to find out all we can about him.”

  He moved to the love seat beside me, close enough to read my book and distract me with his presence all at the same time. I jerked my mind from broad shoulders to the book’s index and began to flip pages.

  Samedi was a popular guy. “He’s the god of the dead, or of the crossroads between life and death,” I read, scanning through the descriptions. “He’s the leader of a group of loa called the Barons. Looks like a skeleton in a top hat and tails. Wears dark glasses with one lens missing. He seems to thrive on sex and debauchery.”

  Great. Sounded like a guy that would be popular in New Orleans, or at least in the touristy areas.

  I scanned another couple of pages. “Followers believe Baron Samedi is the god that determines who lives and who dies, and is the head of the Vodou gods who are linked to magic, ancestor worship, and death. Believers don’t consider him evil, just capricious.”

  Alex reached across me to lift a page and better see the illustrations. “I don’t believe in voodoo gods, but some murderous SOB obviously does. If it weren’t for the wizards’ houses being targeted I wouldn’t think this was supernatural at all, but just a nutcase.”

  I stared at the book’s drawing of the vévé. “I don’t believe in those gods either, from a religious standpoint. But as far as the Beyond goes, what we believe doesn’t matter. The fact that a lot of people do believe is enough to make him real. And voodoo supposedly still has an active presence in parts of New Orleans. Certainly did in its past. And the fact that wizards’ houses are being marked means it has to be supernatural.”

  “So, you think the undead Marie Laveau has come back with some agenda like Lafitte did, and is making sacrifices to this Samedi guy?” Alex leaned back on the love seat and stretched his legs, one heavy, black-clad thigh running alongside my leg.

  Sure was hot in this house.

  I got up and paced the library. “Marie Laveau would make sense. She’s by far the best-known voodoo practitioner who ever lived here. But why would she be killing soldiers? Since she’s marking their houses, why not kill wizards?”

  We stared at each other.

  Alex was already punching a number into his cell phone. “I need to talk to Ken again—let him know these symbols are showing up on houses. I’ll leave out the wizard part. Maybe they can at least put some patrols out at the addresses where the wizards are in town.”

  Including mine. I doubted the cops had the manpower for extra patrols, or that it would do much good, but I slid a pad and pen in front of him anyway.

  He stared at the notes after ending his call. “Our symbol was painted at the scene of all three murders—they finally uncovered it on the sidewalk in the last one. Ken says they don’t have any leads, and they’re frustrated. The dead soldier this last time was from somewhere in Texas, no ties to the local voodoo community that anyone has found. First victim was from California, second from Virginia.”

  “Do the police know what the symbol is?”

  “No, they made the voodoo connection because of the candles and the dead roosters. Second murder also had a kind of altar set up with a bottle of rum on it. Ken’s best guess is that the murders are some warped kind of blood sacrifice, maybe an appeal to the gods for hurricane relief.”

  I huffed. “Why kill the soldiers who are helping us, then? The sacrifice part sounds right, but what does it have to do with wizards?”

  “Any chance the soldiers were wizards?”

  I didn’t think so, but it warranted another call to the Elders. I was beginning to think we needed our own Elder hotline.

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2005 “The east bank of New Orleans may not have safe tap water for up to two more months, Sewerage & Water Board officials revealed Tuesday, further jeopardizing plans to begin a staggered repopulation of unflooded Uptown neighborhoods …”

  —THE TIMES–PICAYUNE

  CHAPTER 17

  The murdered soldiers were not wizards, but the Elders were “concerned that spillover from the breaches with the Beyond might be inadvertently impacting the nonwizarding population
.” Which was a bureaucratic way of saying they didn’t want human cops dragged into anything related to magic. So in true Elder fashion, instead of doing the expedient thing and sending us out to track down the voodoo bad guys, they told us to sit tight while they rattled some red tape.

  Great. That would help find Gerry. To stay busy till the magical desk jockeys got their horses lined up, I began sorting through the boxes filled with Gerry’s books and papers. At the bottom of the third box, stuck between The Way of All Vampyres and a tome on wizarding history, was Gerry’s last journal.

  I thought about calling Alex, but the citywide dusk-to-dawn curfew had already gone into effect and he’d headed back to wherever Alex went at night. I’d eaten dinner, checked my wards, showered, put on a tank top and shorts, and settled in the library. Gandalf snored in front of the fireplace and Sebastian watched me suspiciously from atop my worktable. Calling Alex would ruin our little picture of domestic bliss.

  I turned to Gerry’s last journal entry, September 13, the day before he disappeared.

  Helicopter noise driving me mad, but rescuers finally stopped pressuring me to leave. They dropped water and military rations for me this a.m. Interesting visit from Beyond. Levees not the only hurricane breaches!

  That was it. No sense of fear or urgency. Obviously, he didn’t have to leave in search of food. Whoever visited him from the Beyond must be behind his disappearance, and maybe was somebody he’d dealt with before since he wasn’t upset. To me, that said Jean Lafitte or Marie Laveau—and Marie personified New Orleans voodoo. Besides, I’d have lifted something from Lafitte’s emotions when we’d played tussle on my living room floor if he’d been involved in any shenanigans other than his own lust for vengeance—or, well, just lust.

  Marie, though, also had approached Gerry in the past, looking for an inroad back into modern-day New Orleans. Maybe after the hurricane, she came back, offered Gerry a deal, and then double-crossed him. Then he’d gone into hiding to get away from her and figured out some way to make himself undetectable.

  It was all speculation, but I hadn’t heard a better theory yet.

  I was still pondering the possibilities the next morning at breakfast. I’d dropped my wards, let Gandalf out, and was sitting at the kitchen table reading Gerry’s journal and celebrating the return of electricity and air conditioning when Alex waltzed in the back door, my neighbor Eugenie hanging on his arm and every word out of his mouth. He was in dark and dangerous flirting mode—something he hadn’t used on me since our first meeting, thank God.

  Eugenie had been playing with her hair color again and was tugging at blue-tipped spikes with the hand that wasn’t latched on to Alex. Her shorts were too tight, her top too low-cut, and her laugh echoed through the house. I wrapped my arms around her in a hug because I had missed her so much. Whenever she thought he wasn’t paying attention, she’d look meaningfully at Alex and raise her eyebrows. I ignored her.

  Someone pounded on the front door, startling all of us.

  “I’ll get it,” Alex said. “Probably the National Guard again.” Soldiers had been coming by several times a day since Monday, telling us to evacuate in advance of Hurricane Rita. The storm had grown to Katrina proportions in the Gulf, and the New Orleans civilian population—not counting journalists—was estimated at fewer than fifty. Alex had taken to pulling his FBI badge out to get rid of them.

  Eugenie planned to leave again this morning, headed back to Shreveport until Rita blew through. She’d just sneaked into town long enough to check her house.

  “Honey, my roof is trashed worse than the Quarter after Mardi Gras. Water came in everywhere upstairs,” she said. “My insurance guy says it’ll be a month before he can even come out and look at it.”

  I held my breath, hoping she wouldn’t call on my supposed expertise in risk management to assess her insurance company’s liability. Since the cedar hadn’t done any damage to my own roof, I’d decided not to bother filing a claim.

  She had more important things on her mind. Eugenie loved romance and was still fixated on Alex. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Where did you find that great big pretty man? You been holding out on me.”

  The sight of Alex had apparently pushed most of her insurance concerns aside, and I wondered what he would think about being called pretty. Probably pull a gun on her.

  “He’s just a friend. Came down from Picayune to help me clean out Gerry’s house.”

  Eugenie’s green eyes narrowed. “Darlin’, anybody with that nice little butt ain’t friendship material. Besides, he don’t consider you a friend. Says you two been seein’ each other.”

  I scowled in the direction of the front door. “Oh, did he?”

  “Now, DJ. Don’t blow it. That one’s a keeper, and you’ve gotta admit your track record with guys is, well, sorta pathetic.”

  She was being kind. It was worse than pathetic. “Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

  We did a quick comparison of evacuation horror stories, and she won for most horrific. She’d been stuck for a month in a two-bedroom house in Shreveport with her Junior League sister, her pontificating attorney brother-in-law, their five-year-old-going-on-twenty twin daughters, and a pair of yappy mini schnauzers.

  “I was a big hit with the girls after I gave them my makeup bag. Plus, it made my brother-in-law so mad his face turned purple.”

  A pang of sadness hit me, listening to Eugenie talk. It felt so normal, like nothing had changed. But everything had changed.

  After a few minutes, Alex returned from answering the door and sent Eugenie into a virtual swoon, especially since I’d let it slip that he was an FBI agent. He wore a cream-colored shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and tight jeans worn to a light blue in all the right places. It was the first time I’d seen him out of basic black, and I had to admit he could be a keeper except for a few control issues and that bit with his secretive personal life. And the grenades.

  “Who was at the door?” I asked. “Another evacuation warning?”

  “Yeah.” He dug in his briefcase and fished a protein bar out of his never-ending supply. If Eugenie was going to crush on Alex, I needed to warn her about his tendency to turn monosyllabic without notice.

  “So, Alex honey, what does a big FBI agent keep in his briefcase?” I swear Eugenie batted her eyelashes at him. See, that was the difference between us. I sneaked around and plundered through his briefcase when he wasn’t looking, and Eugenie just asked him. Maybe my distrustful nature was hampering my love life.

  He gave her a smoldering look. “If I told you, I might have to shoot you.”

  “I bet you have a real big gun.” She flashed a dazzling grin his way.

  I was going to barf.

  He did the slow, lazy smiling thing guaranteed to make her feel warm and fuzzy the rest of the day, and poured himself some coffee.

  I had pilfered through his briefcase the day I stole the tracker, so I knew the only things in there were a cell phone, a box of protein bars, a couple of knives, some ammo clips, and a gun. A moderate-size gun.

  Eugenie finally got tired of flirting and headed across the street to pack for Shreveport. As soon as the door closed behind her, Alex went into the living room and came back with a large cardboard box. In large, flowery script, it was addressed to “Drusilla Jaco and Alexander Warin, Sentinels.” In the return address space was one word: “Elders.”

  “Where did that come from? It was at the door?”

  “No, that really was a soldier telling us to evacuate, but you got a call from the Elders while I was in the other room—your cell was on the coffee table. They sent this to the transport in your library.” I’d left the courier transport open the night they sent the list of wizard addresses. One never knew when a transport to headquarters might come in handy, especially these days. Edinburgh might make a good place to hide from Jean Lafitte. Or Marie Laveau.

  Alex pulled out a penknife to cut the box open, and we peered inside at what loo
ked like a large light table, the kind used by photographers and graphic designers. Only there was no plug.

  “What is it?” Alex asked.

  “The screen on it looks sort of like Gerry’s big tracker. Maybe it’s a smaller version.”

  Alex held up his hands. “I’m not touching it. I broke the one at Gerry’s house.”

  I lifted it from the box and took it to the office desk. We stood on either side of it, waiting expectantly. Nothing happened.

  “Maybe I have to activate it. I might have enough juice since this one’s smaller.” I touched the edges of the screen and willed a bit of magical energy into it. Within seconds, it lit from below and a series of dark lines began forming an image. It was like holding an oversize Etch-a-Sketch while someone operated it from underneath, only in blazing color.

  “Glad mine runs on double-A batteries,” Alex said, leaning over to look at the screen. “What are we looking at?”

  “A map of New Orleans.” I looked at the familiar crescent shape of the Mississippi River as it wound through the city. The map marked each of the seventy-two distinct neighborhoods, including current flood levels and habitation. In Uptown, my house popped out in purple, the magical version of YOU ARE HERE.

  Alex dug in the box, pulled out a folded sheet of paper we had missed earlier, and read it aloud.

  Now that most areas have been drained of floodwater, please begin investigating temporal or lateral breaches between New Orleans and the Beyond, as time permits. Blinking signals will indicate breaches. Until permanent repairs are made, please note that most signals will be false alarms.

  “Wonder why they didn’t send this earlier?” Alex asked.

  “Maybe the breaches are mostly in areas that were flooded and we wouldn’t have been able to get to them,” I said, looking at the map. “Or maybe there were so many false-alarm breaches they thought it would be a waste of time.”