by AJ Merlin
I’d just have to be my own damn knight today.
“She might not let you in,” Nathanial warned once more, falling into step beside me. He fell back slightly as we neared the door, wringing his hands in front of him.
I ignored him and tried to channel some of that confidence I’d felt at the gala.
So what if I didn’t have the dress or the magic flames.
I was still me. I was still the woman who’d walked into a room of people who laughed at her, and ended the night with a personal invitation from the head of the council herself.
A voodoo priestess, no matter how unfriendly, was nothing compared to the fear of my gala entrance, right?
Something rippled out of the corner of my eye as I neared the porch.
Glancing down in surprise, I found a small trail of harmless flame travel from my wrist to my shoulder, and more flames licked at my fingers. They were the same ice-blue as that night, and when I scuffed my boot experimentally, embers sparked in the air around my foot.
I smiled very slightly, a boost of confidence warming me to the tips of my fingers. If the Loa had enough faith in me to remind me of when I’d felt confident before, why didn’t I have that same confidence in myself?
“Thank you, Marinette,” I breathed, unsure of where she was and hoping she could hear me. The enchantment before had been her magic, after all. It was very safe to assume that this was as well.
I strode up to her porch with my chin high and didn’t react outwardly whatsoever when the door opened to produce a very sullen looking Johanna. I reminded myself to look confident. To not flinch away from her glare.
“What do you want?” She asked in a dull voice, sparing a glare for Nathanial as he came to stand at my side.
“The same thing as before,” I informed her. “To help. But for me to do so, I need you to be open with me.”
Johanna barked out a laugh. “Be open with you? What have you done for that privilege, child?” She spat the word like an insult.
I fought not to recoil, and flames licked at my skin.
Johanna’s eyes widened.
“I have faced the one responsible for killing your people,” I answered firmly. “I have spoken with the Loa, and they have been aware of my every step.” I lifted my hands, grateful for the fire that was hopefully going to convince her to let me in.
“Fire is not my own magic, but we both know whose it is.” Goddess, I hoped they knew about Marinette’s penchant for an open flame.
By the look in her eyes, she did.
“By turning me away, by insulting me further, you’re spitting on the help your patrons have sent you. I cannot help you if you do not let me.” My words sounded confident. I sounded so sure. But inside, I was terrified she might call me on them. I didn’t have a plan B.
I met her gaze challengingly, the flames dying down as I dropped my hands to my sides. “So what will it be? Will you let me in so that I can speak with you and your people, or will you tell me to leave again so that I have to fumble around in the dark and once again find this killer too late to stop another of your family from becoming his victim?”
Johanna held my gaze stubbornly, her lips thinning to a flat line.
“I do not know what games They play,” she murmured. “And I do not like them.” She opened the door wider, gesturing me in.
Embers still flourished wherever I stepped, though there was no more blue fire on my body.
I missed it. I like the flames of Marinette’s body outfitting me like an aura, though I would never admit it to the Loa.
Whatever I had expected to see, the fresh body of another voodoo priest was not it.
The older deceased woman lay on the dining room table, candles near her face and above her hair.
I stopped and stared, taken aback, and nearly faltered.
“Bernadette is-was-“ Johanna spoke like the word caused her physical pain. “One of the eldest and most powerful mambo of New Orleans.”
I wandered closer, very aware of the glares being sent my way by the few others in the room. I stared at her, marveling at the peace on her face when so much of her was stained with blood. Why hadn’t she been cleaned or prepared for a funeral?
My eyes fell to her hands. Both of them were completely intact. What had Tisiphone said before? That magic could be absorbed by ingesting someone’s body part?
Disgusting, for one.
But for two, if the killer was so interested in absorbing the magic of a powerful voodoo priest, why not chop off a finger again?
Inhaling, I pushed my shift just enough to heighten my senses, though not enough for even my ears to peek through my hair.
Her magic was there, but it was being carried away. As if it was being picked up and carried out of the house by some undetectable wind.
Her magic was ebbing away, but I couldn’t tell where it was going. It just seemed to…disintegrate on a breeze that wasn’t there.
“Her magic is fading,” I said, not quite shocked.
“We know,” Johanna came to stand beside me, the worry on her face etched into every line and wrinkle. She pointed at the candles and the dried herbs between them. “Alice is monitoring it.”
The girl near the dead woman’s head glanced up at the sound of her name.
“But we do not know where. It is the same with Ambrose.”
“The other dead priest,” I said, wondering if he was missing any body parts. “May I see him?”
Johanna hesitated, but led me out of the room and into another, just off the kitchen.
The storeroom reeked of herbs and spells, making my eyes water and tickling my nose.
I rubbed my face, blinking away the tears that might make me look weak in the face of this woman.
But she wasn’t paying me any attention.
Instead, she stared at the body of the man in front of us. He’d been placed on a wooden work table, and the same array of candles and herbs curved over the top of his head, wax dripping onto the wood and hardening.
The young woman at his head looked up and spoke before we could. “It’s almost gone, Johanna,” she said in a very soft whisper. “His magic…it’s fading very fast.”
I sniffed the air, unable to scent anything over what lay on the shelves.
A quick look proved to me that he wasn’t missing any of his extremities, either.
Both he and the woman had had their throats slashed. The wide, gaping wounds were hard to look away from, though I did my very best to look anywhere but there.
“I just don’t understand,” Johanna breathed in the stillness of the dimly lit space. “They were our most respected. Even if this killer is one of our own, he goes against everything to kill those touched by the Mother.”
It took a second. Two seconds, actually, for her words to sink in.
I whirled on her, eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?” I demanded. “What does ‘touched by the mother’ mean?”
Johanna gazed at me, confused. “You do not know? The Loa did not tell you?”
I wasn’t going to admit how little the Loa actually helped.
“Let us return to the other room to give Alice the quiet she needs to prepare his body.” She led me back out of the storeroom, then to the hallway where the portraits lined the walls.
Was she kicking me out?
Before I could speak, she stopped and gazed up at one of the hand-painted masterpieces. Johanna ran her fingers along the surface, barely brushing it.
“The Loa are not gods the way your Goddess is. We do not worship an unseen presence, or a legend.”
I kept my mouth shut, wondering if she meant to insult my own religion.
“They are our teachers, in a way. It is not unheard of for them to lay a hand on a particularly promising young man or woman. Or even to teach them personally.” She dropped her hand and looked back at me.
“Okay…” I bit my lower lip. “So Bernadette and Ambrose….they were taught by the Loa?” Is that what she was trying to say to me?
“They were personally chosen by Maman Brigitte many, many years ago,” Johanna confirmed.
And hadn’t Baron Kriminel remarked that Maman Brigitte was referred to as ‘the Mother?’ Hadn’t Johanna herself just called her the same thing?
“But why them? There are others, right? Others chosen or taught by her?” I paced up and down the hallway, my eyes flicking from one old portrait to another.
“I do not know why them specifically,” Johanna said. “There are others, yes. Bernadette and Ambrose were some of her favorites, from what I have heard.”
“Is there anyone else who is considered her favorite?”
“There are many who claim the favor of the Mother,” the woman shrugged. “I myself have spoken to her as well. Does that make me a favored child?”
Did it?
“Was this it?” I asked, half to myself. “The necromancer-the one killing them-he said….He asked if I would take notice when he killed ‘The mother’s pet saints.”
“What does that mean?”
A bark of laughter left me. I was so close. I could feel that I knew the answer to this particular riddle.
Only I could not seem to guess at it.
“Come on, George, think,” I murmured, tangling my fingers in my hair. “Who are the Mother’s pet saints?”
I paced another step, my eyes landing on a man’s portrait. His name lay below it, as all the others did.
Paul Jean Louis.
Paul. Like…Saint Paul? I was no catholic, and any religion outside of my own was far outside the range of my interest, but my mother had driven me past St. Paul’s Academy almost every day as a child.
Quickly, I fumbled at my bag, drawing my phone out and smacking the screen to get it to turn on.
“What’s wrong?” Johanna wandered closer. “Something to do with Paul Louis? He’s been dead for many years.”
“That man in there. Ambrose.” I found my browser and hit the search bar, typing letters in as fast as I could.
Saint Ambrose.
It was a long shot. Absolutely a last ditch effort–
Pages and pages of results appeared about the catholic Saint Ambrose, and my heart pounded.
“Okay-okay, umm–“ I went back to the search bar, my hands shaking. “Bernadette, right?”
That had to be a saint. It even sounded saintly.
When I put Saint Bernadette into the search bar and clicked for my results, I was a bit embarrassed about how well-known she was, yet I had never heard a damn thing about her.
“The Mother’s pet saints,” I said, looking wildly up at Johanna. “He didn’t mean it literally. He meant those people who the Mother laid her hand on or favored, who were named after saints.”
I shoved my phone back into my pocket with a trembling hand. “Are there any others? Anyone else who has studied with Maman Brigitte or who knows her very well?”
“Well, there’s…” Johanna looked down, biting her lower lip. Her hands knit together, the anxiety plain in her motions. “Alice, out there. She has met with Maman Brigitte in a dream.”
“No…I think it has to be more than that. And they have to be named after a saint.”
“Child.” Johanna fixed me with a very frustrated look. “Do you know how many of our babes are named for Catholic saints?” When I shrugged, she went on. “Almost everyone I know has someone in their family who was! John, Paul, Peter, just to name a few! I know six women named Agnes. Six. And don’t get me started on how many women in my circle are called Teresa.”
My heart felt like it was going to stop.
“Like Nathanial’s mother,” I whispered, my hands going clammy.
And she had told me, hadn’t she? That she was one of the last who had studied with Maman Brigitte herself.
The necromancer was going to kill Nathanial’s mother.
Chapter 29
“Nathanial!” I ran into the dining room where the shop owner stood with a group of his peers. He looked up at me, surprise in his dark eyes.
“George?” He looked over my shoulder, and whatever he saw in Johanna’s eyes made the fear spark in his own. “What’s wrong?”
“Where’s your mother?” I demanded.
“My mother? Why?”
“Because she’s not safe!” I grabbed his arm, having no time to sit and explain to him when we needed to have left already.
“What do you mean she isn’t safe?” His voice was harsh, and he shrugged me off, catching up to me in an instant as I shoved open the front door.
“Something the Necromancer said to me-that he would kill the Mother’s Pet Saints. He means he’s killing those who studied with Maman Brigitte who bear the names of Catholic Saints.”
The fear was very plain on his face now. He took off at a run to his car with me on his heels, and I barely managed to close the passenger door before he was racing out of the residential street.
“Why is he killing those who studied with the Mother?” Nathanial asked, slamming buttons on his steering wheel.
A phone icon appeared on the screen above the console, along with the word MOM.
The phone rang once, then twice.
Please let her pick up, I begged, hands shaking in my lap.
It went to voicemail.
Nathanial tried again. I palmed my phone, praying for any message at all.
Only Yuna had texted me back.
I barely read over her concerned words before opening the conversation to let my fingers hover over the keyboard.
“Where are we going?” I whispered when the call went to voicemail once more.
“We’re going to–to–“ Nathanial’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. He rattled off an address that I typed into the phone, trying to tell her in a succinct way what was happening.
I sent the same message to Merric, then hesitated.
Then I called him.
My hand clenched around the phone as it rang against my ear. I closed my eyes, praying silently to my Goddess that he would please, please pick up.
It also went to voicemail.
“I need you. Please, Merric. I can’t get anyone on the phone. I don’t know where you are. I don’t know…” I swallowed. “I sent you a text. If you can…please. I’ll give you whatever you want-another debt or whatever. Please just help me.”
I hung up, staring at the screen as if he might actually message me back on the spot.
Both of us were silent as Nathanial drove well over the speed limits of the city, taking turns that I thought would cause us to wreck and driving past other cars without any notice of their honking horns of rudely gesturing drivers.
No one called. No one messaged, even after I shot another one off to Indra and the others.
I was alone. I was going to have to deal with this necromancer alone.
Glancing over at Nathanial, I saw that his hands gripped the steering wheel so hard that it had to be painful. “It’ll be okay,” I said, with confidence I didn’t feel. “We’re going to make sure it is. How reliably does she answer the phone? Maybe she’s busy, huh?”
A small, hopeful smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “She leaves it all over the place,” Nathanial whispered. He looked at me, eyes wide. “Are you sure? Can’t there be some mistake? Maybe he’s done. Maybe it isn’t my mother at all.”
Goddess, I was right there with him.
“It might not be,” I agreed. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’m still wrong, and your mom is just in the shower or watching her eighties exercise videos. Don’t all old ladies love those?”
His hands loosened very slightly.
Around us, the traffic had lightened up, and we were no longer in the city proper. Now the only buildings around us were houses, and each one had a more spacious yard than the last.
Finally, Nathanial pulled into a driveway that led through sparse trees, the trunks black in the moonlight.
When he stopped in front of a big, well maintained but still old house, all of the lights were off
.
“Maybe she’s asleep?” I asked.
“Maybe.” His voice didn’t hold the same agreement as his words, and he leaped out of the car before I could stop him.
“Wait! Nathanial–“ I grabbed for his arm just as the smell hit me.
Blood.
And black magic, not far behind it.
Nathanial shook me off and ran for the porch, a gris-gris in his hand that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. While it might make his powers stronger or act as some kind of protection, I wasn’t so sure it would be enough in the face of this necromancer’s pets.
“Nathanial, please! Don’t go running in like that!” It was absolutely too dangerous to do that.
Especially with just him and me here.
A creaking sound met my ears, dragging my eyes upwards towards the slanted roof of the house. I backed up a few steps, unsure of where the noise was coming from.
It was as if something was walking-no, sliding-across the roof. But what could be–
A face poked out over the edge of the roof that covered the porch.
“Goddess,” I choked out, my hands suddenly clammy.
Even in the moonlight, its face was grey and bloated in death, and its eyelids were sewn shut. Its jaws hung open, the hinges loose as its head tilted first one way, then the other.
As if studying me.
It was one of the Necromancer’s monsters.
He was here.
“Nathanial!” I shrieked, taking a chance and sprinting up the stairs to the porch. The thing snarled and hit the ground behind me, but it was too slow. I was in, the door slammed shut behind me before it could catch me.
The monster hit the door, shrieking, and the glass windows rattled in their frames.
My heart hammered as I stumbled forward, falling into Nathanial’s back.
“H-hey! What–“ Why was he standing still? He caught me, steadying me and helping me regain my balance. “Nathanial, what are you…” I looked up at him, then in the direction he was facing.
There was blood on the floor. Blood, and one of the necromancer’s dead pets.
“That’s good, though,” I urged, though I wasn’t so sure. He never traveled with just one.
The proof of that was right outside the door, banging its protests at not being let in.
