CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Nothing. Nowhere. Zoë didn’t so much leave the hotel as sink down into the floor, leaving the convention and forming a puddle of misery.

She sank deeper into the grass. She could sense the wet ground, the soil around her. She became intensely aware that very few coterie could come down here. Well, aside from any earth elemental or sprite or other ghost. But the others, the zombies and vampires who claimed to be intimate with the earth by virtue of the fact that many of them were buried, them she knew more than about this.

Not that there was a lot to know. It was dark, which should have been blindingly obvious. But it was also full of life, the network of root systems, the worms and beetles that burrowed, and close were the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi with their teeming life. I could stay here forever. I have nowhere else to go.

What did you do to me? Why am I suddenly so emo? she asked. The city made no reply. Zoë ached with loneliness. I could just sleep here.

She thought about her friends, Morgen and Gwen and Eir. Morgen, who had sacrificed herself to save Zoë and her friends from a fire demon. Morgen who would never let Zoë quit even when it looked as if everyone was against her. She wondered what the water sprite would say to her right now. “What the hell, Zoë? That’s not how you become an earth sprite! And you wouldn’t want to be one of them anyway. They have no sense of humor, and they usually watch really bad television.”

Eir simply would have no patience with her. Go big or go home, that would be the Norse goddess’s motto if she were American and from a steel town. Zoë didn’t know what the Norse said to pump themselves up. Something like, “Devour the whole pig or eat greens forever after!”

Gwen. Would Gwen see her as an errant soul and devour Zoë on her day off?

Once she might have thought Gwen could help her. Gwen was a psychopomp, and she knew exactly what to do with spirits.

Why hadn’t she gone to Gwen right off? Did she really mistrust her friend that much? Ever since she saw her friend eating souls, yeah, there was mistrust there.

She floated up, up, and into the sunlight. The cloud cover had finally blown away and left a beautiful blue sky.

How long had she sulked in the ground?

Something pulled at her, and she followed it like E.T. following a trail of candy.

Or like Hansel and Gretel.

Gwen sat on a park bench several blocks away in Louis Armstrong Park, watching a brass band and waiting patiently.

Hey, Gwen.

“I didn’t know how long you were going to wallow. I thought I would watch the band while I waited.” She smiled. “What did you get yourself into?”

Zoë told her much of the story, from merging with Anna to following the golden thread to become one with the city. My first problem was just that I didn’t know how to get back into my body. Then I tried to go back but couldn’t, and the city just… abandoned me. I feel like I lost my virginity to a boy who did it on a dare. I’ve been intimate with the city but now what?

Gwen nodded. “I don’t know much about cities, but I do know about souls. You are not necessarily a ghost, but you’re close enough. I could guide you back to where you are meant to be, but your body isn’t on this plane. It never was.”

I need to fly another airline, then. Where the hell is it?

“Oh, it’s here, but not here,” Gwen said. “You need an anchor, not a guide. You can do this yourself.”

That’s wonderful, Gwen. Remind me to give you your merit badge in obscure and unhelpful.

Gwen smiled at Zoë’s annoyance. “Just calm down and listen. You said you followed a golden thread toward the city’s heart. You didn’t follow some sort of heart line, but where you needed to go. Now what you have to do is do that again. Think of where you need to go, and follow your thread there.”

That actually makes some sort of sense, Zoë allowed. It still doesn’t tell me how to find my body, or how to get back into it.

Gwen opened her mouth. Zoë held up her hand to stop her. And for the love of, well, you, don’t tell me to find the strength inside me. ’Cause it’s not there. I checked. Sang the Whitney Houston song and everything. And I looked behind the milk, and under the couch, and in my pocket. I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know who to trust anymore! I don’t even know if you would eat someone like me, an errant soul just bobbing around!

Gwen smiled sadly. “Zoë, we were both inebriated last night, a position I don’t often find myself in. The souls pass through us unharmed, they are not processed, or eradicated, or devoured. I understand your objection, but it’s not nearly as bad as you thought it was. And even if it were, I would never do that to you. You’re my friend.

“Go find your body, we can talk about the rest of this later. You have a connection to the city now, if you concentrate you can find anything here you want. You have to do this yourself, Zoë, but understand you are not alone.”

Zoë nodded and sighed, realizing that she had no mouth, and didn’t need to breathe, but going through the motions made her feel better. She tried to think about what she needed to do to connect with the city, despite wanting to do the exact opposite. She really didn’t want to talk to the city again, but she needed it now. She spread out, finding the borders of the city’s presence, at the coast, through the bayou, over the Mississippi and the lakes and the sound. She found she couldn’t go into the swamps, or the Gulf. She felt her friends, and more. She felt the anguish and shame of Opal, and the regret and grief of Eir. The people she didn’t know as well, she couldn’t sense their emotions. She found Christian, who was inspecting a block of ice in his freezer, and seemed to be talking to it. This cemented one of Zoë’s theories about water sprites, but she couldn’t think about that.

Zoë drifted and thought about what she’d learned. She thought about citytalkers and zoëtists and the mysterious Doyenne. She thought about the voodoo practitioners, and Freddie Who’s Always Ready’s grandfather, the one who fought Muhammad Ali. She thought of the host of the party she had been invited to, and how she could explain that she had been kidnapped by a city and had to miss his party.

The golden thread reappeared, and Zoë followed it gratefully. It led her east.

She drifted along into a small shop in the Warehouse District of town. Civil War museums, art galleries, the Superdome, the convention center, these were all upper-crust business and tourist destinations, but one shop stood out horribly. And that’s why the humans ignored it completely.

Zoë headed inside, taking note of the seven people who lived in the small apartment above the shop. The aisles were dark and the few windows were coated with grime. A handwritten sign on the door read MAREE’S SHOPPE—WELCOM.

Zoë browsed the shelves, feeling many of the items fairly pulse with energy. This was a voodoo shop, a real one, not one with cheap masks and New Orleans mugs to appeal to the tourists. This was where zoëtists shopped.

The top shelves held jars of herbs and bottles of viscous liquid, some black, some yellow. One rack that stood apart held swatches of fabric, velvet, it looked like, alongside rolls of ribbon, bottles of glitter, and embroidery kits.

The herbs had names like crossing powder, calamus root, catnip, and holy thistle.

Another aisle held small boxes of edible herbs, such as basil, lavender, cloves, and ginger. This aisle also had oils Zoë was more familiar with than the items on the other shelves, like peppermint, cinnamon, and vanilla.

A lazy Susan sat on the counter at the left of the door next to an old cash register. On it were trays of things like rose quartz, jasper, eggshells, silver coins, and pink coral.

On the floor by the counter were a barrel and a large glass jug. The barrel held dried alligators’ and rabbits’ feet, and the jug looked to hold live leeches.

“You just lookin’ or are you gonna buy?” asked the man behind the counter.

Zoë didn’t know what startled her more—the fact that she hadn’t sensed him there, or that he appeared to see her.

“Can you see me?” she asked.

“A’course I can see you. What kind of priest do you take me for if I couldn’t see the dead?” He chuckled. He spoke with an accent, and Zoë guessed him to be from Jamaica, or more likely Haiti. He was bald and had a steel spike through his nose. He looked to be at the indefinable age between forty and seventy that some well-preserved people manage to achieve.

He squinted at her. “Only you ain’t dead, is you?”

She felt herself grin ruefully. “You’re good. I, uh, am not sure how I’d buy anything of yours, and I left my money in my other pants. Meaning my pants, you know.” He didn’t smile. She cringed and went on, less flippantly, “So I am kind of stuck, I got put in a trance and can’t merge back with my body.”

“Hokay,” he said. “Where your body now?”

“Somewhere in a walled garden, near the St. Louis Cemetery, I think,” she said.

“Dat ain’t too far,” he said. “Imma make you a gris-gris bag, and you hang it on your body, and that’ll anchor your soul right smart there, yeah?” He got moving toward the swatches of cloth, pulling a pair of dirty gardening gloves out of his pocket.

“You have done this before?” Zoë asked, floating along after him helplessly.

“Once or twice. Ain’t hard if you know what you doin’. And I can’t read or write good, but I knows my gris-gris.” He reached out and grabbed one of the swatches of cloth. He eyed her. “You got a favorite color?”

“Blue,” she answered absently as she watched his hands deftly thread a needle while wearing gloves, then grab a swatch of blue fabric and begin sewing three of the sides together. Within a minute he had a little bag. He took a white ribbon and attached it to the mouth of the bag.

He moved around the store, muttering to himself. “Now a girl’s not gonna want da chicory, she want da rosemary.” He dipped his gloved hand into herbs, took a pinch of each, and then sprinkled several drops of oil into the bag. He then went up to the counter and dropped in a few eggshells, a small piece of jade, and then a dried baby alligator foot.

He put his mouth close to the bag and whispered into it, then quickly tied it up tight and knotted it a couple of times.

“Dere. That gonna anchor you but good.”

“What do I owe you?” Zoë asked, knowing he would have to take credit since she had no cash on her.

“Blood. Freely given, that is. I don’t traffic in the other stuff.”

“Other stuff… but I am kind of separated from my blood right now. And I don’t think I even want to know why you want it,” she said. “And besides, how am I going to take the bag?”

He tossed it to her, and reflexively she put her hand up and caught it. He grinned, his teeth white and perfect. “Tole you it wasn’t my first time. You put that ’round your neck, go get back in your body, and then you’ll be good. You don’t let nobody else touch it, ever. You come back to me soon and we settle up, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, feeling out of her element completely. “Totally. Thank you so much.”

She drifted toward the door, and he called to her, “And don’ worry, she do this to every talker. She think it funny.”

Zoë turned around slowly. “How did you know… and why do you know that about her?”

“Ain’t. My. First. Time.” He said the words slowly. “’Sides, my family got both strains in it, priest and talker. Only the talkers is gone.” He looked sad for a moment, but then perked up. “So you go get back, and you make sure you don’ let anyone else know what you are. Dat’s what my sister didn’t do, and she gone now.”

Zoë thought for a moment. “If you’re a zoëtist, do you know the Doyenne? Do you know if she’s alive?”

The clerk’s eyes narrowed and he spat on the floor. “You clearly don’ know, so I’m not gonna curse you for that, but you don’t speak her name in my house.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I just need to find her,” Zoë said. “I’m sorry I offended.”

He snorted. “You need to find her. Everybody need to find her. Some even think she dead, and they still try to find her. No body, no grave. But she out there. Mark my words.” He spat again. “Now go on before your body piss itself or something. And come back, but say that name no more.”

She nodded, and fled.

CHAPTER 3

City Infrastructure

Pharmacy Museum

If you find yourself injured or ill in New Orleans, the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum is the best place to go. Ostensibly to preserve the history of pharmacology, it is staffed by dedicated and talented health-care professionals, and many of their tools and medicines are still quite potent. If you need aid when the museum is closed to humans, someone is always on call. Their medicines are top-of-the-line, and their leeches well trained. They are able to treat any injury, and most illnesses such as rot, mange, and plague.