CHAPTER TWENTY

Had Opal really hit Zoë? She couldn’t remember. Phil would kill the vampire if she had, though.

Something pricked her arm.

Had someone picked her up? Where was she?

Someone brushed the hair from her forehead, tenderly. Then a piece of tape was pressed over her mouth. When Zoë finally opened her eyes, the presence was gone.

She was in a small room, lying on a cot. A lantern hung from the ceiling, lighting two individuals on other cots. They were an old man and an old woman, shriveled, looking at least ninety years old. Their mouths had the caved-in look that hinted that no teeth were inside. They wore stained white boxers and T-shirts that looked as tired and worn out as they did.

The wall next to the door was lined with shelves holding huge jars of herbs, flowers, and salts. None were labeled, but Zoë recognized many of the herbs and powders from the voodoo shop she’d visited as a ghost.

She couldn’t have gone far from the road; the humidity in the room was the same as in the swamp, and the small windows near the top of the room were propped open. The chilly humidity made the sour smell of unwashed bodies and illness nearly unbearable.

She struggled to pull the tape off her mouth, but discovered leather cuffs at her wrists and a leather strap around her chest, keeping her securely on the cot. She winced as the movement upset the needle in her arm, shooting a pain up to her shoulder. Her neck went cold with alarm when she realized the needle was diverting her blood through a tube and draining it into a glass jar. Clearly the IV wasn’t to give her anything beneficial.

She looked away from the needle and tried to think past her pounding head. So she had been kidnapped away from Opal and Bertie. She wasn’t sure if the two would have lifted a finger to save her, but she had to assume they were either incapacitated, captured and held somewhere else, or in on whatever weird kidnapping was going on.

Instinct made her want to scream out for help, but the tape was firmly keeping her mouth shut.

She looked around the tiny room to get a bearing. The people on the other two cots were sleeping—this she discovered after watching them closely for signs of life. They were not restrained. The thin windows looked to be made of cheap yellow plastic, but were too high and too small to crawl out of. The walls were covered with torn brown wallpaper over drywall, and the carpet was horribly stained and worn, and Zoë had no idea what color it had once been.

The door had no hinges, and had a small concave area to put your hand in to slide it aside to open.

She was in a trailer.

A boat motor rumbled outside, and the room dipped and swayed a bit. A modified trailer that’s also a houseboat, she amended. Houseboat. Someone was looking for a houseboat, she remembered.

The IV was worrying her. She had no idea how long she had been out, only that it was still nighttime. The glass jar was much bigger than one liter, and it was about halfway full. The needle was taped in place, and no amount of wiggling was going to dislodge it. The straps, while loose, were still firmly keeping her down on the cot.

She looked down at her dress, now filthy. But the fabric was still shiny and blue and firmly around her. It was before midnight, then. Not much time had passed since they had gotten to the swamp. She thought as hard as she could to communicate the way she did with New Orleans.

Hey. Dress.

She felt ridiculous, but if her Cinderella fabric had saved her on Bertie’s back, it might be able to help her here. Can you work me out of these restraints? I just need the left wrist, I can do the rest.

The hem of the dress twitched, and the bow around her waist untied itself and snaked over to the restraint. She didn’t remember a bow at her waist, but the dress apparently had use for it. She couldn’t believe it had worked. She wanted to laugh with relief but tried to keep the muffled noise low. The dress fumbled with the restraint, then just wrapped itself around the leather that was pierced by the buckle. It had nearly lifted it off the prong when a bell dinged somewhere outside the room.

The sash from the dress dropped, and the whole dress wilted around her. Its color faded from blue to dirty white, and the gems hanging from it turned to gravel.

Oh no. She twitched under her leather. Midnight. Apparently the fabric lost all its magic at midnight. What the hell was the point of a dress that dies at midnight?

Her roommates didn’t stir at all during this, and she began to worry about them. Were they in comas? Why weren’t they in hospitals getting life support instead of out here in the swamp, apparently getting their life drained?

Her struggles had increased her heartbeat, unfortunately, which increased the flow of blood from her arm. She began to get light-headed, so she relaxed back to calm herself. She’d fainted once while giving blood, and knew it only meant low blood pressure, and not impending death. At least, she thought, not yet.

She wondered what Bertie would say. Probably mock her for not having a plan. She had a plan, dammit, it was to use her magical dress to get out of these restraints. It wasn’t her fault her dress became impotent at midnight.

While she took deep breaths to slow her heart, she heard rustling outside, footsteps.

“Is this the place you saw from above?” It was Arthur’s voice.

“It has to be.” Gwen. “Knock on the door, it is your battle.”

“Did you see where Zoë and the others went?” Arthur.

“No, I lost them. They were heading in the same direction, so they probably are in the woods somewhere. Unless she was just flying Bertie for a look over the Gulf.”

Eir spoke up. “That is probably what she did. I understand humans need a distraction after ending relationships.”

“Lay off,” Arthur said. “Can we focus on what we need?”

The house shook a bit under Arthur’s knock. Someone stirred outside Zoë’s door.

She was in the Doyenne’s house. This was the woman who had trained Ben, who had trained the terrifying woman who tried to destroy New York. The woman who had the secret to halting the zombie virus. Why was Zoë trapped in the back?

Blood. Freely given, that is. I don’t traffic in the other stuff. That’s what the zoëtist in the shop had said he wanted from her. Her blood had power. It made a certain bit of sense: she was coterie, her blood had to be different from a regular human’s blood.

That zoëtist had wanted blood freely given. This, tying her down and taking the blood, was presumably the “other stuff.” Zoë started to get a very sick feeling about how the zoëtists imbued their herbs with their life magic.

Or maybe that was just the blood loss.

“We can search for Zoë and the others after we leave here,” Gwen said.

“We could leave the man, if you like,” Eir said.

“I’m right here, you know,” Arthur said.

“No, we need to keep him safe. We promised Zoë,” Gwen said, continuing as if Arthur wasn’t there.

Eir snorted. “You promised. I did no such thing.”

“Then go. If you know where to start looking.”

Pause. “I will text her again,” Eir said.

Although it made Zoë feel like a complete idiot, she began to grunt in a pitiful attempt to scream. “Mmmph! Mmmmmrrrrr!”

Sure. It could sound like “Gwen” and “Arthur” if they were listening. Sure.

She realized it would be a better idea if she listened to discover what they were talking about. She had missed some of the conversation while she was grunting at them.

The door had opened. “You must want something real bad,” came a croaking voice, “to visit the Doyenne this late. Who sent you?”

“Ma’am. My name is Arthur Anthony. Your former student, Ben Rosenberg, is my doctor,” Arthur said. “He supplies the herbs I need to avoid, uh, turning. Zombie. He left town and I had an accident where I ran out of my supply.”

Croaking laughter interrupted him. “Accident? Do you leave everything that keeps you alive up to the accident gods?”

“It doesn’t matter how I lost the herbs,” Arthur said, sounding annoyed. “What matters is I am out. And I need more. And I can’t reach Ben. You’re the only person I know that can supply them. We weren’t even sure if you were alive. We needed a psychopomp to find you.”

“You don’t know me,” she said slowly. “If you did, you wouldn’t have come, bringing death goddesses and life goddesses to my home.”

“Are you saying you won’t help him?” This was Gwen.

“What you want with him? If he die, then you get to eat. Or that big woman could cure him.”

“I am a god of healing,” Eir said. “But this is zoëtist territory.”

“And that’s none of your business either,” Arthur said. “It shouldn’t matter how I lost my herbs, or why these ladies are with me. I have payment. Are you going to help me?”

There was a long silence and Zoë wondered if they were doing a standoff or some sort of silent communication.

“You already paid,” the Doyenne said finally.

“I have?” Arthur asked. “You mean you’ll give them to me?”

“Yah. You pay lots. You pay that you don’t tell no one about where you found me. You tell, I will know, and maybe those herbs won’t work so good no more.” She chuckled. “Yeah, you pay. Whether you like or not. Stay. I get what you need.”

The door slid open and the Doyenne slipped into Zoë’s back room and closed the door behind her. She was tall and stooped, with heavily wrinkled skin. She might have been of African descent but her skin was now faded and gray. She paid no attention to Zoë, who struggled and “mmmph”ed angrily at her. She took a small empty pouch off the shelf and then opened three jars of herbs. A handful of one, a pinch of both the second and third. It looked a lot like the gris-gris bag the zoëtist had made for Zoë.

The Doyenne finished with a sprinkling from the jar of salts. Then she came to Zoë.

“He pay, he just don’ know how much. You draining nice here, girlie. You come along at just the right time. I thought you’d be that fox boy, I been huntin’ him for some time, but you’ll do nice-like. My kids over there are just about done.”

She plucked the tube from the jar, dribbling Zoë’s blood on the floor before she held the tube above the herb packet. She let it soak into the herbs and then smiled.

Realization sank in and Zoë’s eyes went wide. The Doyenne smiled now, showing graying, rotted teeth. “You know now, ah? Life is the only thing that can hold off death, but not just any life. Human coterie life. Citytalkers were the best, they only powerful in cities. Sometimes I use weres. I used my students if they was bad.” She pointed to the woman. “But lately my supply ran low. I been draining these kids for nigh on forty years. They got almost nothing left.”

Zoë began furiously “mmmph”ing again, struggling and no longer feeling the sting of the needle in her arm. The Doyenne reached out with her hand and smoothed the hair out of Zoë’s eyes.

“Don’ fret, you bleed more if you fret. And I need you for a good long while.”

She cackled again as she left the room. Zoë listened with dawning horror as Arthur gushed thanks to the woman, and the goddesses gave her polite farewells.

Then they left.

The Doyenne was draining Zoë’s very essence. She felt as if she were in a Jim Henson movie, a puppet that existed only as sustenance for others. So the other two were talkers? Or zoëtists? The room didn’t look secure enough to hold an angry werewolf, even a geriatric one.

Her head swam. She longed for the cookies that the Red Cross gave out during blood drives. She had eaten nothing all day, which was not helping things. Was she still bleeding? She had to think she was; the needle was still in her arm and she hadn’t seen the Doyenne put a clamp on the tube.

Her friends’ voices faded into the woods, and were gone.

She felt herself instinctively searching for the city’s presence again, if not for advice then at least for companionship. But again there was nothing.

Anna. Where was the ghost? She looked around for a reflective surface to see if she was there, but the only slightly reflective surface was the jar of blood, and it showed nothing but the floor.

Anna? Anna! She tried to call out with her mind. The ghost could only hear her in her head. Had she lost interest? Or been detained?

She flopped back on the cot, exhausted now, and starting to feel light-headed again. Tears pricked at her eyes as she stared at the ceiling.

Zoë really was truly alone.

CHAPTER 20

Swamps

The swamps that lie between the city and the Gulf of Mexico are largely lawless. The infrastructure is still undergoing a rebuilding effort within the borders of New Orleans, which has allowed the swamps to become a lawless land, much like the American Southwest used to be for humans.

Some of the water sprites who caused so much chaos during Hurricane Katrina remained after being kicked out of the city. Zoëtists who operate outside of the scope of Public Works have been known to stay there, including a master zoëtist who was reported dead twenty years ago, though some swear she still lives.

It’s not the best place for vampires, as it’s not a population center, and zombies may find the oppressive humidity unfavorable if they have dermatology issues. But the swamps are teeming with life and are a lovely place for water-loving coterie, or plant lovers.

There are few official hotels if you’re looking for a place to stay that involves someone taking care of you (we all like someone to wash our linens from time to time, after all, and everyone likes room service), but if you are a vampire or someone else who prefers human or coterie contact and service, the Other Shoe is an elaborate hotel carved into a giant cypress tree. The trunk is hollow and contains a ladder to the surprisingly luxurious rooms in the branches of the tree. For coterie who need a more accessible entrance, the concierge is a tree nymph who controls the Spanish moss that hangs from the tree. The tree itself can grab its guests and bring them to the branches.^*

The hotel has accommodating places for different coterie to sleep, but where it stands out is the catering. It could be its stable of bewitched gators that go hunting every night, it could be its contacts within the city, or it could be the humans on the staff who allow for (chaperoned) feedings for vampires. Regardless, it is known for its remote location and romanticism—it is a popular honeymooning spot—and for being one of the best out-of-the-way places to eat in Louisiana.