Chapter 4

 

The smell of death jarred me like a kick to the face. The long staircase that led into Vilokan was steep and unpleasant under regular circumstances. This was something else. There were still a lot of rotting bodies in the city, and the smell had made its way through the staircase. I wasn’t at all looking forward to what was surely an even more pungent odor in the city proper.

A bitter chill struck my chest—it froze my lungs, causing a sharp pain when I gasped at the contact.

What was that? Isabelle asked.

“Do you sense anything?” I asked, coughing through my words as I attempted to breathe. “An essence or an aura?”

Nothing…

Ghosts were known to cause a few degrees’ drop in temperature when they manifested. I’d gathered most of the souls from Vilokan—all those who’d been in the auditorium when it had flooded. Some of them re-inhabited their reanimated bodies—thank you, Mercy Brown—and became vampires. The rest I freed when I shattered the vessel. It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be other ghosts lingering here, ghosts who weren’t in the auditorium at all. Those whose souls I hadn’t gathered into the vessel. But if what had struck us was a human spirit, Isabelle should have been able to see their aura, and since I also had Baron Samedi’s aspect, I should have seen them. Whatever struck us, it was stronger… inhuman.

“Why the hell am I doing this anyway?” I asked.

To revive Vilokan, to restore hope to the survivors, to provide them a place where they’re safe from Kalfu.

“Still, why couldn’t Aida-Wedo do this herself? She can teleport. She could clean up this shit a lot more easily than I could.”

She’s a Loa, Isabelle said, stating the obvious. She doesn’t clean shit up.

Don’t get me wrong. I was grateful for Aida-Wedo. She’d saved my dog for God’s sake. And even though rescuing Letty from the flooding city probably meant one more human died that she could have saved made it bittersweet, I was nonetheless grateful to have my dog back. Isabelle and I both were. This whole idea, though, that I had to come here alone, face down the demons of the past, so I could lead the Voodoo world against Kalfu… well, it seemed absurd.

The cold chill struck me again, this time knocking me off my feet. I fell onto the steps and slid down a flight.

“What the fuck!” I shouted, shaking my fist aimlessly into the air as if whatever it was that kept hitting me would be intimidated by the almighty combination of f-bombs and shadow boxing.

Not a ghost. Maybe a projection?

I shook my head as I got back to my feet. “What person have you ever met who was powerful enough to project themselves with that kind of force?”

Joni could… probably. If she siphoned the right kind of magic.

“Okay, aside from Joni. She isn’t doing this.”

You just asked if I ever met someone powerful enough. I have. Joni. I’m just saying, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that this is a living person projecting.

“I guess if anyone knew, you might.”

Isabelle could project, too. She didn’t do it much. Sometimes she would project because Letty could see her when she did, and she loved playing with the dog. But for the most part she said it felt unnatural, uncomfortable. Still, she did have a body—even if she was sharing mine—so Isabelle wasn’t dead, technically speaking. She’d know what a human projection could do.

“I still don’t understand who it could be. And why they’d be trying to knock my ass down the stairs.”

A frost formed on the wall beside me. I quickly leapt down a couple steps as another icy blast jumped across the stairway.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Stop with your shit! Just tell me what you want!”

Something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. Something moving on the wall. The frosty patch… it was like something was being written.

FIND QUEEN N-- HOST.

“The queen?” I asked. “Marie Laveau?”

No response.

And a host? The Loa require hosts. Was it Oggie trying to communicate with me? I could only hope. And what was the word that started with N? I couldn’t make out anything after it before HOST.

The hair on my neck started to rise. I looked around. Another patch of frost had formed on the wall.

L… A… X

“The airport in Los Angeles?” I asked out loud, raising my voice to be sure that whatever was out there trying to communicate with us could hear.

I’m sure it isn’t the airport.

I shrugged. “A laxative? Are you constipated?”

Shut up, Annabelle.

I snorted. “Well, I can’t think of what else it might stand for.”

How about Laveau? First two letters. And pilgrims draw an X on her tomb when they visit her grave seeking a blessing.

“I guess that makes more sense in this context than laxatives.”

Ya think?

“Maybe Marie Laveau died in the flood. And she wants us to find her a host so she can come back and save our asses? I mean, some people think she is a Loa anyway, seeing that she returned after she died and never seems to age.”

But why would she say “find queen” if it’s her?

“Maybe she likes speaking about herself in the third person. Annabelle does that sometimes.”

The next time I have the reins, remind me to slap us in the face.

“Why would you do that? You’d feel it.”

And you would, too. It would be worth it.

I chuckled. “Still, if whatever this thing is was running out of energy and can’t spell the second message with more than three letters, I don’t think they’d say ‘find queen’ the first time if they meant ‘find me.’”

She would, since we wouldn’t know who ‘me’ was.

“Okay, you have a point. But it still doesn’t seem likely.”

Well, if Marie Laveau is a Loa, we should be able to summon her somehow, right? I mean, one way or another we’d be finding the queen.

I bit my lip. “Seems like there was a veve for Marie Laveau. We never learned it in Summoning 101. But I remember Asogwe Jim telling us in Philosophy of the Arts that evoking the queen’s presence through ritual was forbidden.”

That’s right. And if it was forbidden, it means it’s possible. It means there is a veve… and an offering she’ll respond to.

“We could just ask Aida-Wedo.”

She doesn’t know. She’s the one who told us that she was missing, no one knew what happened to her. If she knew how she could be summoned, she’d do it.

“Or she does know but won’t tell us because she doesn’t want someone to summon her.”

Either way, asking her isn’t going to help.

“Maybe if I ask her pretty please? I’m even willing to bargain with sugar and honey on top. I mean, she is a Loa. Maybe she likes to make bargains, too?”

Aida-Wedo doesn’t deal in bargains. And I’m sure she could get sugar and honey herself if she wanted. You just don’t want to go down there and clean up these bodies.

“Of course I don’t. And you do? How the hell are we going to get them out of here? Have you thought about that? I’m not hauling one body up these stairs, much less hundreds of them. And then what would I do with them when I get to the alley? Start piling up bodies? Yeah, that won’t look suspicious at all.”

I figured you’d just use Beli. Cut a gate and send their bodies to rest in Guinee.

I scratched my head and coughed. “Well, why the hell didn’t I think of that?”