Gathering Deep (24 page)

No doubt Lucy had run off to tell Mama Legba what I was up to. I needed to catch up with them both and tell them what I'd learned.

“I could take those back to the office for you, if you want. It's on my way out,” I offered.

Dr. Aimes didn't look all that certain at first, but his disgust for what the copies contained must have won out, because he handed them over without much fuss.

“Ju
st put them on my desk. I'll figure out what to do with them tomorrow.” He glanced up at me. “And if you hear anything from Piers … ”

My throat went tight. “I'll let you know.”

Twenty-Nine

“You drive,” I said, tossing Odane the keys.

“Me?” He seemed confused. “I thought you were taking me back to get my car.”

“Change in plans. We need to get these to Mama Legba's before anyone realizes I didn't drop them off like I was supposed to, so you drive and I'll read.”

He frowned but didn't argue.

As he tore down back roads to get to the highway, I tried to make some sense of the journal. The copy was hard to read in some places, but that didn't much matter since it was written in French, which I couldn't make out, and a series of strange symbols, which I
really
couldn't make out. But whoever had done the translating had written the English words in a strong, clear hand right below the originals.

I started reading.

By the time we reached the highway into town, I was starting to get a picture of Roman Dutilette that was different than anything I thought I knew. None of the materials from my training to give tours of Le Ciel had prepared me for the man I met in the pages of his journal.

It turned out that the journal wasn't just a record of his life. There were all sorts of things mixed in—spells from different lands, charms and superstitions from different traditions. Most were darker than anything I'd ever heard of. The spells in those pages required all sorts of death and darkness—black cats buried alive, frizzled cocks burnt as an offering, and blood. So many of the spells required blood and sacrifice.

The more I read, the more I saw a strange sort of logic weaving itself together.

“He was afraid,” I told Odane as the lights of New Orleans came into view down the road ahead of us.

Odane glanced over at me, his expression grim. “What did he have to be afraid of?”

“The Dutilettes came from Haiti,” I explained. “Jean-
Pierre bought the property the mansion is on and moved his family here to make his own fortune right before the slaves staged a massive uprising on that island. Roman's father happened to get himself and his wife out in time, but most of Roman's extended family died at the hands of their slaves. You can see his anxiety all through here that it might happen again.” I picked up another sheet. “He picked slaves specifically from countries that had a tradition of Voodoo. He was afraid of it, because he'd heard that the Haitian uprising started with a Voodoo ceremony. It looks like he thought he could fight fire with fire. Everything he did seems to be to keep another massacre like the one in Haiti from happening again.”

On one of the pages, Roman had drawn the alley of trees and the pillars of the house in a rough sketch. I remembered what the young Thisbe had told a young Roman about the trees.

“It's why he built the house where he did—he thought the trees had some power to protect his family,” I said. I pulled out another page and studied it. “I think Roman was collecting all sorts of magic—especially dark magic. He wrote the spells and charms in code, so no one would have been able to tell what he was doing.” I looked up at Odane. “How did no one ever find out? There had to have been rumors.”

“It's secluded out there now,” Odane said. “It would have been more so back then. Besides, it's not exactly the sort of thing he'd want to get around, so he would have been careful.”

“Which explains the code,” I agreed.

“People were scared of what they didn't understand back then, same as they are now. Plus, his standing in the area would have shielded him from suspicion as well.”

I sank back in the seat. “So he wanted to protect his family and he collected these spells … They go over most of his adult lifetime,” I said, flipping back through the book. “It's going to take a while to sort through all this.”

Odane's phone vibrated in the front pocket of his shirt. With a frown he looked at the number on the screen and then answered.

“What's up?” he asked. “Right now? I'm kind of in the middle of … Got it … Of course I'll be careful. Love you, too.”

He clicked off the phone. “Change of plans,” he said. “I have to make a stop.”

“Can't you drop me at Mama Legba's before you do?”

Shaking his head, he shifted and shot off across three lanes to catch an exit we'd almost passed. “That was my mom,” he said. “She saw something, and I think you'll want to be there.”

“Me?”

He glanced over at me. “She said it was someone connected to you.”

“Wait … You mean she
saw
something,” I said, understanding. Then a sort of leaden dread settled in the pit of my stomach. “Do you think it could be Piers?”

“She didn't say, but if we don't hurry, someone's gonna die.”

Thirty

Odane turned off the main highway and took a dark access road that led back into the brush. A little ways down that road, we came upon a broken-down sign that used to welcome visitors to Adventureland, an abandoned theme park just outside the city.

“Your mom saw something here?” I asked, peering through the darkness of the night in front of us and trying to see the park out in front of us.

Most people at school had taken the drive down the lonely stretch of highway that winds around the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, out to the abandoned ruin of the park. It had become almost a rite of passage for the privileged and bored to go out to the sticks and play with some danger.

Back before Katrina, the whole city had been excited about the park opening. People talked about jobs and tourists and money flowing into the area. Then the hurricane came and washed everything out, and the company decided
it wasn't worth the money to fix it. They left the park
exactly as Katrina left a lot of things, rotted and empty and covered in a layer of whatever the floodwaters left behind.

Even I went out there once with a handful of other girls. We weren't brave enough—or stupid enough—to go at night like a lot of people did, but we spent the better part of one winter afternoon looking around, scaring each other silly, all while the empty ribs of a forgotten coaster lurked above. It had been bad enough in the daylight, and I wasn't in any hurry to see what it was like at night.

Odane cut the headlights so only the running lights of the Nova lit up the way in front of us. A few yards in, we came to an unguarded police barricade.

“Give me a second,” he said, getting out of the car. In the dim yellow glow of the car's light, he moved the wooden barricade out of the way and then got back behind the wheel.

The abandoned parking lot was filled with crater-sized potholes and broken glass that glinted in the dim beams of the running lights, but Odane navigated it all with the same easy confidence he always used until we were at the gates of the park. “We'll have to walk from here,” he said. “Do you have a flashlight in here or anything?”

I opened the glove box and pulled out a flashlight and handed it to him.

“Ready?” he said, looking at me.

I nodded and eased open my door, careful not to make a sound.

Before us, the abandoned park loomed like a broken city. Here and there, a few floodlights—probably for security—spotlighted areas in a murky yellow. A few shot upward, illuminating the skeletal remains of rides that had never been opened and casting long shadows that fell across them like bars.

We made our way carefully through the broken-down turnstiles that should have welcomed visitors and found a moldering map of the grounds hanging listlessly from its busted-up frame. Odane shone the flashlight's beam on it.

“What are we looking for?” I asked.

“I don't know,” he told me, studying the map. “My mom's visions aren't always specific.”

“The path to the right is shorter. Maybe we should start there?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Odane said, his voice still as hushed as mine, like someone might be listening nearby.

We left the map and followed the debris-strewn pathway to the right, passing a limp, horseless carousel as we went. When we came to the entrance of Mardi Gras World, we had to pass under a half-collapsed archway. Huge, clown-like masks watched with empty eyes as we made our way beneath them, and once we were on the other side, everywhere we looked, more gruesome masks, their surfaces darkened with age and mold, leered at us from every surface.

“This was a mistake,” I said, wishing I had picked the other direction. “It's like they know we're here.”

Odane took my hand. “Come on,” he said, leading me farther into the madhouse world that we'd entered. “We need to hurry.”

Onward we walked, steadily, carefully. Past the crumpled frame of a whirling ride, past countless trash bins topped with open-mouthed clowns that looked like they might come alive at any moment and jump up to devour us.

“What's that?” Odane said, training the beam on something that glinted in the dark.

We inched closer to it. “Oh, no,” I said, my voice shaking as I stooped down near the camera. Gingerly, I picked up the broken body, but bits of the shattered lens fell to the ground as a feeling of triumph flowed through me.

Bodies pressed around me, but I didn't pay them any mind. Through the eyes of the mask I watched, following her from a distance through the crowd of the Quarter.

I gasped. The vision wasn't as vivid as the others, but I understood what it meant.

“What?” Odane crouched down near me, catching me as I wobbled free of the vision. “Did you see something?”

“It's Lucy,” I said, sure. “Thisbe has her.”

Odane took the camera from my shaking hands and slung the strap over his shoulder. “Where?”

“I don't know,” I said. “The vision didn't go that far.”

“Maybe you could try again?” When I hesitated, he gave my hand a squeeze. “I've got you, Chloe.”

His eyes were so calm and sure as he urged me to take the camera again. Like he trusted me to do this. Like he knew I could.

“I'm not getting anything else,” I said when I took the camera. “It happened fast. Thisbe was hiding in the crowd somewhere in the Quarter, and she took Lucy before Lucy could even fight her.” I looked around, the buildings lurking over me, threatening to box me in. To keep me there. “Where would Thisbe have taken her?”

“Not anywhere out in the open,” Odane said finally. “She'd find a place to hide out. There—” He pointed to a large, square building with the silhouette of a jester lurking over it like a jack-in-the-box gone wrong. “Let's try in there.”

I wasn't sure, but I followed as he led me to the entrance with its broken-down door, and then into the bowels of the building.

Thirty-One

Inside, the air was close, and it choked us with the heavy scent of rot and mold. And something else—something dark and sticky smelling. It was a scent that reminded me of that first day I'd visited Thisbe's cabin.

“I think this is it,” I said, coughing on the thickness and dust in the air.

Odane peeled off his top shirt and tore a strip from it, leaving only his white tank covering his chest. “Here,” he said, wrapping the fabric around my face. “Don't breathe it in.” Handing me the flashlight for a second, he tore another strip from the shirt and tied himself a mask as well. “Come on.”

Slowly, we crept into the deep darkness of the building. It had been a funhouse once, so we had to watch our step or trip over the tracks sunk into the floor that should have carried riders through the darkened rooms.

“Do you see that?” Odane said, pointing to a glow ahead of us.

“I think so,” I whispered.

“I'm not imagining it?”

“Not unless I am, too.”

He looked at me, the whites of his eyes glinting in the light thrown by the flashlight. With a tight nod, he led me forward, carefully stepping along the tracks. When we got to the source of the light—a set of swinging double doors—he put his finger up to where his mouth was under the mask, like he was motioning for me to be quiet. Then he waved us forward, pushing on the door slowly in case it creaked and gave us away, and then suddenly more quickly, and stepped through.

I followed him and stopped dead in my tracks.

The room was empty except for a pile of rags someone had been using for a bed and a rickety metal table, probably used by a mechanic or security guard at one time. But on the floor, laid out like an offering, there was a body wrapped in red string.

“Lucy!” I rushed over to her, but she didn't stir.

She was burning up with fever beneath the string and trembled at my touch, but she didn't wake.

The red string
—it didn't seem like nearly enough to hold anyone. I touched a place where it had already rubbed Lucy's skin raw, and as my hands brushed against the thread, I was in Thisbe's mind again …

She'd taken the boy from me, so it was only fitting for her to take his place.

I took out the carved figure, the one I'd made for this occasion. The girl was still unconscious when I sliced into her hand and rolled the little doll in her blood. Carefully, I wrapped the wet figure with the red string until the blood was sealed beneath it, and then, happy with my work, I tucked the binding charm into my pocket.

Energy fairly crackled around her, like her body was trying to call back the part of her soul I'd removed. Yes, the girl was exactly what I'd need. Once I found Augustine, we'd be able to live out our lifetimes together with the power her body gave us.

Satisfied, I began wrapping the sleeping girl in the power of the string.

When her body—and all it had to give—was bound up tight, I went over and crouched in front of the man slouched in the corner, until I was eye-level with him. My knees protested as I balanced on the balls of my feet, but I wanted to be close when I said what needed saying. I wanted to see the understanding when it finally lit in the eyes that had been following my every movement for the last few days.

But how to begin?

“When I was a girl,” I started, “the water ran sweet most of the year, as though the roots of the cane had grown deep down into the soil, down to the cool springs under the earth and seasoned them. But come late summer, the water would go rancid and taste of iron and rust, like the land had soaked up all the blood spilled during the harvest. Like the land had judged the sacrifice and found it wanting.

“Those were the hardest months—when the heat flayed you. But in those months, your parched throat wouldn't accept the water you tried to give it, because during those months, the water tasted of death. Those were the months we buried our dead in a hurry, without the proper rituals or any time at all to mourn. After, when the cane was boiling away and when the fields lay massacred by our blades, that's when we waited for the new crop of men to arrive and replace the ones who had fallen.

“There was always a new crop—of cane, of men, and even of hope. We hoped that this would be the last season, and still
we hoped we would see the next. Most of all, we each hoped that something else might happen.”

I hesitated. Even so many years later, the pain still felt as clear and distilled as the water that used to run from those sweet, sweet springs. But I'd lived with that pain for lifetimes, now. I'd live with it a bit longer.

Lifting the boy's chin between the sharp nails of my thumb and forefinger, I forced him to look at me. To see me. “When I learned what my mother was, that was the beginning of my something else, and when I saw his face for the first time, that was the end of it,” I said, waiting for that glimmer of understanding in the prisoner's tired, bloodshot eyes.

The man shifted but never once tried to pull away. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you ought to know. Because I'm giving you a gift.”

“How is any of this a gift?” The words pulsed with anger.

Good. Anger meant strength. Strength meant life. Life was what I needed from him.

I smiled then, not because I felt pleasure at his discomfort, but because I admired the strength I saw before me. “What I'm about to tell you is a gift, because most people don't have any idea why they have to die.”

I surfaced from the vision, gasping for air and shaking with the intensity of what I'd just seen.

“I was right,” I whispered, as my own anger warred with the memory of her satisfaction. “She has him.”

“Who?” Odane asked.

I looked up at him and forced myself to say the rest. “She has Piers. He was here, too, a little earlier. But she took him somewhere. We were right—she's going to trade him to Samedi for Augustine.”