MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2005
“Superdome becomes last resort for thousands unable to leave. New Orleans braces for nightmare of the Big One.”
—THE TIMES–PICAYUNE
A
s Katrina grew to monstrous Category Five status and started her last slow march toward land, I’d spent Sunday night frozen in front of the TV in my grandmother’s living room with no more eloquent prayer on my lips than “please.”
Please let this storm die out. Please take care of those people who couldn’t leave. Please help my home survive. Please help Gerry. If nothing else, help him make it through this.
I drifted into an exhausted sleep around four a.m., then awoke to the news that Katrina had weakened just before landfall and taken a last-second jog to the east. It had avoided the direct hit, socking New Orleans with a blow from its weaker, westerly side. Relief rolled through me, relaxing muscles I hadn’t realized were bunched. News hadn’t come in from the Louisiana and Mississippi coastal areas east of New Orleans, but it would be bad.
I was still trying to process it when Gran, wearing her pink housecoat and fuzzy slippers, wandered in to tell me coffee was ready. “Looks like it didn’t amount to much in New Orleans,” she said in her slow drawl as we watched TV news teams wander
around the French Quarter. The reporters seemed torn between relief at their own safety and disappointment that the big story was happening to the east, where Katrina was probably making mincemeat of St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes and the Mississippi coast.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done if it had hit us head-on.” I watched as camera crews captured the palm trees on Canal Street bending under 140-mph gusts. Hundreds of windows on the Hyatt Regency had exploded, but the building stood. An old storefront downtown had collapsed on a car, but no one was hurt. There would be a lot of wind damage, but it wouldn’t be catastrophic. New Orleans would survive.
“Well, you’d have moved back here, I reckon,” Gran said. “Wouldn’a been the end of the world. Come get breakfast.” A woman of few words and highly understated compassion, my grandmother.
As soon as I’d arrived Sunday night, I’d moved my late grandfather’s old Pontiac out of the garage and created the other end of the transport in case Gerry needed it. We’d talked by phone, made sure the two portals were connected, and then I’d locked myself in the bathroom and retraced the steps of my grounding ritual. I’d learned the hard way that Gran and I got along better if I didn’t know what she really felt behind that stiff upper lip.
I wandered into the kitchen, slid a biscuit and piece of ham onto a plate, and poured some coffee.
“Is Gerry coming here?” Gran sat at the kitchen table scanning the Birmingham newspaper, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose and every strand of silvery-blond hair in place. “You gonna see your daddy while you’re here?”
I sighed. Two loaded questions.
“I don’t guess Gerry will have to come after all,” I said, sitting opposite her at the table. “And do you really think Dad wants to see me?”
My father, Peter Jaco, had dumped me on my grandparents’ doorstep when I was six, shortly after my mom died of an aneurysm. She’d been on borrowed time her whole life and didn’t know it. Dad had worked at the conveyor belt plant, a solid and quiet man. My mom had given up her magic to marry him and live a normal life just like Gran had done with my grandfather. But with Mom gone, Peter Jaco hadn’t wanted the stress of a six-year-old kid with magic skills. Maybe it wasn’t that simple, but that’s how it looked from my end of things.
“Well, of course your daddy would want to see you. What a question.” Gran rattled her paper and turned the page, ending the discussion.
I ate silently, trying to think of an excuse not to visit him. Really, though, he’d done no worse by me than my grandparents. They’d kept me less than a year before driving me to New Orleans and leaving me with Gerry, a complete stranger. I don’t think I was a bad kid, just one with a lot of untrained magic. I tried not to blame them. Sometimes I even succeeded.
I poured the last of my coffee into the sink, then placed my mug in the dishwasher. “I’ll see Dad before I head back home.”
“When you going?”
What was the old saying about fish and houseguests stinking after three days? “In a day or two, unless Gerry needs me sooner.”
“Stay as long as you want to, Drusilla Jane. This is your home too.” Her face was hidden behind the newspaper, and I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. One of these days, I was going to have to come to terms with the fact that Gran and Dad were my closest family members whether or not they approved of the life I’d chosen. But not today.
Back in the living room, the cable news reporter had left the French Quarter and stood in the New Orleans Central Business District, the CBD, looking perplexed.
“We’re getting reports of rising water in different parts of
town, but we haven’t been able to confirm more than this.” He pointed the camera’s focus toward his shoes, which were immersed in a half inch of water. “This wasn’t here an hour ago.”
I frowned and returned to the sofa, my dysfunctional family forgotten as I listened to new reports filtering in. Storm surge had caused levee breaches that were dumping tons of water into the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish. The Lower Nine was a predominantly black neighborhood a few miles east of the French Quarter; St. Bernard was predominantly white and just east of the Lower Nine. Other breaches in the area’s broad levee system had reportedly flooded New Orleans East, but the media couldn’t confirm it—only that 9-1-1 calls had come in before the phone lines went down. No one knew where the water downtown was coming from.
I scrambled in my jeans pocket for my cell phone and called Gerry.
He answered on the first ring. “I thought it was about time you called. You’re such a mother hen.”
“Are you getting any news?” I said. He sounded relaxed, even cheerful. Maybe nothing was wrong after all.
“No, the electricity went out early this morning, but I’d say the worst of it missed—” He stopped talking, and I heard him moving around. “Damn.”
“Gerry? The levees are failing. Get in the transport.”
He didn’t answer, but I heard him calling Sebastian. “There’s water coming in the first floor. I think the floodwall—”
The phone’s tiny gray screen blinked CALL ENDED. Hitting redial got me nothing but silence.
I raced through the kitchen to the garage, passing Gran along the way. “Something’s wrong.” My voice sounded calmer than I felt. “I’m going to try to bring Gerry here.”
I knelt beside the interlocking circle and triangle I’d drawn in chalk on the concrete floor. Lighting two small candles from my
backpack, I set one on each end of the transport and laid small chunks of green amber at each point of the triangle. I warmed the largest piece of green amber in my hands, placed it carefully on the circle, and shot a tiny bit of energy inside it. The power of the transport caught like an ember bursting into flame. Gerry should be able to come through.
Nothing happened.
“TV just said the Lakeview levee broke.”
I started, unaware that Gran had come into the garage and was standing behind me.
A thrill of fear shot through me. “You’re sure it was Lakeview?”
She nodded. “They say the whole place’ll fill up like a soup bowl. They had no business buildin’ a city below sea level in the first place.”
I bit back a retort and did some mental calculations. The foundation of Gerry’s house sat about twelve or fourteen feet below the levee. If New Orleans really did fill up, his first floor would be underwater, but he should be able to go upstairs unless the force of the water pushed the whole house off its foundation. It would depend on how close he was to the breach.
Retrieving the large piece of amber, I warmed it in my hands again. “Gerry established his transport in his upstairs study,” I said. “I’m going to try to go there and see if he’s okay.”
I stepped inside the transport and knelt again, placing the green amber on the line of the circle and willing a small amount of energy into it.
Pressure squeezed me from all sides, and I waited for the transport to begin. Then it dissipated. Gerry’s side of the transport wasn’t working. It had been disconnected, or destroyed.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2005
“Catastrophic: Storm surge swamps 9th Ward, St. Bernard; Lakeview levee breach threatens to inundate city.”
—THE TIMES–PICAYUNE
S
everal hours of frantic transport attempts and aborted phone calls passed before I thought of trying to locate Gerry by less-conventional means. The Elders had outlawed unauthorized hydromancy and other forms of divination years ago because they were too easy to abuse, but like most young wizards I’d tried a few times just to see if they worked. Want to see what the cute boy down the street’s up to? Hydromancy is a teenage girl’s dream.
Sometimes you have to break rules to get things done in an emergency, and I thought a hurricane probably qualified. Besides, I’d run out of other ideas. I’d even checked with Tish, staying at her cousin’s house in Houston, and she hadn’t been able to reach Gerry either.
My energy was flagging from the transport attempts by the time I headed to the Winfield Walmart in search of makeshift hydromancy tools. A headache nudged at my temples, and my muscles ached as I prowled the aisles looking for an acceptable substitute for a dark marble bowl. I found a smoke-brown Pyrex dish that should work, and purified water to substitute for holy
water. Alabama was Bible Belt. Methodists and Baptists do casseroles, not holy water.
Back at Gran’s, I pulled a small gardening table into the backyard to take advantage of energy from the full moon, and set up the ritual. Faux-holy water in the bowl. Something of Gerry’s—a book I had borrowed. Patchouli incense from Walmart. I really needed mimosa leaves to burn, but patchouli would have to do. I lit the incense sticks and tried to relax while the ashes collected in the mason jar I was using as an incense burner. Finally, I added the ashes to the bowl of water.
I rested one hand on Gerry’s book and dipped the other hand in the water, concentrating on Gerry and tapping my dwindling reserves of magic. A minute passed, then two, and a cloudy image reflected on the water’s surface.
Thank God. It had been almost four frantic hours since our phone conversation, but at least I knew Gerry was alive. He sat at the desk in his upstairs study, writing by candlelight and looking hot and sweaty and miserable. But alive. I closed my eyes and my heart rate slowed. I couldn’t imagine my life without Gerry. I might share blood ties with my dad and Gran, but Gerry was my family. I’d stop complaining about my assignments. I’d appreciate what I had. I’d trust Gerry to bring my skills along the way he thought best.
I spent the next two weeks glued to the TV news channels, watching as my beautiful city died an ugly death, broadcast around the world 24/7. Thousands of people were stranded without help because they’d been too poor to leave, or too sick, or too old and frail, or too sure nothing bad could happen. If Gerry and the Elders hadn’t forced me to leave, I would have been one of them.
International media and private rescue groups swarmed the city immediately, but it took almost a week for squabbling officials to send even such basics as bottled water. In the meantime, people drowned in the eighty percent of the city that flooded, and died on the streets in the twenty percent that didn’t.
A report on what looked like a voodoo ritual killing of a National Guardsman trying to secure one of the neighborhoods finally propelled me off the sofa. The camera crews raced to a partially flooded Central City area and showed a black-draped form on a patch of high ground next to a boarded-up nail salon. A strange symbol had been drawn on the side of the building in white paint, and reporters speculated that a voodoo practitioner had sacrificed the soldier in some misguided plea to save the city.
Enough. I had to do something, but I couldn’t go home without blustering my way past jumpy soldiers and breaking the mandatory evacuation order. Gerry’s side of our transport remained inoperable for some reason. No phone calls to the 504 area code would go through. My options were limited.
On Thursday, almost two weeks after the storm, I finally broke down and visited my father—Gran had told me it was his off-day. I didn’t feel too badly about waiting so long. The roads worked in both directions, and he hadn’t come to see me, either.
I pulled up to his neat redbrick ranch house, about a ten-minute drive from Gran’s. The lawn was green and the flower beds well-tended. A black Ford pickup sat in the driveway. Like every place here, it seemed eerily quiet. My life was filled with sirens and horns and streetcars and crowds, with a constant backdrop of music.
The front door opened before I cleared the small brick porch, and Dad stepped back to let me in. “Wondered when you were gonna come by here,” he said, smiling and pulling me into a quick hug. He was always smaller than I remembered. In my mind, Peter Jaco was a tall bear of a man, I guess because in most
of my memories, I was a kid. This Peter Jaco was just a middle-aged man in a navy polo shirt and khakis, thinning on top and thickening in the middle.
“Sorry it took me so long,” I said, following him into the bright kitchen with its floral wallpaper and white curtains. “I’ve been trying to follow what’s going on at home, and, well …”
“Yeah, it’s a shame. Your house all right?”
He’d never come to see it, but at least he asked. “I don’t know. I heard the spots along the river didn’t flood so maybe it’s okay. I’m hoping they’ll start letting us go home next week when it drains a little more.”
Dad held up a Diet Dr Pepper. “You still drink these?”
I smiled and took it. “Where’s Martha this morning?” Dad had remarried when I was ten, but never had more children. Probably just as well.
“Always gets her hair done on Thursdays,” he said. “She’ll be sorry she missed you. You talk to Gerry since the storm?”
I followed him into the neat den and took a seat on the end of the plush sofa nearest his favorite armchair. “I haven’t really gotten to talk to him, but I know he’s okay. His house was about eight blocks from one of the worst levee breaches.”
At first, I’d used hydromancy to check on Gerry every night but finally decided he was fine. He’d always been reading, writing at his desk, pacing. Once or twice I’d seen him talking to someone outside my field of vision—a trapped neighbor, probably, or one of the rescuers going around in boats.
Dad didn’t ask how I knew Gerry was okay. The whole idea of magic made him antsy so neither of us mentioned it anymore. “Gerry will be fine,” he said. “He always lands on his feet.”
I was about to ask what he meant when Fats Domino started belting out “Walking to New Orleans” from deep inside my purse.
Dad chuckled. “Your bag is singing.”
I smiled and dug in the oversize satchel. “I have a five-oh-four area code and no one’s been able to call since the storm,” I said, pulling out a chocolate bar, some keys, and a notebook, but no phone. “Maybe this means the cell towers are working again.”
By the time I’d excavated it from the tangle of stuff that purses always seem to collect, the caller had hung up. I checked the call log and choked on my soda.
Congress of Elders
. No phone number, but the message icon blinked.
“Uh, I need to check this.”
“You go on,” Dad said, heading for the kitchen. “I’m gonna get me some coffee.”
My hand shook as I punched in my PIN. Pixie retrieval did not put one on the Elders’ radar. I’d never seen an Elder, much less talked to one. The highest I’d ever rated on the wizarding scale of importance was a certificate showing I’d passed my sentinel exam four years ago and the nifty badge that came with it.
A deep, rich voice boomed out a short message:
Gerald St. Simon is missing. Return to New Orleans immediately.