"Thank you," she said.
"No problem," Val replied. She looked down, and realized she was in her underwear. "Oh, my God!" She reached for the fallen swaths of cloth and wrapped them around her.
They heard a moan coming from the clinker. It was stirring on the floor where Val had left it. Aunt Herbera stood over it and glared down.
"In my younger days, I would have hung you out with the washing! Crawl back into the sinkhole from which you climbed!"
"Are you kiddin'?" the creature asked, showing its bloody teeth in a grin. "That ain't even poetic!"
"You want poetry?" Val demanded, coming to loom over it.
"No, I want you to drop the towel. You got some body on you, babe." It leered at her.
Val kicked it in the neck. "I want you to swear an oath to me. I want you to promise to serve me."
The clinker let out a pained laugh. "Oaths? We don't swear no oaths! That's fairy-tale stuff."
Val hauled him to his feet by his unspeakably dirty T-shirt. "You don't? Well, how about this oath? If you don't swear to leave me and my friends and family alone and do what I say when I tell you to do it, I swear that I will tear you here and now into little quivering bits and burn them until you will wish you were swimming in a Lucky Dog cart to ease the pain. You owe me."
"For what?" the clinker asked.
"For not killing you right away and asking questions later."
The creature looked alarmed. "What do you want, Ms. Beautiful, three wishes?"
Val grimaced. "No. I'll figure that out later. In the meanwhile, you had better not hurt my friend, or this lady, or me, or anyone in our families, now or ever. Or I'll find you again. I've got friends in high places. And low places. And a bunch of other places. I'll find you, and I will finish the job. You know what I am."
"Yeah. All right, all right! Agreed," said the clinker. "Gimme your cell-phone number."
"What?"
"Well, how the hell you expec' me to find you in all of New Orleans when you want me?" he demanded.
"You have a cell phone?"
"Get wit' the twen'y-first century, lady!" He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a battered flip-phone. Val reeled off her number. The clinker punched a button, and Val's purse erupted with her ring tone. "Now you got mine." It grinned at her. "You don't wanna give me one more look at that bodacious body of yours, huh?"
"No! Now, get out of here!"
"Dang, what a bitch!"
Val made a move toward him and stamped the floor. He fled for the fireplace and zipped up into the chimney. He left a contrail of sparks that winked out.
"That was absolutely amazing," Mai exclaimed, turning to offer Val a smile of admiration.
"Hurts," Val said, folding up like an accordion on the floor. She clutched her hands. Mai noticed for the first time that both arms were covered with blisters up to the elbow.
"It'll heal," Mai said. Now was the time for her to help. She rose from her nest and folded the quilt into a pillow to put under Val's head. Aunt Herbera left the room and returned with a glass mayonnaise jar filled with green salve.
"You both need my special burn cream," she said. "This come from an old family recipe my great-grandma learned from her great-grandma. You can't buy this in stores." She started slathering it onto both girls.
In spite of the eye-watering smell of menthol, the salve smelled good. After just a few moments, the redness went away. Within fifteen minutes, most of the blisters had flattened out. Mai looked down at herself in dismay.
"Will you look at my blouse? It's ruined!"
"I told you it was a waste to buy designer," Val said, fingering the pieces of cloth.
Mai smiled. "Darling moose-butt, it is never a waste of time to buy designer. It is a waste if you wrestle demons in it, though. I will kill that creature. What did you say it was?"
"A clinker," Aunt Herbera said. "Dragon-kin, but real distant. I thought it was a legend that mothers tell their children to keep 'em from goin' out at night and raisin' hell. That was as pretty as anything, the way the two of you faced it down! And you, Miss Val, stompin' it like a cockroach. You wouldn't mind if I tell that story? I participate in folktale circles. That is as good as anythin' else that ever won first prize."
At first, Val was horrified to realize that she had just fought a fire-wielding creature in front of a stranger, and one of Gris-gris's relatives at that. But the older woman's eyes were full of admiration, not fear. She believed in supernaturals. She lived with legends, and she was not at all surprised that Val and Mai had handled themselves like one of her peers.
"No problem," Val said, relieved. "As long as you make sure I don't look fat in my dress."
Aunt Herbera touched her arm. "Honey, they will all be wondering what you got under there by the time I finish with you. You'll look like a woodland nymph. Not that I ever met any. But I bet you have."
"No," Val said. "You'll have to ask my brother. Wood nymphs are more his speed."
"Do we have to ask you not to tell your nephew about this?" Mai asked.
Aunt Herbera shook her head. "Wouldn't matter if I did. He already thinks this girl here can walk on water. The fact that she can wrestle fire-demons will just make him worship her more. But if you don't want me to, I won't. You go on, now. I'll call you when your dress is ready. It'll just give me something pleasurable to think about while I'm sewing. Let me give you something to wear home, honey."
They heard her cackling with delight as they left.
"And so a legend begins," Mai cracked. A borrowed blouse of Aunt Herbera's that would have wound around her twice hung from her slim shoulders.
"So," Val said, "you want to tell me who sent you that guy as a warning?"
Mai hesitated. "Not yet. Forgive me, but I don't want to involve you in my troubles. Not yet. I must thank the two of you for saving my life. And healing my wounds."
"That salve of hers is great," Val said, thoughtfully. "I wonder if it will work on diaper rash."
Griffen ran off the elevator in the Royal Sonesta Hotel. He had had to leave a stimulating discussion over drinks with Holly and Bert, about magic being sacred or profane, but the phone call sounded urgent. The rising annoyance in Wallace's voice told him he had better get there quickly, or there was going to be violence.
Not as many games had been running lately as there might be during this season. The people who normally played one or two nights a week were involved in Mardi Gras activities: going to parties, tableaux, building floats, and all the other activities that Griffen himself was doing on the side. That meant that not as much money was coming in as he and Jerome had hoped. They were feeling the pinch. Griffen had had to cover part of the last payroll out of his savings. Word had also continued spreading about the crooked games--or at least the losers' perception that they were crooked. Once a rumor started, it was hard to stop it. Griffen hoped this was not going to be another disaster.
He heard the shouting from the open door of the suite and winced. He hoped the windows looking out over the pool were shut. A hotel security guard raised his head when he saw Griffen. There must have been some complaints. Griffen made a gesture to assure the man he had seen him, and the guard leaned back against the wall. He had a bribe coming later on for not shutting down the room.
"Hello, folks," Griffen said, coming in with his hands raised. "I'm Griffen McCandles. What's all the fuss?" The combatants stopped yelling and turned to glare at him. A short, round-bellied man with a few strands of hair plastered on his scalp jabbed an angry finger at an equally short, round man on the other side of the table.
"Griffen! This sonovabitch accused me of slipping cards under the table! He says I'm cheating! You have known me for how long?"
"There has to be some kind of misunderstanding," Griffen said. He felt pressure like a drill driving right into the third eye on his forehead that Holly insisted he had. "Mr. Stearn is an old friend of ours. What is it that you think you saw happen?"
"Think?" the other man said. He was a Chinese-American about the same age as Stearn, but with a good deal more hair. "Just because I am old doesn't mean I'm blind, or that since I retired I have enough money to lose to criminals."