The safe house looked different in the light of middle morning. The tiny cracks in the wall where the structure had settled over the course of years looked like crow’s-feet at the corner of an old woman’s eye. The picture window seemed to include the wide swath of unmowed, semi-tended lawn. The Virgin Mary gravestone had turned its back on me.
“Jayné!” Karen barked.
I looked back at her. The mixture of guilt and resentment and wordless outrage in my heart was old,
familiar territory for me. She stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, her arms folded. She didn’t seem shorter than me now. Her anger filled the space.
“The Voodoo Heart Temple is empty,” she said. “Locked up, closed, and everyone inside gone to ground. Can you explain to me exactly what the fuck you were thinking?”
Aubrey, just behind me, took a step forward like he was going to protect me. Chogyi Jake was sitting on the counter by the kitchen sink, and I was pretty sure he would have jumped in if I’d given him an opening. Of my three guys, only Ex seemed as pissed off as Karen.
“I didn’t go there to get involved,” I said. “I was just walking, and I guess it was on my mind. I wound up there, and when I did—”
“You thought, I know what would be fun. I’ll tell the enemy we’re here,” Karen said. “And now, I’m back at square motherfucking one. That’s great.”
The words stung. I felt my jaw sliding forward, my lips pressing tight. I felt the crushing weight of having been a disappointment.
“Hey,” I said. “There was a lot of weird going around last night. What about Mfume? Why would he take me to the hospital after I got hurt? And the rider that was after Sabine? It didn’t look or act anything like the thing that jumped me when I got to town. That one was a snake, and this one—”
Karen growled and ran her hands through her hair. Her eyes seemed to spark with anger. Ex, leaning against the wall behind her, might have smiled, or it might only have been my paranoid imagination.
“I don’t know. I don’t have answers for any of that, and I can’t get them, because I don’t know where the bad guys are,” Karen said. “I didn’t bring you here for your cool Nancy Drew imitation. I wanted help getting Sabine to safety and then killing Legba. That was it. I had an advantage as long as I knew where they were, and you have pissed that away.”
How many times had my parents given me a lecture like this? How could I have failed my test? Where had I been, and who had I been with? Why had I lied about whatever tiny thing it was? It all came back to the same thing, however they phrased it: how could I have been so stupid?
I could see my old room, my books, the cross over the bed, my CDs with all the Christian bands on top, and all the secular ones tucked at the bottom of the pile. I could smell the fake floral stink of my mother’s favorite laundry detergent. The knot of guilt and shame and anger and outrage in my stomach brought all the details back with it.
I was twenty-three and on my own. I’d thought I’d grown up. I’d thought I was through with this. Stupid me.
“I saved Sabine Glapion’s life last night,” I said, my voice shaking. “That thing was going to kill her.”
“You didn’t save her,” Karen said, “because it is still going to kill her. Only now, we don’t have any way to stop it.”
“How would things have been better had Sabine died in the street last night?” Chogyi Jake asked softly. Karen turned to him like a fighting dog that just noticed a new opponent, like my father shifting attention to my little brother.
“Don’t, Chogyi,” I said. “I’m okay. I understand you’re upset, Karen, and I’m sorry that I tipped your hand. But I found Amelie Glapion once, and I can do it again.”
“Your lawyer can, you mean,” Karen said. “All you’ve done so far is fail and have someone save your ass at the last second. I’m not sure that’s the kind of help I need.”
The lump in my throat was an enemy. I couldn’t speak around the humiliation. Karen gathered herself, shook her head, and forced out a slow, hissing sigh.
“Look,” she said, “this isn’t your fault, okay? It’s mine. This is a big deal. It’s hard, and I didn’t understand how inexperienced you are. I was thinking about Eric and all of the things that he could do, all of the tricks that he knew, and I put you in his place. That was unfair of me, all right? I expected too much.”
“I think we can regroup,” I said. “There are still a lot of things that I can—”
“No,” Karen said. “Jayné, just . . . just no.”
“I can fix this,” I said.
But the silence in the room told me I was wrong. I couldn’t. Aubrey’s arms were crossed, his face set in stone. I could see the pain in the way he held himself. Ex’s raised eyebrows told me that he agreed with Karen. Only Chogyi Jake was unreadable.
“I appreciate everything you’ve tried to do,” Karen said. The softness in her voice was worse than the anger had been. “But I think I’d better run this operation solo from here on in.”
I looked for words, didn’t find any, nodded, and walked out. My knee didn’t bend the way I was used to, and the staples in my arm itched. A gentle breeze stirred the branches. I felt like the trees were talking about me. I stood by the small statue of the Virgin, looking away from the house with her. The door opened and closed behind me. Aubrey’s footsteps came close.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I said, and he put a hand on my shoulder. I leaned into him, then flinched as my ribs reminded me that I’d been injured. He had been too. Probably worse than I had.
Somewhere there had to have been a place where I could have done it right. A decision that would have kept Aubrey out of Charity Hospital when
Amelie Glapion’s cult opened the way for Marinette, a question I could have asked Karen that would have put everything in context. I felt like my head was filled with cotton ticking; my throat was thick and heavy with the aftermath of shame.
Karen was right. I was flailing in the dark, and if I did anything right, it was only happy coincidence. I had let them all down, not just Karen. I’d put Aubrey in harm’s way. Chogyi Jake had put his faith in me, and when I’d gone out to investigate for myself, I’d blown it. Ex . . . well, he’d been spending his nights with Karen, so maybe he at least was having some fun.
“I think they’re on the same side now,” he said.
I pulled myself back to the present. “What?”
“I was thinking about it back there. Mfume and Karen must be on the same side, since they’re both trying to protect Sabine. I just wonder why he would be.”
“Well, maybe they can hook up and work it out,” I said. And then a moment later, “It doesn’t matter.”
Aubrey stepped in behind me, his arm draped gently around my collar to keep from pissing off my ribs. When I leaned back into him this time it hurt less. The door opened behind us, then closed again, but no one came to disturb us.
“Whatever you want to have happen,” he said. “You know I’m going to back your play, right?”
“It’s what I love about you,” I said. I felt him
react to the word love. A bird called, shrill and trilling, from the trees behind the house. Near our little prison. Its voice was high, complex, and beautiful as jazz. Months of nosebleed-busy work, days of trauma and danger and injury and failure, and years of the day-to-day struggle of just being me all folded together. I let a couple of exhausted tears escape the corners of my eyes.
“I just want to go home,” I said.
FIFTEEN
We left New Orleans that night, packing everything into the rental minivan and driving to the airport even before I’d bothered to make a reservation. Chogyi Jake checked our database and found a four-bedroom house I owned in Savannah. I called the lawyer, arranged for someone to drop keys off at the house, got four first-class tickets online, and walked up to the Delta counter to let them divest us of our luggage.
Going through the ritual humiliation of security, I felt like a piece of candy someone had put in a tin can and shaken. I was all chips and rattle. We got to
the gate just in time for boarding. The flight crew were all professionally thoughtful, getting us bedded down in our flying Barcaloungers before letting the hoi polloi in coach shuffle past.
Once we were in the air, Aubrey curled up against the window and slept. When Ex headed up to the bathroom, Chogyi Jake leaned forward.
“You seem tired,” he said. “You should sleep.”
“I should,” I said. “I will. It’s just . . . I really screwed that one up, didn’t I?”