“If the rider in Sabine is as intractable as Marinette,” Chogyi Jake said. “An hour. Maybe less.”
“If we’re too late, I think those people may kill us,” Aubrey said.
“I had that feeling too,” I said.
The drive out to the safe house had never seemed longer. Fog pressed in at the car windows, the murmur of the tires against the pavement hissing like a constant, breathless voice just too low to comprehend, and behind us, a string of headlights. The rider cult, following close. With each mile we covered, my stomach knotted more tightly until I was skating along the edge of nausea.
I was pretty sure that somewhere along the line I’d intended to be careful, to plan, to think things through rather than rushing headlong into unknown danger. And here we were, Aubrey leaning over the steering wheel as he broke the speed limits, Chogyi Jake in the backseat in deep meditation that I recognized as a preparation for battle, and me
sitting powerless in the passenger’s seat squinting ahead at the darkness or backward into the light. I didn’t know what we would find at the safe house. The new Legba might already be eaten, Sabine and Ex already dead. Or Carrefour might be waiting for us. Karen could be in the trees with a sniper rifle, prepared to pick us off as we drove up the street.
She might not even be there.
“Jayné?” Aubrey said. “You okay?
“Fine. Why?”
“You keep saying shit shit shit shit under your breath,” he said. “I didn’t figure it was a good sign.”
“Copro-vocal meditation,” Chogyi Jake said from the backseat, his voice calm and amused. “I’m doing the same thing, only on the inside.”
I laughed a little, and in the mirrors, I saw Chogyi Jake, his eyes closed, smile too. I loved him just then. Not like a man, but just as himself. And Aubrey too. And even Ex, asshole that he sometimes was. It was the moment of clarity that put all the rest of it in perspective.
“I shouldn’t have let him split up the family,” I said. “I should never have put up with that.”
Aubrey glanced a question at me, then looked back at the road.
“Ex,” I said. “Fucking Ex. Well, and Carrefour. I should never have let them split us up. I mean this thing that we’re doing? This is not the sign that I did things right.”
“But we have to do it,” Aubrey said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Because of Ex.”
“Would you turn away otherwise?” Chogyi Jake asked. He sounded deep and calm as a temple bell. “If Ex had been with us in Savannah, and you had the same epiphany, would you have turned away?”
“Yes,” I said. “Oh hell yes. You wouldn’t have gotten me back here for anything.”
“Interesting,” Chogyi Jake said.
“It’s not that I don’t like Sabine,” I said. “She’s nice. She’s out of her league, and I totally respect that. But there are a lot of nice people in trouble out there, you know? I’m not even keeping this one from being possessed.”
“And Legba?” Chogyi Jake said.
His tone of voice carried volumes. Legba, the shining serpent that made its way through the blood of Marie Laveau down through the generations. The rider that would keep Sabine and Daria from only being orphaned black girls in a dangerous, broken city. The demon that would not leave New Orleans even in the face of the city’s inundation. Legba the mutualist, the builder of community.
And so, by implication, Carrefour who had raped and slaughtered Mfume’s fiancée and Karen Black’s partner and parents. Carrefour who had lied to me, seduced me as much as it had Ex. Carrefour who had bombed Amelie Glapion and whoever else had
happened to be in the street at the time. Carrefour, the serial killer. The exile.
Did I really think there was no difference between the two? Or was it just that the difference wouldn’t have been big enough to justify the risk of coming back?
I wondered what Eric would have done. I didn’t know anything about his relationship with Karen Black except what she’d told me. There might not have been the consultations she’d told me about. The favors owed and paid. All I knew for certain was that he’d had her number in his cell phone, and that when she called, she’d assumed he would know what she was talking about.
“I think I preferred the muttering obscenities,” Aubrey said.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking.”
“Yeah, I got that from the way I could hear the gears grinding in your head.”
“Maybe I would have come back. For Sabine,” I said, and we ran out of lake. We’d reached Pearl River.
The road to the safe house was empty, and we took it very slowly, turning our headlights off. The cars behind us—eight of them—followed our lead. We glided through the night in the glow of running lights, slow as a funeral. If we actually drove up to the house, they’d hear us for sure. I didn’t know if it made more sense to try sneaking up on Karen
and Ex or going for the full frontal assault. Except I really did want Ex to live through it, and Karen too if I could manage it. All-out assaults tended, I guessed, to have more of a body count. I weighed my options and a shadow detached itself from the trees and loped toward the car.
Aubrey yelped, but before he could gun the engine or turn the car to attack, Joseph Mfume’s long face was framed in the window, his finger turning a fast circle that meant we should roll down the window. When Aubrey did it, the thick, unconditioned air smelled like swamp and sweat.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Waiting for you,” Mfume said and looked back at the other cars. “And them as well, I take it.”
“I got some reinforcements,” I said. “She’s really here then?”
“Yes,” Mfume said. “I followed it from the house. Amelie? She’s . . .”
“Gone,” I said. “And Legba with her.”
Behind us a car door opened and closed, and then another. The cult preparing for battle. Mfume’s goofy smile looked strained and nervous.
“They have been in the shed for some time,” he said. “We have to hurry.”
“I know,” I said, then to Aubrey, “just park it here. We’ll walk in.”
“You have a plan?” Mfume said.
“That would be generous,” I said as I got out.
“I’ve got a bunch of general intentions and thirty or so people with cheap handguns and machetes.”
“More effective than intention alone, I suppose,” Mfume said.
The others were spilling out into the midnightblack street. The dome lights flickered on and off like a huge, understated Christmas tree. One car alarm chirped, and angry voices followed it. I felt some sympathy for whoever had made the mistake. We were all improvising here.
They gathered close, but I could see their eyes turning toward the gently curving drive that would lead to the safe house. I could feel them drawn toward it like moths toward flame; their queen was in danger, and they strained at the leash of my own tentative authority. I couldn’t hold them back any longer.
“Okay,” I said, my voice a stage whisper. “They’re going to be in the shed out back . . .”