by Arden, Alys
“Ripple. Ripple. Ripple!” she yelled.
When I looked up, there was no one else there—her eyes were completely white, as if rolled back in her head, and her finger was pointed at me.
“The magical ecosystem. Destroy the binding, and everything will unravel.”
I stood up, her white-eyed, glossy gaze following me.
“Witch,” she said, taking a step forward, causing me to take one back. “Air witch.”
The way she said it suddenly made me feel like that was a bad thing.
“Ghost witch.” Her mouth opened into a hiss, and I stumbled back, losing my footing. Before I could hit the ground, I took crow form again and conjured my own current to lift me into the sky faster than my wings could flap.
“Protect the binding, protect the magic . . . !” Her voice faded out under the sounds of my pounding pulse.
It took several blocks to regain my composure in flight, the air current pushing down beneath me at an unnatural speed thanks to my magical boost.
Next on my route usually came the abandoned brothel, but tonight I skipped it, feeling the need to put a little more distance between me and Ritha Borges.
What the hell was she talking about? Supernatural crime? Could more vamps have arrived in town? Or maybe I was just thinking about vampires because I’d arrived at the convent.
Ironically, the Catholic property was under the protection spells of my family, because Susannah Norwood Bowen had lived here in 1728—so it always got more than a flyby. I circled the perimeter, checking out each one of the window shutters, which were secured with a thousand antique nails and Adele’s family magic, then I swooped over the roof and around the attic, where the vamps were trapped. The original four: Gabriel Medici; his two vamp-spawn, Lisette and Martine; and his sister, Giovanna. And, of course, the two bonus vamps we captured when we reinstated the curse, the biggest assholes of the lot: Emilio and Niccolò.
“Dammit!” I yelled, jerking back to human form about thirty seconds before I’d meant to, tumbling the last four feet to the roof.
I got up and shook it off, cursing all the more.
Stop letting that bloodsucking, leather-jacket-wearing asshole get under your skin.
I paced the length of the roof. Whenever I thought about Nicco, it was harder to control my magic, and nothing pissed me off more than losing control of my magic.
Nothing other than Nicco.
I paused, fishing a small metal object out of my wallet; I flipped it into the air with a casualness that contradicted the precious way I kept it hidden. With a quick whip, I caught it and continued to pace.
I flicked it up again, almost hoping a strong gust would take it away, relieving me of all responsibility. Of course, I didn’t really wish for that; otherwise I’d have conjured up a gust and spun it all the way up to the Arctic.
I had no idea what it was, but Nicco must have given it to Adele on Halloween night before he threw her out the attic window, because she’d been holding it when I caught her. I was pretty sure she didn’t remember ever having it.
It was just smaller than my palm and resembled origami made of folded metal—pewter, maybe? On the smooth side, three interlocking circles had been etched, each with a triangular peak, so they looked like three diamond rings. Something about it was romantic, which annoyed me even more. Leaving behind tokens had not been part of our plan. Then again, I don’t think ending up in the attic had been part of Nicco’s plan either. He must have known it was a possibility though if he’d thought ahead enough to bring this stupid thing. I had the sneaking suspicion that whatever it was, it was his ticket to getting out of the attic. His insurance plan.
Dammit.
The thought of Nicco being one step ahead pissed me off the most. I hated that he’d been the one to come up with the plan—that he’d insisted Adele would risk her own freedom to save everyone else. “If it comes down to it,” he’d said, “I’ll throw her to safety, and you have to catch her.” Then he told me what he’d do to me if I failed to catch her.
He was right about needing the plan. Only, I can’t imagine that me ending up with Adele, and with this thing, was exactly what he had in mind.
I swallowed a laugh. It’s not funny, Isaac. I hated it. It was the only secret I had from her.
This stupid metal thing, and me and Nicco’s plan on Halloween night.
I sat down, peering out over the French Quarter, legs dangling over the roof’s edge, just like I’d done so many other nights. I squeezed the metal object in my palm until the corners pierced my skin.
Can you smell that blood, Nicco? I hope so. I hope it drives you nuts.
I flicked the metal origami up and watched it spin back into my hand—the prize waiting to be claimed. Let him try. If it weren’t for the promise I made to the coven, I’d burn the whole convent down right now, vampires and all. I hated Niccolò Medici. And not just because he was a vampire—a killer. I hated him because he was in love with my girlfriend.
He’d never told me he was in love with Adele. In fact, he’d never really said much at all. But he must have known she’d close the seal after he threw her out the window. As far as I could see, there were only two possible explanations why Nicco would allow himself to be trapped. Cursed. The first was that he loved Adele, and he was willing to trade his life for hers. The second was that she was worth more to him alive than dead—so much so that he betrayed his family and trapped himself inside the coven’s spell.
All so she could live.
Either way, he’d traded her martyrdom for his own—not that it was quite the same considering he was immortal but not exactly something you did for an acquaintance. None of that matters now, because Adele thinks Nicco tried to kill her.
I imagined him lying there in cold fury, judging me for not correcting Adele’s mistake. Part of me knew he was right, but when she saw him as her potential killer, it was the first time she saw him for what he truly was.
A monster.
“I couldn’t do it,” I said into the darkness. “Sorry, Nicco. But you belong locked away.”
Pushing away the guilt, I remembered the morning I’d tried to return the metal object to her. I knew it wasn’t right to keep it, but then she kissed me—a kiss free of tears and elixirs—and I suddenly didn’t care anymore if she knew the whole truth, just as long as she never saw Nicco again.
I should have been ecstatic, now that he was trapped for eternity, but I couldn’t help thinking Niccolò Medici was the kind of guy who always had a backup plan.
My fingers crushed around the metal. She doesn’t owe him anything. If the way to prevent him from reentering her life meant me being haunted by him forever through this origami thing, then so be it.
I could feel him beneath the roof. All of them. It was a hint of the same cold feeling I got when I neared a dead body on a recovery site. Death.
It made sense—you can’t be a vampire without dying. Just like you can’t be a vampire without being a monster.
I slipped it back into my wallet, ran the length of the convent roof, and jumped off. It was stupid and risky, and I’d never do it if it wasn’t for the curfew, but it made me feel like I owned the streets of the French Quarter, and that they didn’t.
I swooped back up and over the roofs. There was one more stop after the convent.
I always told myself I’d just check on her, but it never ended up that way. I circled Adele’s house three times before landing on the second-story wrought-iron balcony across the street. If I stayed behind the potted plant, I was out of her sight line from the window. I think. She hated it when I perched across the street.
I knew she’d especially hate it tonight. She’d done her best to hide it all week, but I’d seen the ambivalence setting in. The wall she was putting up to prevent the pain from overwhelming her . . . Hopefully tomorrow would bring her some closure. My beak opened into a wide yawn, and I stretched my wings.
My perching wasn’t about her; it was about me. I had to b
e at work in two hours, and when I slept this close to her, I never had the nightmare.
I wasn’t stalking her; I was stalking sleep.
CHAPTER 2
The Corpse Whisperer
November 20th
“Stormy!” I yelled into the pitch black, my voice wobbling as my board rolled over the bumpy road. The first signs of morning had yet to light the sky, but I didn’t have to worry about waking the residents—no one had returned to the Bywater post-Storm. There was nothing to come home to. Not yet, at least.
I held up my flashlight, which at this point felt like a natural extension of my arm. I was never anywhere without it. The gas lamps on houses became fewer and farther between when you left the Quarter heading east, until there were zilch in the destitute area, where my crew was rebuilding houses in the Lower Ninth.
“Stormy!” I yelled again, my eyes flicking back and forth to the ground, looking for potholes that could send me flying into the next state.
When I got to the train tracks, I hopped off and kicked the board into my hand. I’d attempted the jump a few times before, but it never ended well after I’d been up most of the night.
“Stormmmmy!”
Movement came from the decrepit porch of an abandoned house, and Stormy sprang out of a tire. That’s why she always smells like rubber.
“There you are, girl. Don’t scare me like that.”
She yapped, running down the stairs to me.
I bent down to pet her as she rubbed her head into my palm. “Do I have a treat for you today.” I pulled a crumpled ball of tinfoil from my knapsack and removed the strip of bacon from it.
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t go nuts like I expected.
“I saved this for you.” I held the bacon close to her nose so she wouldn’t bite my hand off when she smelled it.
But she just stared, as if confused.
“I know it’s been a while since you’ve had table food, but really?”
I held it out for a couple more seconds, but she remained disinterested and then nudged at my other pocket.
“Fine, more for me,” I said, and crammed it in my mouth. Man, you know this place is screwed up when the dogs won’t take bacon.
I wondered if she was sick. I’d never be able to get her to a rescue shelter for a checkup. The last time I tried to take her somewhere was the only time she’d ever bitten me. She made it perfectly clear that she did not leave her hood.
She lit up as I pulled the old tennis ball out of my pocket. I hurled it, and she took off. I dropped my board and kicked off after her, just like every other morning on my way to work. She brought the ball back, and I threw it again, feeling the tightness in my arm after the night of flying.
I stretched my arm over my shoulder as my board bumped over the shitty road.
When I threw the ball again, an undeniable sound sent a chill ripping up my spine: a shotgun cocking. My board skidded out from under my feet, and my hands shot up. The flashlight crashed to the street.
“I’m just on my way to work!” I yelled, heart racing.
“Work?” came a voice from the house to my right. “Now, I know that’s some bull.”
Stormy ran back, jumping up on my legs, barking, not understanding why we stopped.
“There ain’t no work around here, boy. You loot, we shoot.”
“I’m not a looter!”
A beam of light shone my way, and I slowly turned toward the voice. All I could make out were two male silhouettes on the porch of a house that no longer had a front wall. One guy held a flashlight, the other a shotgun.
A breeze picked up, blowing the trash around my feet. “I’m a recovery worker! On my way to the site now.”
He shined the flashlight directly at my face, and the guy next to him uncocked the gun.
Thank God. The wind around us gently subsided.
Stormy continued to yelp, but they didn’t seem bothered by her. He turned the flashlight, illuminating his own face, and I got a better view of the wall-less room behind him. There were a couple of women and a bunch of kids sprawled out sleeping on the floor.
“When’s someone gonna get to our street?” he asked.
“I—I don’t know.” I left out the part about the waiting list being epically longer than the approved funding. Instead I pulled a card out of my back pocket and approached the porch. “If you have the means, call this number and ask.” I looked him straight in the eye, not wanting him to see the pity I felt for his family. My pity wasn’t going to feed his kids.
“They ain’t gonna tell me anything.”
“Probably not. But that’s the direct line to the director’s office. Feel free to blow it up anyway.”
There were no thank-yous and no good-byes; then again, there were no bullets fired either. I considered it a win.
And if I hustled, I wouldn’t be late for work.
“Isaac!” a voice boomed from down the street. “You’re late!” It was AJ, our crew captain.
“Sorry!” I yelled, running the last half block. I liked AJ because he didn’t treat me like I was the boss’s kid. “Trying not to get my head blown off. Looter-shooter!”
“Oh, good Lord, Isaac,” said Betsy. “I told you Brett and I would pick you up on the way. It’s dan-ger-ous around these parts. Especially before sunrise.” Betsy’s southern accent gave syllables so much separation they needed their own zip codes.
She was standing in the middle of the dark street with the rest of the crew, all getting their assignments. We had a system: AJ, Chase, and I ripped stuff out, and Jory, Betsy, and Brett hauled it out to the curb. There it would all sit for God only knows how long. There was no trash service up and running, because the government had yet to figure out where it would all go. Urban Crisis Management—or UCM, as my father referred to it—was on a fast track to nowhere sorting that kind of stuff out.
“Thanks, Bets, but it’s fine.”
“You make my prayers work in overdrive.”
“And I appreciate it.” I smiled. Betsy and her boyfriend, Brett, were Jesus fanatics from Florida, who proudly wore their abstinence on their fingers and liked nothing more than to preach.
“It’s too early for God-squading,” Jory said, stomping out a cigarette. He was a student at Tulane—at least he had been before the Storm. Philosophy major.
“He must believe and not doubt,” Betsy recited, “because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”
“You know what I have faith in?” asked Chase, our resident adrenaline junkie. “I have faith in sledgehammers.” He picked one up and handed it to Jory. Chase spent half the year as a smoke jumper, which meant he was partly insane. “I also have faith in crowbars,” he continued, picking one up and handing it to me. “And I have faith in each and every one of you tearing the shit out of this house so we can rebuild it.”
“Amen to that,” I echoed, wrapping a bandana over my mouth and nose.
Everyone else did the same, and we ran to the residence. Since we were starting a new house, it was going to be a demolition kind of day. Dirty, disgusting work. I caught a glimpse of the X on the exterior as I hopped up the steps—it wasn’t one of mine, although we weren’t too far from the streets where my first-responder crew had worked the weeks after the Storm.
Jory and I stepped into the house at the same time—we both nearly vomited.
The running joke was, never eat breakfast before coming to work if you didn’t like wasting food. There was more puking between recovery workers than sorority sisters. The Storm-stench was not something a person got used to.
My jaw clamped shut to prevent the vile smell of rot and death from rushing into my mouth, but when it hit my nostrils, I paused, bending over.
“He’s going down!” Chase slapped my back as he sped past me. We had a routine whenever we started a new house. The pukers went back outside while the rest of us ran through holding our breath, opening all of the windows. If they didn’t open, we broke them—a
nything to let the air flow in.
I choked back the vomit and pressed forward; lingering would only ensure that I wouldn’t be able to suppress the next wave. I made it to a dining room window and jammed it open before vomiting up the bacon projectile-style. Effing disgusting.
I hung outside the window for a couple breaths, aggressively spitting. Shudders swept across my shoulders, and I broke a puke-sweat. Before heading back inside, I grabbed a bottle of water from my knapsack, gargled, then jammed a piece of gum in my mouth.
Headphones in, I blew through two Beastie Boys albums, ripping apart the upper level of the camelback house. Baseboards, crown molding, a wooden fireplace mantel, a bathroom floor three layers of linoleum deep. Nothing was salvageable; the house had been completely submerged all the way up to the roof. One more floorboard and this room would be done. Dirty sweat dripped off my face as I tried to yank out the board with the crowbar. It didn’t want to come up.
“Chase,” I yelled out the door, “I need the sledgehammer back!”
I pulled off the bandana and wiped my face. A breeze kicked in through the window. At first it felt good, but then it made me shiver beneath my sweat-soaked shirt.
Cold.
Too cold for today. Maybe even too cold for New Orleans. Debris rustled on the floor as the breeze traipsed around me and out the bedroom door. I followed it, and a sinking feeling followed me.
“Here,” Chase said, meeting me in the hallway with the sledgehammer.
“Thanks.” I took it and walked past him, down the stairs, not wanting to lose the breeze—the cold.
“There he goes,” Betsy said, coming out of a bathroom, signing the cross as she joined us.
I entered the bedroom Jory was working in. “Oh no,” he said as I walked straight past him to a door on the opposite side of the room.
When I turned the knob, it didn’t open.
“It’s swollen in the frame,” he said. “I couldn’t get it to budge.”