by G A Chase
Kendell tossed a pillow at her. “Just because you’re a coldhearted bitch.”
“And tequila, my dear Olympia Stain, makes you feisty. Band practice is tomorrow afternoon, so don’t spend all night fooling around in your new love nest.” Kendell always smiled when Polly referred to her by her stage name.
Myles felt the effects of the alcohol as he stood up. Polly was probably right about him being a little emotional, but nothing he felt was untrue. He gave each of their friends a big hug before they headed out.
Left with only Kendell and Cheesecake, he finally explored every room of the apartment. “I think we’re going to be happy here.”
She said, “I’m always happy with you,” but she looked concerned.
“What is it?”
“We haven’t heard from Papa Ghede lately. And I’ve been having nightmares I have trouble figuring out. In my dreams, I’m here in the Quarter, but everyone’s gone, and it’s not really me.”
Myles grabbed the mostly empty bottle of rum and took her out to the terrace. “Both Delphine and Sanguine said you’re connected to Colin Malveaux through the curse. With him in hell, do you think you’re reading some of this thoughts?”
“I think I need to talk to both of them. There must be some way to isolate my mind from him. Sanguine said her grandmother designed her version of hell to cut Colin off from every person. So why can I hear him? I’m worried there’s something wrong with me—or worse, her cage isn’t holding up.”
He knew they’d both been slacking on their duties to the afterlife. “I suppose waiting around for Baron Samedi to free himself hasn’t been the most productive of plans. The last thing I need is a pissed-off loa of the dead.”
He located the shot glass that he reserved for contacting the voodoo loa. Then he set it on the table and filled it from the bottle of rum. A dark man in a dusty long coat and top hat materialized, looking more ragged than Myles remembered.
“Are you ready to get back to work?” the man asked.
Myles considered giving him a sarcastic response. After all, it wasn’t as if the guardians of the dead were paying him to be their living lackey. But the spirit looked so drained that Myles knew things weren’t going well in Guinee. “What are we up against?”
Papa Ghede drank his rum but didn’t refill the glass—definitely a bad sign. “Without Baron Samedi at my side, Baron Kriminel has been gathering followers. I think he intends to take over Guinee.”
Kendell nearly dropped her glass. “But you’re the supreme loa. You’re the first. I didn’t think Guinee was susceptible to political bullshit.”
“You’ve just stumbled on the problem with giving other entities freewill, be they humans or gods. Eventually, someone always thinks they can do a better job. Though Guinee isn’t your problem, freeing Baron Samedi is. Since he isn’t in Guinee—and you haven’t heard from him among the living—I have to believe he’s stuck in your Wiccan witch’s hell.”
A cold breeze from the river sent a chill down Myles’s back. “How exactly do you propose we rescue him?”
“You’ll have to go to hell, but based on your belief in the deep waters and Kendell’s study of voodoo, neither of you has the doctrine needed to cross over.”
Kendell nearly bolted from her chair. “No way. I’m not dragging Sanguine into this. She’s done all she can to secure Colin from both life and Guinee.”
Myles understood her outburst. The young swamp witch had one job—to tempt Colin into her dead grandmother’s clutches. She’d performed admirably. “Kendell’s right. All Marie Laveau intended was for the Wiccan witches to be guardians of the curse, not active participants.”
Papa Ghede toyed with his empty glass but still refrained from refilling it. “Agnes Delarosa took it on herself to build Colin Malveaux’s hell. Her granddaughter willingly went along with the plan. Someone must be watching over that portal between the living and hell.” He looked up to stare into Kendell’s eyes. “Have you noticed any weaknesses in the jail cell? My bet is you have. We all know of Malveaux’s determination.”
She settled back into her chair. “If we do nothing, he’ll come back.” She didn’t say it as a question but as a truth she hadn’t wanted to face.
“With no one else in that hell, he’ll learn to rule a realm of the afterlife.”
She nodded. “So he’ll come back as a god?”
“That’s my concern. While he was in Guinee, I had some control over him, but now that he’s tasted his own reality, there will be no containing him should he escape. We have to go all in for Agnes’s hell. But as of now, that realm may not be strong enough to contain him. Especially if he gets to Baron Samedi before you do.”
3
To the casual observer, Kendell’s lunch with Delphine de Galpion and Sanguine Delarosa might have looked like nothing more than three good friends at their weekly get-together. The topic, however, necessitated that their meeting be conducted in the private garden courtyard of a gumbo shop Delphine had recommended. Noticing the animosity that lurked under the layer of civility between Sanguine and Delphine, Kendell thought, Looks can be deceiving.
“We shouldn’t all be in one place at the same time,” Sanguine said.
Her paranoia was all too often justified. Kendell reached over the wrought-iron-and-glass table and took her hand. “Colin is in hell. Who’s going to come after us?”
The beautiful young swamp witch wasn’t easily pacified. “The Malveaux curse is nothing to be trifled with. You above all people know that. The three of us at this table are all that stands in the way of Colin realizing his full potential.”
Delphine had never been shy about expressing her views of Sanguine or her deceased grandmother. “Agnes Delarosa created Colin’s hell, and you inherited it. I’m only here to offer you my knowledge. This is all in your hands.”
“Fine.” Sanguine had the defiant tone she often used when confronted. “But it’s your ancestor who created the curse in the first place.”
The argument threatened to ruin Kendell’s enjoyment of her crawfish étouffée. “I didn’t invite you two to lunch just to have you fight. I’ve been having nightmares.” She let the word nightmares dangle out there like a fisherman waiting for a bite.
Sanguine uncharacteristically dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. “What kind of nightmares?”
“I think you know, and I think you’ve been having them too.”
Delphine could be a hard-ass, but she also had an ability to read danger signals. “I was afraid something like this would happen. Agnes Delarosa believed a stagnant hell would be enough to hold Colin, but if a rat is left in a cage with nothing else to do, he’ll find a way to chew through the bars. You two are the cage that holds him. If you’re getting messages from his hell, we have to act. What do you need?”
After the conversation with Papa Ghede, Kendell had thrashed out the possibilities with Myles for most of the night. “I need a way into hell. I’m part of the curse, so I have to go. If there’s a weakness in the walls of Colin’s realm, it’ll have to be patched from the inside. Myles’s connection to Baron Samedi means he’s going too—not that he needed a reason. He wasn’t about to agree to this without accompanying me. But we can’t make the trip alone.”
Sanguine took a spoonful of her turtle soup before replying. “You think I can get you there? I have only the most basic idea of what my grandmother created. I tossed Samedi’s walking stick into my grandmother’s hurricane, and Colin dove in after it. After she got what she wanted, the door slammed shut.”
Delphine pushed her shrimp rémoulade salad aside. “So that’s why you need me. The way into the Wiccan hell isn’t through the witch’s knowledge. You’re expecting a voodoo back door.”
Myles was right. There is a back entrance. Fuck. “It’s going to have to be a good-sized passage. Myles has taken me and Cheesecake on his psychometric journeys before. He even took you with us once. But I’m not sure his soul can handle bringing Baron Samedi back along with m
e and Sanguine.”
“Wait a minute, sister,” Sanguine said. “I never said anything about visiting my grandmother’s hell.”
Kendell hated pressuring Sanguine, but her assistance was vital to their success. “Neither Myles nor I know the first thing about Wicca. Without you there, we’ll be trapped. Colin will have all the power, and we’ll be at his mercy.”
She could tell the young swamp witch really wanted to let loose with some choice expletives. It was a testament to their bond that she refrained. “You’re going to owe me an ice cream when this is over.”
Kendell laughed at the childlike response from the woman who was not much younger than she was. “I already owe you a lot more than that. Any thoughts on how we enter your grandmother’s version of Guinee?”
Sanguine quickly reverted to her irritating self-righteousness. “You people and your mystical realms. I’ll bet Cheesecake was some kind of unicorn in that fanciful world. Agnes’s hell isn’t like Guinee. It’s a real place—or rather, dimension.” Sanguine waved her hand at the sky. “Guinee is like some fictitious place.”
If it were anyone else, Kendell would have been preparing for battle, but Sanguine had proved herself to be correct too many times for Kendell to argue with her. “Cheesecake would like you to know she was a very large wolf, thank you very much. Guinee isn’t some world made up by little girls playing in their rooms.”
“I didn’t mean to disparage your religion. All I meant was, if we go on some spiritual journey to get there, we’ll be no more than ghosts. I’m not sure that would do us much good. Scaring someone already condemned to hell doesn’t seem useful. Besides, his realm isn’t connected to the deep waters.”
Kendell began to understand. “So that’s what makes it hell? Colin can’t ever connect to humanity because he’s denied that basic human right?”
Sanguine took a sip of her iced sweet tea. “That’s how Agnes secured him from dumping his greed back into every person.”
Kendell wondered if such a fate was justified. “But that’s only while he’s in hell, right? What happens when he dies?”
“So long as he’s alive, the longer he’s in that realm, the thinner the bond to people will become. It’s like a rope that’s slowly fraying but is never completely severed. Even I don’t know what happens once he dies. Agnes could only build her hell from the land of the living. Now that she’s passed on, I would guess she’s got something special prepared for him when they meet again.”
Kendell turned back to the voodoo priestess. “Any thoughts on how we convert Myles’s abilities into a gate to hell?”
“It’s not that easy. You physically will have to leave this dimension—just like Colin did. But as Sanguine said, we can’t exactly call forth Agnes as a hurricane. You need something from this reality that connects to something in that hell.”
“What about the cursed items from Baron Malveaux that Colin wears? Those were the things that let me keep track of him while he was chasing Sanguine through the swamp.”
Delphine shook her head. “Not good enough, not this time. It has to be something that’s actually mated to something in hell. If you had one of his cufflinks and he had the other, that might work, but he showed me that he was wearing them both.”
“We do have something,” Sanguine said. “And it’s so obvious. The silver skull we pulled off Baron Samedi’s cane. Nothing would be more connected than that. Assuming, of course, that the cane ended up in Agnes’s hell.”
A plan began to form for Kendell. “We didn’t find the staff among the living, and Papa Ghede is positive it’s not in Guinee. Where else could it be?”
Delphine wasn’t finished. “That’s just the first step. You’re talking about multiple people crossing over. That’s going to take a lot more than just putting your hands on the skull like some kind of magical transportation object. You’ll need to infuse it with energy like what Agnes did with her little hurricane.”
Kendell knew right where she’d hidden the skull. “It’s not very powerful, but it would seat plenty of people.”
“What are you talking about?” Delphine asked.
“I gave the skull to Minerva to hide with Fleurentine Malveaux’s other possessions. Minerva thought it would make a nice gearshift knob for her VW bus.”
“Crude, but it could work. The energy needed is less about force than emotion. And I may be able to whip up a little turbo-spell to move that old van along a little faster.”
* * *
Minerva Wax leaned against her vintage VW with her arms crossed, like a mother deciding whether Kendell was good enough to take her child on a date. The remaining three members of the band gathered around her.
“Do you or Myles even know how to drive a stick shift?” Minerva asked.
“I drive my little scooter around town. How different can it be?”
The drummer dropped her arms to her sides. “That settles it. I’m coming with you.”
Polly stepped next to Minerva. “We all are. It’s not like we can play a gig without our lead guitarist.”
Kendell loved her band for always wanting to stand together, but some destinations were only for the most foolhardy. “We’re going to hell. This is not some gig in Kenner. I’m talking actual hell here.”
“All the more reason,” Minerva said. “I’ve always joked that this old bus has taken me to hell and back. Time for my old girl to make an honest woman of me.”
The bus looked the part. When Minerva inherited it from her grandfather, it had been decked out as a hippie wagon, but the whole band had pitched in to paint it with images of Dia de los Muertos sugar skulls on a black background. The interior had never lost the early ’70s upholstery of brightly colored Mexican blankets and dayglow stickers.
“This is stupid,” Kendell said. “You can’t go. I won’t let you. End of story. I just need your bus. It’s a lot to ask, I know. But you’re all aware of the consequences if I ignore the warnings.”
Minerva dangled the keys off her finger. “Sorry, me and my bus come as a matched set.”
“Just like the whole band,” Polly said.
Lynn Seed had a tendency to find the logical argument when everyone else chose emotion, and vice versa. “Think about it, Kendell. You’re going to have to use magic in hell. We all know your power lies in your music. Now, you could play on your little guitar, and I’m sure that would impress the hell out of the devil, but your music is stronger with us backing you up.”
“We’re all badass women,” Scraper said. “What’s more badass than playing a gig in hell? Count me in.”
Kendell turned to Myles. “Would you please say something?”
“If it were up to me, I’d go alone. But you’d never stand for that. Just like your girls won’t stand for being left out. I can’t think of a single time they haven’t shown up to a rescue. I don’t like the idea of risking anyone, but your girls have proven to be pretty handy in a fight.”
“Next you’re going to tell me I should bring Cheesecake.”
Myles shrugged. “She’s been a she-wolf before.”
* * *
With Kendell at work at the coffee shop, Myles considered his next move. Getting out of his old place hadn’t just been about satisfying her needs. So long as he didn’t register a change of address, the police would be left guessing about his location, but it wouldn’t take them long to piece together that he’d moved in with his girlfriend.
The scene of the cop cars camped out in front of his apartment as he was on the run in the stolen van with Joe Cazenave—one-time lieutenant in the force—and Professor Yates continued to haunt him. It could have been nothing, but with Chief of Police Gerald Laroque trying to distance himself from any paranormal investigation into his extended family, Myles had to believe he would at least be forced to spend a night in jail. If Chief Laroque needed a scapegoat to keep his family quiet, Myles feared he was the most likely choice.
Joe was the problem. The last thing he’d said was that if he wa
s back on the force, Myles would know everything had returned to normal. But how was Myles to find out? Walking into the huge marble police station seemed like a good way to inadvertently turn himself in. He needed every ally he could find among the living, and no one had more connections than Joe Cazenave.
Out on the veranda, Myles turned away from the police station to look out toward the Mississippi River. He had one other ally to check in on, and though the professor might not be as useful as Joe, contacting him didn’t involve the risk of incarceration. No use putting it off any longer.
As he headed out of the building, he grabbed his beat-up bicycle from under the stairs. It wasn’t a long distance to the wharf, but with the ever-present police, he didn’t want to rely on his Sketchers for mobility.
The bike chain squealed as he got up to speed and headed away from the river toward Rampart Street. One block up, he turned onto a quiet residential street. Zigzagging his way through the Quarter, he made his way to Esplanade Avenue. The large-limbed oak trees that occupied the garden-like division of the main thoroughfare nicely shaded the bike path. Gutter punks had found the area pleasant enough to use for their daytime siestas. Any cop who might be in the area found himself busy with paranoid tourists who thought the miscreant sleeping youths were out to get them. The distraction gave Myles peace of mind. He’d be the last person someone would be complaining about.
Professor Yates’s laboratory hadn’t improved since Myles’s last visit. The carnival-like gypsy trailer he used for his steampunk-mystic fortuneteller con was parked on the dock. Other than that, the old shipping office looked to be abandoned.
Myles knocked on the boarded-up glass door. “Professor, are you home?”
The sound of equipment falling over preceded the old man’s call for Myles to come in.
“Would you look at what they did to my instruments? For an organization devoted to keeping mystical objects safely out of the hands of the general public, Luther Noire’s little operation doesn’t know the first thing about how to handle scientific gear.”