by G A Chase
He headed up to the roof for the best expansive view of the city. From the last dull glow of the van’s headlights, he knew the irritating gang was playing out its little plot around the far end of the Quarter. He could reach the bank before they figured out he’d left his tower, but confronting Baron Samedi again felt too much like replaying a losing hand. He turned his back to the only activity in the city. No matter their plan, the amateur gang would eventually head to the Garden District. The fact that they had a vehicle and he had to travel by foot meant he needed to literally stay multiple steps ahead of his adversaries.
He headed down to ground level for the well-traveled path back to the mansion. Serephine wouldn’t see him. He’d stopped hoping. For once, he was grateful the worn steps, busted-out windows, and missing wallboards remained exactly as he remembered. He’d kicked the front door in so many times it fell open with only a push of his cane. The driving rain, which forever had just passed, soaked the bottom floor. Every surface squished as he walked through the wreck of a building. “Time to do what I should have done when I first bought you.”
His feet slipped on the wet stairs to the open-sided second floor. In the house’s arrested state of remodel, moving anywhere above the ground floor felt as though it required a hard hat and steel-toed shoes. The boards were slick with mold moistened by rain. The third floor, however, was close enough to the gabled roof to have remained relatively dry, or at least dry enough, and the rear rooms hadn’t been touched. Any financier standing out front of the house and not paying attention would think the crew was farther along than they actually were.
He started pulling small clear jars that contained miniature flames from the inner pockets of his coat. Without their totems, the fire wraiths wouldn’t be conscious. Tormenting others would be impossible for his warm, fuzzy pets. But this time, all he needed was their true identity as fire.
He opened each jar and set it next to the most flammable items he could find: moth-eaten draperies, termite-riddled wood, and peeling wall paper. Without time, the little candles could only illuminate what they were next to. “I’ll only need a few minutes to pass.”
The air outside felt electric with possibilities. Setting traps for adversaries united both the modern businessman Lincoln Laroque and the manipulating banker Baron Malveaux. Colin felt whole.
He could head back to his offices, but unlike cartoon villains, who never stuck around for the grand finale, he enjoyed watching others suffer. The elegant antebellum mansion across the street had looked down on the Laurette family’s estate for over a hundred years. He couldn’t imagine a better location for watching it burn.
He walked across the street, feeling he was leaving his past behind. The ornate cast-iron gate soundlessly swung open on its solid hinges as if taunting the derelict across the street. Colin walked five paces before turning back to close the access. “No point in giving away my presence.” Months of isolation had made him lazy when it came to closing doors.
A bashed-in door would be an easy reminder that he’d already investigated the premises. He avoided the front door but, for good measure, swung his iron-cane cudgel at a side entry of the mansion. No one would see the damage from the street, and the act of violence helped ease some of the tension that always preceded a confrontation.
Unlike his wreck of a mansion, this home had every bit of molding and railing intact. The pine floors gleamed with fresh finish. Even without furniture, the place oozed class—like an upscale nude woman who didn’t rely on her finery to make an impression.
Colin flipped his cane around and dragged its mangled handle along the floor, knocking out every other baluster along the way. He made his way to the third-floor master suite, scratching, denting, and demolishing as much as he could of the unsullied mansion. The room that faced the street, like the rest of the house, didn’t have a stick of furniture. He wished for a chair to sit in while we watched the festivities, but even a devil in his personal hell couldn’t have everything.
He didn’t have long to wait.
* * *
Myles wasn’t crazy about once again dividing the team and running all over New Orleans with Colin on the loose, but Kendell’s concern made a lot of sense. The hellhounds would need everyone to keep them calm.
He doubted the grumpy VW had ever been all that reliable in life, but with Delphine and Professor Yates’s modification, the thing positively did not want to start for anyone but Minerva. “At least with there being no such thing as time, the battery probably won’t go dead.” He gave the key another turn while laying off the gas. The small air-cooled, four-cylinder engine started with a backfire.
Kendell squirmed in the passenger seat. “Please be careful. Minerva will kill me if we damage her precious bus.”
Shifting into first gear wasn’t a problem. Taking his foot off the clutch, however, was like releasing a fire-farting dragon, and he and Kendell barely hung on. When he hit the brakes, the big black steering wheel was all that stood between him and the windshield. Without the nice long front end of a normal car, he felt as if he were standing on the frontline of any upcoming obstacle.
“How in the hell does she drive this thing—no air bags, no front end, just a big pane of glass to protect the occupants? This has to be the most unsafe vehicle ever designed.”
In response to his disparagement, the bus died at the next corner.
“You really don’t know how to talk to a lady, do you?” Kendell stroked the black vinyl dashboard. “It’s okay, girl. He didn’t mean it. You are a fine old bus with a history anyone would envy. Don’t listen to the cruel, mean millennial. You are a hippie chick that will never die.”
She nodded at him to try again. The engine spun to life like a little kitten that started purring from having its belly stroked.
“I promise not to say another mean thing.” Just to be safe, he treated the van like a cat that couldn’t decide if it wanted his attention or was about to scratch the living daylights out of him. He left the bus in first gear for the drive to the Garden District.
The mansion looked like a demented version of the building Myles had worked on with Charlie. “I guess the demon contractor didn’t get past the gutting phase.”
“Should we knock on the door?” Kendell asked.
If only it were that simple. “I can’t see how Antoine or Serephine could hear us across dimensions. While Colin had me in his little playpen, I was only partially removed from this reality, and I couldn’t hear you at all. Did you bring the drawing?”
Kendell held out her hands like a little girl showing she wasn’t hiding anything. “I had to leave it in the trunk so Miss Fleur would have it for Colin.”
“Right. Damn. I guess we hope Antoine or Serephine find their way to us like Miss Fleur did for you.”
As they walked up the path, she took his arm as if she were showing him a piece of property they hoped to buy. It was a silly impression, but one he couldn’t shake.
“You’ve proven pretty good at finding things in this house,” she said. “We’ll find a way of making contact.”
“Let’s start with what we know,” he said. “Sanguine couldn’t have forced Colin into Agnes Delarosa’s version of hell without there being a gate. Though we didn’t pass through the same location to get here, the gatekeeper had to let us pass. We know that was Antoine, so we know we’re welcome.” To prove his point, he pushed on the front door, which opened without resistance.
Kendell followed him into the foyer. “We need to contact either Serephine or Antoine. I should have held onto that hair art.”
“I considered that. Like Miss Fleur, though, we need to contact her children at a point in their history. By the time Antoine was a Civil War veteran and Miss Fleur made that thing, Serephine had already died.”
Kendell began to sound desperate. “There’s no way we’re finding something from one of them in this mess—especially not something from them as children. You and Charlie already demolished most of the upstairs.”
Myles ran his hand along the wainscot. “As Anthony Laurette, while he was building this place, he used it to hide his connection to his father, the baron, and the associated curse. He didn’t dread his sister, though. He loved her. Maybe whatever he had of hers isn’t hidden in some moldy, rat-infested attic. He’d have hidden it in a spot more befitting a young girl—someplace very personal.”
“You mean like the master bedroom?” she asked.
He looked at her, wondering how she could be so sexy one minute and so naïve the next. “You really think he would have wanted his dead sister’s doll under the floorboards of his bedroom? That’s just creepy.”
“Okay, smarty pants, where would you hide it?”
He turned toward the first door off the hallway. “Do you remember when we were talking with Samantha? We always used this den as the meeting room.”
“Sure. It was the main office of Laurette and Associates Architects. It made sense to use it as the meeting room.”
He slid the oversized pocket doors fully open. In spite of the run-down condition of the house, the doors moved easily on the hidden rail. “Exactly. Maybe that level of comfort wasn’t strictly due to the workspace. Even if the demolition crew had gotten this far, the remodel specified keeping as much of the architectural detail as possible.” He ran his hand across the carved moldings that encompassed the magnificent cypress bookcase. “This built-in unit doesn’t fit in with the rest of the room. Look around. Everything is made out of either mahogany or oak. This is the only cypress piece in the mansion. Even the carvings are different.”
“Please don’t tell me we have to destroy it in search of something he hid inside.”
He’d spent enough time in the trades to be able to identify work done by a master carpenter. “My bet is this came from the Malveaux family mansion. Mr. Laurette would not have wanted his remembrance of his sister to be sealed off like she was in some cage. He’d want it to be the focal point of the house but only understood by a select few. Something they both might have played in.”
“Like a hiding place? It would help if we had some idea of what we’re looking for. Do you think the whole wall unit swings open, or is it a miniature compartment?”
He felt the familiar cold chill that preceded an encounter with their enemy. “I don’t think it’s safe here.”
She frowned at him. “Safe in hell? Come on and help me look. You said the bookcase should have some hidden compartment. It’s a start at least. Maybe when Serephine and Antoine see we’re not leaving, they’ll cut us a break.”
Trying to entice ghosts out of the walls wasn’t a career path Myles had ever envisioned for himself. He climbed the rickety wood ladder that at one time must have made the bookcase truly elegant and started his search in the uppermost corner. Every piece of varnish-peeling cypress still felt substantial enough to warrant a good refinishing. He pulled on each wall section as if trying to remove a book and then checked out the corresponding shelf. Nothing budged.
“This is going to take all day.” He looked down from the ladder.
Instead of helping, Kendell was standing in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. “What’s wrong with that cabinet?”
“What are you talking about? I’m not getting off this ladder unless you think you’re onto something.” The shock at hearing a little girl giggling under his feet made him shake the ladder. “Tell me you heard that.”
“It’s coming from the cabinet. I think we found what we need.”
He eased down the ladder, hoping none of the steps would snap and cause him to fall, landing on the hidden child. Once his feet were on the oak floor, he kept lowering himself until he was looking into the trick-glass front of the cabinet. “It looks like a magician’s box.” He opened the neighboring door and put his hand inside. He leaned back so Kendell could see it in the angled piece of glass he was kneeling in front of.
“So what, or who, is in that cabinet?”
“Good question.” He took his hand out and stood up like a parent who’d discovered his child’s deception. “Serephine Malveaux, is that you?”
The door popped open, and a child of less than ten years crawled out. “You found me. I knew you would. Antoine said you’d never get it.”
As a young man before the Civil War, Anthony Laurette would still be going by his birth name, Antoine Malveaux—the heritage he’d tried so hard to escape once his precious sister took her life.
Kendell knelt the way she did when talking to Cheesecake. “Where is your brother? Is he here?”
The girl bit her lip as if she wasn’t sure she was supposed to tell. “He’s shy. Do you want to see my room?”
Myles could see why the precocious child had been the family’s favorite member. “That’s a pretty small cabinet. I don’t think I would fit.”
The joy in her giggle could never be conveyed by Miss Fleur’s pastel drawings. “It’s just a doorway. My room’s on the other side in the old house. I’ll go first and pull you through.”
Before he could object, she dashed back to the open cabinet. He hurried forward to keep the door to the alternate dimension from closing and turned to Kendell. “Maybe you should go first.”
“I suggest a trip to hell, and you’re the first on board, but venturing into a little girl’s room has you spooked?”
He gave her the scowl he reserved for when he knew she was needling him. “I think you might have more pulling power than a ten-year-old girl. But then, she’s not much smaller than you.”
Kendell kicked him lightly in the ass for the crack about her diminutive stature. “Just don’t let the door shut. I don’t want to get trapped in history without you.”
With her through the portal, he again had the queasy feeling in his gut telling him something was wrong. The most important thing was to be with her. He reached his arms through the opening. “Pull me through.”
A young girl’s small hands took his right arm, and Kendell’s loving fingers wrapped around his left. With a solid tug, mostly from Kendell, he was on the other side before his nose registered the smell of smoke.
* * *
Sanguine couldn’t give a coon’s ass about whether Baron Samedi could use his precious cane. He wasn’t her problem—just another interdimensional spirit with delusions of godlike powers.
She walked all four walls of the old bank office, trying to detect her grandmother’s magic. The old woman always had something up her sleeve. Re-creating the seventh gate of Guinee wouldn’t be any fun if she hadn’t left a little surprise for her favorite granddaughter.
The members of the band irritated Sanguine as they fawned over the voodoo loa as though he were a magician at a child’s birthday party playing with his phallic-looking stick. This was hell not Metairie. “I don’t understand what we’re doing here. Someone needs to check on Kendell and Myles. They already talked to Antoine as an adult, so this trip should have been a piece of cake.”
Of all the girls, Polly had the most backbone—too bad it didn’t connect to a brain. “Kendell knows what she’s doing.”
That was a laugh. Every plan Kendell dreamed up ended in Sanguine having to swoop in and save the pieces. “I’m telling you, something feels off. I wouldn’t be this tense if my grandmother wasn’t trying to tell me something.”
“Hey, if you’re in contact with your granny, can you have her conjure us up a pizza?” Lynn was Sanguine’s least favorite band member—too bubbly and flirtatious.
She chose to return to ignoring the whole room. Only Baron Samedi seemed to treat her with the reverence due a swamp witch, but then, he was trapped in her dimension. She supposed she’d be a little more differential to him as well if the situation was reversed.
To everyone else, the walls appeared to be ornately carved reliefs from a bygone era. Sanguine ran her hand over the scene of stately mansions in the Garden District. A smell of carbon mixed with fear manifested in her nose. She leaned down for a better look at the carving, which for her was
constantly moving like a wooden hologram. “What was the address of the Laurette mansion?”
No one from the group piped up with an answer, but as she turned to them in frustration, she saw Baron Samedi towering over her. “What do you see?”
“They’re in trouble.”
He lowered the silver head of the cane to the carving then thrust it hard against the wall. Sparks flew out the bottom tip of the cane.
She knew the place must be on fire, but that wasn’t the big surprise. Sprawled on the floor, as if someone had tossed him into the room, was a teenaged boy in 1800s attire. “You have to help. My sister’s trapped in the mansion with your friends. The fire started upstairs, but it won’t take long to work its way down.”
Sanguine knew enough about the hell reality to understand when time moved and when it didn’t. Someone, and she didn’t need many guesses to figure out who, had masterfully set a trap to hold Kendell, Myles, and Serephine in the same place to allow time to move. “How do we free them?”
Baron Samedi helped the boy off the floor. “Only Antoine can materialize through the relief from office to mansion. I’m still stuck in this office.”
Sanguine thought it must be nice not to bear any responsibility, no matter the occasion. “And what the hell are we supposed to do? Carry Mississippi River water with us in our hands? We’re not exactly a fire brigade.”
“Who cares?” Polly asked. “We need to get there first and do what we can. We’re wasting time.”
Sanguine could just hear the same words coming from Kendell. “Is it a band thing that you all jump into a fight without first thinking how you’re going to win?”
Before Polly had a chance to turn the skirmish into a war, Baron Samedi aimed his cane at the door, which closed tightly. “Sanguine is right. You won’t be able to fight the fire. The only answer is stopping time. Sanguine, you’re the closest one to this reality. How would we go about halting the fire?”