by G A Chase
Her look almost resembled contrition. “The power works as a containment?”
“Not quite. The wooden figure feeds energy into the glass jar in its belly. The spirit remains conscious due to the nourishment. That’s part of its torture. Since these are drained, the imprisoned spirits are dormant.”
Her look changed from contrition to contempt. “And you want to repower these fetishes? What kind of sadistic devil are you? Why not let the spirits rest in peace?”
“I could ask you the same thing. Unlike me, however, my friends’ punishments will serve the goal of getting you out of this time dimension. A lot of power can be stored in those ancient voodoo dolls.”
She glanced through the first journal as though eyeing a used-book table at a charity fund-raiser. “You’re counting on me doing evil to get away from you. This is your ultimate argument against me being some force for good, isn’t it?”
“I’m not trying to trick you. These souls were imprisoned by Marie Laveau. She was the judge, jury, and jailor. We’re simply using them like a landowner hiring a prison chain gang to clear his swamp.”
She turned from the table and crossed her arms. “I still don’t get it. You went to a lot of trouble to capture me for an afternoon chat. Now you’re willing to use your secret stash of power to set me free. What’s in it for you? And don’t give me any bullshit about wanting to see the sun again. You could have done that by never zapping me in the first place. I’m also not buying that you just wanted to talk to me to present your case for clemency. You knew that was never going to happen. If I were to guess, I’d say you’re about to imprison me in one of your little voodoo totems—probably as payback for my exorcism of you out of Myles.”
“That’s not a bad idea, but retaliation isn’t a useful emotion in this empty hell—just a waste of energy. My preference would be for you to stay with me. I’ve been told that, given enough time, women find me quite charming.”
“That’s called Stockholm syndrome, not attraction.”
“I’m constantly getting those two confused.”
Her mouth remained tight, but her eyes told of the giggle that played inside her mind. “Jokes? Really?”
“A devil in his personal hell can’t tell jokes?”
She turned back to the journals. “Not bad ones. You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I wanted to start a dialogue with you. If I keep you here any longer, you’ll start complaining that you’re my hostage. I’ve presented my case to the only person who would listen and was in a position to do something about it. Negotiations aren’t always concluded in one sitting.”
She set one of the journals next to a totem by the window—a good sign that he was making progress. “I don’t expect our next meeting to be as dramatic.”
He pulled off his cufflinks. “I’m sure you recognize these. Take one of them with you.”
“I’ve cut my tie to the curse. And with you in hell, even Myles wouldn’t be able to read you with one of the baron’s possessions.”
“You’re a clever girl. You left that damn voodoo guitar pick here in hell. Now it contains the curse. That little guitar pick is a nine-volt battery compared to my nuclear reactor. However, that little hunk of voodoo-powered gold should be strong enough to power the connection between the two cufflinks.”
She handled the piece of jewelry with her fingertips as if it were red hot. “And if I lock this thing up in some safe-deposit box? I’m not carrying it around with me.”
“Must I figure everything out for you? In terms of voodoo technology, these cufflinks are like two tin cans and a string, and about as innocuous.”
She nodded and stashed the piece of jewelry in her jeans pocket. “I still don’t trust you.”
“Life wouldn’t be any fun if you did. Now, how do we power up these totems?”
24
Myles wasn’t sure what to do. He’d been standing at the gate for five minutes. Kendell’s trip, from his time perspective, should have been instantaneous. He needed to find Baron Samedi, but leaving the gate with the cane would close the door to the other realm. He looked down the hall. If someone saw him, there could end up being a rift between life and death.
A woman plowed into him so forcefully from the back that they both went tumbling to the floor.
“Thank God you’re back,” he said.
“Not so fast, bucko.”
He rolled over and was shocked to see Sanguine but even more shocked that she had wings. “What in hell is going on?”
“Colin moved Kendell back in time. I needed to come tell you. Now I’m headed right back through the gate to get her.”
The booming voice of Papa Ghede filled the hallway. “The hell you are.”
Being caught by the head loa felt to Myles a little too much like seeing his father standing in the bedroom doorway while he had a girl on his bed. “I can explain.”
“Baron Samedi filled me in. We need to get you out of the seventh gate before anyone else runs into you.” Papa Ghede looked Sanguine over from head to toe. “Not very inconspicuous, are you?”
“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to survive in hell.”
Papa Ghede didn’t wait around for further small talk. “I’ve got a club next door. It’s the kind of place where people don’t ask questions. Follow me.”
Myles felt like some notorious villain as he followed Papa Ghede out the back door and along the alleyway between the two buildings. At least Myles was dressed for the occasion. Sanguine, in her long white backless dress and wings, looked like a kid on her way to a school play. Her feathers rustled against every wall they passed.
When they were comfortably seated around a wooden bar table in the back room of Papa Ghede’s establishment, Myles turned to Sanguine. “What happened?”
“Colin made it through Mary’s first gate. We were headed over to confront him, but we were too late. He set loose a lightning storm from the World Trade Center. Next thing I knew, he and Kendell were gone.”
Myles turned to Papa Ghede. “She’s right. We have to go back. Right now.”
The loa took a set of glass salt-and-pepper shakers and placed them next to each other. “It’s not that simple. When you opened the gate, you shared a time frame. So long as you held the gate open, the time remained the same.” He pulled the pepper shaker back toward him. “Then Kendell was sucked back in time. Bad, but not the worst situation. When Sanguine plowed through the gate, however, the door closed.” He started moving the salt shaker forward one inch at a time. “Time is moving forward again for you. Even if Kendell was able to jump back to the starting point of when you first opened the door, we’ve moved past that point.”
Myles thought his head was about to explode. “So she’s trapped!”
“Not necessarily.” Papa Ghede jumped the pepper shaker forward to where the salt was. “If she could figure out when you closed the door and how fast time is moving, she could calculate how far to jump forward. But as time isn’t moving for her, you’d have to open the door at that moment.”
“To the exact second? You’re not leaving me much hope. And what if time isn’t moving as fast here as she expects?”
Papa Ghede moved the pepper shaker the width of the salt container. “There’s a time overlap, so she wouldn’t need to hit it on the exact second—more like within a few minutes. That’s why you needed to stand guard at the gate for more than just a second. As for our clocks, any realm that accepts embassies from other dimensions—the seven gates for example—agrees to use a uniform measure of time. It wouldn’t do for someone to walk into the bank in their thirties and come out an hour later in their seventies. And before you get any bright ideas about rushing into her dimension, remember: someone needs to hold the door open.”
Myles put the cane on the table. “Can’t you do it?”
“Not my job. We gave you that staff for a reason. The gate between hell and Guinee is sealed shut. You’re breaking into Colin’s realm. We can’t b
e a part of your misconduct.”
Sanguine took the salt shaker and scattered the granules across the table. “I’m not burdened with a body. Kendell and I are linked, and with the lifeline Myles established, I can pull myself back to him. I’ll go find her and bring her back. It’s really the only answer.”
Myles couldn’t believe he agreed with Sanguine. “Just be quick. The band was fading fast when Kendell and I came looking for you. If you exhaust their spiritual energy, you may lose your way home, not to mention the effect your actions will have on those women.”
* * *
Sanguine didn’t consider Myles stupid, just easily manipulated. She liked that in a guy. The dudes who were constantly questioning her motivations or loyalties were just looking for a fight. Not that she minded a good confrontation from time to time, but when there was work to be done, she much preferred a guy who would appreciate her brilliance.
She stopped him before he reopened the broom closet. “I don’t know how long this will take. Even with Papa Ghede’s explanation, I might be gone more than five minutes. But I promise that when I return, I’ll have Kendell with me.”
“Don’t go doing something stupid like pursuing Colin. Just find Kendell, and get your asses back here.”
Even easily manipulated dudes had backbones sometimes, especially if they weren’t dumb and were worried about their girlfriends.
“I can’t be expected to answer for my actions if I run into him,” she said.
“Likewise. I’m just saying this time, save Kendell. Colin can wait for another day.”
“Any ideas on how to zoom in on her time zone?” She didn’t like accepting restrictions, but once Kendell was out of hell, Sanguine would once again be free to do as she pleased. Plus, Colin had made it clear that time travel was possible for him. All she had to do was sneak into the World Trade Center and find out what he’d been up to.
He opened the door and put the cane across the top of the doorway. “You were the one who said it would be like scattering salt on the table.”
She shrugged. “I needed something to tell that loa of yours. The last thing I need is interference from some voodoo lord.”
From the way Myles crinkled up his face, she suspected he wanted to argue the merits of telling the loas the truth. Fortunately for him, he refrained. “If Cheesecake were here, she’d know how to bark such that Kendell would hear her across time, but I’m afraid you’re on your own.”
Sanguine wasn’t typically a fan of displays of emotion, especially to guys who she wasn’t sleeping with, but she couldn’t help leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. “You’re quite brilliant when you’re not trying to be.” Without waiting for him to demand an explanation, she rushed through the open door to hell.
She ran out of the bank and straight into the swarm of dragonflies she’d summoned. “You guys have the biggest bug eyes I can imagine. So if any insect can see far enough into the past, it would be you. Go find my friend.”
As the long-winged insects flew away, their number was reduced by half. She mentally bonded with the nearest dragonfly before it had time to fly out of sight. Instead of focusing on the present or future, its attention was fixed on the past. It was flying forward, but everything around it was moving backward. It continued on its trajectory, and the future view became the past since that was where it was headed. So that’s how you do it.
Though she had work to do and a promise to keep, Sanguine couldn’t help trying out the lesson the dragonflies had revealed. She jumped off the top step of the bank and spread her wings. Trying to focus on the past, which was like a film running backward through a projector, was confusing enough from the bug’s perspective. As an angel prone to crash landings, Sanguine headed above the buildings for self-preservation.
She caught sight of the dragonfly who’d originally shown her the time-defying maneuver. As the only object moving forward, he wasn’t hard to miss. Other dragonflies passed him flying both forward and backward. As they did, she became diverted by their consciousness. The phenomenon became clear when she spotted another angel in white whizzing past her. So that’s why so many of you insects look exactly alike. You’re all the same being, just at different points in your time travel. I guess I’d better pay attention to where and when I’m flying to avoid plowing into myself.
Darkness fell, and her insect companion drifted off to find a quiet place to wait out the night. When the rain began pelting her wings from below, she realized he was the smart one.
She settled back to the steps of the bank. As if someone had shifted the rain from reverse to forward, the drops once again fell from the sky. In her multitime vision, she could again see the future as the future and not farther into the past. Time travel must only work when I’m flying. Strange. The rain began a rhythmic tapping so monotonously regular that she knew she’d slipped into Colin’s no-time version of hell. She could still see what was coming at her, but when it came to her grandmother’s version of the natural elements, things were once again at a standstill.
She tried to work out how traveling into the past, seeing another version of herself, and the lack of time dimension interacted. There should only be one of me here and now. I could go forward in time and come back later, meaning there would be two of me, but I think I would know. I could feel those multiple dragonflies as one being, just as I would have known without seeing that the second angel was also me. So I’ve only made this trip back to this exact moment once.
The effort made her head hurt. “Fuck this. I’m a swamp witch, not a theoretical physicist.”
She didn’t even know if Colin was in this time zone. The lust to hunt him down and continue her plan conflicted with her promise to keep her mission focused on saving Kendell. “I’m letting you off the hook this time, devil. I’ve learned what I needed to know about time. Our paths will cross again.”
She leapt back into the air. A dozen dragonflies met her—each its own being—and guided her into the future.
* * *
Kendell sat on the top step of the bank, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do. She’d made it back to the time frame she’d left, but the gate back to Guinee had closed. She had no way of knowing how long Myles had kept his vigil. She could only imagine the torment he had to be going through.
Without a way back to Guinee, she was stumped. Her first thought was to wander down to the Scratchy Dog and hope her band members were keeping an eye out for her through their gate. But as the gate was geared for Colin, and she’d left him in the past, the idea seemed hopeless. Approaching all seven gates in order was an option. After all, that was their reason for existence—to let someone from hell back into life. Baron Samedi, however, had proven that a guardian stuck on the wrong side of his gate couldn’t be the one to open it. Unlike him, she didn’t have a Papa Ghede to fill the void. Opening the other six gates, without being able to open hers as well, might too easily make Colin’s escape inevitable.
A dragonfly buzzed its wings in front of her like pages of a book being riffled by the wind. “Hello, little guy.”
Another joined the first, and then another, until a dozen dragonflies were eyeing her as if they found her an oddity in their insect world.
“I’m working on a way out. If any of you have any suggestions, I’m all ears.”
Kendell didn’t really expect an answer, but as they all turned and flew off, she wondered if they knew something she didn’t.
They came back like a fighter squadron that had split off in all directions. A second later, Sanguine materialized out of thin air and plowed into her.
Kendell helped the disoriented angel to her feet. “Those bugs friends of yours?”
“Just my grains of salt.”
Kendell said, “Come again?”
“Inside joke.”
“We’re the only two people in this dimension. You can’t get more inside than that.”
Sanguine shook the rain out of her wings and spread them so the sun shone through t
he translucent feathers. “I’m sure Myles could explain it far better than I can. Now, let’s get you back to his time zone so we can blow this hellhole.”
“You know how?” Kendell asked. “What are we waiting for?”
“I’ll have to take you for a little flight. My dragonfly buddies will show the way. You might find the trip a little disorienting. I know I do.”
Kendell turned around so Sanguine could wrap her arms around her waist. “Great. I’m trusting my life to an angel who gets confused in flight and smacks into walls.”
“Be nice. I’m no angel.”
Kendell crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are we flying when the front door to the bank is right there?”
Sanguine held her tightly and jumped into the air. “I can only move through time while I’m in the air. There are limitations to what I can do.”
The insects moved in a dizzying array as they led the way into the future, but Kendell could only see what was happening right in front of her. “What are you seeing?”
“I get a multioptical vision of the past, present, and future, but I can only see a few moments at a time. Now, hush up, or I’ll miss my landing spot.”
Kendell closed her eyes, fearful she was going to be Sanguine’s airbag on impact. To her relief, she felt the ground gently come up under her feet. “Nice landing.”
“I’m working on it. Now, let’s get you through that gate before Myles pulls off my feathers.”
Kendell feared she was in for a fight. “You are coming with me.”
“Are you crazy? Now that I can fly, see the future, and travel in time, I can go after Colin. I only promised to return you to Myles.”
Kendell suspected arguing with her guardian angel wasn’t the best idea. “I don’t give a shit what you told Myles. Do you have any idea how much we spent on that couch? I’d like it back, Sleeping Beauty.”
“I’m not arguing this with you again. I’ve got a mission to accomplish.”