by G A Chase
The girl scuffed her shoes on the concrete sidewalk, slowing the pace even more. She kept her head down. “Are you going to take care of me now?”
The simple sweetness of the question made Kendell want to cry. “I wish I could, but Myles and I will have to return to our lives. This isn’t our dimension.”
“I guess superheroes don’t make good parents.”
She squeezed the girl’s small hand. “I have a friend who won’t leave you, though. She’s an honest-to-God angel.”
Sere looked up with excitement in her eyes. “The kind with wings?”
“Her wings are ten feet wide. She even flew me across the river once.”
“Where is she now?” Sere asked.
Kendell couldn’t bring herself to explain the complex relationship between Sanguine and the girl’s father. “She’s taking care of another problem, but she’ll be here soon.”
“Is she another superhero like you?” Serephine stopped dragging her feet and started skipping alongside Kendell.
“I guess you could say that. I think of her as a heroine. I suppose super isn’t a bad addition. Would you like an angel looking out for you?”
Sere resumed her normal walk while considering the question. “I want someone who will teach me to be a badass. That’s what the other me said I was supposed to be.”
I wonder if teaching a child swear words is bad if the person teaching is actually herself. “So you’d like to stay in that body?”
Again, Sere gave the question the time it took to pass a few buildings before she had an answer. “I don’t want to go back to Guinee. I wasn’t there for very long, but I didn’t like it.”
Kendell could see how the realm filled with brothels, bars, and casinos wouldn’t be fitting for a small child. “Weren’t the loas of the dead nice to you?”
“Maman Brigitte looked after me. She was nice, but her husband, Baron Samedi, didn’t like me very much.”
Kendell wondered how much of the loa’s reserve toward the child had more to do with her father, Baron Malveaux, and his future usurping of the loa’s power over the seventh gate—not to mention the theft of his cane. “He had some issues with your father.”
“Everyone has issues with Papa. I guess he’s not a very nice man.”
Another topic I can’t discuss with you. “He’s trying to be better.” Kendell looked down at the child who’d already been through so much. “I don’t think any of us has asked what you want. I mean, not just who to look after you but what realm you’d like to live in as well.”
“I don’t like Guinee, and I don’t know anyone in your world anymore—except you and Myles. If you can’t take care of me, I’ll be lost in your world.” She looked into the fog. “I just want someone to love me. Is that possible?”
I wish you were here, Sanguine. “I’ll make sure of it.”
* * *
With an interim plan in place, Myles switched his gate connection from talking to the band and Professor Yates to accepting the request from Sanguine’s gate out in the swamp. Being in the same dimension was a bit like talking over the phone to someone in the same house—no dialing necessary.
Colin’s face dominated the connection. “How is she?”
Myles decided to let the man squirm for a while until his true motivation became clear. “She was in a bad way. We nearly lost her a couple of times. Even now, I doubt she’s the same little girl you remember. She’s grown up a lot in just a few hours.”
“But she’s alive? The loas of the dead didn’t take her?”
That’s really all you care about? “This isn’t a game. I didn’t make the trip out here just so you could rub your success in the loas’ faces. Now that she’s whole again, Papa Ghede is going to demand the return of her soul.”
“You can’t do that. Let me see her.” Colin’s desperation seemed genuine, but then, most of what he did seemed sincere at some point.
“Kendell took her for a walk to help acclimate her to this realm and her new body.”
Colin finally backed up enough to address Sanguine. “We have time. You could fly me back to the Quarter. I can’t let him take her back to Guinee. At least let me make my plea in person.”
Sanguine’s wings were half-spread and her arms crossed. “You’re not in a position to request anything. All we agreed to was helping Serephine. Your part of the arrangement is to stay as far away as possible.”
He raised his hand to her. “Only while she was being saved. If she’s better now, I can return to see her. I never agreed to not seeing her. We can wait until Myles and Kendell return to life, but I don’t want to leave Serephine alone for very long. She is just a child.”
Myles had known the fight was coming from the moment they’d agreed to postpone the decision of what to do with Sere once she was whole. He had his arguments ready. “I’m not leaving her here for you like a bag of groceries in the trunk of a car waiting to be brought inside. You might have been her father at one time, but you lost that privilege when she took her life.”
“I rescued her from Guinee.” Now that he’d gotten what he wanted, Colin’s defiance was in stark contrast to his initial request for help.
“I’m not having you back here in the Quarter, where you can try again to steal my cane. As for Serephine, she’s no longer your responsibility.”
From the way Colin scrunched up his face then slowly released the tension, his attempt at emotional control was clearly causing him physical pain. “All I’m asking is for you and I to meet over drinks to discuss our issues. I’ve never been a fan of talking over connections—be they powered by electricity or magic. You can hide your cane in Delphine’s shop if it makes you feel better.”
I’d rather have it with me so I can rap you over the head with it and send you into another dimension. Instead of continuing the argument, Myles turned to Sanguine. “We do need you back here. There are some things to discuss.”
“You’re not leaving me out here in the swamp alone.” Colin sounded panicked, like a little kid who was afraid of being left alone in the dark.
Sanguine looked at Myles through the connection. “He has a point. My alligators have been eyeing him all day from the marsh grasses. We’re not going to solve anything with him out here anyway. Now that you’ve taken care of the most pressing crises, we can negotiate the peace. Colin is aware of the fact that he’s indebted to you.”
Myles strongly doubted her gators would do anything without her permission, but keeping Colin on his toes while out in the swamp had to be a full-time job. “I’m holding you responsible if he starts playing his devilish games again.”
“We’ll fly to Spanish Plaza. You can meet us there. That way, we can all see Serephine together.”
* * *
Kendell loved the view of the river, even if it was shrouded in fog. Some moments she wished could last forever. With Sere sitting next to her, she imagined herself as the girl’s mother. Myles had been so caring and sweet toward the child. Never before had Kendell thought of him as father material, but he still had his ways of surprising her. “I can see why Colin wanted you back. I just wish he were the kind of father you deserve.”
Sere swung her feet back and forth under the metal bench. “He’s better than you think.”
“Maybe so. Your mother seemed to think he still had redeeming qualities. He needs to control those devilish desires, though. It’s always one step forward then one leap backward with him.”
Sere watched her shoes as if the feet doing the kicking were not her own. “So you think he’s getting worse?”
Kendell had to replay her comment to figure out what the child meant. “I’m not sure. He gives me hope that he’s changed, then he makes some bonehead move that proves he hasn’t. Stealing your soul from Guinee and putting you in a strange body certainly wasn’t his best idea.”
“I could have said no. He didn’t force me. Besides, you were the one who showed me I didn’t have to stay with the loas.”
Finding
the girl in the old mansion then making her one of the guardians over her father’s hell might not have been the smartest play either. “I guess we all do things we regret.”
Sere put her hands in her lap. “You don’t want me here?”
Kendell put her arm around the girl’s small shoulders and pulled her close. “Of course I want you here. But you had to endure more than you should have, and that was partly my fault.”
At first Kendell thought the disturbance in the fog was the effect of a passing ship. When she saw the giant white angel wings emerge from the gray clouds, however, she knew Sanguine was returning from the swamp.
Sere pointed at the angel. “She’s so beautiful.”
Kendell kept her arm around the girl. “That’s the friend I was telling you about.”
Sanguine dropped Colin at the far side of the walkway before settling to the ground in front of the bench. “Sorry to make such a dramatic entrance. What’s with the fog bank? I thought Professor Yates’s projection was stable.”
“Sere needed more energy to keep her replacement body stable. Until we come up with a better solution, hell is going to be a little less populated.”
The green glow opposite where Sanguine had landed indicated that Myles wasn’t far away. Kendell got off the bench to prevent any possible confrontation with Colin. She yelled loud enough that both men would hear her. “Please keep this meeting civil for the child’s sake.”
Myles aimed the foot of the cane at Colin. “I’ll play nice if he does.”
This is not going to end well.
Sere petted Sanguine’s wings as if the tension between the two men didn’t matter. “They’re so soft. What’s it like to fly?”
The connection between the young girl and her guardian angel was palpable. Sanguine’s wings stirred gently, and Kendell had a pretty good idea of what she was thinking of doing. With a nod, Kendell silently agreed to her friend’s idea.
Sanguine knelt in front of the girl. “Would you like to go for a ride?”
As if afraid that anything she might say would break the spell, Sere nodded enthusiastically.
Colin took a few steps toward the gathering but stopped well short of the tip of Myles’s cane. “I want to see my child first.”
Sanguine lifted Sere into her arms and addressed Colin. “You’ve been given enough privileges. This sweet child doesn’t need to be subjected to this discussion about her future.” She ran toward the fog and took flight into the gray nothingness.
Once the angel and her ward were gone, the fog lifted. Instead of the waterfront teeming with tourists, however, there was only the empty hell that had existed before the professor’s projections had gone into effect.
Colin turned around, surveying the area as if experiencing his hell for the first time. “What just happened?”
Kendell tried to stay between Myles and Colin to prevent a fight. “This is the price of keeping Serephine alive.”
“I don’t understand,” Colin said. “The power from the World Trade Center should be more than enough to keep everything running as it was.”
“Well, I guess you don’t know everything, now, do you?” Myles remained standing, much to Kendell’s relief.
She put her hand on his chest to remind him of the love that would hopefully keep him from striking out. “This is the hell Colin is bestowing on his daughter. Let him take it all in before you distract him with your anger.”
“How far back does this realm go?” Colin asked. “Will time continue to move forward, or will it degenerate back to the posthurricane nightmare Agnes tossed me into?”
Myles finally set the foot of the cane on the ground. “Our team is working on a more permanent solution for Serephine, but for now, this is the best they’ve come up with. Drawing this much energy from the projection, however, will eventually reduce the fog into the world you’re seeing.”
“So she’s not stable?” Colin asked.
Kendell had seen enough emotion from Colin to know that the fear in his eyes was genuine. With Myles no longer intent on bashing the man’s brains in, she was able to redirect her attention to the distraught father. “We’re not experts in what it takes to keep a person alive. You were the one who created this problem. Do you have any ideas?”
Colin stared into the fog as if seeking an answer in the gray mist. “While I ran the seventh gate to Guinee, there was a belief among the loas that a balance was needed between the living and the dead. That had to do with life and death, though, not hell. If this realm works under the same rules, a death in hell will be needed to sustain the new life. That’s the only explanation I can come up with as to why Serephine would need so much energy.”
Though she was partially responsible for hell, Kendell barely understood how it worked. “A death wasn’t needed for you.”
“Agnes Delarosa, Marie Laveau, and the loas of the dead all believed that my soul shouldn’t be returned to the deep waters, so there was a mutual agreement to leave me here on permanent loan. Even so, this realm requires the energy of you and Sanguine to keep it running. That creates a balance between life and hell, if not death.”
“So that’s what Delphine meant when she said we were two sides of the cage,” Kendell said.
Myles rotated the cane under his palm. “Could we find two more people to power up Serephine?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Colin said. “The loas are very possessive of human energy. They’d never agree to a second permanent loan of a soul, especially not one they value.”
Myles sat on the bench. “Then we’re back to Papa Ghede’s demand that Serephine return to Guinee.”
Kendell had to move quickly to keep Colin from attacking Myles.
“You can’t,” Colin said as he tried to evade Kendell and get at Myles. “Send me instead, but don’t sacrifice my sweet daughter.”
Kendell doubted Colin was serious, but the idea was worth pursuing. “If the loas don’t want you, what would be the point?”
He backed up a pace. “They don’t register every person who’s born or dies. The way they keep an eye on the deep waters would be closer to a measuring stick to see how much water is in the reservoir—a very precise measuring stick.”
“But they specifically don’t want you,” Myles said. “Even if you did agree to accepting the end of your existence in exchange for Serephine, you’d never make it through Guinee.”
“They’ll be expecting a soul that’s been ripped to shreds. You saw Serephine when she was in the convent. Could you really tell who that person truly was?”
Kendell wanted to sit next to Myles, but she wasn’t yet ready to trust that the two men wouldn’t break into a fight, so she remained standing like a wall between them. “What are you proposing?”
“I can’t enter Guinee without first returning to life,” Colin said. “That means going through your magical seven gates. But once I’m among the living, Myles can go to Guinee and yank me through Guinee’s seventh gate with his cane. The direct transfer should tear my soul similarly to what you saw in Serephine.”
“Or what I experienced when you pulled me into hell.” Kendell’s memories of the event would never fade even if they were so distorted she couldn’t make sense of the demons that had surrounded her.
He lowered his head and looked at her but made no apology. “I’m not saying I’m excited about the prospect.”
Kendell wondered if she’d been spending too much time with Myles. Her skepticism about Colin’s intentions made her consider all options. “How are we to be sure this isn’t just another ploy to go up against the loas of the dead? If Myles pulls you to him in Guinee with the cane, we might be playing right into your hands. All you’d need to do is grab the cane, and you’d have everything you wanted. There would be no one to stop you from once again challenging the loas of the dead.”
Myles tapped the cane against the concrete walkway in agreement. “And if I did get you to Guinee with the cane, you wouldn’t be torn apart. You’ve made t
he trip yourself, so you already know that. Your idea is starting to sound a bit fishy.”
She’d never seen Colin in less control of his emotions. “Then you come up with a better one, because I’ll do whatever it takes to save my daughter.”
* * *
Sanguine flapped her wings with Serephine in her arms to get above of the fog. To her surprise, it only extended a few hundred feet from where Kendell, Myles, and Colin had been standing. She kept to the river in case the fog had something to do with Serephine’s need for energy.
The girl spread her arms and arched her head back against Sanguine’s neck. “I’m flying.” Her joy was infectious.
Sanguine remembered the heady exhilaration of first spreading her wings. But she had never experienced the untamed excitement Serephine was feeling. The responsibilities of watching over Colin had always gotten in the way of her unbridled joy of flight. “Where do you want to go?”
“Can I see your home?”
Sanguine spread her wings into a comfortable glide and angled toward the swamp. “You’re a lot lighter than my previous passengers. I could stay aloft all day with you in my arms.”
“If I stay in this world, can I have wings too?”
Sanguine wondered if that was possible, but she didn’t see how. The projection the child relied on for her physical body wasn’t a part of Agnes’s creation. “I wish you could, little one. I’m afraid you’ll have to rely on me to take you for rides.”
“Are you my guardian angel?”
She held the small body tighter against her chest. “I suppose I am.”
“Good, because I always wanted one.” Serephine looked back at the river and flapped her arms each time Sanguine flapped her wings.
Sanguine couldn’t remember ever being so happy to be in the air. Flying had proven a useful escape from Colin and a way of seeing the past and looking into possible futures, but never before had it been a pure joy. On seeing her island in the distance, she instinctively kissed the girl’s short strawberry-blond hair.