by G A Chase
Please tell me I don’t have to spend eternity listening to her pontificate about my failures. “Seems like you could have found an easier way of conveying the message without resorting to Delphine committing murder.”
She shrugged as if to say such things as life and death didn’t matter. “You’re not the easiest person to convince.”
* * *
Kendell paced the apartment with Cheesecake keeping a watchful eye from the ottoman. “It’s been a week with no word from Delphine. Even Colin isn’t that stupid. He must have made some attempt at escape by now.”
Myles entered from the kitchen and handed her a beer. “If he were loose on the streets, we’d have heard about it. Any word from the homeless contingent?”
“Nothing useful. My friends heard about a tourist running down Royal, yelling that some crazy guy was trying to bite her, but since it was just that one woman, they suspected something nefarious had been added to her drink.”
Myles twisted off the top to the bottle in his hand and traded with her. “Each night, I’ve kept a watchful eye at the club. If he did make it out of hell, even out of his mind, I’d expect him to stumble into the Scratchy Dog at some point. Your music would draw him in no matter his condition.”
She blushed at the compliment. “What can I say? I’ve got a way with the bad boys.”
“Some of the good ones too.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Seems like we’re getting a little short on ways to check in with hell, especially with Sanguine off playing foster mother to Sere. I wish she’d at least try to check in to let us know they’re okay. She didn’t even say goodbye.”
“Don’t give me something else to worry about,” Kendell said. “I fully intend to give Sanguine a piece of my mind when she resurfaces, but I believe she’s okay. If there was a problem, I’m sure we’d have heard. My guess is she’s just keeping Sere away from her father. No girl should see her dad lose his mind, not even the devil’s daughter.”
Myles took a long swig of his beer. “We could check in with Professor Yates. He often comes up with ideas I hadn’t considered.”
“Other than showing us what the projected mannequins are up to, I don’t see how he’d be much use in finding Colin.”
“He was able to figure out what Colin was up to by tracing how he’d interacted with our puppets, but if Colin has gone into hiding, that won’t do us much good.”
Kendell resumed her pacing. “We don’t dare go into hell to search for him. If he is playing his games again, he might be waiting to ambush us so he can try once more for your cane. I don’t see any more moves.”
Myles set his empty bottle on the coffee table. “Let’s assume for a moment that Colin isn’t sitting idle in hell, waiting for us to make a move. That doesn’t sound like him anyway.”
“Sure, but if he came through the gate, we’d have seen him. We’re back where we started.”
He shook his head. “Not if he’s unable to leave Scratch and Sniff.”
She could see in his eyes where his thoughts were taking him. “You think Delphine has him? I’m not sure she could hold him even if she wanted to. He’ll be out of his mind. Unless she put a binding spell on him, she’d never be able to control him. And why would she hold him captive?”
“I didn’t say she was working against him. If she were, she’d have contacted us.”
Some first impressions never change. “I can’t accept that she would agree with his plan of dominating all human spirits. It goes against everything the loas of the dead believe in. She might not always agree with Papa Ghede, but he is pretty much the head of her religion.”
“Colin can be pretty persuasive.”
Myles still held concerns about Colin’s advances toward Kendell, but he didn’t know just how far the man had fallen. “When he’s at the top of his game, he can make a compelling argument,” she said. “Unless we’re wildly wrong, however, he would have turned up in life as a crazy person. When I saw him through my gate, he was in pretty rough shape. It would be pretty hard for him to convince anyone of anything in that condition.”
He took her empty bottle and set it across from his. “All I’m saying is, if he’s not here or here”—he tapped his bottle and then hers—“he might be stuck between the two realms.” He tossed an overturned bottle cap between the two bottles. “The only person I know with the skills and position to do such a thing would be Delphine.”
Kendell sat next to Cheesecake on the ottoman. “What do you propose doing? Unless we see him strapped to a chair in her office or screaming from the next dimensional room, all she’d have to say is she hasn’t seen him. I can’t even use the curse like a homing device any longer.”
He took one of the bottles and started peeling off the label. At first, she thought it was just the result of nerves, but as he tossed the wads of paper and they ricocheted off the other bottle and onto the table and the bottle cap, she began to wonder what he was thinking.
“You can’t use the curse, because we blew up the bank,” he said. “And Sere can’t enter the Quarter because, in effect, one of our projector’s lenses is smashed to smithereens. Those little shards of paranormal glass cover every surface for a ten-block radius, and we’re still using the psychometric energy to project our virtual reality into hell.”
She wanted to ask him where he was going with his idea, but she didn’t want to interrupt his train of thought. He tore more paper until a layer surround the bottle cap.
“In hell, Colin would have experienced the results of our broken equipment like that bottle cap filling up with wads of paper. We were pumping a lot of energy into creating those fake people. With each of them suffering the interference from the old bank, they wouldn’t be able to fully absorb the power we’re sending. Colin must have had a physical reaction to the extra energy. I’d guess it would be like being around nuclear material. Assuming he did escape hell, he wouldn’t be a part of what we’re projecting because he hasn’t had our enhanced beverages, but he could still be feeling the effects of absorbing our energy. I think we may have dismissed Professor Yates prematurely. It may be a long shot, but if he can prove Colin made it back to life, we’ll have something to use on Delphine.”
* * *
Kendell tried not to judge Professor Yates too harshly for the confusing pile of equipment that filled his lab. Hoarder wasn’t a term often associated with mad scientists, but in his case, the two labels were interchangeable. She wouldn’t have cared if it hadn’t been for Sere. At least some of the zapping and flashing equipment was responsible for keeping the girl’s reproduced body functioning.
Myles looked more comfortable in the chaos. “We think Colin escaped hell, and we know where he would have made the attempt. We don’t know when, but it was sometime in the last week. I know your hell diorama only shows the people we’re projecting, but has anything odd appeared in that time?”
“You could say that.” Professor Yates headed to the wall of electronics that covered one side of the narrow hallway. “It’ll take me a minute to rewind this thing to three days ago. When I say the word, shield your eyes.”
Covering a six-foot-long worktable in the old reception office, a three-dimensional projection displayed the whole French Quarter shrouded in a fog of glitter.
“Is this the effect of the bank explosion?” Kendell asked.
“Yep. I’ve been having a hell of a time stabilizing the projection. That building had so much psychometric energy imbedded in every stone and brick that I’m amazed Myles was even able to set foot inside without being overloaded with people’s memories. Once it blew up, all that energy got spread throughout the Quarter like brightly colored sugar on a king cake.” The representation of the Quarter reset to late afternoon. “Here we go. Don’t look directly at the Quarter. The event will last for a couple of minutes.”
When the thin man threw the switch, a bright light appeared in front of Delphine’s shop. At first, the flash wasn’t too bad, but like a camera bulb going off in slow moti
on, it grew more intense with every passing second.
Myles was first to turn away. “What the hell?”
The professor kept the display going until the light snapped off. “It was basically a feedback loop like you would get by holding an electric guitar too close to an amplifier. Whatever that was, it was being powered from hell but illuminated in life, so when I projected it from life back into hell, the power kept increasing. I’m guessing you have some idea of what tried to destroy my equipment.”
Splotches interfered with Kendell’s vision. “That would be Colin.”
Myles finished rubbing his eyes. “We were concerned that once the bank exploded and the virtual people were no longer there to absorb the energy, he might have been bombarded with the current. I guess we were right.”
“It would have been nice if you’d given me a heads-up.” The professor returned the diorama to its present-time setting.
Kendell didn’t want to implicate anyone else in the bombing, but some people, like the professor, needed to know about it. “For everyone’s safety, we had to keep the plot a secret.”
He emerged from the hallway. His jeans and T-shirt where scorched as if he’d been involved in putting out an electrical fire, and his gray hair stood more on end than usual. “I suppose I should thank you for that, but my ignorance about what was going on with the bank made it difficult to keep this thing operating. As one of the Quarter’s oldest buildings, the bank functioned as an indispensable projector. Any word on our little girl?”
Kendell had tried to keep that concern compartmentalized. No one was better able to look after Sere than Sanguine, and she typically didn’t want help unless she asked for it. “Sanguine checked in with the band the morning after the explosion. We’d been playing music for Sere all night. She looked fine when she left, but that was over a week ago.”
“So long as she doesn’t visit the Quarter, she should be okay. I’m doing what I can to stabilize the projection, but until the city gets around to washing down the streets and structures, that psychometric dust will keep messing up my equipment. I hate to think what would happen to Sere if all the energy we were pumping into her got distorted.”
“Do you think Luther might be able to help?” Myles asked. “He is loosely associate with the city. If he were to mention that a thorough cleaning was in order, they might listen.”
Professor Yates stroked the week-old stubble on his chin. “Not a bad idea. He wouldn’t even have to tell them why. Those who have a clue about what he’s up to usually prefer to be kept in the dark about his day-to-day activities. I’ll have a talk with him tomorrow.”
Kendell wanted to get as much information as possible to avoid having to make another trip to the crumbling office on the wharf. “Any progress on making Sere’s body more independent?”
“Her body is still a physical projection,” the professor said. “With the bank gone, I’m no longer losing her energy through the seventh gate to Guinee. At least I can now dial in her exact power needs. I’m afraid I’ve been a little too busy to give much thought to how to make her self-sufficient, though. Some projects don’t happen overnight.”
“I didn’t mean to push. I guess no one’s gotten a full night’s sleep since the bank explosion. You’ve been a miracle worker just keeping her alive.”
He looked even lankier than usual as he put his hands on the table and leaned over the diorama. “I didn’t mean to get snappy, but this little project of yours is becoming a full-time job. If I had the money, I’d hire an assistant.”
Kendell looked at all the little people wandering the virtual projection of the make-believe world. “Maybe you could get one of those fake people to help.” Her attempt at a joke, however, only made the scientist scratch his head.
“It’s not the worst idea. More than a few of those marionettes have gone off script. Usually it happens when one of them is interacting with Colin. I assume it had something to do with Delphine’s end of the creation.”
Kendell could see that the man’s brain had locked onto an idea and he wasn’t likely to resurface until he had it all worked out. She turned to Myles and motioned toward the door. “I think we’ve got what we came for. Time to pay a visit to Delphine.”
“Not just yet,” Myles said. “I need to stop by the club first. If we’re going up against that voodoo priestess and her imprisoned devil, I want my cane with me.”
She quietly opened the door while the professor talked to himself about the mathematics involved in giving one of his puppet people independence. Once outside, she took Myles’s hand. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea? We could be walking into a trap.”
He zipped up his coat against the fall chill. “If Colin and Delphine are working together, we’re screwed with or without the cane, but it’s the only protection we’ve got.”
“And it’s the thing Colin most desires.”
Myles stood on the sidewalk, facing Frenchmen Street. “I said earlier I was done playing defense against Colin. A weapon is only as good as the one wielding it. We’ve been trying to keep the cane away from him because we believed he had better mastery of its powers than I do. I no longer believe that’s true. The cane obeys me, not him. I’ll take my chances.”
63
In spite of what he’d told Kendell, Myles wasn’t any happier about the prospect of walking into Delphine’s with cane in hand than she was. But if Colin was going to make a play for the powerful stick, Myles wanted to just once have the pleasure of bashing him over the head with it. First, however, he had to retrieve the oversized magic wand.
Charlie’s truck had become almost a permanent fixture in front of the club. The beat-up red Ford gave Myles a feeling of calm assurance. “At least someone’s watching the business while we go off on these adventures.”
Kendell, however, had refused to ride in the beast since the day she’d had to drive it out to the swamp. “Let’s just get the cane and go. Every time I enter the club, I feel guilty for not doing enough to keep it running. We really have taken advantage of damn near everyone we know.”
“We’ll make it up to them once this is over.” He pushed open the door so Kendell could enter.
“What brings both my bosses out of their cave in broad daylight?”
Charlie’s infectious good humor was one of his most valuable traits. “I need that cane back,” Myles said.
“Of course you do,” Charlie said from behind the bar. “Eight days cold turkey. I’d say that was a record.” He wiped his hands dry on a bar rag. “I’ve got it out in the truck.”
“Are you crazy?” Myles asked. “I said to keep it safe, not haul it around like a jar of olives that fell out of the shopping bag.”
Charlie winked as he walked past Myles to the door. “That old jalopy never gets bothered by thieves. It might be the safest hiding place in New Orleans.”
“I can attest to that,” Kendell said. “Starting that thing was more complex than casting a voodoo spell.”
“My old truck can be a little finicky about who she lets operate her controls.” Charlie pulled out his keys but didn’t head for the cab. Instead, he unlocked and dropped the back gate. It fell to the full extent of its link assemblies with the sound of squealing metal.
Myles wondered if he shouldn’t have been a little clearer with Charlie about the wand’s dangers, but it was too late to say anything more. “So long as you’ve still got the cane. Right now, that’s all we’re worried about.”
“You really do sound just like an alcoholic waiting for that first drink after a week on the wagon.” He pulled the heavy-gauge wire that hung from the inside of the door where the handle should have been. A loud click sounded from the side. “Just push in the latch of the lift gate, and pull out the side panel.”
Myles searched around the mangled edge for something to grab hold of that wouldn’t slice into his flesh. He stuck his finger against the thick angled rod and shoved it back into the hole before pulling on the sheet metal. The side of the
gate separated to reveal the cane stashed in a shipping tube. “I’m not sure Baron Samedi would approve of the disrespect.”
“My understanding was that I should be more worried about how Baron Myles feels about it.” After Myles retrieved the cane, Charlie fixed the back of his truck. “Just don’t go getting yourself stuck in a situation where I’m unable to help. You hear me?”
Myles patted his friend on the back. “I appreciate it. Don’t sweat it if we’re not back by opening.”
Kendell waited until Charlie returned to the club before dealing with Myles. “So assuming this doesn’t go haywire and Colin is in Delphine’s shop, what’s the plan?”
Myles lifted the cane. “I’m taking him to Guinee. That’s the real reason I needed the cane. We’ve waited as long as we dare, possibly too long. If the loas have their act together and get the new seventh gate up and running, I won’t be able to sneak Colin in under their noses. I don’t even want to think about the nightmare I’ll be facing if that’s the case.”
“Do you plan on taking me with you?”
He’d been alone in all of the scenarios he’d run. He knew, however, he’d never let her conduct an operation on her own again, so it was only reasonable she’d want to be included. “I’m going to have to be fast and stealthy. Though I could definitely use the help, I’m afraid two living beings among the dead might attract too much attention.”