What it meant—what might happen at other wards, or other places of magical power in New Orleans, now that his whole body was suffused with that static—he wasn't sure. He'd been following the map according to Ray's plan, but now it really struck him just how little he knew about the magic, and what other side effects it might have.
Stop, he told himself. Worry about this shit later.
Frantic, he glanced around again, thoughts falling into place, a surreal calm descending upon him. Tumblers clicked. Doors opened. Would the Moment pass? How long until it did, and he slipped back into the flow of 2005 to let Coco carve out his organs? No telling. But he looked at Mireault again, carving symbols into solid stone with his crooked finger, and thought that when Mireault finished, this Moment would be over.
He stared at the ward. At the river. And he smiled. At the Beauregard-Keyes House, he'd gone in the front door with the Tordu right behind him, but in the midst of the Moment he'd moved from the front of the house to the back. From the Tordu's perspective, he had stepped through the front door and out the back in the blink of an eye. Several times now, as he'd borne witness to the past, he had wondered how far he could wander inside a Moment.
It was time to find out.
“Catch me if you can, fuckers,” Max whispered.
Mireault whipped around, faster than it seemed he ought to be able to move that contorted body. He scanned the night and his eyes narrowed, staring right at Max.
“Quelle êtes-vous?”
Max ran at him. Mireault's lips peeled back in a savage sneer and he raised his gnarled hands with their hooked fingers, muttering some kind of incantation under his breath. Max didn't slow. He raced past Mireault, past the ward, and dived into the river, swimming as hard as he could.
After four strokes, he kicked off his shoes. He heard a shout behind him but did not slow until he'd gotten three quarters of the way across. When he risked a glance back, Mireault had returned to the task of preparing the ward. It wouldn't be finished until he had sacrificed a life within that circle, but the gnarled man worked feverishly now, as though whatever he'd seen had spooked even him.
The river's current was lazy, and Max reached the other side in no time. Breathing hard, he stood and slogged to the bank, moving into the trees. He turned to peer across the water at Mireault working in the moonlight. The current had brought him a little off course, and the angle gave him a clear view of Mireault. Catching his breath, he watched for a minute or two.
When Mireault stepped back from the ward and began to dab the ground beside the stone with the revolting concoction, Max knew that Mireault had concluded his preparations. All that remained was the sacrifice, the blood, the fucking cannibalism.
Max shuddered, feeling the wind shift and the humidity pounce as though it had been stalking him all along. He knew before he saw it start to happen. For a beat he saw the past and present together, as if perceiving 19th-century Mireault with one eye, and 2005 Coco and his Tordu possewith the other. And then there was only the present, and the four people standing in the candlelit circle at the river's edge.
“What the fuck?” Lamar shouted, looking around.
Gerard swung the gun in quick arcs, searching. Coco stormed into the circle, crouched, and ran his hands through the grass, reached out and touched the ward, then stood and looked around, eyes wide with astonishment. It was almost comical.
Felicia had a hand over her mouth, staring at the place where Max had been only a moment before.
“Where did he go?” Gerard snapped. “Where the hell did he go, Coco?”
“How did he do that?” Lamar demanded. “What kind of mojo is that shit?”
“Coco!” Gerard shouted. “Where the hell—”
Enraged, Coco spun on him. “I don't know!”
Max should have fled, but their confusion amused him. He wanted to savor it as a small shred of vengeance. The three Tordu men flapped and squawked like fools. But their antics drew his focus, and he didn't pay enough attention to Felicia. So when she pointed across the river and shouted, it caught him by surprise.
“There!” she said. “He's right there.”
He'd thought the tangle of overgrowth dark enough to hide him. But she had seen, and he wished she had remained the silent woman forever.
Gerard swung the pistol up and squeezed off a shot. It snapped through the trees seven or eight feet from where Max crouched, echo rolling along the river. But Lamar had no patience. He knew that Gerard had little hope of hitting his target.
Max had crushed his brother's legs, killing the man.
Lamar threw back his head and let loose a howl of primal rage, and then ran for the river. Felicia called for him to stop. Coco even reached for him, grabbing Lamar's sweaty arm, but could not hold on. Lamar tore free and thundered past, knocking over a couple of candles as he hurled himself down the bank and into the water.
Right past the ward.
“You got nowhere to run, dead man!” Lamar screamed as he first waded, then started to swim. “Where you gonna go?”
He continued with a stream of profanity and promises of pain, and all the while, Coco and Gerard and Felicia were shouting, trying to make him hear them. Lamar could not see the way the woman gestured for him to return to the riverbank, nor the way Coco shook his head as though the sad matter had already concluded.
“You dumb asshole!” Gerard screamed, his voice rising an octave.
Nothing seemed to get through to Lamar. In fact, when the moment came that he faltered, standing man-tits deep in the river, and looked around in utter bafflement at the result of his blind rage, it was clear the revelation had come from somewhere deep inside his primitive brain. Their words hadn't reached him, but somehow, he had come to his senses.
Max watched from in amongst the trees as Lamar glanced around at the dark water, head moving in quick jerks as though every ripple on the surface threatened him.
“Oh, Mama,” he said. And though it must have been only a whisper, Max could hear it fine.
The giant black Buddha-man began to retreat, shambling back toward the riverbank, and the ward that marked the outer edge of the city Mireault had claimed so long ago. Gerard and Felicia exhorted him to hurry, but both kept well back from the ward that separated Tordu territory from the rest of the world.
Coco said nothing. When Max looked over, he found the Tordu leader staring at him. Though the trees partially hid him, he knew that Coco saw him very well. That handsome face was no longer alarmed, but resigned.
No splash of water revealed the demon's presence. The river did not even part to flow around it.
But Lamar started to scream. Unseen hands plucked him out of the river, held him dripping in the moonlight, and turned him upside down. He hung there for a second, and then a wet tearing noise filled the air as Lamar was ripped apart.
Gerard shrieked.
Pieces of Lamar began to vanish as though swallowed by the air.
Coco screamed at Gerard, slapped his face. “Hurry! The ward's weak. If it senses the weakness, it could try to get through!”
Max stared in confusion, unsure what Coco had in mind. What could he do? The ritual had not been completed.
Gerard and Coco fell on Felicia. They dragged her sobbing into the circle and the filleting knife rose and fell, reflecting moon- and candlelight. They would be cutting pieces of her free now—her heart, her liver, her kidneys. They would have to complete the ritual. In Max's place, it was Felicia who would be eaten alive.
Felicia had become the silent woman forever.
As the last shreds of Lamar vanished above the river, Max turned at last and began to flee through the trees, working his way back toward the road.
chapter
15
The battered Ford pickup rattled along Chef Menteur Highway, slowly disintegrating. Max sat in the rear of JL the truck staring at the rust-eaten floor of the flatbed, where metal flakes sifted down through holes and shook and jittered like sand. He thought of trips
home from the beach with his dad at the wheel of Mom's station wagon, Max and his sister in the backseat, and the way the drying sand flaked from their feet and legs and accumulated on the floormats, a thousand little grains, jumping and sifting with every bump in the road.
That had been long ago and far away. God, how he wished he could go back.
Humid or not, it was November, and with the wind whipping around his wet clothes, Max shivered and huddled down behind the pickup's cab. He didn't say a word, nor had he complained when the driver had balked about letting him sit up front. It wasn't like his wet jeans were going to do much damage to the upholstery of the ancient pickup, but how could he argue? The guy had stopped for a stranger hitchhiking on a lonely stretch of highway, sopping wet and with no shoes on…
And where were his shoes now—or more accurately, when were they? How could his clothes be saturated by water from the 19th century?
It seemed that with each Moment he experienced, he was there more and more.
A few cars had passed him by before the graying, bearded pickup driver stopped, and Max felt nothing but gratitude.
They drove past warehouses and shipping docks on the canal that ran along the north side of Chef Menteur Highway. Eighteen-wheeler s sat in parking lots, silent monoliths, and small cargo ships were moored at the docks. Not a lot of fishing boats up this way. The occasional gas station or liquor store broke up the landscape, and once or twice a mile, a lonely house. They'd rolled right on past a wealthy suburban development that seemed remarkably out of place, and then across the bridge that spanned Chef Menteur Pass, and now Max's jeans and shirt were stiffening as they began to dry.
With every mile he moved away from the city, the pull of New Orleans grew stronger. He fought the urge to tell the driver to pull over so he could turn back. It was barely past midnight, but he felt the seconds hurrying past. Max needed a place to stop for a few moments, to think and take a breath, but he knew he would have to return to New Orleans, and quickly.
Outside of the wards that marked their territory, the Tordu could not follow him, but they would never let him go. No one he loved would be safe if he left New Orleans behind.
If there was a way to survive, he wouldn't find it anywhere else but here.
The pickup began to slow, and the driver turned into the half-full parking lot of a squat little place with neon beer emblems in the windows. A sign at the edge of the lot announced it as Mattie's All-Night Crab Shack. The post leaned to one side, maybe nudged by an errant car bumper.
A pair of thirtyish women laughed about something as they walked toward the door. One of them, an attractive brunette with librarian glasses, gave Max a curious look as the pickup slid into a parking spot, but then lost interest.
The driver popped his door and stepped out, slamming the door behind him. The impact made the rust flecks in the truck bed sift with a sandpaper rasp.
“This'll do ya,” the driver said.
Clothes plastered to him, Max climbed stiffly from the back of the pickup and dropped to the pavement. He'd shed his wet socks back in the woods, and the tar still held some of the warmth of the day. It felt good.
“You think it's okay for me to go in there like this?”
The driver smiled, blue eyes bright in the light from the restaurant. “Mattie's has seen worse. ’Sides, you had a rough night already. Nobody gonna give you a hard time now. Least, not if you come in with me. Might be Mattie can fix you up with something for your feet.”
Max cocked his head. “Thanks. But why are you bothering?”
The man laughed, stroking his graying beard. “I didn't say it wouldn't cost you nothin’. For my part, you can buy me a beer if you still got a wallet in them pants.”
Max patted his back pocket, though he'd already checked and knew his wallet was there. The cash would be soaked, but the credit cards ought to still work. He'd given the driver one fat lie on the side of the road—said he'd been out fishing in a rented boat and hit a rock, holed the hull, nearly drowned, and had had to kick his shoes off in the water. It sounded like bullshit even to him, and he had no idea what the driver thought had really happened. But all that mattered was the guy had picked him up.
“Still got it,” Max assured him. “And I'll go you one better. If you're hungry, I'll pick up the tab.”
“That's a deal,” the man said, pointing at him. He thrust out his hand. “Archie Baldwin.”
They shook.
“Max Corbett.”
“All right, Mr. Corbett. You follow me.”
Archie led him inside. If he was troubled by the sign on the door that said NO SHIRT NO SHOES NO SERVICE,he didn't show it. The place came alive the moment the door swung open, laughter and clinking glasses and the low susurrus of human voices. Max's stomach purred at the smells of frying seafood and cooking spices. Music played low from hidden speakers, and colored lights and mirrors behind the bar gave the place a surprising glitter. Mattie's All-Night Crab Shack wasn't the shithole dive he'd been expecting, and it made him feel even more out of place.
A waitress with red hair and a spray of freckles across her cheeks and nose whooped when they came in and made a beeline for Archie.
“Hey, honey, what you doin’ out here tonight?” she asked, giving him a hug.
“Oh, you know, Beth. Just wanted to see your pretty face. Plus, my friend here ain't never had Mattie's crab cakes, and I told him he can't go home until he's had a taste.”
Beth cocked a hip, studying Max up and down. “What happen to you, baby?”
Max shrugged. “Fell in the river.”
“Now, come on, darlin’. Max's had a hard day. Don't be making him feel even stupider than he already does.”
“All right, all right,” Beth said, smiling up at Artie, eyes sparking. He might be twenty years her senior, but Max could see she wasn't just flirting. He charmed her. “But you know he can't come in here in his bare feet like that. After the way Mattie's done the place over, it's a class joint.”
Artie smiled. “Come on, now. Nobody's gonna notice if you hustle us into one of them booths by the bar.” He gestured. “Anyway, I was hopin’ Mattie could open the bait shop. You know she sells them Timberlands or whatever they are in there, the waterproof boots. Max could buy a pair, maybe a sweatshirt or something.”
Max was impressed. Artie might drive a rattletrap, but there was nothing rusty about his brain. The guy had it all worked out. Max had noticed the extension on the side of the building but hadn't paid any attention to the sign there, because the windows were dark and the place looked locked up tight. If they sold boots and sweatshirts, it sounded more like a full-service fishing supply store than a bait shop.
Beth dashed his hopes with a shake of her head. “I'm sorry, honey, but Mattie don't work this late at night. And you know she don't let Jasper have a key to the place.”
She looked at Max, and brightened a little. “We can fix you up with a dry shirt, though. Got Mattie's Crab Shack T-shirts behind the bar, only twelve dollars. Sweatshirts are twenty-five. Got caps, too, but that won't help much.”
Max smiled. Dry clothes of any sort sounded good. “No pants or shoes with the Mattie's Crab Shack logo on 'em, huh?”
Beth laughed. “Not much call, sorry to say. Used to carry aprons, but they didn't sell.”
She hooked her arm through Artie's and guided them both to a booth across from the bar. They passed a few tables where people were eating and drinking, and though several people tossed Max curious looks, nobody mentioned his bare feet.
“You don't happen to sell maps, do you?” Max asked as he slid into the booth.
Both Beth and Artie looked at him, obviously wondering what he was really up to.
“Sorry,” Beth said. “In the bait shop, yeah, but not here in the shack.”
Disappointed, trying to figure out how he could work out the location of the next Moment, Max forced a smile.
“No worries. Thanks.”
Beth slipped them menus. “You b
oys figure out what you want, and I'll see what I can dig up.” She looked at Max. “You a large?”
“I'll take extra large if you've got them. The T-shirt and the sweatshirt both. And two of whatever beer Artie wants—”
“Corona,” the man chimed in.
Max nodded. “Corona's fine.”
Beth strutted away, promising two guys at the next booth that she'd check on their food. Artie and Max sat together and silently perused the menu for a couple of minutes, but Max spotted what he wanted pretty much immediately. Mattie's menu called them Creole Crab Cakes, and that sounded fantastic to him.
“You're not going to ask, huh?” Max said at last.
Artie shrugged. “You already told me a story. Figured the details were none of my business.”
Max noticed the wording—-you already told me a story. Not the truth, in other words.
“I appreciate that.”
Artie's expression grew serious. “We learned a lot of lessons down here not long ago. People reach out for a hand, you got to help them up. Do what you can. We're all in this together, and we can't expect the authorities to do a damn thing for us. We got to do for ourselves, and for each other.”
“It's a hard lesson to learn,” Max said. “But it means a lot. I won't forget.”
“See you don't,” Artie said.
As Beth reappeared, so did Artie's smile. She delivered their Coronas, then went behind the bar and returned with a blue T-shirt and a pale red sweatshirt, both neatly folded, and promised to be right back. Hurrying away, she vanished into the kitchen.
Good as her word, she came back less than a minute later with two dishes for the guys at the next booth, then whipped out her order pad and stood with her pencil poised.
“Okay, shoot.”
“Crab cakes and dirty rice,” Artie said.
Max pointed at him. “Times two.”
“You boys make it easy,” Beth said, gliding away again.
The Map of Moments Page 23