The Tangled Bridge

by Rhodi Hawk

  Ethan emerged from the bedroom wearing a fresh tee-shirt and walked to the bathroom. The sound of running water.

  “It’s back,” Bo whispered.

  Madeleine swallowed. “You can tell that from clicking?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Well that’s good. But it’s not really back. You’re picking up on something in me.”

  Bo was quiet for a moment. “You gonna kill me, Doc LB?”

  The statement sent a frenzy of emotions through her and none of them were sympathetic. Her stomach rolled. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep this up before going mad. She closed her eyes again and counted aloud, distantly aware that she hadn’t answered his question.

  But as she counted, she felt a touch on her arm. She opened her eyes. Bo was there, his hands reaching for her, and then his arms went around her neck in a gentle hug.

  “Don’t worry Doc LB. You gonna be OK.”

  And that quickly, it changed. The void was replaced by warmth.

  * * *

  MADELEINE KNEW THAT IF they stayed home and Zenon came looking for her, he’d find out Bo was alive. Better to disappear into a crowd for a while. So they walked along the waterfront in the Quarter near Pirate’s Alley. That way if Madeleine sensed Zenon might be nearby, Ethan could take Bo and blend in with the hordes of tourists. Security by obscurity.

  How she was going to explain to Zenon why the phosphorescent “stain” had returned, though, she wasn’t sure.

  They streamed through people and felt the kind of invisibility you can only get in a tourist-saturated area. Bo was awake enough but Madeleine and Ethan moved like the living dead.

  “We’re going to have to sleep sometime,” she said.

  “Yeah,” was all Ethan managed.

  The steam calliope on the Natchez played whistling carnival music. Bo was listening and grinning in the direction of the thing, and Madeleine could tell he was dying to click at it.

  Madeleine said, “Watching him may be difficult. You have to go to work.”

  Ethan shrugged. “I think I can bring him with me into the lab, at least for a little while. Things are loose right now with the students on summer vacation.”

  Madeleine looked out over the water. “I guess we just need to concentrate on getting through today.”

  “Yeah, well that one’s easy.”

  “Why?”

  Ethan gave her a sideways grin. “Ice cream.”

  Madeleine looked, and saw that he’d spotted the Sucre Gelato van. He took Bo by the shoulder and steered him in that direction. Tourists queued up to buy treats from a woman in a blue bouffant wig.

  All these people. Zenon could make them his pigeons in the blink of an eye. He was so much farther advanced than she was. He would have eventually closed in on Bo if he hadn’t wanted Madeleine to make the kill. It didn’t matter where they went—they were sitting ducks.

  A few days ago Chloe had offered up advice in finding the truth by distracting the conscious mind. Ethan had said virtually the same thing when they’d stood together in the rail yard. But Chloe was the one who knew the full spectrum. She was the one who’d spent a lifetime observing the ways of the briar.

  Madeleine watched while Ethan read aloud each of the flavors on the menu to Bo. Bo went for a strawberry gelato sundae, and Ethan picked out a café au lait for himself and a chocolate gelato with chocolate fudge topping for Madeleine. The man knew her well. Regardless of circumstances, she always found an appetite for chocolate.

  She dipped her spoon in and let the icy sweetness settle over her tongue, deliberately facing into the sweltering sunlight.

  Ethan said, “Feeling better?”

  She nodded. “Loads. And I have an idea.”

  “What.”

  “I need to go see Chloe.”

  He scooped a behemoth spoonful into his mouth and swallowed in a single gulp. “Ain’t that like drinking strychnine after swallowing a spider?”

  She shrugged. “If anyone knows how to get out of that trap, it’s her. Yeah, she’ll probably try to twist things on me. But I’ll be on guard.”

  “Alright. We’ll go see Chloe.”

  Madeleine shook her head. “Chloe hates the lumens just like the river devils do. I don’t think it’s wise to bring Bo around her.”

  Ethan paused for a moment, then threw his ice cream in the trash. “I don’t like the idea of us splitting up. What if Zenon shows?”

  “Quite frankly, if he shows, he’ll be looking for me. He thinks Bo’s dead so he won’t go seeking him out. So if he does come looking it’s better if Bo’s not around. Who knows…”

  She looked at Bo, who’d forgotten himself and was now clicking toward the gelato van. “Maybe Chloe knows a way to evade Zenon. Or better yet, neutralize him. Now he thinks he can convince me to kill off Bo’s neighbors in that Bridge City trailer park. I can’t keep faking him out much longer.”

  Ethan was breathing through his nose, hand to his hip, the grimness around his eyes having returned in full.

  Madeleine said, “Let me just call and see if she’s around.”

  She dialed Chloe’s number into her cell phone and got Oran. She talked to him a few moments while Bo kept after his sundae and Ethan frowned behind his sunglasses.

  “They said come on by now,” Madeleine said as she ended the call.

  “How long you think you’ll be?”

  “A couple of hours, probably. You can go on ahead and take Bo to your place and get some rest. When I’m done with her, I’ll come join y’all.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t either. But I don’t know what else to do.”

  * * *

  ORAN HAD GONE TO fetch Chloe. Madeleine waited on a settee in the drawing room, pulling at her hands like they were sugar taffy.

  She felt a pang as she looked out toward the grand hall of Chloe’s mansion. So much like her old house, which her father had burned to the ground before he’d died. Good old Daddy. Madeleine had rebuilt the old place but had had to sell it, which is why she now lived in a warehouse on Magazine. Another family heirloom.

  Both this house and Madeleine’s old place had been in the family for generations, and there were similarities—some of the old wall fabric, the cane motif in the frieze, even the china. But Chloe’s house had a particularly strange quality about it, as though the wood in the framing was slowly reverting back to the trees they once were.

  “Briar waiting to happen,” Madeleine muttered to herself as she waited in the drawing room.

  Madeleine had abandoned the settee and was looking out the window by the time Oran returned with Chloe.

  “You are distressed,” Chloe said, but her expression was more reproach than concern.

  “You could say that.”

  “It is because you are worried for someone. That will not serve you any favor.”

  Madeleine shrugged. She hadn’t come here to talk about that. Oran filled two crystal glasses with sherry and handed one to each of the ladies.

  “No thank you,” Madeleine said.

  But Chloe barked, “Take it.”

  Madeleine looked at her, puzzled by her sharp tone, but she took the sherry.

  “Now drink it,” Chloe said, and then added, “won’t you please.”

  Madeleine lifted a brow. It smelled like roasted sweet walnuts and alcohol. She sipped. Not a taste she cared much for but she could see why some drink it.

  “So now, let’s hear what you have to say,” Chloe said.

  Madeleine set the crystal on the tray and folded her arms. “I’ve come about Zenon.”

  “Mm.” Chloe’s expression didn’t change.

  “What’s your relationship with him, Chloe?”

  “He is my great-grandson. Just as you are my great-granddaughter.”

  “Stop it. You know what I mean.”

  Chloe said nothing for a moment, looking at Madeleine, and then: “It’s a complex thing, a relationship, business or person
al. Would you say that my relationship with you is complex?”

  “Of course.”

  “And so it is with Zenon.”

  Madeleine said, “‘And so it is.’ Not, ‘so it was.’”

  Chloe opened her hands. “Why don’t you ask what you came here to ask?”

  Madeleine hugged herself and looked at her feet. “Actually, I’ve come to ask for help.”

  Chloe nodded. “Of course you have.”

  “Zenon, he’s been coming after me. Hunting people. Figured out how to project his consciousness from his body. I think he might try to hurt me and … others.”

  Chloe looked at her for a long moment, each facial feature occupying its own fold of skin. She turned toward Oran and gestured to the Persian rug. Oran disappeared into the hall.

  Madeleine said, “I want to know if there’s a way to obscure myself so he can’t find me.”

  Chloe nodded. “I can hide you.”

  “I mean in a briar sense, not so much physically.”

  “I know what you mean. You want my help but you don’t want to engage with me. Cannot dirty yourself with the truth of what is to be done.”

  “Listen, Chloe I—”

  “Get on your knees.”

  “What?”

  Chloe gripped the armrests of her wheelchair and rose to her feet, her lips quaking. “You, Madeleine, are no different from any of them. Only your own self and your one tiny little life. No care for the wider existence. You come here for my trick of protection, then so be it. Get on your knees. I give you what you ask.”

  Oran had somehow reentered the room beneath Madeleine’s notice. He had an armful of bleached towels which he was spreading over the Persian rug.

  Chloe’s hand was on Madeleine’s arm, pulling her toward the towels. Madeleine found herself going to her knees as ordered. Like with the sherry, she was reacting more from stunned curiosity than obedience.

  Severin had said Zenon had found a trick of hiding. Maybe that’s what Chloe was doing for Madeleine now.

  Chloe dipped her fingers in Madeleine’s sherry and sprinkled it into her hair.

  Madeleine said, “Chloe, what is this? I was thinking there was a way through the briar—”

  “Shush!” Chloe took her roughly by the chin. Madeleine was on the verge of getting to her feet and walking out, but this was too important. Lives were at stake.

  “You are the one with the gifts, Madeleine. You have what I have always wanted and yet you waste it. You are a child of the briar but I am not. And yet you come here, to me, and you want me to help you, but only under your conditions with nothing to offer in exchange.”

  Chloe released her and took short, slippered steps to the credenza. “I can guide you but I cannot do what you can do.”

  Chloe seemed so unsteady she might lose her balance.

  The old woman pulled open a drawer and retrieved a stamped tin box. “I cannot benefit from the gifts you squander, unless you deign to hand me your scraps. For me it is the old ways of the river. Crude tricks. But it will work. It will hide you.”

  Madeleine watched in awe. Chloe stepped back to where Madeleine stood kneeling on the towels and pushed Madeleine’s head down. She stroked Madeleine’s hair forward, muttering, “to hide this girl, to hide, to hide, to hide her hide…”

  She was sprinkling something down the back of Madeleine’s neck. Musty herbs. And then more sherry. Madeleine didn’t know what to make of it.

  And then, a slicing pain along the skin at her neck.

  Madeleine jerked her hand to the spot and got to her feet. Chloe was watching her.

  “What was that?” Madeleine said.

  She looked at her fingers. Blood where she’d touched the back of her neck.

  “Cruder magic,” Chloe said.

  Madeleine looked at Oran, who’d now shrunk back down the hall though his reflection was visible in the mirror.

  Chloe said, “It is all you need. You must now be surrounded by water. You will be hidden.”

  Madeleine looked at Chloe with incredulity. “That’s it? And Zenon can’t find me?”

  Chloe nodded.

  Madeleine frowned. It didn’t feel like it could be so simple. “But what if I want to hide someone else, too?”

  “Who you hide, girl? Your brother’s child?”

  Madeleine felt an internal jump. “What are you talking about?”

  “There is nothing to hide but yourself from yourself. This is all you ever do.”

  Madeleine felt a strange tickling on her nose, and she scratched it with the back of her hand. She needed to hide Bo, too. Hiding herself wasn’t nearly enough. But she didn’t dare tell Chloe about that.

  The tickling progressed from her nose to her lips. Madeleine rubbed. But in doing so a shimmer of light caught her eye. When her hand moved through the rays of sun that were spilling through a gap in the curtains, she saw a faint reflective thread, invisible but for the sunlight that bounced from it. No, there were several threads.

  Madeleine gasped. Spiders. Tiny ones that could fit on the head of a pin. Spinning over her hands. Her arms. All over.

  She tried to shake them off. Slapped at her legs.

  “Get back down, Madeleine,” Chloe said.

  “The spiders! What did you do?”

  “Then it has caught hold already. This is good. What you see is an illusion.”

  The spiders were wrapping her in their silk, so thin and faint she could only see it when the light shined on it. But then one of the spiders bit her on the forearm. She gave a start. In the pinprick of blood that welled up, the creature burrowed into her skin. Madeleine screamed.

  “Go to your knees, girl. River magic isn’t for pretty.”

  The spiders were wrapping, wrapping, burrowing into her skin. She sank to her knees. The ghastly things were wrapping her from the inside now. Around her throat so that she could no longer speak above a whisper.

  “Chloe,” was all she could choke out.

  Her feet and hands were numb. Her knees had gone cold. She felt the spiders in her spine, in her joints, in her neck. A curtain of white with a single blood speck covered her left eye, and she realized that she was now on her side, staring into the towels. She was wheezing.

  She managed to squeeze out the words, “The blood is real.”

  A single spider darted over her eye carrying its silken thread. It itched. She watched it move across her field of vision with another silken layer.

  And though she could no longer see Chloe, Madeleine could hear her voice from somewhere above. “Yes, Madeleine, your blood is real. And now you belong to me.”

  thirty-four

  NEW ORLEANS, 1927

  WHAT SURPRISED PATRICE WAS that Simms and Hutch went off somewhere with Guy and Gilbert, leaving the girls alone with the soft-curled woman who’d painted their lips. She was holding a satchel full of sheet music.

  Patrice realized she’d never introduced herself to this woman and didn’t know her name. But as Patrice was about to remedy this she stopped herself, thinking it could somehow make it easier for Maman to find them if the woman knew their names. Names were powerful.

  People crushed in all around them. Patrice couldn’t believe how many people were on the streets. No wonder no one they’d asked had seen Ferrar. How could any single person remember seeing another in this madness?

  How were they even going to find Ferrar?

  And were the children, also, just as anonymous? Perhaps with all these crowds, Maman would be less likely to locate them.

  “Well, get on with it,” the woman said.

  Patrice looked down at the sheet music in Rosie’s hand but paused when she looked back up at the soft-curled woman’s face.

  “Go on!” the woman said. “Ain’t got all day!”

  But suddenly, the manner in which she was speaking—she wasn’t of her own way. She was being whispered.

  “Allons! Rapidement!” She said it with wide vowels like the country French common at Terrefleurs.r />
  Her voice had changed and her face contorted. Patrice felt Rosie rear up beside her.

  “Careful, Rosie.”

  Rosie was holding the sheet music and it was crumpling in her hands. Patrice gripped Francois’ Bible.

  “Don’t look at it,” Patrice whispered to Rosie.

  Patrice rarely had to look upon other people’s river devils. Usually it was just her own, or the ones who taunted her siblings. Everyone had a river devil but few knew it, and the devils liked to stay hidden. The fact that they’d become so apparent to Patrice now meant that the briar was folding over them in a very uncontrolled way. They shouldn’t be out on the streets like this. They should be home in bed, tied down or at least watched over by someone. Walking their physical bodies while their spirits drifted was a dangerous thing. It meant you had to pay attention to both worlds at once.

  Patrice knew that there were two things above all else that inflamed a devil—being subdued or being recognized for what it was. And she recognized the creature on this woman. It snaked around her and infused itself into her skin. It saw Patrice.

  The woman made a sound resembling that of a cat facing down a coyote.

  Patrice swallowed in hopes of bringing moisture back to her mouth. She understood that some of this was unfolding in the material world, but not all of it.

  Relax, listen to the birds—

  But there were no birds here on this street. No wind in the trees, no quiet bayou. That’s where she was used to focusing her attention.

  Patrice could see Hutch and Simms now. They were looking at them from down the block. Looking so as not to be noticed. Spying. Their devils, too, had become visible. Everyone’s had. All the people on the street wore them like capes. The devils twitched when they saw the children. Or rather, when they saw the children seeing them. Some of the devils looked like humans. Others looked part-animal. They were baring teeth at the girls.

  Next to Patrice, Rosie started singing. Loud. Very loud, and gloriously off-key.

  But Patrice realized her sister was right to do this, and Patrice started singing, too. The girls sang full voice, bringing attention inside to the song, and in focusing attention the effect was like stealing oxygen from the river devils’ flames. At least as far as the girls were concerned. There were enough folks on the street who were feeding their own river devils with their mind chatter, their worries, their fears—all of which the creatures inhaled and spat out as chaos. Chaos that might erupt in the form of tempers flaring, or it might simmer for later release on their families, friends, enemies.