She held the note a little longer, then took another breath and began to sing an old Spanish Christmas song. I didn’t understand the lyrics, but the words didn’t matter. The power was all in her voice, and as Shanique’s music flowed over me, Miko’s horrible vision evaporated like fog in sunshine. The gore around me became innocuous swamp water, and what had seemed to be zombie hands grabbing at my legs was just a tangle of common river weeds.
I looked up and found myself staring up into a set of toothed jaws the size of Madame Devereaux’s Volkswagen. I’d have been momentarily petrified if the sight of the monster wasn’t a welcome relief from Miko’s visions. The creature looked like the skeleton of some kind of dragon that had been taken over by the flora of the bayou. Creaking green vines linked the ancient bones, serving as muscles and sinew. Moss bearded the dragon’s jaw and huge scarlet rose mallow flowers bloomed in caches of muddy debris on its back and sides. I could see between its ribs, and where the dragon’s flesh heart should have been was a knot of dark, shiny vines that pulsed with a faint blue glow.
Shanique was standing ramrod straight in the boat, apparently giving the song all she had. I caught her eye and she pointed at the bag of gear with an expression that clearly said, “Get on with it already!”
So I got on with it. I splashed back to the boat, grabbed the gym bag, slung it across the front of my body, and began to climb the beast’s slippery vines to reach the heart. My flames were still sizzling against the wet glove, but the sulfurous steam wasn’t thick enough to do worse than make me cough a little. And Sap Daddy was too damp for me to accidentally set on fire.
Gripping a mossy rib between my knees as if it were a tree trunk, I unzipped the bag and pulled out the African knife. My access to the heart vines was blocked by some stray vegetation; I cut as little of it away as possible, just enough so I could squeeze the jug and funnel into the chest cavity. I positioned the receptacles beneath one thin, pulsing black vine, then slit it with the tip of the knife.
Black sap—the same sap that Madame Devereaux had put in Pal’s apples—began to ooze from the core of the vine down into the funnel and the jug. The fishy odor was much more pungent in this fresh dragon molasses, and that on top of the sulfur in my steam made my eyes start watering. The vine clogged after a little while and I had to make another cut. My thigh muscles began to ache from the effort of clinging to the rib after about fifteen minutes, but I hung on until the jug was full. I carefully corked the jug, slipped it and the knife and funnel back into the gym bag, and slid down to the water.
Once I was back in the boat, Shanique continued caroling as I poled us away back toward the stream, avoiding the mossy wrecks of other boats that had ventured into the swamp after Sap Daddy.
“Do you think you can keep singing long enough for us to get home?” I asked her. Whatever magic the girl was able to weave in her music, it was doing a fabulous job of keeping Miko out of my head. I knew Shanique couldn’t keep it up forever, but I’d enjoy what peace I could get while it lasted.
Shanique nodded, looking a little mischievous. She took a deep breath, and started belting out “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”
I smiled and began to sing along with her.
chapter
thirty-two
The Cure
Madame Devereaux was waiting for us on the stream bank, looking impatient. “Why you singing that, girl? I told you not to waste your Talent on them silly songs!”
Looking innocent, Shanique pointed at me. I just shrugged.
“She’s helping me out with a little problem tonight.” I threw the loop of the mooring rope over the tree stump and stepped out of the boat with the gear bag. “We got the sap; you want it?”
The old witch ignored the bag and frowned up at me. “ ‘A little problem’ my bony posterior! Bend down here so I can take a look at your eye, girl. Your flesh one.”
I did as she asked, and she took off her spectacles and peered into my eye, holding up her kerosene lantern for a better look. What was this, an optometry exam?
Shanique hopped out of the boat and peered at my face. “Ooh, your eye’s gotten all purple! It looks like a grape!”
“Well, now, when was you gonna tell me you’re bein’ diabolically possessed?” Madame Devereaux’s sharp tone of disapproval made me instantly feel defensive.
“Well, now, since when do you care?” I shot back. “It’s my problem, not yours.”
“It gets to be my problem right quick if your head starts a’ spinnin’ while I’m in the middle of my spell for your critter, don’t it? If your devil makes you distract me, your familiar don’t get cured. He gets dead. Do you want that?”
I flinched, realizing I’d been an idiot. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
The witch lowered her lantern and sighed at me, shaking her head. “Come on to the house. I got something that’ll keep it getting’ any worse. But leave your kickers on the porch … don’t be tracking mud all over my floors!”
Feeling utterly tainted, I followed her up to the front door, pulled my mucky boots and sodden socks off and left them on the concrete steps, then followed the old witch inside, my pruned feet slapping on the polished hardwood. She took me to a back bedroom where she unlocked a large mahogany jewelry chest and pulled out a necklace made of blue glass beads with a large round turquoise pendant. When she held the necklace out to me, I realized that the beads and the stone had been carved to look like eyes.
“Put this on, wear it close to your heart. And keep it on till you get to your daddy’s castle,” she said. “I reckon whatever’s tryin’ to get its hooks into you won’t be none too happy about being spirit-blocked. So when you take this off again, be ready for the devil to hit you hard.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I slipped the necklace over my head and tucked it under my T-shirt. The moment the stone and glass touched my bare skin, I felt the same kind of cool washing-over relief that Shanique’s song had given me in the swamp.
After that, I went outside again and helped Madame Devereaux set up a black iron cauldron on a tripod over a pine log fire in the middle of a big circle of packed earth in the backyard. We gathered fresh herbs from her garden, and then put the dragon molasses, plants, and some silver nitrate powder in the cauldron to boil. I went into the barn, roused Pal and got him to roll back onto his levitating litter, and pushed him over to the spell circle.
“Put your critter on the ground right there.” Madame Devereaux pointed at a spot that looked to be due north of the cauldron, just beyond the worst heat of the fire. “And take that litter back to the barn; the magic in that could interfere with my magic.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I did as she asked and came back to the circle. “Is it okay if I sit beside him?”
Madame Devereaux nodded. “Matter of fact, I need you to stay with him. Make sure he don’t try to leave the circle.”
She headed back to the house. Even with her protective amulet, I was starting to feel anxious again about Miko showing up, anxious about what she had done to Cooper, anxious about everything. I leaned against Pal’s warm bulk, whispering “it’ll be okay” over and over. I wasn’t sure if he was conscious enough to actually hear me.
The old witch finally returned wearing a loose blue caftan. In one hand she carried a cooler of dry ice and in the other a clean oaken bucket that held a long-handled steel dipper and an owl-feathered rattle made from a dried gourd lashed to what appeared to be a human radius bone. After slipping off her clogs, she stepped onto the dirt circle barefoot. She set the bucket and cooler down just inside the circle’s edge, away from the heat of the fire, and spent the next couple of hours down on her hands and knees inscribing various arcane symbols in the dirt with the ceremonial knife. Some she put around the cauldron’s fire, others she drew around me and Pal.
Shanique was sitting on a log near us, watching her grandmother work with rapt interest. Madame Devereaux finished scratching the last symbol into the ground. Her knees and back popped audibl
y as she got to her feet and stretched, raising the muddy knife toward the still-dark morning sky.
“Have you seen her do this before?” I whispered.
The girl nodded.
“Hush! No more talking, now,” the old witch admonished me. Then she looked at Shanique. “You get on the other side of her critter—don’t mess up my marks. Y’all gots to hold him if he starts to thrash around. I reckon he’s too weak to throw the both of y’all off, so just hang on.”
Shanique and I nodded. The girl carefully stepped over the symbols and took her place beside Pal. Madame Devereaux hobbled over and pulled off a handful of Pal’s fur, some of which she threw into the pot. The rest went into the fire, flaring slightly green as it burned.
We held on to Pal as the witch got her gourd rattle and the knife and began to chant, stomp, and dance around the potion bubbling in the cauldron. The cooler of dry ice was sending an eerie low fog across the ground beyond the fire. Her motions were practiced and utterly confident; she slashed the air with the knife as if she were cutting down every last one of the forces of evil.
I couldn’t understand much of the chant, but I caught enough of the meaning to know it was focused on Marinette, the patron loa of werewolves and shape-shifters. And Madame Devereaux wasn’t trying to appease the vicious goddess, as most witches would have done, offering up a live-plucked rooster or slaughtered goat. She was ordering the loa to get her damn, dirty claws off Pal. Madame Devereaux was bringing all her authority to the table here, and she was wielding an ancient, powerful magic that was downright scary. Hairs rose on my arms and the back of my neck, as if a thunderstorm was gathering above us, but the sky remained clear.
She kept dancing and chanting until the sun began to crack the horizon, and then she kicked dirt onto the fire to put out the flames. Without breaking stride, she went to the cooler, knocked the lid off, and dumped the contents straight into the pot. Immediately an impressive fog of carbon dioxide boiled over the sides of the cauldron, extinguishing the remaining live coals. Thick, spooky vapor billowed across the ground, but I realized she hadn’t dropped the dry ice in as a cheap effect—it was to quickly chill the potion without diluting it. She retrieved the oaken bucket and went back to the cauldron, gave the contents a couple of good stirs, and started ladling smoky black potion into the bucket.
“Through the power of Sap Daddy, drink this and be healed!” Madame Devereaux carried the bucket over to us, and I got Pal’s mouth open.
“Drink this and be freed from the clutches of Marinette and her disease!” The old witch poured the potion into Pal’s open mouth, and he began to choke and thrash. Still, she got most of the bucketful down his throat.
“Close his mouth!” she ordered.
I clamped his jaws together under my arm and pulled his head up to force him to swallow, feeling terrible that I had to hurt him like this. Shanique was gray-faced with fear, but she threw herself onto Pal’s back and did her best to hold him down.
Pal scrabbled at the ground with his eight legs and began to thrash. It felt like he was having a seizure; I could feel his muscles cramping and twitching, and his body suddenly got hot, very hot, his skin beginning to steam in the morning air.
“Be healed!” Madame Devereaux shouted, and she pointed at his forehead with the knife and rattle.
The pressure in the air was abruptly relieved as a small, blinding bright lightning bolt arced from the knife into Pal’s forehead, and in my literal shock I let go and tumbled into the dirt. I lay there for just a second, stunned, trying to blink away the spots in my vision, but I sat up—
—and immediately panicked because it looked like my familiar had disappeared.
“Oh my God, Pal—” I began, but then I looked down and saw the small form of a ferret lying in the middle of Pal’s circle. For one bad moment I thought he was dead, but then I saw his sides shudder. I scrambled over to him and scooped him up, cradling him to my chest like he was a baby.
“Are you okay?” I asked him. “Please tell me you’re okay.”
His whiskers were dusted with dirt. He squirmed, began to crack open his eyes. Sneezed.
There was a sudden pop of air being displaced and a sudden coldness of magic sucking the heat from the air and in a blink I was on my back, squashed flat by seven hundred pounds of shaggy grizzly bear.
“Whoa, I didn’t know he could do that!” Shanique exclaimed.
“Oh my, how peculiar,” Pal said inside my head.
“Crushing … spleen …” I gasped.
Pal rolled off me and sat up, blinking down at his bear body curiously. “How very odd, I never expected—”
He sneezed. Another pop and burst of cold. In a blink Pal had shrunk down again, but this time he was a cat with long black fur.
“Well, I ain’t never seen this happen before.” Madame Devereaux squinted suspiciously into the bucket, as if she expected to see a troll-faced faery shaking its booty at her from the bottom.
“Can you cycle through all your past familiar forms?” I asked Pal.
“I’m not sure,” he replied.
“Well, sneeze again and let’s see.”
“I can’t just sneeze on command!”
“Dude, you’re a cat. I know you can sneeze.”
He flicked his tail irritably, but managed another sneeze. Pop. Cold. And now he was a bright green parrot. He stretched his wings and flapped, rising a few feet off the ground before he let himself glide to the earth again.
“It seems I can,” he replied.
“Well, I’ll be!” Madame Devereaux exclaimed. “This is a right strange cure, it is.”
“Strange? It’s freakin’ awesome!” Feeling giddy and overwhelmed with relief and gratitude, I jumped up and gave the old witch a big hug. “You’re awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Surprised and apparently mortified, Madame Devereaux went stiff as a bundle of skis in my arms.
“I ain’t a hugger!” she shrilled.
“Oh. Sorry.” I quickly let her go and backed away.
Her face had gone dark with embarrassment, and she tugged at her gown to straighten it. “I don’t reckon I ever let nobody touch me but my dear departed Earl. And babies. They don’t know no better.”
“Well, maybe I could buy you a drink or something in town? Or dinner? Or … go shopping for … shoes? Auto parts?” I felt like we should do something to celebrate.
Madame Devereaux shook her head. “I don’t need no payment for this. It’s what I do. Y’all just get some breakfast and some sleep and then get going to your father’s place. Peace and quiet is the best gift you can give me.”
“Okay,” I replied, feeling a bit crestfallen.
I turned my attention back to Pal, who was preening his feathers and admiring his wings.
“I rather enjoyed being a parrot,” he told me. “Although my master then was serving aboard a pirate ship, and I must say the other crewmen weren’t a pleasant lot to be around.”
“Can birds sneeze?” I asked him.
“Hmm, good question.” He concentrated for a moment, and let out a small achoo.
Pop. Cold. And now Pal was back to his original shaggy spider monster form. His body looked perfectly healthy, his legs free of sores, his coat shiny. He stretched and gave himself a shake—
—and all his hair fell off with an audible foomp! as it hit the ground in an itchy pile.
“My fur!” he shrieked, rearing up on his back legs.
“I’m … I’m nude!”
He said “nude” the way most people would say “covered in leeches.”
“Ewww,” Shanique said. “An’ I thought he was ugly before.”
“You hush now,” her grandmother scolded. “That ain’t polite.”
“Don’t panic!” I told him. “It’ll grow back! You probably just changed too much, too quickly. Or something. But, seriously, it’ll grow back.”
He settled down, staring at his wrinkled, mottled, naked skin unhappily. “I suppose yo
u’re right.”
His shifting feet caused some dust and ashes to waft up to his nose, and he sneezed again, his naked ferret body falling deep into one of the massive fur piles.
“I’ve got to learn to control this,” he complained as he fought his way to the surface of the hairball.
I picked him up, brushed him off with my flesh hand, and set him on my shoulder. “I can always take you to a vet and get you an allergy prescription.”
“Taking mundane medicine seems almost as shameful as being hairless,” he grumbled.
I wanted to say, “Pal, seriously, you just got cured of a major fatal illness and you’re worried about your fur?” but then I heard his little stomach rumble with hunger. Low blood sugar could certainly cause his whininess and overreaction.
So instead I asked: “Do you want some breakfast?”
“Do you think she has any hard-boiled eggs?” he asked plaintively. “And bacon?”
“If she doesn’t, I’m sure we can make some.”
chapter
thirty-three
Pawn Takes Knight
After breakfast, I lay down on my cot to nap for a few hours, Pal curling up beside my head. Madame Devereaux woke us up a little after noon; she gripped a small round mirror.
“I burned a letter to your father in my fireplace to let him know I cured your familiar,” she said, and then held the mirror out to me. “And he left this for you in my mailbox.”
I sat up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, then frowning as her words sank in. “Wait a minute … you didn’t tell me you could get in touch with him that way.”
She blinked at me, looking confused and annoyed. “Well, I reckon you didn’t ask me, did you?”
I bit back on an F-bomb and took the mirror from her hand. I’d be seeing my father soon enough, and he’d be able to put me in touch with Cooper.
“Thanks,” I said, and she grunted and shuffled away.
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