“Fuck!”
Hailey laughed. “Isabelle knows why it won’t work… it’s because she’s with me now.”
The elementals that had formed Beli—some of them came together because they were drawn to me, some of them because of Isabelle. Now, I had nothing.
Mercy extended her wand and cast something at Hailey—I wasn’t sure what it was. Hailey raised her wand and deflected Mercy’s spell with one of her own.
“Just wait until I get control over this, bitches! In the meantime, we’ve got a war to wage.”
“A war?” I asked.
Hailey smiled wide. “Kalfu’s goal is to take over Guinee, eventually. But he figured why not have a little fun here first. Take over this world. You know, just for practice.”
“It won’t work. You have the power he wants. He will betray you again.”
“Again?” Hailey asked, incredulity bathing her words. “Looks to me like I got even more than he’d promised. Once he and I conquer this world, he can have Isabelle and take Guinee for himself. I’ll be free to rule here. Sounds like a deal to me.”
Hailey dropped something at her feet, a cloud of black smoke billowed around her body, and she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
How much more could I fucking lose? No Isabelle… now no Beli. Those were my two biggest advantages—if I wasn’t relying on Isabelle to take the reins or give me a good dose of magica to get shit done, my trusty soul blade was what I turned to when things went south. What was I without Isabelle, without my blade? I was just an average girl, I guess. One with a few neat little tricks up her sleeve. I had other aspects, but I never grew into them. I never learned what they could do for me—because I’d leaned so heavily into Ogoun’s aspect, into the abilities I had with Beli in hand.
I stormed out of the gymnasium. I couldn’t stand to even look at Mercy right now. She’d always looked down on me, as if I were some kind of inferior creature. But now, without my blade that I could use against her in a pinch, without Isabelle, she was right. I was nothing. Yeah… I was the Voodoo queen, but I was a sham queen. Marie Laveau chose me because of the shit I could do… with Isabelle and Beli! Now, I didn’t even deserve the title.
“Come now,” Legba said, “you still have me.”
I’d almost forgotten I was still gripping Legba’s shrunken head by a tuft of his hair.
“What’s that going to do for me?” I asked.
“I’m the Loa of the crossroads, dear child! And you are a Voodoo queen! You have my aspect!”
I shrugged. “All true. I still don’t know what that means.”
“Do you know why I was the Loa who was headmaster over the Academy for all those years?” Legba asked.
“I don’t know. Seniority?”
Legba chuckled. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose that’s right! It’s because I could control which Loa would come and go, which would have access to the Academy and this world, and which would not.”
“A power Kalfu also holds, if I remember correctly from my studies.”
“Indeed, Miss Mulledy. But Kalfu opens the crossroads to any Loa who wishes to pass through. Good or evil, it makes no difference. Any who might serve his purpose can and will join him.”
“So you’re saying this army he’s amassing… will consist of evil Loa?”
“Most likely, amongst other things.”
“Then why hasn’t he brought all these other creatures and such out yet? Why now?”
“Because until now his goal was to wrest Isabelle from you! The young witch has been deceived.”
“Ya think?” I asked. I didn’t mean to be rude, Legba was giving me advice. But sarcasm is sort of my go-to when I’m standing in the wake of shit hitting the fan.
“He is bringing these creatures here not to take over the earth because he’ll have a jolly good time doing it. Though, I’m sure he’ll derive some pleasure from all the bloodshed. He’s doing it because in order to bring his army into Guinee, he has to bring them here first.”
“You know, these details would have been helpful to know during our first little brainstorming session…”
“I did not see what his full plan was until the young witchling spoke. But now, it makes sense.”
“How is he going to get his army from here into Guinee?”
“If you cannot cut the portal for him, he’ll have to make it through bloodshed.”
“Through bloodshed?”
“Enough lives lost in a single day and the veil between worlds will be torn. Too many souls passing between here and there…”
I took a deep breath. This world had known some bloody wars. Think of when the atom bombs dropped at the end of World War Two. Think of all the battles, all the lives slain at the hands of other men. And never before had the number of lives lost been enough to thin the veil between earth and the eternal realms. What Legba was talking about, it had to be something on an unfathomable scale. “How many lives are we talking about?”
“At least half of humanity. Gone in one day. That’s his plan.”
“Holy shit… How do we stop it? I mean, does Hailey even realize what she’s helping him with?”
“The girl is likely clueless, and telling her won’t likely do much good.”
I nodded. “She is headstrong, and trying to convince a headstrong teenager she’s wrong…”
“Sounds like something you might know from experience,” Legba said.
I smiled. “You could say that.”
“So I think it’s time you learn what abilities come with being the Voodoo queen. You need to learn to wield my aspect. That is the only way, now, that Kalfu can be stopped.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
A war is coming. Oggie said as much the first time we met. The Bokors were going to be involved. They were insidious Loa who didn’t have humanity’s best interests at heart, who craved only power. He was right about that, too. Most of the other Loa dismissed Oggie’s warnings like those of a crazed lunatic. But that was the whole reason he brought me to the Academy to begin with. It was why he put his last hope in me. It was why he was willing to tell Mikah to sacrifice him just to give us a momentary advantage in our conflict with Kalfu. Everything Oggie had said would happen was happening. I just never anticipated I’d be facing it without Isabelle… without Beli… without a lot that I’d lost.
“So by accessing the crossroads, I can bring in other Loa to help?” I asked.
“Not easily,” Legba said. “You can’t bring any back from the void unless you go there, as you did for me, to escort them back.”
“Then what can we do that will help?” I asked.
“You can contest the crossroads,” Legba said. “It has always been a struggle between Kalfu and myself who would hold the crossroads, who would govern which spirits and creatures of the eternal realms, of Guinee and Samhuinn, might cross over.”
“Sounds like this is a battle between you and him,” I said. “What is my place in this?”
“For centuries I ruled the crossroads. Kalfu was always inside of me—a part of me. The battle over the crossroads was one levied in my person—in the body that once belonged to the very mouth through which I speak. And for centuries I dominated. From time to time he would get the upper hand—the travesties that befell the earth on those occasions was great. But I fought the good fight, I always prevailed in the end.”
“The travesties? What are you talking about?”
“The disease that wiped out the original inhabitants of this continent, the slave trade, the holocaust. I could go on and on. All travesties, plagues on this earth. All due to momentary lapses, single occasions when Kalfu gained control over the crossroads.”
“So you’re saying that Hitler, to name one example, was a demon brought over from Samhuinn?”
“No,” Legba said. “Hitler was a man. But he was influenced by a devilish Loa whom Kalfu brought forth from Samhuinn. You need to contest Kalfu for the crossroads.”
I shook my head. “You do it.”
“He overcame me before because my former host had grown old. In a manner of speaking, the new one is too young. A Loa and his or her host require a period of maturation. But our lives are now bound together. We stand the best chance if you stand against him on our behalf.”
“If you haven’t noticed, I’ve lost all my major abilities. Everything about me that he might have feared—Isabelle’s power, my soul blade—it’s all gone!”
Papa Legba looked at me as if he were trying to manipulate his shrunken face to show empathy and understanding. Instead, he just looked constipated. I was pretty sure that wasn’t it on account of the fact that he had no bowels. “They respect you, Annabelle. Your friends. You are leading them. I don’t believe Marie Laveau chose you to replace her for your magical abilities, Annabelle. It’s your leadership, your resolve, and your better nature that made you her heir apparent.”
I smiled slightly. “That may be, but leadership isn’t going to do squat in a one-on-one contest over the crossroads.”
“Oh, it isn’t a one-on-one contest.”
“Then you could join me after all?”
“I would not be your best choice. Both the one who holds the crossroads—in this case, Kalfu—and the challenger may choose a second.”
“Like a tag-team partner?”
“In a manner of speaking, but you will not tag one another in or out. A crossroads, by definition, contains two roads. Two paths, like two lives, intersecting at a single point. To gain control over the crossroads you and your second must possess both paths, you must control both roads.”
I bit my lip. “So when you lost control of the crossroads…”
Legba sighed. “It is easier to hold control of the crossroads than it is to lose it. Even if contested, so long as the current holder can maintain his control of one of the paths…”
“Or her,” I said.
“Of course. Or her control of one of the paths, as we hope may soon be the case. I did not lose control of the crossroads because my second failed. I lost control because my second succeeded.”
I cocked my head sideways.
“Kalfu was my second, Annabelle. He would grant anyone passage, any creature, good or evil. But as the first, I never granted such consent. But Kalfu—who himself could only access this world through me as a vessel—gradually grew stronger as I, in an earthly host, aged and became weaker. When he took over, when he finally suppressed my consciousness, he also managed to kick me out of the crossroads.”
“How could he do that if he was your second?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Legba said. “But I think it had to do with my aging host. Our hosts are not immune to ailments, sicknesses. During the era of the slave trade I’d taken to the seas and my host contracted scurvy. The result? Kalfu seized control while I was in a weakened state and brought forces to the world that plagued the middle passage for four hundred years. When my host contracted polio, the holocaust followed. In both cases, I was eventually able to regain control, to retake my place. This time, I think my host was dying. Not from a sickness. But simply from age. And because he wasn’t getting better…”
“You could never regain control.”
“I could not. And since Kalfu killed my host—expediting what was, I believe, the inevitable—there was no way to test that hypothesis.”
“But Kalfu still has control of the crossroads now that he has a different host?”
“He doesn’t have control of the crossroads. Not entirely. That’s why, until now, he hasn’t been flooding the earth with armies of creatures from Samhuinn. The crossroads remain contested—which means you have chance to challenge his claim.”
“But I don’t understand, why hasn’t he simply assumed control in your absence?”
“Because he required a second. Someone who, of their own free accord, would join him. Someone he couldn’t compel, couldn’t bind by a bargain…”
“Hailey,” I said.
“A girl with power, indeed. But one still impressionable enough that he could figure out ways to manipulate her in more… conventional ways. Not with magic, not with bargains…”
“But with mind games, promises of power.”
“Indeed.”
“So who should I choose as a second?”
“Choose carefully, Annabelle. Choose whoever you believe will guard the crossroads faithfully. Choose one whose heart is in this fight as much as yours. And keep in mind—the best choice might not be the obvious one.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kalfu had what he wanted within grasp. Isabelle was now soul-fused to a witch, and he’d promised her the world in exchange for her aid. But why did he need the witch? We had Mercy Brown, our own vampire witch. He had one, too. Only his version had Isabelle rattling around in her head. But Isabelle was fighting. She’d cut off Hailey from her power already. Isabelle would do that to me if I was ever trying to use her abilities in a way she found morally objectionable. It used to happen on the regular when I was a teenager, but even now—well, up until the last few hours—she would cut me off if I was misusing her abilities or trying to accomplish something with them that she thought I hadn’t thought through sufficiently. I’d never been able to get past that, myself. But Hailey was a witch and, despite her youth, a rather powerful one at that.
I gathered the city together at the auditorium—the place where we’d held the Trials not long ago. Our numbers were few, but growing. And we’d need everyone who could be of use. Even the vampires. I know I said I’d keep them in Vilokan—but that was just to keep them away from Kalfu. As it was, we were going to need every warm body—and probably the cold ones, too—to stop Kalfu before he blew open the crossroads and every nasty creature that had ever been imagined was unleashed on the earth. If what Legba said was true and the worst episodes in human history occurred when Kalfu had gained control over the crossroads, there was no telling what we were in for if I didn’t at least try to contest him. To do that, I’d need everyone I had at my side. Mercy and the vampires. My classmates. Even common vodouisants.
And to do that, I had to access the crossroads myself. I had to make a claim. That’s what Legba said. And if what Legba said was true, if he was going to force a thinning of the veil and break into Guinee’s groves through massive bloodshed, a sacrifice of human blood on a scale many times greater than the world had ever seen, I couldn’t not try.
I’d often wondered, what if one person who saw what Hitler was doing before he did it had intervened, had taken him out. That person would probably have been arrested and executed. After all, supposedly the ends don’t justify the means. But when those “ends” are known, and it means the loss of millions of lives, how couldn’t good people act? The odds were stacked against us, heavily. Especially now that I didn’t have my powers. But I wasn’t powerless. I still had my people, my friends, even my vampire allies.
“The time has come,” I said, standing at a makeshift dais, formed from a couple of old benches stacked on top of each other.
“Kalfu has gained new powers—not the least of which is my own familiar, my friend. Isabelle.”
Audible gasps, followed by a hush, spread across the small crowd.
“When I first came to this world, I hid her from you. I knew that what she could do would be coveted by many Loa—and it was true. But Kalfu doesn’t have her. Not completely. She’s fused to a young witchling who follows Kalfu under the pretense that once he slaughters nearly half of the human race, the blood offering will thin the veil and grant him, with the aid of Isabelle’s power, access to Guinee’s garden groves.”
I cleared my throat. The people were staring at me intently. The words half of the human race received less of a reaction than I’d anticipated. But the loss of Isabelle, that seemed more shocking. When I spoke of worldwide genocide, though, it was like I was met by stares of resolve, of intention. They were hanging on to my every word. I still felt like a fraud, not the best candidate for Marie Laveau to have chosen for this
job, but standing there with the queen’s headdress on my head and with determination in my voice, they were listening, they were ready to follow.
“With one loss comes another gain. Papa Legba has returned,” I declared. “Some of you already knew it. But while he matures into his new host, we need to stand up against Kalfu. We need to reclaim control of the crossroads.
“As I speak, Kalfu is amassing an army from Samhuinn. Creatures of every sort who can exact the bloodshed he requires. The militaries of this world will be powerless against him. The weapons of conventional warfare will have little effect on these creatures. But you—you are creatures of magic. Good magic. In Voodoo we respect balance—the Hougan and Mambo strives to honor that balance in all he or she does. We must stop Kalfu to restore balance to the crossroads.”
“But what about us?” a tall, broody vampire said, who stood in the front row. I didn’t know him—probably the eldest vampire of one of the neighboring covens I’d never met.
I nodded at Mercy, bidding her to speak.
“We are not abominations. Not like we’ve been taught to believe. We’ve always limited our numbers, minimized our cravings, because we needed humanity. Not just as food, but because they maintain our world. Now humanity needs us. And we will answer their call.”
The same tall vampire responded. “You expect us to stop feeding? That’s insanity.”
“I cannot expect that,” Mercy said. “But tell me, would you rather have this world ruled by Kalfu—who would feed on us in his insatiable quest for power—or resume the order as before? I don’t think it’s a question. If for no other reason than that humanity is our food supply and Kalfu stands to take half of them away, we must defend our herd.”
I scrunched my brow. It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected, but the vampire seemed to eat it up—I mean, the metaphor is apropos considering they were talking about defending human beings like a rancher would defend his herd, which he still plans to slaughter eventually, anyway. It was an awkward moment, and looks of confusion befell the non-vampire contingent of the crowd. But it seemed to rally Mercy’s numbers and, for the time being, we’d have to roll with it.
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