M.L.N. HANOVER - Unclean Spirits

Karen blinked, her brow furrowed. She looked at Aubrey and smiled.

“That’s a really good metaphor,” she said.

“Let’s get back to the part where we’re following the bad guy,” I said.

“Right,” Karen said. “My first point was that we can beat her in a fight. The second is that Amelie Glapion is a living woman, and she needs to eat. She’s got her voodoo cult, and they have meetings and ceremonies that require her to be out in public. We know where she’ll be. And we know that Sabine will be close to her. We do our reconnaissance, find where the girl is, and then we can make a more detailed plan for getting her out.”

“But sooner is better than later,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Karen said. “Time is an issue.”

“So how quickly can we do the thing?”

She smiled. The gleam in her eye looked like complicity.

“Funny you should ask,” she said.

BETWEEN THE near-apocalypse of places like Lakeview and the Ninth Ward and the undamaged icon of the Vieux Carré, there was a middle ground with no tall grass, no bare foundations. The corpses of the buildings hadn’t been washed away in part because they were too large to dispose of. Even if they weren’t too big to kill.

Aubrey and Karen and I stood in the empty fourth story of the parking structure as the twilight around us deepened into true night. Across Tulane

Avenue, Charity Hospital still towered, but the hundreds of windows were all dark. Pigeons rose in the dim light, whirled above the street and the traffic and us, and then settled again. We weren’t more than ten minutes’ drive from the hotel and the restaurants, the music and the tourists, and the life of the French Quarter, and we were in the ruins.

“It’s better now,” Karen said softly. “Not fixed, better. And not Charity. That’s . . . that’s never coming back. But the city is better than it was right after.”

“I can’t believe that,” Aubrey said.

“No,” Karen said. “What you can’t believe is how bad it really was. Come on, kids. Let’s suit up.”

We turned back to the minivan. Karen had known where to get the things we needed. The right props and clothes were as important to what we were doing here as the ritual unguents and incense that Chogyi Jake and Ex were using back at the house were to their work. Only instead of looking like weird occult freaks in the suburbs, we looked like weird ninja wannabes in the city. I pulled black surgical scrubs over my jeans, a soft black wind-breaker over my T-shirt. Karen stuffed her pale hair into a tight black cap.

“They’ve been meeting here almost since it was abandoned,” Karen said as she strapped leather-sheathed knives to her forearms and plucked the sleeves of her windbreaker over them. “Amelie’s always in attendance.”

“And the girl with the Sight?” Aubrey said. “She’s here too?”

“Sometimes,” Karen said.

I tested the little blue LED flashlight, then stuffed it in my pocket.

“So if she tipped them off, we could be going into a huge building filled with crazed, armed rider cultists,” I said.

“It’s a risk,” Karen said with a grin. “Come on. Who wants to live forever, right?”

She walked away fast. Aubrey and I trotted to catch up.

“Me,” I said low enough I didn’t think either of them would hear. “I would very much like to live forever, thanks.”

Aubrey turned his head and chuckled, but neither of us stopped.

Karen led us down a side street, walking with her hands loose at her sides and a bounce in her step. When she ducked in close to the building itself, the motion was perfectly graceful and natural. Aubrey and I followed. Karen helped us through an empty window frame, then slid through herself without making a sound louder than breathing. I felt like a kitten on its first mouse hunt.

The hallways were darker than night. The emergency lights had died years before. I took out my little flashlight, and the hall lit up in dim monochrome blue. Graffiti sprawled along the walls and

debris covered the floor; old plastic chairs, bits of desiccated shrubbery, a wide, clear plastic box that reminded me of the incubators they kept premature babies alive in. The stink of mold was overpowering. Karen slunk along the passage like a cat, her hands out before her, fingertips touching each obstacle, and then moving on. Aubrey and I followed as best we could. I felt the adrenaline seeping into my blood even before we heard the drums.

The bass carried through first, a throb so low it almost wasn’t sound. Like the building had a heartbeat. Karen grinned and picked up the pace. Aubrey and I struggled to keep up. Higher tones started to join the beat—bells, tambourines, bongos. At the corner of two wide hallways, Karen lifted her hand and pointed to the flashlight. I turned it off. Far away on our left, a dim light danced, red and gold and flickering like flames. I saw Karen’s silhouette as she moved toward it. When she reached a pair of double doors with

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in fading red, she gestured to the thin gap between them with her chin. I snuck over and peeked through.

The cultists had taken over what might have been an emergency room or some kind of intensive-care ward. There was room for twenty or thirty beds, though the space had been cleared of them. A curved desk squatted in the middle of the room like an altar. Ruined curtains hung like cobwebs from rusting metal tracks. On the far side of the room,

half a dozen men drummed, their eyes a perfect, pupilless white.

The light wasn’t fire, but a collection of orange and red lamps. The flickering came from twenty or thirty dancing bodies. Men and women. Old, young. Mostly black or brown skinned, but I saw at least one woman as pale as me. All of them were naked.

They writhed and leaped and called out. If there were words, I didn’t catch them. My vestigial fear of being discovered eased. These people wouldn’t have noticed if I’d led a riot squad through the door. I felt Karen lean over me, squinting through the same crack. She tapped my shoulder and pointed to the far corner of the space.

Between the bodies, I caught a glimpse of what she meant. The old woman from the hotel— Amelie, Legba, whatever we were calling her— walked through the crowd toward the altar. She wore a thin, shifting gown that might have been white, but glowed gold in the light. And behind her was a girl no more than sixteen years old in a matching outfit. The girl’s face was as serene as her grandmother’s, her skin darker, her hair in shining plaits. She was stunning. I touched Karen’s arm and nodded. I saw her.

Sabine Glapion. The girl we were supposed to abduct. The girl we were trying to save.

Legba rose to the desktop, but I didn’t see quite how she got there. Her head was moving to the lush rhythm of the drums, but awkwardly. She shouted

and raised her hands. Her left arm was noticeably thinner than her right, and rose more slowly. The drums quieted, but did not cease. The dancers stood in place, swaying. Their faces were ecstatic and empty.

“Children!” the old woman said. “My children, we are set upon! We are attacked! Comprenez-vous?”

The dancers shouted something with one voice, but I couldn’t make out the word. When the old woman spoke again, her voice was a low growl, her hands stretched before her like claws.

“We are weak, my children. Weak! But we shall be strong! We are fallen, but we shall rise up! The spirits hear us, and they will not be denied!”

The crowd shouted again, and the the old woman clenched her fists. Sabine was behind her, almost directly across from me, swaying in the same oceanic flow as the dancers. As her grandmother’s claws clenched into fists, her eyes fluttered closed.