M.L.N. HANOVER - Unclean Spirits

“Kisa sa a ye?” Legba shouted, Amelie’s mouth widening more than the merely human would allow. “Kisa sa a ye!”

Mfume, across the room, sat cross-legged. A map was open on the floor before him, and he was passing his hands over it like he was feeling heat radiating from it. The dancing cultists shouted and whooped to the pulsing rhythm of the drums. Against my will almost, I found my body swaying too. My eyes closed almost without me, and I stepped out into the ceremony, drawing Aubrey along behind me.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what it meant, but the heat of the bodies before us, the pressure of Next Door, the danger and the lush, complex rhythm, the smell of fire and flesh, made it all feel right. One of the male cultists no older than I was had taken off his clothes, his dark skin shining with sweat. His erection seemed strangely comforting and familiar. It was a reminder that even among these spirits, we were first and foremost human; our animal nature made us part of this world, the physical, immediate, concrete. I heard myself shout, felt the rumble of the air in my throat.

The world became a dance, not bodies, not spirits, but the relationships between the two. Like an optical illusion, I was not my body or my mind, but the space defined by them. I tore free of my own shirt, delighting in the feel of air against my skin. Lust and hunger. Pain, sorrow, and joy. They were the tether of humanity that held me from spinning out into another world, and I honored them, fed them, and trusted them completely to hold me and to pull me back.

Like the report of a handgun, Amelie Glapion clapped her hands. The drums stopped, the dance stopped, and I stumbled, sitting on the floor. My head was spinning and I felt flushed and energized and a little nauseated. Chogyi Jake wasn’t more than three feet in front of me, bracing himself

with both hands like a man almost too drunk to crawl.

“Did it work?” I managed, and he nodded carefully.

Above us, Amelie Glapion sagged, leaning on her cane. Her face looked drawn. I felt almost unstuck from my body, like I’d just gone through a marathon of sex and liquor. I couldn’t imagine how she felt. But a moment later, the half of her face that was still alive, smiled.

“I am never getting tired of that,” she said low in her throat, and Mfume shouted.

“I have her,” he said. His eyes were still closed. His fingers pressed onto the map like a blind man reading braille. I stood unsteadily, scrabbling at my cast-off shirt. Aubrey appeared at my side, and we navigated across the room.

The map was of New Orleans, but marked with ley lines in black and red and yellow. I saw the yawning darkness of Lake Pontchartrain, the snakecurve of the Mississippi. The gridwork of streets between the two like a crystal growing between the curves.

“Where is she?” I asked, pulling on my clothes. I was hoarse.

Mfume opened his eyes and knelt close to the paper. I could see his fingers trembling.

“She’s . . . in the street,” he said. “She’s here. She’s outside right now.”

We were silent for a moment, and then with a roar like a lion, Amelie Glapion strode out toward the front room. I saw the glow of streetlight squeezing past the gray-painted glass as she opened the connecting door.

The explosion lit her in silhouette, a darkness standing against the sun.

TWENTY-ONE

I grew up in the ’90s. All I knew about explosions came from the action films that my older brother Jay used to watch when my parents left him in charge. They were great big Jerry Bruckheimer things that billowed smoke and fire like a grand, implacable tide shot from three different angles. This explosion wasn’t like that at all. It was sudden, sharp, louder than anything I’d ever heard, and over before I understood that something was happening.

I didn’t black out or lose consciousness, but time seemed to skip. I found myself running forward,

toward the empty doorway and the haze of smoke and the leaping light of flames without knowing what exactly I thought I was doing. I stumbled on something and fell forward. The floor was hot under my palms. The air smelled like acid. Someone behind me was screaming. With a sense of profound detachment, I noticed that my arm was bleeding where Carrefour had cut me. I forced myself to stop, to look at where I was and what I was doing despite my body’s impulse to blindly react.

Amelie Glapion had been thrown backward into the room, which was a very good thing, because the street-facing storefront of the building appeared to be on fire. Six or eight of the cultists were skittering around the back. One woman had collapsed and was being carried; one of the drummers had her heels and Chogyi Jake—still naked and marked with voodoo symbols—her shoulders. Aubrey stood open-mouthed in the center of the room, balanced between the impulse to act and raw shock. I knew how he felt. The cornmeal veve were being scattered by running feet, blurring like chalk marks in a rainstorm.

“Jayné!” Aubrey shouted.

“I’m fine,” I yelled back. “Find the girls! Get out!”

He hesitated.

“Go!” I shouted.

Something in the street cracked, and I saw a brief yellow-white light in the darkness at the far side of

the deeper orange fire. Muzzle flash, I thought. She’s shooting at us.

“Stay down!” I shouted. I could feel the vibration in my throat, but my voice seemed to come from half a block away. “Everyone take cover!”

I couldn’t tell if they heard me. Amelie Glapion moved, her arm rising up slowly, like a strand of seaweed waving in a light current. I started toward her, and a strong hand grabbed my arm, turning me. Mfume’s eyes were wide, his skin ashen. He had the crumpled map of the city in his other hand.

“Don’t,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.” His voice was only the bass notes. Like a stadium concert pressed into a fraction of a second, the blast had blown out my hearing.

“It’s okay,” I shouted. “I’ll risk it.”

A different thought struck me.

“You have to go,” I shouted. “You have to get out of here. Now!”

“We can all go,” he said. “I have to—”

“No! You have to get out. The cops are going to come. They’re going to be here. If they find out you’re alive, you’re heading back to prison.”

Mfume rocked back like I’d slapped him. He’d forgotten that he was an escaped serial killer. He looked around the carnage and panic, and his expression was anguished.

“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “Just go!”

“I will stay close,” Mfume said. “I will find you.”

“It’s a date. Now run!”

He stepped back, hesitated, and then turned, running toward the back of the place. I wondered what escape routes he could find. I didn’t think there was an alleyway behind the building, but there might have been a connecting passage or a way up to the roof.

I couldn’t worry about it. Another volley of gunfire came from the street, then the screeching of tires probably about a hundred times louder than my abused eardrums could register. I crept forward. The fire in the front room was getting bigger. I couldn’t see the darkness of the street on the other side, so I assumed that if Karen was still out there she couldn’t see me. The doorway was bright, the flames dancing wildly. The heat came off it like an assault. I scuttled forward, grabbed Amelie’s blouse at the shoulder, and hauled her back. Above us, the ceiling was almost lost in a roiling white smoke. A voice I didn’t recognize shouted somewhere to my left. I heard glass breaking from up the stairs and hoped it had been intentional.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said, then looked down at the woman I was carrying and knew that it wasn’t.