M.L.N. HANOVER - Unclean Spirits

“Interesting,” Chogyi Jake said.

“It’s not that I don’t like Sabine,” I said. “She’s nice. She’s out of her league, and I totally respect that. But there are a lot of nice people in trouble out there, you know? I’m not even keeping this one from being possessed.”

“And Legba?” Chogyi Jake said.

His tone of voice carried volumes. Legba, the shining serpent that made its way through the blood of Marie Laveau down through the generations. The rider that would keep Sabine and Daria from only being orphaned black girls in a dangerous, broken city. The demon that would not leave New Orleans even in the face of the city’s inundation. Legba the mutualist, the builder of community.

And so, by implication, Carrefour who had raped and slaughtered Mfume’s fiancée and Karen Black’s partner and parents. Carrefour who had lied to me, seduced me as much as it had Ex. Carrefour who had bombed Amelie Glapion and whoever else had

happened to be in the street at the time. Carrefour, the serial killer. The exile.

Did I really think there was no difference between the two? Or was it just that the difference wouldn’t have been big enough to justify the risk of coming back?

I wondered what Eric would have done. I didn’t know anything about his relationship with Karen Black except what she’d told me. There might not have been the consultations she’d told me about. The favors owed and paid. All I knew for certain was that he’d had her number in his cell phone, and that when she called, she’d assumed he would know what she was talking about.

“I think I preferred the muttering obscenities,” Aubrey said.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking.”

“Yeah, I got that from the way I could hear the gears grinding in your head.”

“Maybe I would have come back. For Sabine,” I said, and we ran out of lake. We’d reached Pearl River.

The road to the safe house was empty, and we took it very slowly, turning our headlights off. The cars behind us—eight of them—followed our lead. We glided through the night in the glow of running lights, slow as a funeral. If we actually drove up to the house, they’d hear us for sure. I didn’t know if it made more sense to try sneaking up on Karen

and Ex or going for the full frontal assault. Except I really did want Ex to live through it, and Karen too if I could manage it. All-out assaults tended, I guessed, to have more of a body count. I weighed my options and a shadow detached itself from the trees and loped toward the car.

Aubrey yelped, but before he could gun the engine or turn the car to attack, Joseph Mfume’s long face was framed in the window, his finger turning a fast circle that meant we should roll down the window. When Aubrey did it, the thick, unconditioned air smelled like swamp and sweat.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Waiting for you,” Mfume said and looked back at the other cars. “And them as well, I take it.”

“I got some reinforcements,” I said. “She’s really here then?”

“Yes,” Mfume said. “I followed it from the house. Amelie? She’s . . .”

“Gone,” I said. “And Legba with her.”

Behind us a car door opened and closed, and then another. The cult preparing for battle. Mfume’s goofy smile looked strained and nervous.

“They have been in the shed for some time,” he said. “We have to hurry.”

“I know,” I said, then to Aubrey, “just park it here. We’ll walk in.”

“You have a plan?” Mfume said.

“That would be generous,” I said as I got out.

“I’ve got a bunch of general intentions and thirty or so people with cheap handguns and machetes.”

“More effective than intention alone, I suppose,” Mfume said.

The others were spilling out into the midnightblack street. The dome lights flickered on and off like a huge, understated Christmas tree. One car alarm chirped, and angry voices followed it. I felt some sympathy for whoever had made the mistake. We were all improvising here.

They gathered close, but I could see their eyes turning toward the gently curving drive that would lead to the safe house. I could feel them drawn toward it like moths toward flame; their queen was in danger, and they strained at the leash of my own tentative authority. I couldn’t hold them back any longer.

“Okay,” I said, my voice a stage whisper. “They’re going to be in the shed out back . . .”

“We gonna need three groups,” Aunt Sherrie said. “Omar, you take your crew and head around the left side through the trees, and don’t go fast. You go too fast, you make noise like that goddamn car alarm.”

“Sorry about that,” a voice said from the gloom.

“Don’t be sorry, just get your boys together,” Sherrie said. “Elijah? You take Nick and Majora and any two others you like and secure the house. Anybody in there, you just keep right on going all

the way around until you hook up with Omar, but if it’s empty, you get in and hold it. Deny this bitch her fallback position, you understand?”

“Yes, Aunt Sherrie,” a man with a voice like a landslide said.

“All right, then. The rest of y’all come with me. That means you too, Miss Thing,” Sherrie said, looking at me. “We’re the ones going to bell the cat, and I am not doing that job by myself. Omar, I’m going to give you five minutes to get in position. If we have to fall back, Carrefour’s going to get drawn out, and you be ready to come in behind it. Now all you remember we’re trying not to kill the preacher or the horse. Preacher, you just hold him down or shoot him in the knee. Whatever. The horse . . . well, do what you can.”

“Um,” I said, blinking.

“Two tours in Afghanistan, one in Iraq,” Sherrie said. “I do not fuck around.”

I had the almost genetic impulse to say sir, yes sir, but I sat on it. Mfume stepped forward.

“I will take the rider,” he said. “Don’t kill her unless I have fallen.”

Sherrie cocked her head, then shrugged.

“You heard the man. Be careful with Carrefour until it kills this one. Then do what you have to do. Now let’s go.”

Half the cultists seemed to dissolve into the gray, moonlit mist, the others waiting to follow Sherrie’s

lead. She smiled at me with wide, white, tombstone teeth.

“This is your party,” she said. “You go on ahead, we’ll follow you.”

Meaning, I understood, that if anyone was going to get shot from a distance, it was going to be me. I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly and nodded. Chogyi Jake and Aubrey came to my side, and then Mfume joined them. Five minutes, she’d said. They lasted forever and no time at all. Sherrie looked from her wristwatch to the drive, pointed at me, pointed at it. My throat was thick with fear and my blood felt like it was vibrating in its vessels.

I walked down the side of the path, the knee-high grass muffling my footsteps more than the gravel would have. The safe house slowly came into view, its windows glowing in the fog. No one confronted us but the Virgin Mary, looking more like a tombstone than ever. The shed was still hidden by the angle of our approach.

Aubrey trotted up to walk at my side, Chogyi Jake and Mfume followed close. Aubrey took my hand.

“I’ve got to stop getting us into situations like this,” I said softly. “I’m seriously going to get someone killed.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You really are.”

TWENTY-THREE

We made our way around the corner of the house. The white cargo van squatted at the back door, its windows black. I had the sense that it was watching us, though there was no one in it. The fog-wet grass soaked my shoes and the cuffs of my pants as I walked, cold and clammy and grasping. My shirt and hair were getting damp, and Aubrey’s hand in mine was the only warmth I felt.