M.L.N. HANOVER - Unclean Spirits

The thick air also muffled sound so that even the handful of crickets seemed to be singing from miles away. The prison that we’d made from our shed was a looming darkness punctuated by intense points of

brilliant white light—the line around the doorway, the slats of the tin vent. I squeezed Aubrey’s hand one last time and let it go. Hunching close to the ground, I moved forward until the dark, mist-soaked wood was almost close enough to touch. The voices got louder as I approached like someone turning up the volume knob. Ex, his voice hoarse, in a shouted litany. The higher, weeping voice of Sabine.

The world felt thin, changed, unstable as driving on ice. Whatever rituals Ex was doing to cast Legba out of Sabine’s body had brought the Pleroma or Next Door or whatever we called it close enough to feel, and it made my skin crawl.

Someone came up on my left. Mfume, and then a moment later, Chogyi Jake and Aunt Sherrie. This was it. The big moment. We would gather all the cultists together, kick in the door and hope for the best. I steeled myself, but my hands were tapping busily at my knees, like my body was trying to get my attention. I had Chogyi Jake and Aubrey, Mfume and Aunt Sherrie, and at least a dozen of Legba’s congregation. I was pretty sure, if it came to it, we could rush in and take them by force. A few cultists would probably die. Maybe Ex. Probably Karen.

So I had to try the other way first. I motioned Aubrey and Chogyi Jake to stop, then I waved Mfume and Aunt Sherrie closer.

“Get everyone around the shed,” I whispered. “Not in line of sight, but close by, okay?”

“What the hell are you doing?” Sherrie said.

“I’m going in,” I said. “I’ll get the others out if I can. Just stay clear until I give the high sign.”

Sherrie didn’t seem to like the idea, but she nodded.

“Your funeral,” she said, and I stepped up to the shed door and knocked.

“Ex! Karen! It’s Jayné! We need to talk!”

I waited for a hail of gunfire, but all I got was a stream of invective from inside the shed. I heard men and women scattering in the thick, wet darkness and held myself steady. When the door swung open, the light was blinding.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Karen said, and for the first time I recognized the deepness and power in her voice as a rider. Carrefour was speaking through her, and the mask was beginning to slip.

“I need to talk to Ex,” I said.

“Jayné?” he said from within. He’d stopped his chanting, but Sabine’s keening cry didn’t falter.

“Hey,” I said. “Sorry for the shitty timing. But . . . I tried calling your cell phone.”

“I lost it,” he said.

Yeah, I just bet you did, I thought.

My eyes were adjusting. Karen was more than a movement within the brightness, and Ex had come to her side. The shed was lit by four halogen work lamps, hissing and hot as a furnace, and the gloom

around us seemed deeper by contrast. Ex looked exhausted. His skin had a gray undertone, and his hair hung in his eyes, limp and greasy. His clothes looked like he’d slept in them. He held a crucifix in one hand and a book bound in black leather in the other.

Karen, on the other hand, almost glowed. Her eyes were bright as a fever, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, with only one stray lock to soften her face. She was wearing what looked like military surplus gear—thick canvas pants and jacket over a ribbed white T-shirt. There was something inhuman in the way she held herself. Carrefour was so close to winning that it could taste the victory, only here I was interrupting the party. Once the young Legba was plucked out of Sabine’s body, Carrefour could turn on us all, but until then it had to keep the masquerade going.

I smiled as if I meant it and walked up like I assumed they’d let me pass. Karen almost held her ground, then with a growl like a dog ready to bite, she took a step back, and I went in.

The shed had seemed bigger when it was empty, but it was still a wide, high space. The halogen lamps burned in three corners, fed by bright-orange extension cords. A matte black shotgun lay against the wall like a presentiment of doom. The dirt floor was covered now with symbols in paint and earth like Amelie Glapion’s cornmeal veves. The designs seemed to move in my peripheral vision, and they

filled me with a deep unease. In the center of the floor, a black iron ring stuck out of the newly poured concrete. Sabine was chained to it, bright steel links going to manacles at her wrists and a tight leather collar at the throat.

Her clothes, ripped and bloody, were the ones she’d worn at the ceremony, the ones I had seen her in only hours before. They were almost unrecognizable. Her eyes were puffy and closed, and she rocked back and forth on the ground, whispering to herself. Louvri le pót. Legba. Legba. Louvri. Please, please, Legba louvri le pót. I wanted to sweep over to her, to wrap my arms around her and comfort her and tell her it was going to be all right, even though I thought it probably wasn’t.

How had I ever believed this was a good idea?

“What’s going on,” Karen said. “Why are you here?”

“We got back this morning. I needed to see Ex,” I said.

“He doesn’t answer to you anymore,” Karen said, moving to him in a fair imitation of protectiveness. She took his hand, and he let her. The confusion in his expression hurt to see.

“You fired me,” he said, which wasn’t exactly the same as Karen’s statement.

“Yeah, I know. Look, could I just talk to you for a minute? Alone?” I gestured toward the door. If I could get him outside and out of the line of fire . . .

“No,” Karen said. “We’re in the middle of a ritual cleansing. Every minute we let it rest, the rider gets its control back over the girl. We have to get her free.”

I nodded and smiled as ingratiatingly as I could. It was a doomed effort, but I tried.

“It’ll only be—”

“What’s going on here?” Karen said. Her eyes swept the door and walls like she could see through them. “Where have you been? What do you want?”

“It’s okay,” Ex said. “I can handle this.”

She turned on him faster than a human could, a hand pressed to his sternum.

“Don’t you fucking move,” she said. “Something’s wrong here. Are you alone? Did you bring someone here?”

“Aubrey and Chogyi Jake are outside,” I said, nodding to the door. Karen lifted her head, sniffing the air like an animal. Ex stepped back from her, crossing his arms and frowning.

“I’d love to talk,” he said, “but I can’t.”

Sabine’s litany trailed away into a low keening. She looked up, her eyes no more than slits, as if she was seeing me for the first time.

“Jayné?” she said.

The silence that followed was like a thunderclap. The fear tasted like pennies and tinfoil.

“How,” Karen said, her voice low and dangerous, “does it know your name?”

“You’ve got the wrong rider,” I said. “Ex, get outside now.”

Before he could move, Karen dove, scooped up the shotgun, and whirled. The barrel was pointing at my head, and it was big as a tunnel. And then Ex was between us, shielding me with his body.

“Karen!” Ex shouted. “Stop it! What are you—”

“She’s with them,” Karen said. “She’s been taken over by them. Don’t you get it?”

Ex looked at me, fear and pain in his eyes, and I knew he thought it was true. He had walked away from me, and I had gone and gotten myself possessed by a rider, and it was his fault for not protecting me. Months of living in close quarters made every nuance of his expression legible as a book, and I felt a surge of desperate impatience with him.

“Ex, you need to get out of here right now,” I said. “Karen lied to us. She’s possessed. She has been from the beginning. It’s called Carrefour, and it’s the exiled rider. The thing in Sabine never left New Orleans.”