Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

“What was the first number?” I didn’t remember reading anything about the Axeman leaving numbers back in the good old days.

Ken flipped through his notebook. “Fifty-seven.”

Fifty-seven and twenty-five. A chill washed over me. I lived at 5725 Magazine Street.

Alex cleared his throat. “DJ, that’s your house number.”

Ken and I looked at him, then at each other. “Gotta be a coincidence,” he said, but he was frowning. “Right?”

I looked back at the number. “Right.”

But maybe I’d amp up the security wards on my house, just in case.

If zombies and ghouls took over Disney World, with creative direction from Satan, the theme park would resemble the corpse of Six Flags New Orleans. I parked outside the main gate and squeezed past rusted, twisted turnstiles and purple-painted, crumbling offices covered in graffiti.

Six Flags had never been profitable. Folks who come to New Orleans for vacation aren’t usually looking for a Louisianathemed amusement park in the eastern part of the city, far from the Quarter. Plus, underneath the Cajun kitsch, the place was, well, Six Flags. When Katrina hit in 2005, the park sank under six feet of water for more than a month and never reopened.

Years later, here it remained, a distorted, hellish sideshow in the middle of swampy soil. It was tied up in a terminal case of litigation, its rusting roller coaster reaching toward heaven like a monument to the fates of nature and indifference.

The perfect place, in other words, for some discreet lessons in elven staff usage. Or so I’d thought—the site was my bright idea. Now I wasn’t sure. It was eerie, even in the weak sunlight that had finally broken through the clouds, and my nerves had been on edge before learning the Axeman had left bloody numbers at his last two crime scenes that added up to my street address. Were they left under the instructions of the necromancer?

My logical mind said it was a weird coincidence. My panicky, spiraling- out-of-control imagination whispered that maybe I was a target. Except I didn’t know any necromancers, and while I’d pissed off a few people in my day, I don’t think I’d made any mortal enemies.

I wandered past the sculpture of a headless merman next to the roller coaster, which looped and twirled through the sky like a demon sculptor on hallucinogens had carved a statue of rusty metal. Stephen King should set a horror novel here.

A creaking noise sent shivers down my arms and made my fingers tingle, but when I spun around, only the wind revealed itself to me, moving the swinging chairs of a Looney Tunes ride like they were being boarded by a horde of ghost children.

In a burst of creative irony, I’d left Adrian Hoffman a message to meet me by the entrance to the Jean Lafitte Pirate Ship ride, which during better days had taken passengers on a short lagoon trip. Now it looked as if Jean himself might have abandoned it during his human life. Even the water in the murky faux-lagoon had a rusty tinge.

My first task was to set up an open portal for my teacher since he’d told me during our meeting with Zrakovi that he wasn’t comfortable driving in the U.S. Apparently, we uncouth Yanks insist on driving on the wrong side of the road. If I’d been a responsible, mature adult I’d have offered to pick Adrian up, but obviously I wasn’t.

I set my backpack on the “dock” and retrieved a baby- foodsize jar of iron filings. I also had a sizable cache of premade potions and charms in marked vials as well as the elven staff. Lately, the motto Be Prepared was more than a Boy Scout slogan.

I turned in a circle, searching for the best transport spot. Something not likely to be disturbed by the photographers, gang-bangers, and “explorers” who risked arrest to wander out here and take photos or add to the urban art. The land belonged to New Orleans, so the city council wanted to curtail access. They worried that people like graffiti artists (or stray wizards) might fall on a rusty pirate sword or trip over the merman’s missing head and sue them.

For the transport, I found a tangle of weeds next to the entrance to the Gator Bait ride that would give Adrian a great view of the sign when he arrived. On it, a bright green gator in a king’s red cloak and a crown drove an airboat and waved, although the storm-broken sign beneath him now read gator ba_t.

The spot was overgrown enough to camouflage the transport so we could keep it open, but not so overgrown that we couldn’t get in and out easily. I used trails of iron filings to create a large interlocking circle and triangle inside it. Taking the elven staff from my pack, I touched it to the closed transport, muttered a few directives in my South Louisiana version of the ancient wizard Celtic language, and shot enough energy into the figure to fuel the site indefinitely. Once this educational adventure ended, I’d break the transport line and close the connection.

I had plenty of my own native physical magic to power a transport, so using the staff was a bit of overkill, but I figured the first thing Hoffman would do was order me to quit using Charlie until the post-Thanksgiving elf meeting. Might as well wield it while I could.

I took my pack and returned to a bench near the pirate ship entrance, my mind fixated on the Axeman and his necromancer. If the necromantic wizard was planning to direct the Axeman to a specific target or targets, how could we figure out who it was beforehand? We’d been able to find no link between the two targets where numbers had been found.

And the numbers had to be significant. Just on the off chance it was my house number, I typed a reminder into my phone to download a few jazz CDs. Couldn’t hurt.

I’d met Alex for lunch at my house before heading to Six Flags. First, I had to share my good news from the blood test. Alex broke into the rare smile that cracked apart his enforcer façade and revealed the sweet, decent guy he so rarely showed anyone. I’d seen it a few times, but never quite like now. He didn’t say anything, but pulled me into a hug so tight my ribs ached. And I didn’t care.

I didn’t know how Alex felt about me. I wasn’t even sure how I felt about him. But something was growing between us, and I was glad a fur disaster wasn’t going to ruin it.

Although he hadn’t said he was worried about Jake, the sag of relief in his shoulders when I told him his cousin was safe told me more than words. He didn’t even complain about being in Jean Lafitte’s debt.

Once we finally focused on the Axeman, Alex had reluctantly agreed the numbers were probably a coincidence. Once he heard the necromancer angle, however, he helped me gather the supplies to walk the circle around my house, burying packets of magic- infused herbs and stones at regular intervals and reinforcing my security wards.

Before I left for Six Flags, Alex had also called Ken and asked for extra patrols around my neighborhood.

He’d even offered to come with me to Six Flags, but I needed to learn to work with Adrian on my own. We would never be best buddies, but I did want his respect. I didn’t think I could earn it arriving with backup for what was supposed to be simple elf lessons. Right now, the rest was paranoia. “Keep your phone nearby,” I’d told him when I left. “I’ll call you if there are any problems.”

Instead, he’d decided to stay at my house all afternoon and make sure an ax-wielding bad guy didn’t show up. He also planned to call the Elders for a list of locally registered necromancers. When I got home, we’d divide the list and start tracking them down, and then—

“Could you possibly have picked a more disagreeable place to meet?”

Heh. I wiped the grin off my face before turning to greet my new mentor. Wearing a charcoal-colored, tailored suit that probably cost more than a month of my salary, Adrian stood ankledeep in the patch of briars. He held a briefcase and a scowl.