Arise (19 page)

I placed my hand over his, stopping his thumb but doubling the heat on my cheek. I didn’t speak. But an irresponsible part of me wished he’d read a reply in my eyes, one that revealed I could never hate him when I loved him this much.

After a prolonged silence I squeezed his hand and then released it. In a soft, almost unfamiliar voice, I said, “You won’t have your cousins to blame for staying out late tonight. So I guess you’d better start thinking of some excuse for why you need to go somewhere at midnight. Otherwise, you’re just going to have to sneak out.”

Joshua arched one eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

“Really.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“I hadn’t made my mind up
against
the idea,” I said. “It just kind of threw me for a loop, that’s all.”

“And … now?”

“Now I kind of want to see what happens. See if she can help me control the materializations and freaky dreams.”

Or even help me protect my loved ones without having to flee or join a troop of rogue ghosts
, I thought.
No harm in asking once we’re there
.

The strained half smile tugged at my lips again, helping me to keep those thoughts from playing themselves out on my face.

“Just promise me one thing, okay?”

“Anything,” he said earnestly.

“If she’s lying, and she’s actually on the Ruth side of things … if she ends up trying to exorcise me—”

“We get the hell out of there,” he finished, and then gave me a surprisingly wolfish grin. “And stiff her the fifty bucks, of course.”

I laughed. “Of course.”

My one, weak laugh was all Joshua needed. Suddenly excited, he clutched both of my hands and gently pulled me forward until I balanced precariously on the edge of my chair. With my lips precariously close to his too.

“I really want her to help you tonight,” he whispered, serious again.

I sucked in a sharp breath, which brought with it the briefest scent of his cologne. When the scent evaporated, I nodded slightly, dizzily. I let Joshua hold me there—on the edge of my seat, and on the edge of something potentially momentous.

But I didn’t—and wouldn’t—tell him the truth: that I was knee-quaking, bone-shaking scared.

Not that I might see last night’s ghosts or demons spending the witching hour in what had to be one of the more haunted places in New Orleans. Not that Gabrielle—who struck me as someone with more than a few ulterior motives—might hurt me.

I
was
somewhat afraid of those very real threats, obviously. But they weren’t what filled my heart with an icy sort of dread; they weren’t what I struggled to hide from Joshua’s perceptive gaze.

Because, in the end, I was most afraid of what would happen if Gabrielle couldn’t do a damn thing for me.

The sun set too quickly that night, disappearing over the slate roofs of the Quarter and pulling the streets back into the shadows. I sat alone upon the front steps of the town house, with my arms wrapped around my legs, watching the darkness descend.

Inside, I could hear the raucous sounds of the Mayhew clan crowded around the dinner table. Tomorrow, the entire group would travel to one of the many gourmet restaurants in the Quarter to celebrate Christmas Eve in style. But tonight they were supposed to dine together in their family home, filling every available inch of the first floor.

The only exceptions to this tradition were the young Seers, who still hadn’t returned from their trip to Lafayette. (I couldn’t remember my own parents’ curfew rules, but I imagined they were far less lax than those of the Mayhews.) Sitting outside, I absently wondered whether Joshua missed their company.

If I listened carefully to the clamor, I could distinguish his voice as he laughed and joked with his younger cousins. If I stood up, I’m sure I could peer through the front window and see him sitting closest to the glass so that he could keep a watchful eye on me.

Considering what we might face in a few hours, I probably should’ve taken a covert place beside him in that cramped dining room. Especially since he’d warned me that this first family dinner might run long into the night, giving us no time alone together before we had to leave for the cemetery.

But like some scared little rabbit, I’d fled the house only minutes after I’d caught my first glimpse of someone I’d half expected never to see again.

I’d seen Ruth Mayhew before anyone else in the family had, standing at the top of the main staircase. In the shadows, she looked like some aging heroine in an antebellum movie, tall and grand and patrician, with one hand on the banister and the other clutched to her shawl.

Very briefly, I’d thought about confronting her—asserting my presence in this house for whatever limited period of time I intended to occupy it.

When she’d taken a few, unsteady steps down the main staircase, however, I took my own steps toward the front door, practically flinging Joshua against it and begging for him to let me outside. Somehow, being outdoors felt safer than staying inside with her.

But before Joshua had moved to shut the door behind me, a beam of light from the dining room fell across her face. At that moment I’d gasped. Even when the door closed, my mouth stayed open in shock.

I had no idea how someone could age so much in only three months, but tonight Ruth Mayhew didn’t even look like the same person. Her glossy white hair had dulled, and her skin had sagged even further. Instead of carrying herself ramrod straight, she now hunched like an old woman. Worst of all, her normally hawk-sharp eyes looked bloodshot and vague.

Granted, she was emerging from the stupor of a two-day migraine; anyone would look terrible after something like that. And she’d obviously had the energy, at some point between the time we’d arrived in New Orleans and the time I returned from Jackson Square, to decorate the back stoop with Voodoo dust.

But as I watched her through the dining-room window, I couldn’t help but notice that her relatives treated her like a helpless invalid. They very nearly carried her to the dining-room table and, once they had her there, flocked around her as if she couldn’t even lift a spoon. Which, judging by her shaking hands, she couldn’t.

Despite all the horrible things she’d said and done to me, I felt the strangest twinge of sympathy for her. People aged, people died—I knew that better than anyone. That didn’t mean I wished it upon Ruth, though. Nor did I want Joshua to have to watch it firsthand. Of course, there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening. And even if I could, I’m pretty sure Ruth would still use her last ounce of strength to banish me to the Antarctic or somewhere equally unpleasant.

So, however weak and hollow she might look, however much sympathy her appearance might elicit, that woman was
still
Ruth Mayhew. And because I had no intention of angering her, I stayed put, alone outside with my own dark thoughts.

Anyway
, I told myself,
tonight’s going to be hard enough without adding her to the mix
.

As if responding to my mood, the gas lamps above me sputtered violently, sending an army of shadows dancing across the street. The movement startled me, and I pulled my legs more tightly to my chest. Call me crazy, but aging enemies, flickering shadows, and midnight rituals in cemeteries all made me jumpier than usual.

The image of another, more familiar graveyard in rural Oklahoma popped into my head, and I couldn’t seem to get rid of it. As the evening dragged on, I mulled over the shape of the lettering on my own headstone, the way its concrete looked at sunset, the curve of the ground over my grave....

Finally, after nearly a full hour of this torture, I groaned loudly. I ran my hands through my hair, covered my face with them for a moment, and then leaned my head against the brick wall behind me. I had to think about something else while I waited for Joshua to sneak out for the night. Otherwise, I really
would
go crazy.

So instead, I pictured the prairie I’d dreamed about during the car ride to New Orleans. I envisioned the lush grass and the endless blue sky. Then I imagined my mother and father, sitting with me on a blanket spread over the carpet of wildflowers. I pretended that I could taste the food from our picnic, smell the flowers as the breeze hit them, feel the sun on my skin.

And since I was fulfilling all my wishes in this little fantasy, I added Joshua to the scene. In my imagination, he was sitting next to my father, laughing with him about something my mother had just said. The dream-Joshua, still talking to my dad, absentmindedly reached across the blanket and took my hand—a real touch, without sparks or electricity, but somehow better. So much better.

I sighed happily and reached my hands out in a big, satisfied stretch. But the second my fingers touched something icy and wet, I jerked them back, fast. I opened my eyes, and then let out a small, choked sound.

It wasn’t possible. What I had just touched shouldn’t be there. Yet here it was, as real as the gas lamps that had suddenly disappeared. A garishly colored metal girder, with my fingerprints still visible on its shimmering, frosty coating. The kind of girder you’d find on a bridge.

The kind I’d seen before.

I took an automatic step backward, away from the icy girders. Then I looked wildly around me. Instead of old buildings and narrow streets, I was now surrounded by twisted metal bars, all colored in bizarre, wounded shades of black and red and purple. Like some insane, life-size version of a birdcage.

This was definitely not the French Quarter; this was a bruised and ugly place, encrusted in ice and plunged into darkness. I hated it, almost as quickly as I recognized it.

High Bridge
.

The words whispered in my mind, like a curse. This place looked exactly like the netherworld version of High Bridge.

But a second look told me I wasn’t on High Bridge—just a different structure that closely resembled it.

I had to be in the netherworld. But
where
in it, I couldn’t say.

As far as I could tell, I was standing in some sort of metal pavilion. Its girders extended up, over my head, to support a steeply pitched roof. In the back, behind me, the pavilion opened onto what looked like a metal boardwalk. Beyond that I couldn’t see very much since this part of the netherworld was as shadowy as the part I knew. In the front, where I’d just been, a few rows of twisted girders were the only things between me and a sudden plunge.

Whatever that plunge led to, it did
not
look welcoming. Even in the impenetrable darkness I could tell I wouldn’t want to lean over the edge of the pavilion. And yet I felt an irresistible tug toward it—an urge to creep just a bit closer and find out what waited below. The longer I resisted it, the stronger the impulse became, until I could hardly keep still. It gnawed at me, making me squirm and wriggle in an effort to stay in place.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I took one lurching step toward the edge.

But before I could take another, a faraway shrieking sound made me freeze. When I looked up, in the direction of the noise, my mouth dropped open.

Above me, the ceiling of the pavilion seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a sky of purples and grays that teemed and seethed around each other like storm clouds. Their movements were too rapid, though. Too unpredictable and chaotic to be part of any earthly storm.

And there in the cloud forms, so high I nearly missed them, were swooping black shapes. Hundreds of them.

If I squinted, they looked like enormous, high-flying crows or ravens. But I knew those shapes weren’t birds.

They were demons. Real ones. And suddenly, they were moving in a flock formation to take a downward dive.

Toward me.

Chapter

SEVENTEEN

A
scream began to build in my throat. I tried to choke it back. Tried to keep silent. Despite that feeble effort, it ripped its way out when someone gave my shoulder a rough shake.