Sweet Unrest (21 page)

Thirty
-
Six

Eventually I surfaced from the haze of drugs and stayed awake long enough to find out what had happened. I’d been shot, my parents told me. Someone had come onto the property and tried to set fire to Thisbe’s cabin. I must have gone to investigate, they said, because the person chased me and fired at me before running off. Luckily the bullet went straight through my arm and didn’t hit anything vital. Employees at Le Ciel heard the shots, and Piers found me by the pond. He was the one who called for help and saved me. Or that’s what they believed.

I didn’t try to correct them. There were some things better left unsaid. Some stories that couldn’t be told.

When I finally came home, my parents didn’t want to let me leave their sight. They hovered around me unless I locked myself in my room for a nap, so I spent most of my time in there, “resting.” I didn’t spend much time sleeping, but they didn’t need to know that.

I knew that Alex blamed himself for my injury, but I gave up trying to convince him that it wasn’t his fault. I told him that my memories of our short time in the clearing by the pond more than made up for any pain.

The morning after I came home, my mom knocked on my door and said I had a visitor. My first thought was Chloe. I knew Thisbe was still out there somewhere, and I didn’t know if she’d let Chloe go, so I was relieved when it was Piers who eased himself into my room instead.

He stared at me for a long minute, and then his gaze focused on the space next to me—on Alex. “Still hanging around, huh?”

Alex’s face registered shock for a moment, but then he composed himself. “Where else would I be?” he said.

“You can see him?” I asked, glancing between the two of them.

“Mostly. He’s a little hazy, but I can make out the shape of him.” Piers turned to Alex. “Not seeing any bright light yet?”

Alex didn’t dignify that with a reply.

“Yeah, well. That’s the reason I’m here.” Piers told us that Mama Legba had filled him in on everything that was happening and thought he might be able to help. Turned out he’d been working on more than school stuff with Mama Legba.

“Then shouldn’t you be out looking for Thisbe?” I
asked. Since I was trapped under my parents’ watchful eyes, someone should be. As far as we knew, Thisbe still had Chloe, which meant Chloe needed our help, maybe even more than Alex did.

“I know,” Piers said darkly, suddenly looking very much like the dangerous warrior I’d originally seen him as. “There will be time enough for that, Lucy. Right now we need to work on finding Alex’s body. It’s probably the best way we have to weaken Thisbe.” He turned to Alex and addressed him directly. “Do you have any idea where it might be?”

Alex looked meaningfully at me. We’d talked about the whole dream I’d had in Mama Legba’s shop—what I’d seen Thisbe do with his body and where she’d taken it—but he hadn’t wanted to leave me yet.

“Thisbe put his body in a tomb, in one of the cemeteries in the city,” I told Piers.

He was obviously disappointed by my information. “There are hundreds of tombs in the city’s cemeteries.”

“I know, but they were moving so fast, and I don’t know New Orleans all that well. And it looked different then—newer, you know? Not like the cemeteries look now.”

“Right.” Piers let out a deep sigh and ran his hand over his smooth head. “Do you think if you walked in your dreams again, you could find out?”

I started to answer, but Alex interrupted me. “No. Absolutely not. She is not strong enough yet. I will not have her risking herself for me again.”

Piers studied him for a second and then nodded. “I can appreciate that, man. I’d do the same, but we need to—”

“Just give me a second to think,” I interrupted. I closed my eyes and brought my memories of the dream to the surface of my mind. It wasn’t as clear as being there and walking in it, but I could picture the place Thisbe’s men had carried Alex’s body to. “It looked like a temple—one of the old Roman or Greek ones. And there was something on top of it, a tall spire or an obelisk of some sort.” The rest was too indistinct for me to get anything more. I opened my eyes. “Does that help at all?”

Piers considered it for a moment. “Maybe. He glanced at Alex. “What year was it when this all happened to you?”

“I was to sail back to France in 1841,” Alex told him.

Piers nodded. “That limits it some too.” He looked up at me. “Would you know the place if you saw it again?”

I thought about the dream. The night had been bright because of a large harvest moon hanging low in the sky. It had taken the men who worked for Thisbe a while to open the tomb before they could place Alex’s bound body inside. My memories of the dream were foggy, but I knew I’d remember the place if I saw it again. Its strange carvings set it apart from the other tombs that night.

I nodded. “I would know it anywhere. It was covered in markings like that doll.” And like Lila.

“We can try to find it tonight, if you’re feeling up to it,” Piers said.

“My parents aren’t going to let me out of the house.”

“They don’t have to know, do they?”

“No—” Alex started, but I held up my hand to stop him.

“What about Chloe?” I asked.

“We’ll help Chloe once we take care of this,” Piers said, and from his tone I could tell he hated waiting as much as I did. “As for Thisbe, we can be sure she’ll try to interfere. She’ll be desperate, so we should expect anything and everything. I’ll have Mama Legba work on some protection charms for us. We’ll get you back where you belong,” he said to Alex.

“You will keep Lucy safe.” Alex’s voice was quiet, but firm. It wasn’t really a question.

“You know it,” Piers said simply. “It’s what I do.”

That night, I found myself heading back into the city in the front seat of Mama Legba’s van.

“I think our best bet is to try one of the St. Louis Cemeteries,” Piers told us. “They probably have the most tombs from the mid-nineteenth century.”

“There’s more than one St. Louis Cemetery?”

“Three,” he confirmed, glancing over at me. “You have a lucky number?”

“Might as well start at the beginning,” I told him.

But St. Louis number one was a bust. After half an hour of looking at tomb after tomb in the eerie quiet, I didn’t think I’d ever feel warm again. St. Louis number two looked much the same as the first cemetery. It was surrounded by the same high, impenetrable walls and populated by the same narrow rows of tombs that rose up out of the ground to surround visitors with the dead.

The cemeteries would be creepy enough during the day, but at night, the silent tombs cast menacing shadows and the presence of death felt overwhelming. And at night, people more dangerous than the silent dead often roamed the cemeteries.

I didn’t ask Piers where he’d gotten the key to open the gates, and I pretended I didn’t see the snub black pistol he’d tucked into the back of his waistband and covered with his shirt before we entered the second St. Louis Cemetery.

“Alex, your arm,” I told him, pointing to the trickle of blood traveling down his hand.

He rolled up his sleeve and found the source of it on his forearm. “It’s happening more frequently,” he said, examining the tracks of scars that crisscrossed his skin.

Dark liquid seeped from the cut and began to trail down his forearm before he finally pressed his arm to his dark trousers to stop the bleeding. He glanced up at me, but neither one of us seemed willing to put into words what we were thinking—Thisbe was probably with his body at that very moment.

“We must hurry,” Alex said. “If she moves my body … ” He didn’t have to say any more.

“When was the last time this happened?” Piers asked.

“The day Lucy was injured,” Alex said. “And a few weeks before that as well. But before then, not for a while.”

“So Thisbe might be changing her usual pattern—maybe taking more from you than she usually does.” He frowned. “We’re going to need to be extra careful.”

“Perhaps we should take Lucy back,” Alex suggested.

“No,” I told him. “You go, I go. That’s the deal.”

Alex started to argue, but Piers stopped him. “We don’t have time for this right now.”

Alex glanced at me and I could tell he was still thinking about ways to convince me to go home.

“Come on,” I said, not giving either of them a choice as I stepped toward the shadows.

We were working down the second row, searching for the tomb with the strange carvings, when we heard a scraping noise echo in the still night. Piers and Alex exchanged a look, and Piers nodded, as if agreeing to something in their silent exchange.

“Keep her safe,” Alex told him, and then he faded into the darkness.

“Where’d he go?” I asked, unnerved to have him disappear without warning.

Piers put a hand on my shoulder to calm me. “To investigate that noise. It’s safer for him than for us.”

But I wasn’t so sure—not when it came to Thisbe.

A moment later, I breathed again when Alex reappeared and gave Piers a quick nod.

“Stay here, Lucy,” Piers told me.

“No,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “I’m going with you.” I didn’t want them to rush into anything without me, and I certainly didn’t want to be left alone in that city of death.

“It’s not safe.” Alex came closer. “Please. Wait here for us.”

I shook my head again. “Alex, no. I want to go with you. I can help.” Not that I had any idea how.

“How many are there?” Piers asked Alex.

“Just the woman. Mina, I think you call her now.”

“Wait here, Lucy,” Piers commanded. “I can’t deal with Mina if I’m worried about protecting you. This won’t take long. I promise.”

“He’s right,” Alex said. “You’ll be safer here—and so will he.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but the way Alex looked at me made me stop. “Fine, but you better come back to me.”

“Always, Lucy.”

The men followed the row of tombs and then disappeared around a corner, leaving me alone in the dark surrounded by the uneasy quiet of the dead.

The tombs in that part of the cemetery were more than a hundred years old. Time and weather had worn down the inscriptions and darkened the white marble, but they still had a quiet grace that pronounced the importance of the lives they commemorated.

I ran my fingers along one of the inscriptions.
My Beloved Angel
, it read. I said a quiet and urgent prayer for Alex’s safety, and added one for Piers as well.

“I thought you might be lurking in these here shadows,” said a voice oozing out of the darkness behind me.

I turned, and Chloe was right behind me, her eyes glowing in the dark night. It seemed that Thisbe hadn’t released her. In fact, whatever hold Thisbe had on her seemed to have grown.

“You best come with me, child.” She tilted her head to the side at an odd angle, like she was trying to crack her neck. “We don’t want to miss the party, now do we? It’s gonna be a good time, too.” She smiled, all teeth and no joy.

I grasped a small charm Mama Legba had given me.

“You keep holding your little bit of juju all you want,” the Chloe-thing hissed, sounding more like Thisbe than she ever had before. Her mouth pulled into a wicked grin as she drew a small gun from her pocket. “But I’ve never heard of a charm that could stop a bullet, so you best start walking.”

I thought about making a run for it, about shouting to alert Piers and Alex, but I’d had enough experience with being shot to last a lifetime so I did what she told me to. On leaden feet, I turned and followed the path Piers and Alex had used a few minutes before.

I walked slowly, trying frantically to think of a way out, a way to protect the guys, but I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t involve someone getting shot. Probably me.

A few rows over, we turned a corner and I saw it—the brilliantly white tomb from my dreams. Unlike the tombs surrounding it, it still looked new. Only the date confirmed that it had been there for more than a century. The strange carvings were still there in sharp relief, showing no sign of wear from the wind and weather. Unlike the other tombs lining the row, the slab that sealed it was missing, leaving the doorway to the crypt dark and empty.

As we approached, Piers stepped out of the t
omb, holding Mina’s arms and pushing her in front of him. He was about to say something to Alex, who was standing with his back to us, when he saw me.

Alex turned, following the line of Piers’s vision, and his face blanched. “Lucy!”

“I’m okay,” I told them, not at all sure that was the case.

Chloe wrapped her arm around my neck then, pressing the gun to my temple. She laughed, but it was an empty approximation of her real laugh. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” she said, in eerie unison with Mina.

“Let her go, Thisbe,” Piers said as he pulled Mina’s arms back roughly and lifted his gun to her temple, a mirror of Chloe’s position over me. “It’s over.”

They laughed again. Their voices rang through the air, melding into a discordant harmony as they spoke as one. “It’s barely begun, boy,” they laughed.

“Let her go, Chloe,” Piers said. “Come on, baby, you don’t want to do this.”

“Don’t I?” the Chloe-thing asked, her head cocked to the side. She pursed her lips, like she was thinking, and then tightened her hold around my neck until I could barely breath. “I think I do,” they said in unison. “I think I’d like nothing better than to break this girl’s weak little neck for meddling where she don’t belong.”

“Thisbe,” Piers tried again. “There’s no way out of here that doesn’t go through me and this gun. Let Lucy and Chloe go. It’s time.”

Chloe and Mina laughed. “Did you really think that you could outmatch me? Did you think I’d go without a fight?” Their voices echoed off the walls of the tombs that stood as silent witnesses around us. They laughed, and the sound sent chills through my spine. “All I’ve done for more than a hundred years is fight. I know more than you can imagine. I know things you can’t even dream, and I’m not even close to done here. Children,” she spit. “No better than sniveling babes playing at games they should have stayed clear of.”