The Map of Moments (37 page)

Even with all that he'd seen and done, Max might have argued, but he still felt the frisson of magic in him, the high voltage passing through his veins and bones. He'd spent all this time gathering the mojo into him so he could have this moment, this opportunity.

Now his thoughts raced ahead. With all he'd been through, he'd thought very little about what he would actually say if and when he saw Gabrielle again. If he didn't speak the right words, if he couldn't persuade her to have faith in herself, then she would give in to her fear and to Coco, and it would all have been for nothing.

I've never been eloquent,
Max thought.

But he would have to be. It had occurred to him that he
could go back to the beginning of their relationship and simply make it so that they had never met, or never fallen in love. Max would be protected that way. The selfish part of him felt tempted, but that would also mean never having experienced the love he'd felt for Gabrielle, the good times they'd shared, and though he'd have saved himself some pain, Mireault and the Tordu would still end up controlling New Orleans. They'd win. And though the implications of that were still vague in his mind—

If no one stood against him, my brother would turn everyone. Then even Seddicus would bother him no more.

—he could not allow it. Not after the way they'd twisted Gabrielle. Seeing the anguish in her, seeing her ruin herself …Max didn't have the power to make Mireault pay for what they'd done to Gaby, but he could take away the Tordu's victory.

And if he could get to her before she slept with Joe Noone—or even after, as long as it was before she gave Noone up to the Tordu—then maybe the thing he'd wished for all along could come true.

Maybe Max could have her back.

Deep, booming laughter came from the back of the bar. Max glanced over and saw one of the Cooper brothers with one hand clapped to the side of his head, rocking from side to side with mirth. The other brother rolled his eyes and shot him the middle finger. A man and woman who were huddled back there with them also seemed amused.

A waitress teased a flirty customer. Fresh beers were opened. Morose faces slumped on tables, but others were
alight with humor and warmth—with survival. In the wake of the storm, people were recovering as best they could, and each in their own way.

So would Max and Gabrielle, when this was all over. Each in their own way.

It was his greatest wish.

“Max…” Ray began.

“I'm going.”

The two of them stood by the door. Outside, the street sounded quiet.

“I'm trying to think of a reason to thank you,” Max said.

“Don't trouble yourself. I didn't do it for you.”

“I know.” Taking a deep breath, Max looked at the door. Then he pushed it open and stepped outside, hearing it creak shut behind him.

“What the fuck?” he whispered.

Because it was all wrong.

The wind hit him, making him stagger, and the rain pelted his face. He raised his hands to protect his eyes as he took two steps out into the street. The moonlight had gone away. The storm howled along the street, tugging at shutters. Trash skittered in the wind, flapping down the sidewalk.

A gust pushed at him again.

“This isn't it,” he said quietly, and then his voice rose to match the roar of the storm. “This isn't the right time. This isn't it!”

The night he'd walked in on Gabrielle and Joe Noone had been months before Hurricane Katrina. But here was the storm. Dark as it was, it might only be hours before
landfall. Right now, at this moment, she would be up in her attic, waiting and hoping for the storm to kill her so she would not have to face the evil she'd done, the person she'd become.

“You fucker!” he screamed into the storm, turning back toward Cooper's.

The old sign still hung there. But the door was boarded over now, the façade covered with wood and nailed down tight. The words WE SHOOT LOOTERS had already been spray-painted across the boarding. The Cooper boys weren't taking any chances. The only thing missing was the brown tidal line, but that would be here soon enough.

The worst had already happened. Gabrielle had given up her soul to Seddicus. She'd murdered Joe Noone. After all Max had been through, Ray's conjuring had fucked him again. He had arrived too late to save Gabrielle from herself.

But if he hurried, there was still time to save her from Katrina.

T
his time it was real. The Katrina-battered street knew that Max was here. Wind howled around him, rain sliced through the air to sting his exposed skin, and he could feel a rumble through the ground, like the approach of something terrible. But it was when two men struggled past him along the street that he knew this was not just another Moment. Because they both looked at him, and one of them grinned. The man shouted something that sounded like, “Here we go again!” and then they were gone, arms around each other's shoulders to help move along the road.

Max started after them. There was an urgency in him,
inspired by both the incoming storm and the sense that his time here was not without limit. Perhaps it would be dictated by the strength of the drink Ray had given him, or maybe his accumulated magical aura would determine exactly how long he could live this moment again.
Am I reliving it, or is it reliving me?
he thought, confused and terrified at what this meant for time, and existence, and everything he had ever known.

Viewing the Moments had been like witnessing the past, and he had been unable to influence what he saw. Here, when he placed one foot in front of another, he was changing events with every motion, every heartbeat. The man who had just grinned at him had been at this point before, and that time Max had not been here for him to smile at. How could that affect the future? How much could it change the past? He knew the saying about a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane. Well, here he was in the path of one of the greatest storms known, and he had no wish to be a butterfly at its mercy.

Time.

Ticking away, for him, and for Gabrielle.

Max started running.

This was a very different New Orleans from the one he had been immersed in for the past few days, yet there were striking portents of the tragedy to come. Many businesses and homes had been boarded up, and some of this temporary protection would remain for months to come. Several homes had small boats already moored in their dry yards, tied to the buildings or stakes in the ground with long ropes, ready for the water. And more than once Max saw
the glare of lights behind drawn shutters, evidence of those who had been unwilling or unable to leave. He wondered how many of them would die tomorrow.

And then he wondered if
he
could die here, and the answer came back fast, obvious, and terrifying.

As he jogged, he tried to figure out in his mind the quickest route to the house in Lakeview. Frustratingly, after days of staring at maps of the city, he could not conjure an image of the New Orleans streets, so he simply headed west, knowing he would have to traverse City Park to reach Gabrielle's neighborhood.

A lot of people were just leaving, finally realizing that the Big Easy wasn't going to skate by this time. On the main roads there were cars jammed with evacuees, and trucks piled high with what some seemed to value: suitcases; furniture; bedding; boxes of food. In a couple of trucks, Max saw someone quite literally riding shotgun in the passenger seat, the barrel of their weapon on display.
Go into a disaster with that mind-set, come out the other side the same,
he thought. But he berated himself for being so judgmental; this was not his city, and this had never been his disaster.

It is now. Maybe it already was. I wasn't even here and it ruined me.

Somehow, though, the terrible wind and rain seemed to partition him from the New Orleans he had known. Filled with panic and held breath, raging with storm, this was a strange place to him, almost as strange as the ruined city to which he had returned just days ago.

Max ran, slipped, fell, and rose without slowing, propelling himself forward. His heart beat in time with some
internal clock. He tried peering through the rain, hoping to see some clock tower or a bank building with a digital sign. How much time did he have? How long before Gabrielle's lungs filled with water?

Goddamn you, Ray. You old bastard. Goddamn you.

Think, Max.

In the midst of the maelstrom, it would be so dark that it would be difficult to tell what time of day or night it might be. But shutters weren't tearing off, signs weren't pinwheeling across the street. Katrina hadn't yet made landfall. What he raced through now was just the first flirtation of storm and city.

He tried to remember. Landfall would be right around dawn. And then the flooding would start, first breaching the levees off the Intracoastal Waterway into New Orleans east, then battering down parts of the levees to flood the Ninth Ward, Bywater, Chalmette …so many neighborhoods.

Focus. Why didn't this matter before? They aren't just details, they're people's lives.

Maybe two hours after landfall, Lake Pontchartrain would be so pregnant with the storm surge that it would overtop the floodwalls. And that would be it for City Park, Gentilly, and other northside neighborhoods.

So how long until the 17th Street Canal floodwall failed, and a tidal wave swept through Lakeview? How long until the water filled Gabrielle's house and rose up into the attic? Three, maybe four hours after dawn?

But when was dawn?

Max let out a scream of frustration, lost in the howl of wind and rain, and ran on. His chest burned, his muscles
ached. His clothes were soaked through and his hair was plastered to his scalp. He reached City Park and started through, shocked at how different it looked from the last time he had seen it. Old oaks bent and creaked, but at least they were still standing. Grasses danced as the wind made exotic patterns across the ground, and soon they would be smothered with water and muck. Trees that had stood for hundreds of years vainly swayed and bent to the whim of the wind …but soon, they would fall.

Nothing, he realized, lasts forever.

Immortality was a lie.

Ray was dying. Old and powerful though he might be, and ruthless in his manipulations of lesser mortals, he was fading. And this storm had snatched his last hope for leaving an enduring legacy behind: Gabrielle. Like one of those old oaks, Ray could rage against the storm, but there were never any guarantees.

Max felt a weight of responsibility crushing him down, and he did not want to become a part of the mud.
I could die here,
he thought, still coming to grips with the reality of it. This place where he had never been, this tragedy he had never seen, could become his grave. Yet there was something incredibly potent about such a possibility, and for a moment he realized just what Ray must feel.

“I don't
want
the power!” he shouted, but his voice was lost to the wind, and the only thing that heard was Katrina.

Landry Street, Lakeview. He wanted to smash down each door, shout at anyone left behind that they had to leave, flee,
abandon the city to its terrible fate. And he tried, knocking at one door several houses away from Gabrielle's aunt's house. A frightened old man opened his front door on a chain and Max started screaming at him.

The man slammed the door in his face, and Max tried to remember what he had seen of this house after the storm. But his memories were no longer clear. His mind, buoyed though it was with magic, was not well suited to what it had been through, and what it was still going through now. Perhaps this juggling with time would affect his memories and perceptions …but perhaps, also, he would never know. What would he remember? What, God help him, would he forget?

At last, he stood before Gabrielle's aunt's house. The last time he had been here, it was a ruin, with
1
IN ATTIC
spray-painted across the dormer. He was here now to ensure that message was never left.

There were no lights, and he could see no sign of anyone being inside.

As he mounted the steps the storm seemed to shift up a notch. A sheet of corrugated iron flipped along the street, scoring the road and smashing a car windshield as it sailed by. Water gushed along gutters, carrying litter down into the sewers. Rain dashed horizontally, and in the distance Max heard a sound like a siren, rising and falling and casting its doom-laden notes across this condemned city.

Nature angry at his interference, perhaps.

He tried the door, found it open, and entered without knocking.