Night of the Living Demon Slayer (15 page)

The shop had quieted down again. Obviously, my rapping at the door had done no good except to wake a pet of some sort, one that was too lazy to sound the alarm.

It flapped its wings and retreated into a back room.

Maybe she was in there.

"We're going 'round back," I called, remembering the alley I'd passed when I'd come here the first time. "She might be doing inventory in the store room," I said to Dimitri.

He motioned for me to show the way. "Let's hope."

The narrow alleyway smelled of old beer and garbage. The back doors didn't have street numbers or any signage that I could see, but I'd bet anything Aimee's was the purple one with the flaming heart and the evil eye painted across it. I dodged the large flower pot filled with geraniums and braced myself before I knocked.

Please be there.

If something could be done tonight to help Carpenter… I didn't want to wait until morning.

"It's Lizzie," I said, rapping at the door.

No response.

"The demon slayer," I added, knowing Aimee was one of the few in this city who would believe me.

No response.

"I brought my husband, Dimitri," I said, in case she looked out and grew worried about the huge man at my back. "Carpenter's in trouble."

Something metal clanged to the ground. Then I heard her voice. "One moment."

The door cracked and Aimee peered out. Her curly dark hair tickled her flushed cheeks and hung wild about her bare shoulders.

Oh my. "We're sorry to interrupt," I said quickly.

Her face shone with perspiration. "I was in the middle of a ritual," she said, clearing her throat. "Let me get my robe."

Dimitri averted his eyes. Now I'd seen everything.

"Naked rituals?" he asked. A wicked grin tickled his lips and he gave me a nudge. "Maybe you should stop trying to learn spells and start up a voodoo practice."

"I'll get right on that," I said dryly, as if he didn't see me naked enough.

Aimee opened the door as she shrugged into an orange silk number. She tied the belt as she motioned us inside. "What happened?"

We stepped into a claustrophobic back room with a candle-lit altar to the right, and shelves of glass jars, herb-filled baskets and who knew what lining the left wall and every other spare inch of wall space. The air hung heavy with magic.

That wasn't even the weird part. I stared at a full-sized hot tub, shaking as it hummed, and taking up almost every bit of walking space.

"How relaxing," Dimitri mused.

"Never mind that," she said, waving off the concern.

Right.

I tried not to stare at the thing, but oh-my-god she'd filled it with muddy water and twigs and bits of floating grass. With a jolt I wondered—despite what the necromancer said—if it was wise to team up with a woman like this.

"Listen," I said, hoping we were correct to trust her, "Things have gone wrong. Osse Pade captured Carpenter and is keeping him trapped in a magic circle. He said it was too dangerous to break him out. He told us to come to you for help."

"What did it look like?" she asked.

"A white circle on the ground, with lots of squiggly lines coming off it in all directions."

She handed me a piece of parchment and a pen. "Draw it."

I sketched a hasty picture, trying to remember each shape as best as I could. At first glance, the markings had appeared random, but I knew better. There had to be some kind of meaning behind them.

Aimee drew a sharp breath even before I'd finished adding the spikes around the edges of the circle.

"A twisted veve," she said, as if the very words were evil.

"Can you break him out of it?"

She visibly paled. "No, I cannot. This is strong dark voodoo."

I'd had a feeling. "Okay, we'll go to plan B. Carpenter told me to take you to the grave of the three sisters."

She made a quick sign of the cross. "Aye, Madre, what's there?"

"He said you'd know."

Her forehead furrowed. "I don't know what he's talking about."

"Maybe you'll know it if you see it," Dimitri suggested.

She cast a worried glance to her altar. "Perhaps. But my husband isn't home. He'd have my head for going there."

"I know the feeling," Dimitri mused.

Feelings aside, we didn't have time to wait. "I don't know how much longer Carpenter has."

She gave a tight nod. "Come," she said. "Let's at least get there before the witching hour." She headed for the door before she looked down at her state of undress and caught herself. "I'd better change first."

"Maybe leave a message for your husband," Dimitri suggested.

She opened the door into the main shop. "We have an apartment above the shop. Wait here." She started up set of stairs heading up to the living quarters.

"He has every right to punch me in the face," Dimitri mused.

"Let's hope we don't run into him then," I said. But seriously, I understood that these guys wanted to protect us. They also needed to know when to let go. Aimee was a big girl. She understood the risks. "I didn't even know she was married," I added. "Does your husband know voodoo?" I called after her. Maybe he could help.

"He doesn't practice," she said, her voice trailing from the open apartment door upstairs. "But he has every reason to believe."

She returned wearing a loose-fitting neon green skirt, a hot-pink stretchy top, and white tennis shoes. She'd tied her hair back into an orange striped bandana and held a flashlight. "All set."

Dimitri frowned, as if he realized that protecting her would be a bigger job than he'd thought. I could understand his concern. If she were one of the biker witches, I would have told her to skip the flashlight. She'd glow in the dark all by herself. But I didn't say that because I was polite, and there was something I liked about the voodoo mambo.

She was comfortable in her own skin. I admired her confidence.

Or maybe it was simply that I needed her.

"Let's bring this just in case," she said, plucking two stones, a candle, and a red cloth bundle from her altar.

"Sounds great." I'd stick with my switch stars.

We headed out the back, and Aimee locked her door. Dimitri's frown deepened as she motioned us into a dark corridor on the other side of the alley. I hadn't noticed it before.

My husband drew me close. "Short cut?" he asked.

"The best way," she said, moving first through the narrow space. We followed close behind.

Laughter and conversation from the party crowd filtered from the surrounding streets, making the corridor feel even more secluded.

Dimitri slipped his hand into mine. "You've done this before," he said to the voodoo mambo, as the path emptied into another alley.

She tossed a glance over her shoulder. "It's a long story. You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

We followed the back streets and alleys until we came to Basin Street.

Sweat trickled down the back of my neck as the white stone walls of a graveyard rose up in front of us.

St. Louis Cemetery Number One used to be located at the outskirts of the city, which now meant the edge of the French Quarter. The cemetery closed its gates at dusk, for safety's sake. Most people assumed that meant the prevention of criminal activity. But knowing what I did of the other side, I'd be willing to bet other things went down in the dark cemetery at night.

"I hear it's a maze in there," I said quietly.

"I know the way," she said, leading us past the front entrance. A simple wrought-iron cross topped the tall gate. I paused to look in on the above-ground tombs, pearly white in the light of the moon. "Stay close to me, no matter what you see in there. There are more than one hundred thousand departed souls resting inside those walls. Most are dead and gone. But there are some who practiced voodoo and their power calls to me. I'm never truly alone in there."

"Great." Dimitri said, eyeing the wall.

"This way," she said, hurrying to an area at the north edge where the streetlights were widely spaced and the side street deserted. Tall trees rose up on our side of the fence, their heavy canopies dripping over to the other side. She hitched a toe in the thick white stone wall like she'd done it dozens of time before.

Oh, who was I kidding? She probably had.

She found every nook and cranny until she crouched at the top of the wall. Then she paused, her features clouding with worry. "I didn't think of how you—"

"No problem," I said, drawing on my power, willing it to lift me off the ground. There was something to be said for levitation, I decided, as I joined her on the top of the wall.

We both crouched low. "Nice trick," she said, without a trace of irony.

"Demon slayer," I said. No sense hiding it.

Dimitri found hand and toe-holds I hadn't even noticed and soon joined us at the top. Together, we looked out over tangled rows upon rows of graves. No wonder they called it a city of the dead.

"Follow me." Aimee scooted her legs over the wall and leapt to the ground.

Dimitri motioned for me to go first, and so I did, although I couldn't resist slowing my descent just a bit as I neared the ground on the other side. In any case, jumping sometimes made my knees hurt.

In one graceful leap, Dimitri was at my side. "You've gotten better at that."

"You should have seen me stick that landing in the swamp." It had been pure magic, or at least as close as I could get to it.

Aimee grinned. "I can see why Carpenter picked you two."

I couldn't help but return her smile. "I don't think he had much of a choice." At least as far as I was concerned.

"Come on," she said, getting her focus back. "Just because I've come here a lot doesn't mean it's safe to linger."

We left the shadow of the trees and kept our lights off for the time being. There was enough of a moon tonight and we didn't want to draw attention. Aimee moved almost silently and so did Dimitri and I as we wound through the crumbling monuments to the dead.

The place smelled like mold and concrete and the heat of the city. Wrought-iron gates with thick spikes hugged some of the white stone vaults, while others lay neglected, their plaster falling away to expose redbrick skeletons. Still others had sunk into the ground, their inscriptions worn and barely visible as earth swallowed them whole.

Entire extended families shared mausoleums separated by narrow pathways.

We passed a tomb coated in crumbling white marble, with a weeping angel over the doorway. It radiated power and darkness.

Aimee touched my arm to keep me moving. "We don't notice a thing," she said, as if failing to acknowledge it could somehow diminish its power.

That approach seemed to be working so far with the spirit in my head. I winced at myself for thinking of him and purposely cleared my thoughts.

Dimitri strode next to me, shoulders drawn back, focused on every detail of the cemetery.

"Lord, I missed you," I told him.

A slight grin tickled his lips. "So you showed me earlier."

"Up ahead," Aimee murmured over her shoulder. We took a hard left, and I knew immediately which grave was that of the Three Sisters. It stood at the end of a short, dead-end row. The tomb radiated malice and death, as if it could infect the living with merely a brush or a touch. Maybe it could.

There was nothing remarkable about the stone itself – plain white, topped with a simple slanted roof. It was better kept than most of the others, with white paint and a well-maintained exterior. Vases set into the path on either side held fresh blood-red roses twined with strands of pearls and feathers. More flowers scattered the ground in front of the entrance, along with offerings of rum and cigarettes.

The name on the etched gray stone read
Pade
.

I gave an involuntary shudder.

"Pade's mother was a powerful dark bokor," Aimee said quietly, as if her words themselves could summon her. "His grandmother and his great-grandmother held great influence as well, but none so much as Mamma Pade. There are five generations in that crypt."

I glanced to Aimee, who stood with her arms over her chest, as if she couldn't get warm. "How many ancestors are we talking about in there?"

"I don't know. Sometimes servants and followers are buried with the family…if they've shown enough loyalty."

Dimitri stiffened next to me. "I wonder what that entails."

I'd seen it firsthand.

"Every family member adds power." Aimee paused. "Feel that spiky energy coming off it?"

I raised a hand over the stone. The jabbing power tore at my palm like a thousand tiny, piercing arrows.

"It's probably cursed," she said, pragmatically. "And before you ask, I can't lift a generational curse in an evening."

I hadn't asked. Damn. "Carpenter said this was important." It had better be. We could be sacrificing a lot.

Aimee looked like she might cry. "He may get in over his head sometimes, but he knows how to get out."

He was asking a heck of a lot in the process.

"What exactly is there between you and Carpenter?" Dimitri asked. It was an uncomfortable question, and I prepared myself for an answer I didn't want to hear. Then again, we needed to know what skin she had in the game.

If his question surprised her, she didn't show it. The voodoo mambo lifted her chin. "He's my half-brother."

I sighed. "He hadn't told me."

She looked grimmer than I'd ever seen her. "He's a very private person."

That was an understatement.

She watched me carefully. "You said you could stop Osse Pade."

"I'm trying," I assured her. I reached out and forced myself to touch the front of the tomb. It was freezing cold, even on this sultry night. The energy cut at my hand. The surface felt as if it were pulsing.

I ran my hands over the stone blocking the entrance, looking for a way inside.

Dimitri took my hand and gently lifted away. "You're not going in. I am."

I appreciated the sentiment, but in this case, he wasn't the right one for the job. "We don't know if you're equipped to deal with this kind of evil." His griffin power drew its strength from goodness and light. Osse Pade dealt in blood and death. "I've tasted Osse Pade's power before, in the swamp. I survived."