A Twisted Ladder (53 page)

She used the last reserves of her energy to hoist Anita’s body into the cradle of the massive oak. She pawed at the tree with numb fingers, and wedged Anita into a section where the trunk divided into four huge branches. As a safety measure Madeleine removed the belt from around her waist and cinched the girl’s body to a limb, hoping it would help keep her stable.

When she finished, Madeleine curled up over Anita in the arms of the great tree, closed her eyes, shivering, and released herself to exhaustion.

NEW ORLEANS, 1920

A
T THE FAMILY’S WAREHOUSE
on Magazine, where Chloe had quietly established a gambling ring, she began to rely more upon Bruce Dempsey. He was known as “The Brute.” The nickname came about because when he introduced himself, his sparse front teeth caused him to pronounce his name “Brute Dempthey.” Chloe knew Dempsey was not aware that this was the reason behind his nickname. In his mind, he probably thought they called him The Brute out of deference to his tough reputation, and so he seemed to like it.

Chloe realized the gambling hall itself had proved a brilliant move. She was entertaining the people of New Orleans with dice and cards and an opportunity to take home the evening’s pot, so long as they tithed a standard cut to the house. She’d begun it as a small, dirty enterprise, but amidst the excommunication of the devil’s drink, sin had come into fashion. She found that whiskey helped loosen gamblers’ fingers from their money clips. So effective was the booze in separating cash from gamblers, that Chloe had begun arrangements to increase production. She’d heard that the agents of the Prohibition Unit, the newly formed task force of the Department of Treasury were paid laughably small salaries. This made them easy accomplices, and Chloe had paid them less money for their cooperation than she’d paid the police. A busy year.

Chloe had also given birth to a baby girl. She’d named her Marie-Rose. But the infant had been greedy, and had turned Chloe’s womb inside out. Chloe bled for two weeks. Disgusted, she’d handed the baby over to the capable hands of Tatie Bernadette and the wet nurse to care for with the rest of the children. For Chloe, they were all disappointments. The twins made little progress with their exercises and Patrice had natural talent, but was obstinate.

Shortly after, Chloe left for New Orleans where far more urgent affairs awaited. Bruce Dempsey had been getting carried away with himself. He’d been skimming money and had taken to drinking the newly produced liquor. He no longer wore filthy tattered clothing but instead swaggered about in sharp suits and felt hats, and entertained boisterous women.

His superstitious fear of Chloe had faded. He’d continued to serve her because he’d found it profitable, not because he’d feared or felt indebted to her. He had forgotten that Chloe still possessed his ear. So Chloe had to resurrect his deference.

She’d suspected that Dempsey had redirected some of the profits to his own pockets, or to some of the women he’d kept on hand. Also, although Chloe had forbidden Dempsey to drink, he’d been keeping a bottle in the warehouse. But Chloe was dependent upon Dempsey’s roguish ways, along with a small crew of other street characters she’d assembled over time to keep her business safe from other underground gangs. Criminals, all of them, and greedy. Dempsey himself carried a reputation as a ruthless murderer. In the days before Chloe had taken him, he was said to have killed a man for making jokes about his sluggish wit. Since he’d gone to work for Chloe, gossip had churned about the violent means Dempsey used to extract payment for gambling debts. And more than one overzealous gambler had disappeared altogether when Dempsey sought his bounty. Rumors flourished.

Chloe’s employees at the warehouse each remained loyal to her for one reason or another, and even Jacob Chapman had been a crucial ally as a liaison in legitimate business dealings, but mostly it was The Brute who helped her business grow. He saw to it that everyone performed his job, be it dealing cards or watching the door, and he always succeeded in collecting debts. And yet Dempsey himself was a difficult one to control.

At first Chloe started dropping hints that the spirit Ulysses had told her Dempsey was not trustworthy, and that Chloe should let Ulysses come eat his soul. Dempsey sneered at this, but he still valued his position at the warehouse, and so he assured Chloe that he’d been nothing but loyal.

“Then so be it,” Chloe said to him. “But should you take a drink of alcohol, may your gut rebel against your body.”

Chloe had shown Dempsey his own severed ear, now white and preserved in a jar of shine. “Do not forget, Bruce Dempsey, you belong to me.”

Dempsey had stalked out of the Toulouse Street house with his heavy square jowls clenched, but Chloe could see the anxious wrinkle creasing his face. She’d learned where he’d kept his whiskey stash, and she’d slipped crushed powders into the bottle.

Later, when Dempsey had taken a drink, he’d grown ill and vomited so profusely that he’d been forced to leave the warehouse that night. For a full day, he’d wallowed with a cramping gut and hallucinogenic dreams.

The sickness had been enough to keep him in check, at least for the time being. But were it not for the pharmacist, Chloe might never have regained Dempsey’s full loyalty. The pharmacist, Chloe’s latest acquisition among her indentured souls, had run up an exorbitant gambling debt. Rather than send Dempsey to collect, Chloe had personally overseen the matter.

The pharmacist worked at a clinic designated as an official opiate dispensary. New Orleans had established the clinic in an effort to reduce the frequency of petty theft in the city, and to drive down the underground price of illegal opiates in hopes of eliminating the entire underground trade.

Chloe had extracted from the pharmacist a small payment on his debt, but also she demanded a supply of morphine. She had intended to take the drug home to Terrefleurs and administer it to Rémi in an attempt to keep him subdued, but when the situation with Dempsey had arisen, she’d decided that she might see what magic the morphine tablets could bring to him.

“You have demonstrate to me a loyalty and spiritual purity,” Chloe had told Bruce Dempsey after a week had passed without dalliance. “I know this is difficult for you, because for so long you are a bad man. As a reward for your effort and for being my servant, I give you this tonic that will help purify your soul. Do not forget who take care of you.”

Dempsey had eyed the tonic with suspicion. However, he seemed to have been amply spooked by his sickness and hallucinations, and did not seem inclined to provoke Chloe when it came to affairs of the spirit. And so he’d drunk the tonic, and even appeared glad for having done so; for he’d found the effects very pleasant. So pleasant, in fact, he would eventually lose his craving for alcohol altogether, and seek instead only that tonic that he could obtain from one source alone: Chloe.

Chloe had mastered the talent of getting people to do her bidding. Through Rémi, she’d learned secrets of the other world. She used a bend of her mind, the way a convex lens can pull light into a single, concentrated spot. But it took enormous focus. The morphine tonic proved an easier tool to get what she needed from Dempsey.

Tamed, Dempsey had again become Chloe’s faithful attack dog, and tolerated no one who dared undermine her endeavors, least of all deadbeats who dawdled in paying their debts. Chloe’s profits were soaring. For the first time in a while, Terrefleurs and the entire LeBlanc estate were flush.

BAYOU BLACK, 2009

M
ARC,” EMILY SAID
.

Madeleine could see nothing. She was in some sort of current, fighting against a river that flowed in darkness. She flailed, grasping at anything to keep her from getting swept away. But when she lashed out, her fingers closed around bramble. Nothing but bramble. It tore open her hands. She stopped struggling.

She heard Emily’s voice again: “Marc, I love you.”

A tunnel opened, and Madeleine could see silhouettes through matted briar. Marc and Emily.

“Em, you need to leave,” Marc said.

“Leave? You can’t mean that.”

“I mean it!”

The water slowed to an eddy. Madeleine was gasping, spitting out fluid. She could hear their voices through walls of thorny branches that were always curling, always stretching. Marc and Emily’s tunnel emitted the only light, and it filtered through to Madeleine in patches. But it illuminated enough that she could now make out gray shoreline. She swam to it and crawled up onto packed mud. She rolled onto her side. A clear view into the tunnel now. It looked like the living room of the Creole cottage on Bayou Black before she and Daddy had cleared it out. The couch and coffee table, the television. Emily looked strange, as though her skin were translucent and light shone from deep within her. A paper lantern of a girl.

Marc said, “You take what you can. You leave here. You get as far away from here as possible!”

“I don’t want to leave you, Marc. I’m afraid you might hurt yourself. There’s something wrong but you won’t tell me.”

Madeleine put her hand over her face. “Oh, God, please make it stop.”

A face in the shadows. Severin was crawling across the bramble wall like a gecko, the branches snapping as she crossed over and jumped down onto the mud next to Madeleine. Madeleine leaned away from her. But Severin turned around twice on the mud and curled up against Madeleine’s waist. Madeleine was too exhausted to react. On the mud, something round and smooth glinted. She picked it up. It felt like a little compact mirror. She held it up to the light and saw that it was a pocket watch. Daddy’s watch.

“Hurt myself?” Marc was saying.

Madeleine looked up sharply.

Marc said, “I’m going to hurt
you
, Emily. Do you hear me? I’m going to hurt you
and
the baby. I already tried to kill one man. It wasn’t an accident. I lied to you and everyone else about that.”

Emily backed away, and when she did, the bramble seemed to recede from her. “You need help. Your sister, she’s a psychologist. We should . . .”