Arise (21 page)

Maybe I’d even met a few of them last night in Jackson Square. Maybe they would soon become my only companions.

The thought chilled me. I followed Joshua more closely, keeping silent until, suddenly, he stopped short and I nearly bumped into him.

He whispered back to me, in a voice so low and reverent I could hardly hear him:

“We’re here.”

Chapter

EIGHTEEN

T
he instant Joshua announced our arrival, a thousand goose bumps—real ones—erupted across my skin. I clung tightly to his back, not sure I wanted to move forward. Ever.

But eventually, Joshua’s stillness and my curiosity got the best of me. I leaned to one side to peek around him. Then I reeled backward.

As promised, a tall, bloodred crypt loomed to our left. The pathway it faced intersected another row, which bore the dining-table headstone that Gabrielle had mentioned, along with more standard, shoulder-level tombs.

And there, waiting in the intersection of these pathways—looking every bit the Voodoo priestess—stood Gabrielle.

A small fire burned in a metal pot at her feet and illuminated her from below, casting mysterious shadows across the planes of her face. This lighting somehow made her look older. More powerful. Her loose, floor-length dress shifted in the wind, as did her wild hair. She caught my eye and raised an arm in welcome; her other arm was occupied, holding a large, vine-wrapped black book.

A family Bible, the same kind of item I’d seen Ruth use in her exorcism rituals. Not necessarily a sign of good things to come.

Gabrielle beckoned again with one hand, signaling us to join her.

“It’s almost midnight,” she called. “Let’s get started. Amelia, I’m going to need you at the center of this ring.”

I looked down to where she had gestured. There on the ground, drawn in a broad circle that encompassed both Gabrielle and her small fire, was a ring of dust.

Voodoo dust.

I shook my head vigorously. “You
do
realize there’s no way I’m stepping into that thing, don’t you? I mean, even if I could.”

Gabrielle laughed low.

“This isn’t banishing powder. This is the protective stuff. It keeps out whatever means us harm.” As if to demonstrate, she lifted her arms and spun around, letting the gauzy hem of her dress twirl with her. “We’re safe in here, to do whatever we like.”

Still unconvinced, I frowned. “What about Joshua?”

Gabrielle shook her head. “He needs to stay out of the circle since he isn’t a part of the ceremony.”

Joshua wrapped his arm around my waist and gave me a slight hug. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’m right here, watching. If anything goes wrong … I’ll be here.”

I hugged him back, not wanting to tell him that I wasn’t worried that I would need his help; I was worried that he would need
mine
. But he looked so intent, so certain, that I nodded.

“All right. I’ll give it a try.”

“Good,” Gabrielle said, sounding relieved. “Now hurry. We don’t have a lot of time left.”

I stepped forward reluctantly while Gabrielle knelt to arrange a collection of items at her feet. She placed the first—a small, portable stereo—just outside the circle. When she noticed me watching her, she gave a one-shouldered shrug.

“Drums,” she explained. “Since it’s just me, we’ve got to make do with recorded drumming.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling incredibly out of my element. “Drums. Of course.”

As Gabrielle arranged the other items—a small bowl, a plastic bag full of dried herbs, some kind of gourd, one bottle containing clear liquid and one containing dark—I took another tentative step toward the circle. I inched one foot and then the other closer to the outer line of chalky white powder. With a deep breath for courage, I muttered, “Here goes,” and took my first step inside the circle.

This time my foot landed where I wanted it to; this time I didn’t feel the solid, impenetrable barrier of Ruth’s magic. Instead, I felt … nothing. Nothing at all.

I sighed in relief, and stepped fully into the ring. Gabrielle glanced up from her work with a wry half grin.

“Congrats. They say the first step’s always the hardest.”

I rolled my eyes and folded my arms protectively across my chest. Just because I’d made it inside her circle didn’t mean I trusted her yet.

Gabrielle, however, didn’t seem to care much about my disdain. She was too busy placing the empty bowl near the fire and then crumbling the dried herbs into it. She grabbed the bottle of clear liquid, removed its cork, and began pouring it in careful increments into the bowl.

“Rum,” she said distractedly. “A gift for the Loas, so that they’ll help us.”

Again I couldn’t manage much more than a bewildered “Oh.”

Gabrielle dipped her fingertips into the bowl and withdrew them to make little splashes upon the ground at my feet. She splashed a few more drops on herself and then ran her wet hand down her face, murmuring something incomprehensible under her breath.

Finally, she grabbed the gourd and the bottle of dark liquid, and stood.

“Sit,” she commanded me, gesturing to the ground with the bottle. So I crossed my legs and dropped to the concrete. Then I folded my hands in my lap and turned my most skeptical expression up to her.

“Look,” I said. “I’m not sure what you have planned for tonight. But mostly I just want the bad dreams to stop. Do you think you could do that?”

I couldn’t tell whether she’d decided to ignore me or just silently process my request. Either way, she didn’t respond as she bent down to press the PLAY button on the stereo. Immediately, the pounding sound of drums filtered out, as well as other, jangling noises.

Finally meeting my gaze, Gabrielle hissed, “Stay quiet until I say.”

Then she raised her arms. In a strange, melodic language I didn’t recognize, she called out to the midnight sky. I tried to catch some of the words—
Legba, souple, lavi
—but wasn’t really sure what I’d heard.

Still chanting, Gabrielle closed her eyes and slowly began to spin in a circle. With one hand she shook the gourd, which made a dry, rattling sound. With the other she held the bottle upright, letting its dark liquid slosh with her movements.

Soon, the sloshing and rattling synced with the drums. Combined, the noises started to take on their own rhythm—a kind of music to which, I now realized, she was dancing. The chiming of her chandelier earrings and clanging of her bracelets only added to the effect.

Despite everything I’d been through, I remained a skeptic about things like this. Yet as I listened to the music swell, as I watched Gabrielle’s dancing grow more hypnotic and frenzied, I felt myself falling into a sort of trance. I had no idea where Joshua was, but I couldn’t turn my head to look for him. I just couldn’t pull my eyes away from the clamor occurring in front of me.

“Loa,” Gabrielle chanted over and over. “Loa.”

She repeated other words, too, like that
lavi
I’d heard earlier. Then she added a mantra I actually recognized: “Please.” She whispered it frantically, like a prayer.

After God knows how long of this chanting, she dropped the gourd to the earth and continued to dance as she uncorked the bottle of dark liquid. She poured its contents carefully onto her hand, which she lifted to the sky and then flung to the earth, splattering the ground with dark drops.

I leaned forward, just an inch, to examine the splatters closely in the firelight. Then I recoiled.

The dark droplets, which I’d first taken as black, were actually red. Deep, arterial red.

Bloodred.

I gasped, but Gabrielle ignored me. She’d stopped dancing and was now swaying, occasionally pouring more of the bloodred liquid into her cupped palm before flinging it onto specific places around the circle.

Suddenly, I was desperate to find Joshua. I craned my neck, searching for him in the darkness outside of the Voodoo ring. I found him quickly enough, leaning against the side of the brickred tomb. Unfortunately, he looked as transfixed as I’d just been.

I spun back around to Gabrielle, whose arms were now covered in trails of red streaks from where the liquid had escaped her palms.

“I want this to stop now,” I demanded. “You stop this right now, Gabrielle.”

The sound of drums and jangling metal, however, drowned out my demand. Gabrielle either didn’t hear me or didn’t care, since she kept swaying and chanting and pouring.

I thought that the ceremony would never end—that I would forever sit in this circle, watching a ghastly display of fire and blood—when Gabrielle froze midsway.

For a long second she remained completely motionless, completely silent. Then, without warning, her eyes flew open and she turned them on me.

What I saw in them made me choke.

Where her irises had once been a stunning, vibrant blue, they were now the color of tar. As black as her pupils, as deep and dark as the abyss I’d seen under the netherworld High Bridge.

I was choking, struggling to warn Joshua that he should run, when Gabrielle dropped into a crouch and lunged for me.

I shrieked and tried to scramble backward, out of the circle. But I suddenly found my back pressed to some barrier—one that I instinctively knew wasn’t visible.

Despite her promise, Gabrielle’s protective circle had turned on me. Trapped me.

Gabrielle reached a hand for me. This time, however, I lunged forward. She was alive and probably couldn’t touch me, but
I
was the poltergeist. I could at least try to fight her off. To keep her from Joshua, if I could.

But instead of clawing at me as I’d expected, she leaned in and softly pressed her blood-tinged fingertips to my collarbone. With an eerie smile, she whispered one Creole word:

Rete
.

Then, with that simple oath delivered, her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed, unconscious, upon the ground.

For a moment I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

I stared down, mesmerized by Gabrielle’s slumped form, which had fallen across the hem of my dress. While I stared at her, I didn’t feel anything. Just numbness. Emptiness.

But the longer I sat there, the more a hot, uncomfortable stirring began to grow within me.

At first it felt like fear. Like adrenaline and nausea and fire mixing together in my core. Soon I could tell that it wasn’t just in my mind, wasn’t some mental side effect of what I’d just seen. This sensation was real, spreading out from my abdomen and tendriling its way to my limbs.

I thoughtlessly let it burn me for a few seconds more, until suddenly, my legs twitched beneath me. I jerked them out from under Gabrielle and sprung to my feet. I spun around toward Joshua, who was still looking gape mouthed at the Voodoo circle.

With a sharp intake of breath, I threw myself at him and very nearly shouted a prayer of thanks when I landed in his bewildered arms. Apparently, Gabrielle’s barriers had faded with her consciousness, releasing me from the hellish circle.

“Amelia?” Joshua murmured, still fighting his way out of the trance.

“We have to leave,” I said, grabbing his hand. “Now.”

He didn’t protest when I dragged him down the pathway, moving as fast as his stumbling, muddled pace would let me. I would’ve sprinted if I could, but there was no way I intended to leave Joshua stranded in this place.

A few times I took a wrong turn and ended up in a dead end of crumbling tombs and weeping statuary. Each time that happened I would groan in frustration and then spin around, tugging Joshua along with me on an alternate path.

Finally, blissfully, we made it into the broad, open area where the cemetery gates waited. I pulled Joshua toward them.

“The gates, Joshua. You have to open them.”

He shook his head, obviously still disoriented, but began to fumble with the chain. When his hands kept slipping, I moaned softly. “Please, Joshua, hurry.”

As if he were a zombie under my command, Joshua deftly removed the chain and let it slither to the ground beside him. He’d only had time to pull one gate open before I was shoving him out of it and onto the sidewalk. I followed him out, folded one of his hands back in mine, and pulled him onto the street.