Arise (30 page)

Gaby shook her head. “We don’t need to. You said it yourself: all the different parts of the netherworld are connected, according to the redheaded girl in your dreams. If we can get into one of those—what did she call it?—portals, then maybe we’d have access to all of them.”

“It’s an interesting theory. But where do we find another portal?” I asked.

She frowned, and her eyes flicked over my shoulder, to the south. “Actually … I have a pretty good idea,” she murmured.

Abruptly, she lunged forward, grabbing my hand and yanking me to my feet. “Come on,” she demanded, and began to hurry down the alley with me in tow.

“Where are we going?” I cried, stumbling behind her.

“You’ll see when we get there,” she called back over her shoulder.

“Why do I feel like you’re always dragging me all over New Orleans?” I grumbled. Gaby laughed loudly.

“Because I
am
dragging you all over New Orleans.”

Once she realized I would come along without duress, she released my hand and continued to walk briskly out of the park. I nearly had to run to keep pace with her as we moved west on the city sidewalks, back toward the Quarter.

I didn’t ask her any questions; I didn’t say anything at all. But when I saw a familiar awning up ahead, I slowed to a stop. After a few steps Gaby noticed that I no longer followed her. So she reversed course and crossed back to me.

“Amelia,” she said impatiently, “it’s, like, almost three o’clock. They’ve definitely gone home by now.”

Without taking my eyes off Café du Monde, I nodded. “Yeah, probably. It’s just … you know …”

“Yeah, I know.” Her tone was surprisingly soft. Kind.

She gave me a brief moment to compose myself and then tugged gently on the sleeve of my jacket, urging me forward again. With a small breath for courage, I hurried alongside her, keeping my eyes glued to the sidewalk as I moved past the café. Even the beguiling scent of chicory couldn’t entice me to look inside.

A few blocks away, Gaby slowed to round the corner of Decatur and Toulouse Streets. I followed her south on Toulouse, passing a tall building full of retail stores and crossing over a steep footbridge. At the bottom of the bridge, however, I skidded to a stop.

There in front of me, just behind a small building constructed to look like a lighthouse, stood the netherworld pavilion.

Or at least something that looked almost identical to it.

Through the open walls of the structure, I saw the gray water of the Mississippi River moving lazily past the Quarter. Underneath its roof, I could make out the shadowed angles of metal girders.

But the roof itself bore little similarity to the one in the netherworld. While the dark pavilion had a purplish, almost transparent ceiling, this structure’s roof resembled that of Café du Monde, with its cheerful green-and-white stripes.

“The pavilion?” I whispered to Gaby.

“Not a pavilion, exactly,” she said. “This is the entrance to the Toulouse Street Wharf, where all the old steamboats used to dock. The only boat still running from this wharf is the
Natchez
, though. When you described your dreams to me, I thought about this place. What do you think? Is it a match?”

Slowly, I nodded. “Yeah, this is pretty close. Not as bone-chilling creepy. But still …”

Gaby stared at the wharf with a thoughtful frown. “Maybe this place is our portal into the netherworld. The dark pavilion going out over the water, the river that looks like an ocean from the right angle—it all fits the bill. We could always come back here tonight, to find out …”

When I shivered slightly, Gaby reached over and gave my hand a quick, reassuring squeeze. “But we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” she added.

Of course, I didn’t miss the disappointment in her voice. Still feeling a little unnerved, I shook my head.

“No, we need to try, and tonight’s as good a time as any. But remember: we still have the problem of
how
to open it.”

“I know.” She sighed, leaning back against the rail of the footbridge. “I’m at a total loss. Part of me is tempted to walk right up to the Mayhew Seers and ask them to join me in some type of magical priestess-Seer council or something. But since we just got your heart to start beating again, we probably don’t want to go break it one more time by letting you see Joshua....”

Gaby hadn’t even finished speaking before I jerked upright. My head whipped around toward her.

“Say that again?” I demanded.

She frowned. “We don’t want you all mopey and pathetic tonight?”

“No, the other part. About my heartbeats,” I urged.

“Um, that we just got it to start beating again?” she offered, obviously confused. “Or at least the resurrection spell makes it
act
like it’s beating. I don’t think it’s actually pumping blood or anything. Maybe. I’m not exactly cutting myself to find out.”

For the first time in hours, I flashed her a genuine, broad grin.

“Gabrielle Callioux, you’re a genius.”

“Of course I am,” she gloated, and then frowned. “But would you mind telling me why?”

My grin widened. “In my experience, a ghost only hears a heartbeat when someone nearby is dying. That’s how Eli tracked his other victims—how he knew the exact moment to take them into the netherworld. If
he
could hear dying heartbeats, don’t you think other supernatural beings can? Say, for instance—”

“The demons,” Gaby breathed. All at once she sounded excited. “You think if we trick them into thinking we’re dying, they’ll send one of their minions to take us into the netherworld.”

“Exactly. But … there’s still a big problem. When the redheaded girl gave me that vision of myself transforming, my heartbeat sounded pretty strong. That means we’ve probably got to find a way to make our heartbeats more sluggish. Make them sound like they’re slowing down. And I obviously have no idea how to do that.”

“But I
do
,” Gaby said, beaming. “Marie has this off-limits potion that makes you seem like you’re dead. She calls it zombie juice, but I know for a fact that it doesn’t have the same effects as the stuff in Haiti: the trances, the deathlike stasis, and so on. It just slows the heart rate
way
down. It’s still risky, of course. But since we’re already dead …”

As she trailed off, I felt a little frisson of fear. But I shrugged it off and finished her sentence: “Since we’re already dead, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Gaby snickered nervously. “Totally. Other than blinking completely out of existence, right?”

“Right,” I answered, placing my hands on my hips in an effort to look brave. Fearless.

For a full minute Gaby and I traded anxious, uncertain glances. Then she crossed over to me and threaded her arm through the crook of my elbow.

“Come on, Amelia,” she said, flashing me a wicked grin. “Let me show you how to plunder a Voodoo priestess’s secret stash.”

Chapter

TWENTY-SIX

T
he outside of the Conjure Café looked just as shady today. Perhaps more so, when I gave myself time to think about its back room and what I planned to do there. As I stared up at the dirty front window—its grime so thick, it didn’t even reflect the pinkish light from the sunset—I forced myself to flicker invisible. That precaution hardly eased my fears.

Gaby noticed my reluctant frown and nudged me with her elbow.

“Don’t be such a wuss. We agreed to do this incognito, remember? So as long as you don’t freak out and go all visible on me, we should be fine.”

“Sure. Fine.”

I nodded mechanically and rubbed my palms on the thighs of my skinny-jeans. Why my hands chose
now
to start sweating again, I couldn’t say. Gaby threw another glance my way and then, with a confident smile, opened the door of the Conjure for both of us to go inside.

Tonight, the restaurant had a few patrons: desolate-looking folks, faces sagging and eyes cast down to their unappetizing dinners. Not a single person glanced up when we entered, despite the fact that the door must have appeared to open on its own.

As I walked down the center aisle of the Conjure, I looked down at their food. Although their dinners smelled revolting, my stomach still churned with hunger. I felt it strongly enough that a nearby plate—covered in something that resembled a cross between lasagna and meat loaf—didn’t look
that
bad. Now I really regretted dropping that second beignet at Café du Monde.

Feeling a bit disgusted with myself, I lowered my head and followed Gaby to the back of the restaurant, where she pulled aside the curtain to Marie’s sanctuary. We ducked into the room, and Gaby let the curtain fall shut behind us.

As it closed, the limited light in the room all but vanished. Tonight, no candelabra glowed, no incense burned. However impossible it seemed, the place was even creepier without the candlelight and tendrils of smoke.

After my eyes adjusted to the dark, I tucked my hands into my tiny jean pockets—something to do besides wring them, I supposed.

“Where’s Marie?” I murmured softly.

I could just make out Gaby frowning into the darkness.

“Actually,” she whispered, “that’s a great question. She always lights candles and does a few spells before midnight mass. So … she
should
be here.”

“Well, then,” I said, rocking forward onto the toes of my boots nervously, “let’s get what we need and hightail it before she comes back.”

“Fair enough.”

I could barely see Gaby’s form as she crept across the room and slipped into the opposite doorway. In the pitch-black, she almost disappeared. Something about her disappearing trick bothered me. Frowning, I pulled one hand from its pocket and stared down at the muted quality of my own skin.

Then it hit me: we didn’t glow in the dark anymore. While other ghosts shared that soft, eerie glow, Gaby and I looked like living people when the lights went out.

Just another ghostly power lost
.

I shifted uncomfortably as Gaby rummaged around in Marie’s secret-potion room. Something about our current mission felt wrong—something other than the theft and the very real risk of ingesting “zombie juice” in order to attract demons.

In fact, I sensed something wrong about this space, in particular. I could almost smell it in the dank air: tangy and bitter, like fear.

I’d leaned forward, about to tell Gaby to hurry up already, when I heard a soft groan somewhere behind me. I spun around, trying to find the source of the sound; but I couldn’t see anything in the blackness.

The groan repeated, so I took a few blind steps backward.

“Gaby, someone’s out here.”

I fumbled behind me for a light switch, a flashlight,
anything
. Over the sounds of my floundering, I could hear ragged breathing from the corner nearest to me.

“Seriously, Gaby,” I hissed. “Get out here and help me.”

Cursing wildly, Gaby stumbled out of the tiny back room and started groping noisily along Marie’s shelving. She must have found whatever she sought, because I heard a sizzle and then smelled the stinging scent of sulfur. Suddenly, candlelight flooded the room.

Gaby grabbed a lit candelabrum and held it up beside me. When she did so, the glow of the flames fell into the corner of the room, and we both gasped.

A body lay crumpled in the corner. If not for the rasping breaths, punctuated by near-inaudible groans, I would have thought it was a corpse. But Gaby knew who it was on sight.

“Marie!” she cried, dropping beside the body and grasping at it. Of course, Gaby’s hands passed over Marie without touching her. One of the many perks of being Risen.

Gaby growled in frustration. In the dim light, I saw her flicker out of and then into focus; going visible.

“Marie,” she called out again, snapping her fingers next to the old woman’s ears. “Marie, wake up.”

Feeling incredibly unhelpful, I willed myself visible and then kneeled beside Gaby as she continued snapping. At that moment, Marie’s head lolled back, just enough to reveal her face.