Spell For Sophia (21 page)

Breaux placed his hand on my shoulder. "Is it done?"

"Yes." I wiped away a tear with the back of my hand. I frowned down at the poppet, sickened by the palpable centuries of hate and evil trapped within it.

"You okay?" he asked.

"It's been a rough day." My voice broke. "You?"

He emitted a gallows' laugh. "Rougher." Something caught his eye. "Hang on." He strode to a nearby oak and crouched, then reached for an object in the shade near the trunk. He swung about holding the man-purse and carried it to Nervous Guy. "Christophe? Here, man. Sorry about the head slam."

"You did what you had to." Christophe rubbed his jaw with one hand and reached for the leather pouch with the other. His eyes met mine. "Sorry he tried to kill you."

I glanced down at the bloody scratches on his hand. "Sorry I had to do you bodily harm."

He rubbed his upper thigh. "Me, too."

My fingers brushed across the bruises forming on my throat. My other hand held the poppet away from my body. Christophe sat down with his legs straight in front of him and balanced the man-purse across his thighs. "The pouch must have special meaning for you," I said, inching closer.

Breaux handed him the table knife. Christophe smoothed his fingers across the leather clutch. "It was a gift from my sister, Amélie. It's all I have left of her." He folded back the flap and shook the contents onto his lap. A small brass key and a school photo of a worry-eyed girl with highlighted brown hair spilled onto his skinny jeans.

Breaux examined the photo. "She'd want you to use the key."

I nodded. "Definitely."

"Can't. It scorches me. I've tried."

My hand flew to the skin graft on my throat. My mind jumped from the first incident with my bio-parents to the flameout explosion in the desert. The phantom smell of creosote and gasoline burned my nostrils. I cleared my throat. "Do you feel its heat through your jeans?"

His brows tunneled. "Actually, no." He sounded surprised.

I reached across his leg until my forefinger hovered above the small key. The imprint of a freshly broken hex lingered on the brass like a foul cigar stench after the smoker had left the room. I traced a clearing symbol in the air above the key, then handed it to Christophe.

Eyes wide, Christophe pinched the key between his thumb and forefinger. The corners of his lips lifted. "It's not burning me." He expelled a long breath. His shoulders drooped and he shook his head. "Three years."

"No one should pay three years' penance for an innocent mistake," I said.

"You never gave up." Breaux's glance shifted from me to Christophe. "You stayed and fought."

Christophe's Adam's apple bobbed up and down. "I had a weak moment after Amélie's death. The Overseer spied his chance and muscled in. He told me she had died because of me."

"I'm sure that wasn't true," I said.

"In a way, it was." Christophe studied the photo. "I owed her, and I dishonored her by letting the Overseer take over my body. So I fought back." He straightened his spine and raised his chin, exposing his throat. I bit my lip while he fumbled to insert the key. After several heartbeats he succeeded in stabbing it into the brass lock. With a slight turn of the key, the weighty padlock clicked open. A chilly breeze threaded through us. For a second I thought the air carried the scent of pipe tobacco and rum. The breeze lifted the school photo into the air. Breaux caught it and handed it to Christophe, who slid it back inside the clutch and snapped the flap.

"Here goes." Christophe unhooked the padlock from its thick chain. The links remained suspended around his neck, as though too surprised to escape beneath his jacket and tee. Christophe pulled the chain from his skin and coiled the shackle on the ground beside him. The tight fetter had left a dark grey stain around his neck.

"What should I do with it?" Christophe asked.

I had been wondering the same thing about the lock, the chain, and the poppet.

"Secure the padlock and bury it far from your home," Breaux instructed. "Place the key in the first recycling bin you see." He raised his voice to be heard over the rising wind. "Take an axe to the chain and bury the pieces in three different locations."

"Then take a purification bath or shower," I added. My eyes stung from the dust and smoke stirred up by the wind. There it was again, the odor of pipe smoke and rum. I stared down at the open lock. Surely it couldn't have opened the…

Breaux's nostrils flared. "Do you smell—?"

"Yes." Clutching my sore ribs and the poppet, I hustled to my feet.

Breaux shouldered the backpack, then clasped my hand. "Look." He angled his head toward the low wall in front of the college. My pulse jumped. Papa Legba and his mongrel dog stood between the words Tulane and University.

Papa tipped his straw hat to us, then raised his staff. The scruffy mongrel barked once, then pointed its nose into the air. I lifted my gaze above the trees and spied Oya-Yansa. Her purple, red, and orange skirt blazed brightly against the clouds. She shook her ebony horsetail switch at us and began to dance. Dust and leaves eddied at my feet. Oya-Yansa whirled. Her skirts flared, undulated, and snapped in the rising wind. I squeezed Breaux's hand. Oya-Yansa's turban morphed into a tornado. The winds swirling around us grew in force. Christophe scrambled to his feet, shoving the knife into his man-purse as he stood.

"Goodbye, Christophe," I said.

"Good luck, man," Breaux shouted over the gale. He pulled me close and held me tightly. I flattened my ear against his chest. The steady
thump-thump
of his heart was the last thing I heard before the tornado descended on us, rattling like a hundred streetcars and tearing the poppet from my grasp.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ainslie

I'd miscalculated. I hadn't factored on karma entering the equation. The thought that Yemaya might know the guy trying to kill Sophia, or that he would be the Walk-in, had never entered my brain. The fact that Sophia might have learned voodoo somewhere along the way had crossed my mind, but…

I backpedaled in midair. Sickening waves of evil energy arced from the Walk-in to the voodoo doll clutched in Sophia's hand. Concentration and distaste contorted Sophia's features and her fingers grew bright red as she bound the rag doll with twine. I shoved the image into the part of my brain where I kept my memories of the lockdown ward. I imagined Thor covering my ears with his comforting hands, muffling the spell Sophia uttered.

When her lips stopped moving and she'd tied off the cord with a final knot, I envisioned Thor lifting away his hands and kissing me on the forehead before disappearing. Then I heard it — absolute silence. No drums. Yemaya had warned me, but I had ignored her. Now the drums had ceased and we had no audible beacon to guide us home. Because of me, we might never reach our bodies again. Mom would kill me.

Guilt rocketed through me. I needed an exit strategy.

I flew to Sophia's side. Man, she had changed. Thinner. Harder. Braver. Older in ways I didn't want to contemplate. The doll in her lap pulsed with barely contained malevolent energy. I wondered how many bottles of hand purifier or liquid sage it would take to dispel its bad mojo. I hesitated, loath to get too close to the doll. Out of time, I flew close to Sophia's ear.
I will never stop searching for you.

She twisted toward me. The expression on her face tapped into every memory I had of Sophia. Her tough-girl-survivor-voodoo-practitioner veneer crumbled. In its place was the girl I had always known, the girl who had reacted to kindness and love with shock, incomprehension, and gratitude. My heart splintered. Before I could say more, before she could say anything, an unseen force yanked Yemaya and me into the sky. Our astral bodies hovered high above the land, suspended in the cold shadows beneath the clouds.

I breathed through the emotional jolt. Yemaya had mentioned three conduits for shamanic journeying: spirit flight over land, traversing the Void, or tunneling beneath the earth and through the Underworld. My hopes rose. We were in the sky. I loved dragon flight. I excelled at geography. I could totally ace this. I could get us home even without the drums.

Gleeful, I turned to Yemaya only to panic when I realized she'd vanished. When had she drifted from my side? I had to look twice before I detected her hovering in front of a towering bear-shaped cloud. The silver sheen had drained from her astral body. She had compressed, her elbows close to her side, her arms hugging herself. Catching my gaze, she raised her chin, affecting a brave front. I almost bought it, but her lips trembled and her legs jerked. I remembered she feared heights.

My mind barely had time to register the
thwap, thwap, thwap
of my dragon's wings behind me before the enormous creature was upon me. Its talons pierced my delicate astral body. I yelped as much from shock as pain. The sound must have startled the dragon. Its massive wings slowed their rapid clip through the sky and a guttural sound rumbled up its throat. It eased its grip.

Daylight prevailed, so the dragon remained high in the sky. I worried a commercial airliner would burst through the clouds. Yemaya would freak. Far below, the Mississippi River stretched out like a blue-gray ribbon. A map of the United States unfolded in my mind. Given the dragon's wingspan and speed, I might be able to reach my body before Mom and Dad returned home. Surely Yemaya's spirit guide would rescue her and bring her home. But what if her spirit guide or totem animal was earthbound?

Crap. Gong Li and Maggie Q would never abandon a comrade and neither would a dragon shaman. I tunneled my thoughts and aimed a telepathic message at my spirit guide.
Dragon. Turn back.

The massive wings slowed, but the dragon didn't change course.

Return to where you found me. We left behind a shaman, a friend. I will not return to my body without her.

The dragon huffed. I imagined steam escaping its giant maw. But it banked, making a wide turn as it circled back. The draft from its massive wings tore at the clouds. My anxiety rose as I searched for the bear-shaped puff. "Yemaya!" I shouted. "Are you still in the clouds?"

"Yes." Fear shuddered her voice.

"Where are you? Can you see or hear us?"

After a slight pause she called out, "I hear the dragon's wings. It sounds like you're on the far side of the cloud." The wind and thin air crackled her voice.

"Hold tight."
Dragon, circle the cloud please. Then we should see her.
She'll need to ride on your back.

The dragon slowed and rocked. My stomach tightened. Had I angered it? Was it about to pitch me into the Void? Panic flooded me as I scanned the sky for a portal of light. I tightened my grip on the pendulum, relieved I hadn't lost it. I didn't see a portal. But last time it had given me almost no warning, so I was hardly reassured.
Please don't throw me into the Void. I beg you.

Instead of flinging me, the dragon unclenched it talons and released me. My stomach whooshed to my throat as I plummeted like a skydiver without a parachute.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die.
Regret corseted my astral body.
I'll break all my promises. Yemaya won't be saved. Sophia will think I lied about returning. My parents will find my body. I promised Mom I would be careful! Who will tell Thor or Aunt Terra and Uncle Esmun?

At the thought of my dragon shaman boyfriend and my aunt and uncle, my shoulder blades tingled. My upper back muscles burned as magic tugged and bunched.
Hurry!
The ground rushed up at alarming speed. I could discern the cargo ships on the Mississippi. Dropping lower still, I spied an abandoned rowboat moored next to the levee. Soon I'd be able to make out the fish in the water. Soon I'd be
in
the water.

With relief, my wings sprouted and grew at magical speed. A thrill rushed through me as they unfolded and I bobbed upward. The wind whooshed over and below, and I heard the first
thwap, thwap, thwap
as my wings arced up and down. With a start I realized I had fallen within range of anyone with a zoom lens. I'd heard that ghosts and fairies unseen by the naked eye had been captured on camera. Unsure if astral bodies fit in the same category, I raised my hands in front of my face and soared.

The dragon emerged from the bear cloud. Seeing it for the first time head on, my breath caught. The creature had always appeared behind me, or above me as it carried me. I had told myself glimpsing it would make it vanish, so I had never tried to peek. Maybe I had just been too afraid. Like now, as terror and awe electrified my astral body.

The creature before me could never have squeezed into the Teen Room in the library or stood behind me in a restaurant. It couldn't have trailed me on the street and nudged me in the back. This dragon could stand in our motor court and look into the second floor windows of the mansion.

And I had bossed it around. Good grief.

Sunlight slicing through the clouds glinted off the dragon's scales. Like the polished interior of abalone shells, each scale captured the dappled colors of water and sky. The wind ruffled the dragon's snow-colored, feathered mane. The creature fixed its turquoise eyes on me. A qualm shivered my astral body when I noticed the dragon's put upon expression. I must have complicated its plans by demanding we retrieve Yemaya. Or maybe I had insulted it.

The dragon veered left, then lowered its right shoulder. With its wings outstretched, I had a clear view of Yemaya flattened against its back, her hands and faced buried in the dragon's feather mane.

Thank you, dragon.

Amira. My name is Amira.

Thank you, Amira.

Amira righted herself and flew alongside me, dwarfing me.
Warn your friend to hang on and prepare herself.

I didn't stop to ask questions. "Yemaya! Hold on tightly with your hands and knees—"

BOOM!
Waves of energy squeezed me from all sides, pinning my wings to my back. As soon as the pressure eased, I gulped ionized air. A swirling tube of energy surrounded me. Panic and claustrophobia clawed up my chakras toward my throat. Another boom sounded and again I was squeezed and propelled forward. Panic swelled my throat, restricting my breathing.