The Map of Moments (39 page)

He didn't sleep, exactly. But he did rest. It felt as if he'd run a marathon. The attic room was bare now; no blankets, no empty wine bottles. The house smelled stale, but there was no odor of rot.

When he stirred at last, and found the strength to go outside, the street was a ruin, and there was an old truck parked in a driveway a few houses away. A man jumped from the truck, and for a beat Max hoped it would be the old man he had shouted at to get away. But fate, he knew, could never be so kind, nor so neat. This man was younger, and whatever grief he carried he kept to himself.

Max looked up at the house. The dormer was bare of those spray-painted words. No one had died in this attic. He had changed the world forever.

For a while, he thought of simply going to the airport and flying out of New Orleans, never to return. But after everything that had happened to him, this journey felt incomplete. There was something tugging at him, a part of him that had become forever New Orleans.

He had to know what had happened to Gabrielle.

He had to know if it had worked.

Standing outside Cooper's once again, Max sniffed the air, wondering whether he would smell Gabrielle's perfume. He closed his eyes and tried to feel the crackle of magic within him, tried to get some sense of what waited for him inside the building, but whatever static he'd accumulated, he had spent it. He felt empty of potential, shorn of power. But at least he still possessed a soul.

What Ray had led her to …what that old bastard had allowed to happen to Gabrielle …

Max was not the man he used to be. The violence he had committed weighed upon him. He'd struck a man with a car, killed him. He'd watched people die. He'd fought a man, beaten him, and he had witnessed the woman he loved commit murder, surrendering her soul to eternal damnation.

I could kill him,
Max thought. He imagined his hands

closing around Ray's throat, squeezing, and Corinne's smile floated before him, and Gabrielle's laughter seemed to fill the air. But even in his imagination his hands soon loosened, and the old man fell away. Max might have killed, but he was no murderer.

He pushed the door open and went inside. Ray and Gabrielle were sitting at the usual spot, the two of them engrossed in conversation. A half-empty whiskey bottle stood before them, and two glasses, and Max wondered how long they had been here. How long had he been out, lying on the floor of that attic? A day, a week, a year? He had no way of telling.
Messes with your body clock,
his sister had once said after flying from Boston to the UK, and Max smiled as he remembered that.
Try this,
he thought.

When they looked up at last, there was no surprise in Ray's eyes. Of course not.

But Gabrielle looked amazed.

“I thought you'd gone back to Boston!”

His breath caught in his throat, brows knitting. Could it be that she didn't remember? Of course. Her eyes held no guile.

“I came back,” Max said.

Ray, the old bastard, actually laughed. He remembered well enough.

“Why?” she asked.

“Unfinished business.”

Ray's smile faded and his old, hooded eyes drooped. “Nothin’ left unfinished,” he said. “That's it now. That's all.”

“You can't just leave it like this,” Max said.

“Why not?”

“Because…” He sat at the table with them. She was staring at him, and her eyes were so very different. “Because…” But he could think of no reasons that involved the old man. Max and his interests no longer mattered to Ray.

Not at all.

“It's done,” Ray whispered firmly. His voice sounded as old as the years he claimed, and when Max caught his eye, he was shocked at Ray's expression. He was almost crying.

“So you've got the mojo now?” Max asked, looking at Gabrielle.

“All kinds,” she said darkly.

“And you're the Oracle,” he said.

“She will be,” Ray answered for her. “There's just one more Moment to pass, and then the balance will be reestablished. For a time, at least.”

Max did not understand. But then the door of Cooper's burst open, Coco entered, and the time for questions was over.

Rising from his chair, Max moved to Gabrielle's side, putting himself between her and Coco. Ray leaned back, seemingly resigned to what was to come, and with a whisper Coco cleared the room. Chairs scraped, and the half a dozen other patrons left, along with the Cooper brothers.

Coco took another step forward, and then he saw past Max, to Gabrielle sitting there. His eyes went wide and his mouth hung agape.

Mireault entered the bar. Old, withered, pathetic, his power surged before him in a wave that took Max's breath away. A chill like winter's first frost settled on the room. Mireault moved with painful determination, wheezing, and
then he looked at the three of them and stopped, staring, a statue of an impossibly old man.

Then he started laughing. It was a cheerful chuckle, the sort of laughter a place like this heard many times each and every day.

“So,” said Mireault le Tordu, “everything
has
changed.”

“But…” Coco began, shaking his head, baffled.

Tumblers clicked, and more doors opened in Max's mind.

Several other Tordu entered, some carrying guns, and they all paused as they saw Gabrielle.

Mireault waved his hand back over his shoulder, as if dismissing everyone behind him. Then he came forward and gently, carefully, lowered himself into the chair Max had just vacated. The old man's eyes had not left Gabrielle for a second. He stared at her for a while, nodding, grunting now and then, as if the truth of what had happened was presenting itself fully to his mind.

“Very good, Matrisse,” he said at last. “Father would have been delighted at your deceptions.”

“You expected me to do nothing?” Ray asked.

“You were bound to try,” Mireault said. A smell came off of him, something older than age, and Max thought of the stinking mess he'd seen this man smearing across a ward centuries before. “But I knew you were all but powerless. Dying. My dear brother, dying.” And then the withered old man did something that amazed Max—he reached across the table and took Ray's hand.

“Death comes for us all,” Ray said.

“So they say.” Mireault nodded slowly. “Clever of you.

Very clever. You'd have never survived the Moments yourself.” He kept his gaze on Ray, and Ray stared back.
How long since they've spoken like this?
Max thought.
How long since they've even seen each other?

“Never was about my survival.”

“The lengths you go to,” Mireault said. “You can never win.”

“But I must never lose.”

Mireault chuckled. “That boy's heart tasted good, and strong. The boy Gabrielle delivered to me. I thank you, brother.”

Ray's smile slipped. “A necessary evil.”

“Are you really going to let him leave,” Mireault whispered, “with all he knows?”

Max realized with a sickening jolt that the old man was talking about him.

“Gabrielle will take him to the airport and—

“No, brother,” Mireault said, smiling. “She's still vulnerable. Still …not all here. We'll have her yet, and you'll die, and I'll let Coco have the young professor. More blood on my brother's hands.”

Ray frowned. “He's served his purpose, Mireault. Why not jus’—”

“He knows too much! About us, and about you.” He glanced at Gabrielle. “About
her
!”

“Gabrielle—” Coco began, but he said no more. Mireault raised one hand and the Tordu man's eyes bulged, his mouth gaping open.

“You speak when I tell you to speak,” Mireault whispered. “Fucking idiot!” In those two hissed words, Max
heard the pent-up fury and blame that simmered in this old man, emotions that spoke of some form of defeat. And it was terrifying.

Ray glanced at Max. His expression was unreadable. Then he looked at Gabrielle, and Max saw something there that he had seen in his own mirrored reflection many times since leaving New Orleans: love, and loss.

“You know,” Ray said.

Gabrielle nodded.

Mireault, twisted and withered as he was, suddenly sat up straighter. “What does she—?”

Ray stood and leaned across the table. As he did so he pulled Mireault closer to him, reached for his head, for all the world looking as if he wanted to give his brother a kiss.

Gabrielle grabbed Max's hand—her skin cool, dry, distant—and shoved him to one side.

“Now's the time, brother,” Ray said. Mireault squealed something that Max could not hear…

But then Coco moved, and Max understood.

As Mireault lifted his clawed hand to frantically wave his men back, Coco pulled a gun, stepped forward, and shot Ray through the head.

“No!” Mireault wailed, his voice that of a child.

Ray slumped to the table, whining as he turned his head and reached for Mireault once more.

Coco shot him two more times.

Beside Max, Gabrielle gasped and went rigid, her eyes wide, mouth slack. She squeezed his hand so tight that he felt the bones crunched together, knuckles popping, and he tugged hard to remove his hand from her grip. Some dreg of
the magic he'd gathered and used remained, because he sensed what was happening to her—smelled the history of New Orleans, saw its present sad state, and tasted the hope that existed once again in its future.

Mireault was laughing and crying. Coco looked aghast at what he had done, and he had already dropped the gun, both hands reaching hesitantly for his master as confusion and fear took hold.

Oh, you'll get yours,
Max thought, and he found it in himself to smile at Coco's stunned expression.

Mireault's tears and laughter filled the bar, and the sound of Ray's blood dripping from the table seemed just as loud.

Gabrielle went slack, sitting back down next to the dead man. As her hand loosened around Max's and she let him go at last, he felt a dreadful loss.
Hold me,
he thought.
Hold on to me forever; maybe you can no longer love but I can, and can't that be enough?

But she was already different, already changed. “Mireault,” she said, breathing heavily.

“Oracle,” he said, tears still streaming from his eyes. “We'll be seeing…” He waved a hand, shook his head.

“I'm sure,” Gabrielle said.

The old man stood and his Tordu helpers, Coco among them, held his arms and guided him backward out of the bar. His gaze never left the face of his dead brother.

Max left her in the bar, and as the door closed gently behind him, he was no longer certain that Gabrielle was even in
there at all. From outside, the building looked and felt deserted and abandoned, and the street echoed with noises that all originated elsewhere.

He walked, and after a while he managed to hail a cab. He told the driver to take him to the airport. The young guy raised an eyebrow and shrugged, as if barely understanding why anyone would ever wish to leave the city.

Max leaned against the window and watched the streets, the squares, the ruined places passing by. Gabrielle's parting words echoed to him, and they were already taking on the tone of a haunting.
Max, it was always you in that attic with me.