This Wicked Game

TWENTY-FOUR

They piled into Eddie’s car, Xander in front, the three girls in the back. It didn’t take Claire long to realize they were heading back into Treme.

After about half an hour, they turned onto North Claiborne. The highway loomed overhead, blocking out the sun on one side of the street. A row of run-down shops lined the other. Eddie parked next to the curb in front of an old building. The structure itself had seen better days, but the red paint job was fresh, the sidewalk swept, the windows gleaming.

For the first time in days, Claire had the urge to take a picture. Too bad she’d left her camera at home when she and Xander had left for Treme. Was it really just this morning?

Eddie got out of the car.

“What is this place?” Claire asked, stepping out into the heat.

“The only one I can think of that might have an answer about the Cold Blood spell,” Eddie said, leading the way to the bright blue door.

They followed him inside and were immediately plunged into cooler air scented with incense. Claire caught sandalwood, patchouli, frankincense. The light was dim, and she reached out for Xander, touching his arm as she waited for her eyes to adjust. Sasha and Allegra came in behind them and shut the door.

“Be right there.” The voice was slightly husky and came from somewhere beyond the front of the cluttered room. It was followed by the sound of shuffled paper and the slow drag of something heavy being moved across the floor.

Sasha and Claire shuffled nervously from foot to foot while Xander peered into the dim recesses at the back of the room. Eddie, unfazed, leaned against the wooden counter.

Claire took advantage of the time to look around. They appeared to be in a large storefront, although it wasn’t like any store she’d ever seen. Bookshelves lined the walls, and an odd assortment of objects was stacked haphazardly on shelves, tables, even the floor. She recognized some of it: gris-gris bags in various states of disrepair, stained and unraveling dolls, sticks of incense—some of them half burned—standing up in a small vase.

If the Kincaids’ supply shop resembled an old-fashioned general store, this place looked like some kind of demented thrift shop. Even after all the years Claire had spent working around voodoo supplies, she couldn’t make out any kind of organization in the jumble of objects, most of which seemed old, used, or damaged.

The sound of approaching footsteps drew her eyes to a narrow aisle between shelves leading to the back of the store.

“There! Sorry about that,” a woman said, her face and body just a smudge in the shadows. “Seems I never stop having to reorganize!” She stepped into the light cast from an old lamp on an oak table. Claire was surprised at how slight she was, both in height and in build. Her skin was as pale as porcelain, her hair even blonder than Claire’s and separated into dreadlocks. Blue eyes skimmed the rest of them before landing on Eddie. She grinned. “Had a feeling I’d be seeing you soon.”

He stepped toward her with a sly smile. “Did ya now?”

They embraced and stepped away from each other.

“Therese Charbonnet,” he said, gesturing to them with his hand. “This is Xander, Sasha, Allegra, and Claire. Guys, this is a good friend of mine, Therese Charbonnet.”

“Nice to meet you.” Her eyes rested on Claire. “You’re Marie’s kin.”

Claire nodded.

Therese’s eyes lingered on hers before taking in the others and coming back to Eddie. “You’re looking for recipes, dark ones, yes?”

“That’s right,” Eddie said. “Cold Blood.”

“Cold Blood?”

“You know it?”

She thought about it. “Not by that name, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t come across it as something else.”

Eddie shrugged. “Don’t have much else. We think it was Marie the First’s. Could be as far back as the eighteen eighties, although it could also have been reproduced somewhere along the way.”

“Wait a minute,” Allegra broke in. “How did you—”

“How did I know what you were coming for?” Therese asked.

“Well, yeah. We only showed Eddie the letters a couple of hours ago.”

Therese’s eyebrows shot up as she regarded Allegra. “I imagine you would be able to figure that out better than anyone else.”

Allegra sucked in her breath. “You see things? Before they happen?”

Therese hesitated. “Sometimes. And sometimes I just know.”

Allegra couldn’t stop staring at her, and for the first time, it occurred to Claire that maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d been feeling alone. Being a part of the Guild, really a part of it, and even knowing your place in it obviously didn’t guarantee smooth sailing. If Allegra was the only one of the firstborns with true psychic ability, it had to freak her out at least a little. And if her parents were as close-lipped about her gifts as the Guild was about everything else, she probably hadn’t gotten a lot of guidance. Judging from the look on her face, she had plenty of questions.

“So!” Therese looked around the shop. “Welcome to my humble abode. I’m sure it isn’t up to Guild Code, but we do have things here that can’t be found anywhere else. No guarantees you’ll find what you’re looking for, but let’s see what we can do. Follow me.”

She led them toward the back of the store. They passed tables and shelves, all groaning with the weight of so much stuff that Claire wondered if it was going to fall on top of them any minute.

“What exactly is this place?” Sasha said.

Therese’s laugh was musical as they rounded a corner at the back of the store and entered another room. “I call it the orphanage.”

“The orphanage?” Xander repeated.

“Yep.” She ushered them into the room. The walls were lined with books, the room separated into four equal spaces by yet more shelves. “I collect relics, books, historical accounts, recipes, antiques . . . anything related to the craft.”

Xander looked around. “Where do you get it all?”

“Estate sales, local thrift stores, yard sales, and online auction sites,” she said. “Anywhere I can.”

“You mean anywhere we can,” Eddie said.

Therese nodded. “Right. Eddie . . . subsidizes my efforts.”

Sasha looked around. “So this isn’t a Guild-sanctioned store.”

Therese laughed. “You could say that. Then again, the Guild isn’t really interested in what we do.”

“But why collect all this stuff?” Claire asked, looking from Eddie to Therese. “What are you going to do with it all?”

“Use it, we hope,” Eddie answered.

“You’re collecting it to ward off black magic,” Allegra said softly.

“That’s part of it,” Eddie said. “But we’re also trying to preserve the history of the craft before it gets waterlogged in the next hurricane or lost in a fire or thrown out with the trash. There’s a lot to be learned from the old ways. Even the doll babies were wrapped differently back in the old days. For all we know those kinds of things make a difference in the strength and purity of a spell. But you’re right; having weapons in the arsenal to deal with threats like Max is a big part of our motivation.”

“So if the Guild won’t take care of it, you will?” Claire suggested.

He gave her a slow nod, his expression grave. “Something like that.”

She was still thinking about that when Eddie spoke to Therese. “So what’s our best bet? The wall by the window? Or have you moved everything around again?”

“I had to reorganize last week when a new batch of books came in from an estate in the bayou. Let’s see . . .” She looked around, like she was trying to remember where she put everything. “Let’s start with that shelf, there.” She pointed to a shelf against the wall. “If that doesn’t work. It’s anybody’s guess.”

Eddie sighed. “Okay, let’s get to it.”

He assigned them each shelves, and they took seats wherever they could find them. Claire started at the halfway point, planning to work her way down while Xander worked his way up from the same shelf.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Therese said from the other end of the shelf.

“We don’t really know.” Eddie pulled a book covered in tattered green cloth from the shelf and opened it. “We found mention of it in an old letter, but there weren’t any ingredients and there wasn’t anything specific about what it does.”

“Maybe we should pull anything having to do with blood,” Therese suggested. “We can go through them all when we’re done and see what we’ve got.”

“That works,” Eddie said.

For a while they were silent, lost in the never-ending supply of books, the musty smell of old pages, and the words of long-dead Mambo Priestesses and Houngan Priests. An hour later, Sasha looked up from a book in her lap.

“Not gonna lie; some of this stuff’s starting to creep me out.”

“I know what you mean,” Allegra said. “I had no idea most of these recipes even existed.”

“If they’re even real,” Xander said.

“So you’re telling me, you believe in the craft’s ability to heal and protect but not to do harm?” Eddie asked him.

Xander thought about it. “I don’t know. It just seems too . . . out there, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Eddie said, firmly closing the book in his hands and leaning forward in his metal chair. “Where do you think modern voodoo came from? Why do you think that in a world that demands a scientific explanation for everything, people still turn to the craft?”

Xander shrugged. “Why do they turn to religion? I mean, I may believe in God, but that doesn’t mean I believe every single word of the Bible.”

“Xander thinks voodoo’s power is mostly in the herbology and root work,” Claire explained to Eddie and Therese. “Kind of like homeopathic medicine with a little bit of conjured energy stirred in.”

“Okay,” Eddie said, “but if magic and medicine can mix to make something beneficial, why can’t it mix to make something harmful? How is it any different from modern medicine, which can heal, but can also destroy if used in the wrong way?”

“I don’t know,” Xander admitted. “I guess I haven’t given much thought to black magic.”

Therese gave a forlorn sigh.

“What?”

“Just . . . you guys are a long way from your roots, that’s all.”

Xander flushed a little. Claire lowered her eyes back to the book in front of her, wondering why more and more, it seemed Eddie, and now Therese, was the voice of reason.

The light from outside—already minimal when they’d arrived—had faded to gray by the time they finished all the books in the back room. Therese had long since gone back to work at the front of the store. Claire stood up and stretched. She’d made a list on her phone of spells involving blood and had stacked the books containing them on the floor so they wouldn’t get mixed back in with the others.

“What did you get?” Eddie asked her.

She looked at her phone. “Something to boil the blood, something to turn it to ash, and one recipe that seemed to stop it from flowing.”

“Could that be it?” Xander asked. “I mean, if you turned blood cold enough, it might not move through someone’s veins.”

“Anything’s possible,” Eddie said. “But without the original spell or something clearly pointing to Cold Blood, there’s no way to know for sure.”

“What did you guys find?” Claire asked them.

She listened while they checked their respective lists. Although some of the spells were freaky enough to give Claire chills, nothing came up that could be clearly interpreted as Cold Blood.

Allegra crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Now what? There has to be somewhere else we can look.”

Claire realized how surreal her world had become as they all turned to Eddie. Just a few days ago, they had thought he was some crazy Guild outcast. Now he was the only one really helping them.

“Let me talk to Therese,” he said. “Maybe she can ask around some of the more . . . unconventional channels.”

“Now that sounds intriguing,” Allegra said.

“That’s one word for it,” Eddie said wryly.

Eddie filled Therese in on their failed search, and she agreed do some digging for information on the Cold Blood spell. They said good-bye and headed back to Eddie’s car in the twilight, the sun almost completely lost behind the looming overpass.

Claire gazed out the window as they drove back to the Cup to pick up their cars. She thought about the Cold Blood spell, wondering what had happened to it. How could such a powerful spell, one that struck fear even in Marie, just disappear into the vapor of history?

She glanced at Sasha and turned back to the window with her heart in her throat. The Drummonds and hers were the only families left to suffer a break-in.

They were almost out of time.

They parted at the Cup and agreed to touch base the next day. Eddie waited for Sasha and Allegra to drive off before turning to Claire and Xander.

“You be careful now,” Eddie said. “And I don’t just mean on the drive home.”

Claire had one foot in Xander’s car when she remembered something. “Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“You never told us what you were seeing. In your dream about me?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he walked back toward them, stopping when he was right in front of Claire.

He sighed, his eyes dark with regret. “The Houngan was bleeding you. And your blood was being used to kill the others.”