Darker Angels - By Daniel Abraham Page 0,41

checked, but since you specifically asked that no contact be made..."

"No, don't. Just send me the addresses and I can take it from there."

"I thought you might say that. Did you know, by any chance, that Glapion was Marie Laveau's married name?"

"Marie Laveau, like the Marie Laveau? Voodoo queen of New Orleans?"

"The very one. Amelie Glapion appears to be in direct apostolic line," she said. "She's the silent partner of something called the Voodoo Heart Temple. Despite the name, it's a retail shop. I thought you might want it looked into?"

"Yes," I said. "That would be great."

"I'll proceed on that as well, then," she said. "And, dear? There is reason to suspect that Amelie may have powerful friends. Be careful."

My lawyer had never said anything like that in the time I'd known her. Her tone of voice was flat and considered. It carried more weight than shouting would have.

"I will," I said.

"Excellent. I'll be in touch."

I leaned against the kitchen wall, looking at the cell phone. Something was shifting uneasily in the back of my mind. Aubrey appeared in the doorway.

"Are you all right?"

"Just fine," I said.

"You sure?"

"Not a hundred percent, no," I said. "Middle eighties, maybe."

"I kind of dropped a bomb," he said. "I really thought you knew about your mother. The way Eric talked about it, I assumed it was common knowledge. I mean, not common. Family business."

"Family business," I said. The phrase tugged at me. Glapion was related to Marie Laveau, the most famous voodoo priestess of all time. Sabine was Amelie's granddaughter. The thought fluttered in the back of my mind, soft and elusive as a moth. If I hadn't been tired and jet-lagged, if I hadn't had three kinds of emotional whiplash in the last half hour, if I'd gone to bed instead of dancing and drinking, maybe it would have come clear.

As it was, I didn't figure it out until it was way too late.
Chapter 11
ELEVEN

"They act like it will all come back," Karen said as we walked across Jackson Square. "It won't. Nothing comes back, it just moves on. The natural state of the world is recovering from the last disaster."

She looked over at me, surprised by my laughter.

"Sorry," I said. "It's just that I have about five different things going on right now, and that describes all of them."

It was the awkward hour of the morning, too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. Jackson Square was full anyway. Fortune tellers sat at folding card tables all around the square, each offering up some small divinatory specialty. Crystal tarot. Energy reading. Palm reading. Aubrey and Ex planned to go to the safe house with Chogyi Jake and perform the rites that would make our cargo van difficult for the loa to find. Karen and I had taken the job of checking the six addresses of Amelie Glapion; playing the shell game.

Only first, we were on our way to the Café du Monde for beignets and coffee. Gawking tourist girl, me.

The air was heavy with moisture, the wide sweep of the Mississippi just up a flight of stairs, echoing the cathedral directly across the square. On one side, the eternal hope and faith of religion, and across from it, the uncaring, amoral water that had drowned the city. Only not this part. Not here. So maybe the cathedral meant something more after all.

"It's a mess," Karen said. "There are still people paying property tax on houses that haven't existed since the hurricane. They can't get the assessors out fast enough. Gentilly. St. Bernard Parish. There are parts of this city that are dead. And it's better now. Oh God, it's better than it was right after the storm."

"You sound like you love the city," I said, then pointed at the tightly packed chairs under the awning. "Is that the place?"

"The very one," she said with a confirming nod. "I wasn't here before. I mean, I passed through once or twice when I was working with the bureau. But not since. Not until the rider decided to come back here. And no, I don't love New Orleans. I respect it. I respect anything that can take a bad hit and not go down."

Like my parent's marriage, I thought. Like Karen herself. Or even the serial-killing rider we were hunting, for that matter.

I had meant to spend the evening after we got back from the safe house reading up about Legba and Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Heart Temple, and demonically possessed serial killers in general.