power, you'll make it through better than when you started."
The door of the temple shifted. I looked down at my palm, but trained my attention on my peripheral vision. I didn't want to stare, but also I had to know when to glance up.
"And this is important, so you listen," the girl said.
"Okay," I said.
"It wasn't your mama's fault. She loves you, and she loves your daddy. She had a worm inside her when it happened, so you be gentle with her."
Adrenaline flooded me, cold and fast and electric. The girl was looking up at me through her eyelashes.
"What?" I said, at the same moment that the teenager who'd emerged from the temple called out.
"Daria! You get back here right now!"
The girl and I looked across the street. Sabine Glapion stood on the far sidewalk, her hands on her hips, her face bent with impatience.
"I've got to go," the girl said, dropping my hand. "You remember what I said, now."
"I will," I managed as she skipped across to her sister.
Chapter 12
TWELVE
I checked Ex, Aubrey, and Chogyi Jake out of the hotel as soon as we could get there. Karen and I took their stuff and piled it in the back of the rental, then drove like hell to the safe house. No cultist-driven deathmobiles pursued us. Mystical beasts failed to rise from the lake to swallow us. The only change was a strong wind that kicked up, stippling the water with small, angry waves and pushing the minivan to the left. I didn't even start to calm down until we reached the safe house.
I'd sat there, on the street corner, with Daria Glapion. The girl with the Sight had held my hand, told my fortune, and Legba hadn't come out to kill me. I felt like a bullet had buzzed past my ear, and it left me a little nauseated. Karen, on the other hand, was equal parts glee and banked violence. She paced through the living room like a tiger in a cage, her blue eyes bright. Chogyi Jake, Ex, Aubrey, and I all sat on the couch or the floor. Behind her, the picture window blazed with the red and gray of sunset. The wind complained and threatened, and the trees bent and shifted like they were nervous.
She was rubbing her hands together in delight. I'd always thought that was a figure of speech. Ex looked serious, but an echo of Karen's smile haunted the corners of his mouth, her pleasure reflecting off him like sunlight off the moon in a reminder of their relationship. It bothered me that it bothered me.
"We should still try to draw the girl out," Ex said. "Legba is going to have wards on the apartment just the way we do. Only since it's a rider, they're likely to be... unpleasant."
"Good point," Karen said. "We need a way to get her out of the building. Something that she can't ignore. Fire, maybe."
Chogyi Jake squinted and frowned. A particularly loud gust of wind rattled the back door. I didn't know I intended to speak until I did it.
"I think we should warn her."
Karen frowned.
"Who?" she said.
"Sabine. If she's in danger, she should know. If she understands what's going on, she can help us. Work with us."
"Why would she do that?" Ex said. "Some stranger off the street comes in and tells her not to trust her own grandmother?"
I hesitated, trying to focus my thoughts.
"Sabine must have seen the changes in her. I mean that's the point, isn't it? Legba was exiled, and now, after the hurricane, it's back. Amelie must have changed. The way she acts. The things she can do. Legba can't have been in her for more than two and a half years, I mean at the outside. And probably not as long as that, or Sabine would be dead by now, right?"