But nothing like that had happened for months, and by the time I had four flights booked from Athens International to the Louis Armstrong International Airport, I was feeling more awake and alive than I had in days. Probably the coffee was kicking in too.
It was four in the morning and still a long way from dawn when I called Karen Black.
"I've talked to most of the guys, and it looks like we can get there in about two days. So Thursday, middle of the morning, but I'll call you as soon as we're in and settled. That sound okay?"
"That's great," she said. I could hear the smile in her tone, and I smiled back. Always good to save the day. Her next words were more sober. "We should talk about the price."
"We can do that once we get there," I said.
"I can do that," she said, and paused. "I don't mean to... When I called before, I was a little scattered. I didn't say how sorry I am to hear about Eric. It was rude of me."
"Don't sweat it," I said. "And thanks. I was... I was sorry to lose him. I'm a little thin on family generally speaking, and he was pretty much the good one."
"He was a good man," she said, her voice as soft as flannel. To my surprise, I found myself tearing up a little. We said our good-byes and I killed the connection.
I spent the next hour with the fine folks at Google, reading up on serial killers who had claimed to be demons. I got a little sidetracked on a guy called the Axeman of New Orleans who'd slaughtered a bunch of people almost a century ago. In addition to claiming to be from hell, he said he'd pass by any house where jazz music was playing, which seemed a lot more New Orleans than lamb's blood on the lintel.
Chogyi Jake woke at six, a habit that he maintained in any time zone. His head hadn't been shaved in a few days, and the black halo of stubble was just starting to form around his scalp. He smiled and bowed to me, the movement half joking and half sincere.
"Getting an early start?" he asked, nodding at the dun-colored landscape drawing itself out of darkness outside our windows. The Aegean glowed turquoise and gold in the light of the rising sun.
"More like an early finish," I said. "There's been a change of plans."
Chapter 2
TWO
I stood on the street, a rented minivan against the ruined curb behind us. Thick, wet American air pressed in on my skin, indefinably different than the damp of Europe. I looked down at the limp MapQuest printout in my hand, then up at the ruin where the house was supposed to be. The walls were covered in dirt and grit, and they slumped ominously to my right. Grass higher than my hips swallowed the concrete rubble that had been a walkway. The windows were gone, the interior walls all stripped down to water-blackened studs.
I walked up two steps of warped boards. Flecks of green paint still clung to them. A huge X had been spray-painted on the door, something that looked like a date above it, letters and numbers to the left and right, and a three beneath it. I could watch Chogyi Jake make his way around the side of the house and toward the back, his shadow visible through the holes in the walls. There wasn't enough tissue left on the house's bones to stop the light.
"Are we sure this is the right address?" Aubrey asked.
I put the key the lawyer had express-mailed me into the lock. It felt like I was dragging it through gravel, but the mechanism turned. I pushed the door open to the smell of rotting wood and mold.
"Yeah," I said. "This is the place."
Ex said something obscene in a reverent voice. The rest of the neighborhood, spreading out around us for blocks, was the same. Ruined streets as much pothole as pavement, shells of houses with only a handful restored or in the process of being restored. Tall grass. I was standing in front of an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar wound, and that was just my house. Every ruined house or bare foundation for blocks around was the same thing.
Hurricane Katrina had rolled into New Orleans three years before. I'd been in the long breathless pause between high