I was hoping to figure him out a bit, see if he had some weakness I could exploit.
The pause was long, as if he were weighing what he wanted to say. “You may call me Clovis.”
I stopped and looked at him, finally getting a good glance at what was inside his hood. The light was dim, but there was enough for me to see his gaunt face with its tight, sallow skin and strange eyes. I could see they were black, like a raven’s wing, but they glittered with many colors.
His face was not truly . . . human.
I made my mouth move even as fear filled me. “If I were going to pick a name, I’d pick one a duck ton better than Clovis. If you were a kid, you’d get picked on for that name. Bogus Clovis. Something like that.”
Louis groaned. “Stop trying to piss him off, and move, you twat!”
Twat, did Louis just call me a twat?
Before I thought better of it, I took a swing at him and cuffed him upside the head, which threw both him and his buddy, Clovis, back a few steps. Did I dare make a break for it?
Yup, time to run. I might not get another chance.
Okay, so hobble run. My ankle screamed bloody murder at me as I forced myself to take off from Clovis and Louis.
Louis screamed, “Don’t leave me with him!”
“He’s your friend, you make nice. I don’t have to!” I yelled back. I doubted I’d get away this easily, but I was sure as hell going to try. What I wouldn’t be doing was going back for Louis. He’d tried to steal the fairy cross for his boss. We weren’t on the same side anymore. My ankle throbbed, and each step felt like the gator had its teeth on me again, but I kept moving.
Because there were two issues with me finding Gran. One, I didn’t think it was a good idea to give Clovis what he wanted. (He needed her for the full spell, I was sure of it. And if it was as bad as Penny thought, we could not let him have it.) And two, which was a rather important point, I had no idea how to find her. I mean, if I followed my gut, it would take me home to Savannah, all the way back to the Hollows and the angel statue. Because right then, I wanted to bury my head in some familiar sand and pretend everything was okay.
A roar built up behind me that was a mixture of a human voice and something unearthly, the word prohibere riding the sound, and I redoubled my efforts despite my legs suddenly feeling even more sluggish. I might not have known exactly what that word meant, but I knew it didn’t bode well for me. The ground rumbled like it had with the statue in Jackson Square.
I ran for several minutes, sweating and cursing under my breath. This was not going well. I was running for all I was worth, and I knew it wasn’t fast enough. It would not take much for Clovis and Louis to catch up to me at this rate.
A whimper on my lips, I whispered a plea for Kinkly or Crash to find me. Of course, I knew in my heart that Clovis had helped set them up too, keeping them busy so they wouldn’t be around to help me. Maybe he’d given Karissa the idea to look for the wings? Maybe he’d been hedging his bets, thinking she’d keep Crash busy and might, as a bonus, find them. Easier to steal from her than to find them in thin air. And then . . . nope, I had to focus on this moment. I’d think about what was going on elsewhere later.
I took corner after corner, weaving my way through the area, looking for something, anything I could use to stave off the necromancer, and coming up empty-handed.
“Sweet baby jaysus,” I hissed under my breath as I took a corner and ran smack into one of the tonton macoutes. Yelping, I bounced off the weirdly stiff body, like it was made of leather. I guess it was, only the leather was made of human skin.
Gah.
I ducked under the reaching arms and grasping hands, getting a good whiff of something sharp and acidic leaking in drips from the body. I grabbed the edge of the building I was next to and used it to slingshot myself around the