to stand the sensations. And I’d only made it out because of Robert.
We were on Treme Street, and Jinx headed straight for one of the rusted gates. It was closed, the two sides linked by several chains, but she put her head down and plowed threw them as if they were wet tissue paper.
“I love being an elephant. I need to do it more often,” she said and promptly reached up with her trunk and grabbed me around the waist. She set me on the ground, and the second my feet hit the surface, I crumpled.
Jinx pushed at me with her trunk. “Seriously? Are you just being a weak old lady, or is it really that bad?”
I dug my fingers into her trunk as if I could pull her closer. “Keep going, find Crash. Go!”
I put as much emphasis as possible into that last word, and with it I felt a pull on my magic. She let out a belching grunt and then trundled off, dragging me with her. Sure, she could have put me on her back, but that would have been the nice thing to do.
“I’m going to ask for a lot of books for this,” she hollered at me.
I rolled onto my hands and knees, unable to keep what little food I had left in me where it was supposed to stay.
Only suddenly Jinx squealed, trumpeting, and then she was back to a tiny spider, scuttling away.
A hand gripped the back of my hair as I continued to heave, and dragged me to my feet, which meant puke ran down my chin and onto my shirt. I slapped weakly at the hands, feeling the death around him. “Damn you, Bogus Clovis. Leave me alone!”
“Stop fighting him!” Louis snapped. “You cannot fight his power. You aren’t strong enough.”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black!” I spat back at him, hoping my anger would help me get and keep my legs under me.
Clovis tightened his hold on my hair and shoved me forward. “You broke through the remaining pieces of your gran’s spell on the cemetery for me, thank you. I can feel your gran through you. This way.” He turned to the left, holding me out in front of him like some sort of human dowsing rod.
Vile creature!
You are not welcome!
Kill her.
You let him in!
The voices were back, pounding into my skull worse than ever. Yet, I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t being allowed to. This was why they didn’t want me here? Because something in me opened the cemetery for Clovis?
Every time my legs went weak, he shoved me, pushing me ahead of him. We wove between the aboveground tombs, the pathways made of concrete without a stitch of grass. That is, if I didn’t count the few overly tough weeds that had broken through the manmade paths in order to reach for the sun. The smell of rain hung in the air, along with a hint of smoke. I tried slapping away his hands but found myself struggling as though he were an adult and I a naughty child in his grip.
With each step we took, the sun brightened the sky a little farther until it was full daylight. It was a dark day, granted, presided over by rainclouds, but dawn had come, and it gave me a little hope.
“Louis, you can’t possibly see this as a good idea!” I said as I was pushed around another tomb. “Come on, dude, help me!”
Louis said nothing, so I pressed on. “They’re trying to find the ingredients for a spell, and it isn’t a good one! This is only going to help them.”
“And who are ‘they’?” Louis asked. “Who are we to be afraid of if you know so much?”
“Well, obviously, Bogus Clovis here!” I yelped as the hand in my hair tightened. Weirdly enough, although the metaphysical attack I’d been undergoing wasn’t under my control, the buzzing under my skin had lessened, the needles that had wanted to drive into me before had eased their attack. “And whoever he is working for or with!”
Perhaps she is not the enemy.
She doesn’t like the death bringer.
The voices began to confer with one another, their hold on my mind easing.
Louis grunted and slid between French and English. “Je ne suis pas surpris. Vous ne savez rien. Of course, you know nothing. Perhaps you should have listened when we told you that you should not be in the Hollows!”
Indignation roared through me. “You were one of the ones who supported me! Don’t