CHAPTER TWELVE
I stared at the body for a few moments, having a hard time soaking it all in, what just happened, when I heard Perry whimper from behind me.
I snapped out of it, ignoring the implausibility of what happened, and went to her. She was huddled against the wall where Tuffy G—or Tuffy G A.D.—had pinned her, ready to take a bite out of her, and she was shaking and crying. I put my hands on both sides of her shoulders and looked at her as closely as possible in the glow of the streetlights. Her eyes were wet with tears but she looked okay otherwise. Her beautiful neck was fine.
“You’re okay, baby,” I told her. “He didn’t get you.”
She shook her head, tears running down her face. “I don’t understand. He was dead. I saw him die.”
“We all saw him die. And now we saw him die again.”
“But why was he trying to hurt me? God, Dex, he was trying to bite me! I thought these weren’t the real undead!”
“I don’t know, but there’s something upstairs you need to see.”
“Does it involve candles?” Maximus asked.
I turned my head to look at him, keeping Perry firmly in my grasp. “Yes, why?”
He was looking toward the attic door. Smoke was beginning to filter out of it.
“Shit!” I yelled. Tuffy must have knocked them over on his way after me. “What do we do?”
“We get the fuck out of here, right now,” he said, picking up his camera from the ground and giving it a quick once over. He’d thrown it pretty hard, but from what I saw, only the lens looked cracked.
“Shouldn’t we wait for the police or fire trucks?” Perry sniveled.
“No,” Maximus and I both said in unison. She nodded, understanding, and wiped her nose. Maximus wanted the NOPD as far away from us as possible and I wasn’t about to get our footage taken away from us again. Besides, between the three of us, we’d actually gotten something, I knew it.
Now the smoke was getting thicker and flames crackled at the top of the stairs, illuminating a slice of floor in the flickering light. If we stood around much longer, we’d be swallowed up fast.
“Let’s go,” I said, giving her shoulders a squeeze. “We have to run.”
At that, there was a thump from up above us. Something or someone in the attic.
She swallowed hard, her eyes searching the ceiling. “What else did you find up there?”
“I’ll tell you in the truck,” I said, pulling her. I didn’t see anyone else in the attic, except Tuffy. I hoped it was just the house starting to collapse on itself.
I picked up my camera, which had skittered across the ground, and we quickly hopped down the aging stairs, careful to sidestep the ones we’d broken. The fire grew louder behind us, and once we hit the main floor, I was met with the idea that the house might not let us leave at all.
I was about to warn Maximus about this, but he crossed through the front door to the porch easily and Perry and I followed. I glanced down at the door frame as I stepped over it, and noticed a thin line of salt. If I had the time to stop and investigate it, I felt like I’d discover it went all the way around the house.
Maximus was already at the truck and starting it, Perry was climbing in the front seat, her eyes begging me to run faster. I caught up and jumped in the back, looking up at the house as we pulled away in time to see flames spread along the roof.
The window in the attic shattered, the sound competing with the noisy truck as we roared off, and I wondered if it was the heat that caused it or if someone had broken the window, trying to escape. And if it were the latter, should I have felt relieved or not?
Maximus drove like a madman out of the neighborhood, all of us silent and breathing hard, pulses racing.
Perry turned around in her seat to look at me. “What happened upstairs, Dex? Where did he come from?”
“Aside from a fresh grave? I don’t know.” I explained to them what I saw in the attic, the circle of candles, the live snake pinned to the ground, the hanging chicken feet, then Tuffy G rising from the corner of the room, glassy-eyed and enraged. I left out the part about my mother. They would have thought I was nuts.
“I captured it all, I think. Until he started running at me and then I just ran like hell.”
“Leading him to me. My god, I thought I was done for,” she said with a shiver. “He was dead but he wasn’t dead. I saw him on the machine for just a second before I dropped it. He was orange-red, just like the rest of us.” She was still visibly upset but she was handling herself a lot better than I was. My gut was twisted up over the image of him manhandling her, over what depraved thing could have happened if Maximus and I hadn’t acted fast, while my brain was warped over what I’d witnessed in the attic, the candles, the animals, my mother, the pull of the house, the salt.
“This couldn’t have been an accident,” I said suddenly. “Someone knew we were going there.”
“No shit,” Maximus said dryly.
“Well if that’s what you’re thinking, then why aren’t we talking about it, huh?”
“I still think it’s Ambrosia,” Perry said stiffly.
Maximus’s eyes flew to the mirror to meet mine. I knew we were thinking the same thing, that Perry didn’t like Ambrosia, so of course she’d think that of her. But call it a gut feeling, I knew Ambrosia meant no harm.
“Ambrosia’s not capable of that,” Maximus told her. “She doesn’t have the power, she’s not even been initiated into the Societe La Belle Venus yet. She has years and years to go.”
“Who told you that?” she asked.
“Rose did.”
Perry crossed her arms in a huff. “You’re both thinking with your dicks.”
I nearly laughed. When didn’t I think with my dick? But there were better times to make jokes and this wasn’t one of them, not when a zombie nearly tried to munch on my girlfriend.
I exhaled and sat back, trying to calm myself and go over what had just happened, when I noticed we were passing the bed and breakfast.
I tapped Maximus on the shoulder. “Where are we going?”
He eyed me sternly in the mirror. “We’re going to get Rose. And then we’re going to see Maryse. I want some damn answers.”
***
Rose was visibly worried when we pulled her from her bar duties, enough that she didn’t mind leaving Nameless to one of her newer employees while she got in the truck with us and headed out to the bayou.
We told her everything from start to finish, but she was particularly interested in what I saw upstairs.
“What color were the candles?” she asked.
“Black. Some were red. But most were black.”
“Did they have names carved on them?”
I leaned my elbows onto my knees and eyed her as she drove, Maximus now riding shotgun. “Why yes, while this fucking snake was dying a painful death in the middle of the room, the chicken feet were swaying in the imaginary breeze, and I saw a dead man rise from behind a full-length mirror that reflected nothing back, I decided I had enough time to pick up one of the candles and get a better look at it. I wanted to know if it was scented or not.” She stared at me blankly. “No, I never saw if there were names carved on them.”
“Did they look oily?”
I frowned, remembering that they had. “More so than normal. I thought maybe it was the wax.”
“Maybe, maybe not. It could be sacred oils. Maryse will tell us.”
Maryse might be behind all this, I wanted to say. I bit my lip and sat back. Perry wrapped her arm around mine.
Soon we were coasting down the bumpy dirt road lit only by Rose’s headlights. The dark trees and swamp water flew past us, and I could only imagine what we’d see if we swung the lights that way. Probably a sea of glowing eyes, watching our every move, waiting for the next bite.
Rose parked the truck beside Maryse’s house and tossed us the mosquito spray again. “Cover your mouths and noses and spray it in here. You’ll get eaten alive the minute you step out of the car.” While we coated ourselves with it, coughing at the toxicity, she pulled two flashlights out of the center console, keeping one for herself and giving me the other. “Don’t want you taking a wrong turn and stepping into the swamp.”
“Is there anything in this city that won’t try and take a bite out of you?” Perry mumbled as we got out of the truck. The whine of the insects was everywhere, buzzing dangerously close to my ears. Despite how badly I stank to them, I still felt a few of them stinging at my neck and arms.
We huddled after Rose, sticking tightly to the path, and walked up to the screened porch. Before we entered, she aimed her flashlight at the water. I was right. There were eyes in the water looking at us. There was also Ambrosia’s air boat. Perry made a grumbling sound at the sight and I patted her shoulder, hoping that would make her feel better somehow and fully knowing that it wouldn’t.
For her sake, I decided I’d try and look at Ambrosia through her eyes and try not to discount her as easily as I wanted to. It was hard trying to think like Perry and see her in a not-so-flattering light but I did it.
We walked inside the house; Rose didn’t even bother to knock.
“Hello?” she said as we stood in the foyer and I slowly shut the front door behind us. I heard things skittering about on the porch and didn’t want them running inside with us, whatever they were. I wondered if there was a rodent problem in these parts and if Voodoo priestesses ever used them for whatever rituals they did.
A cat meowed from the corner of the darkened living room, scaring the shit out of me again.
“It’s just Mojo,” Rose explained in a hush. She aimed her flashlight over to where the cat was and we all sucked in our breath in unison.
Maryse was sitting in an armchair, upright, eyes glinting as she stared at us. A black cat was in her arms. I was starting to think this was a bad idea, no matter how badly we wanted answers. Then I remembered Tuffy G going after Perry and I swallowed down my fear and stood my ground.
“Maryse,” Rose said breathlessly, “you scared us.”
Suddenly the lamp beside Maryse switched on and the room was illuminated. It looked the same as before, except for Maryse’s more or less lifeless body and the squinty-eyed cat on her lap. Both of them took their time to glare at every single one of us.
Maryse sucked at her dentures. “I scared you? How do you think I feel with four nitwits walking into my house at midnight? A little warning would have been nice.”
“We’re sorry, Mambo,” Rose said, remembering the formality. “We’ve come here to talk to you about something very important. I know you don’t want to see us again but this is a matter of life or death.”