Birthright (Residue Series #2) (41 page)

Knowing he was referring to what happened this afternoon with Sartorius, I felt my heart weaken for him. Despite what I was putting him through, after all these months, his attention was still on my welfare. “I’m fine,” I replied and gave him a faint smile.

He nodded but didn’t return the smile.

“You?”

“Fine,” he repeated and turned away, noticeably
repeating my answer.
I knew what this meant. He was fine with what happened earlier
,
but his heart…
it
was still broken.

Guilt overwhelmed me
,
pressing against my chest and restricting my lungs. I wanted to move across the seat, take his hand, and tell him that
my heart was broken too. Yet,
there was no sense in it. It
wouldn’t
possibly help to know I felt the same misery, not when we couldn’t do anything about it. I had no other course of action other than to stare out the window and guess where we were headed.

After taking I-10 and merging onto Clairborne Avenue, I could make a good assumption. It took just fifteen minutes to arrive, pulling up on a roughly paved road to the side of a dark, desolate house propped on brick stilts.

Stepping outside the car felt like we had landed in a foreign country. While the Garden District boasted immaculately-detailed, white-columned porch houses, lush gardens, and manicured trees, here, in the Ninth Ward, streets were sparse. The clapboard houses were spaced every few yards with just a metal fence partitioning one land from another and many of them still showed signs of past hurricane damage.

A dog barked in the distance as we stopped at the door, likely disrupted by our arrival in the still night.
No
other sign of life emanated from the neighborhood. This was good
,
because Miss Mabelle didn’t bother to knock. She opened the screen and front door and entered without hesitation.

Inside, the aroma of rotting wood surrounded us, violating our sense of smell until there was nothing else that could permeate it. Dry dirt littered the floor alongside leaves that had made their way in through the broken windows.
There
wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the room
we were standing in.

As
Jameson and I waited patiently for them to tell us why they
brought us to a vacant, dilapidated house in the Ninth Ward
,
Miss Mabelle lit a lantern and led us to a small room in the back.

The floor creaked, letting anything living there know to expect us before we arrived. It sent the cockroaches and rats scurrying to safety well before we encountered them
,
but we hear
d
their feet scuff as they fled.

After
the four of us squeezed into a room large enough to comfortably hold two, Miss Mabelle began to speak.

“This was my bedroom. It was here
,
where I learned who I was and who I would become. It was where I asked our deities for guidance and where I learned the practice of
Voodoo.
This
was my temple,” she whispered in reverence.

She moved to the back, carrying the lantern with her and illuminating faded drawings on the walls. Symbols were strewn across them from midway down because Miss Mabelle hadn’t been tall enough to reach any higher back then. I imagined her – short
and
wiry, with knobby knees – attempting to leap and mark the wall above her latest drawings. It was endearing, but that was before she spoke again.

“Had no idea back then I’d be dealing with the two of you,” she narrowed her eyes at us
.
“The Loa didn’t bother to mention your emergence in my future.”

“The Loa?” I asked, tilting my head at her, prompting her to explain.

“The Loa are the spirits – the Mystères and the Invisibles – who conduct business for us with the Bondye, our creator. We entertain them
,
and they, in turn, assist us.” She paused and added, “Usually.”

“You entertain spirits?” I asked, realizing that less than a year ago I would have laughed at this woman and done my best to slip unnoticed from the room. Now, I actually believed her.

“Yes,” she snapped
,
so it was Miss Celia who explained it to us.

“The Loa have varying personalities and they come from varying backgrounds. They are distinct individuals. Some are beneficent. Some enjoy causing a little commotion. Some like to eat. Some like to dance. Some like to drink.” She summed it up for me. “We entertain them
,
so they will entertain us
-
by bringing our requests to our Bondye.”

Miss Mabelle, who had been closely inspecting her childhood art, turned and headed back toward the door, stopping at Jameson and me long enough to state, “It is good you are here. Your presence gives the Loa perspective. They will recognize you now when I ask for their help in protecting you.”

She whirled back around and disappeared
through
the doorway
,
just
as I felt the goose bumps ris
ing
on my arms. There was no justification for my reaction other than recogni
zing
that we were in such dire trouble we needed supernatural assistance. That didn’t
sit
well with me.

Miss Mabelle didn’t bother to speak again until we left and were at the car. When Jameson attempted to open the door, she barked at him, “We ain’t done yet.”

He chuckled to himself, muttered consent, and closed the door
,
before meeting up with us to stroll across the street. There, another house sat on a lot equally as barren as Miss Mabelle’s childhood home. It was made of brick yet showed the same neglect. The windows were missing entirely. Screens hung from their hinges. The two concrete steps to the front door were broken and crumbling. Judging by its exterior, it appeared to be vacant, also. This proved to be true when Miss Celia entered without knocking.

Inside, she paused to glance around, allowing us the opportunity to see where we stood. The living room had the same desolate feeling as Miss Mabelle’s had, especially with the remnants of a campfire left in the corner by a past visitor.

Miss Celia moved to the right, directly next to a window where the streetlight shined off a green glass bottle left on its windowsill.

“This is the very spot,” she said
,
quietly, her eyes downcast in memory of the moment she was relaying to us now. “This is where we were told of our obligation to assist you.”

“Mmhmm,” Miss Mabelle
concurred.

“Where our lives changed.”

“I’m sorry,” Jameson said
,
holding up his hand in a gesture
, asking
them to stop. “Are you saying you’ve been planning this with us,” he motioned between him and me, “since you were small? You’ve known all that time?”

“Our sisters lived centuries ago,” Miss Celia reminded him, referring to the first channelers who determined the future of our world.

He didn’t reply, having been stunned speechless.

I, however, was not. “You have been waiting for us since you were young?”

“Yes,” Miss Celia replied
,
plainly.

“How young?”

“Five years of age,” she stated and quickly looked at Miss Mabelle for a nod of confirmation.

“And what did you do to prepare?”

A
smirk
began to rise, but
fell away
when determination overcame it
. “We became the best
Voodoo
priestesses in the city.”

“The world,” corrected Miss Mabelle, never one to be modest. For good measure, in case we missed it the first time, she reiterated, “In the world.”

“Well,” I muttered, staggered by that proclamation. “Thank you for doing that…”

“You’re welcome,” said Miss Celia
,
proudly. She sighed
and
took one final look around,
moving
to leave. “We have a schedule to keep tonight,” she informed us
,
as she passed. “We should be going.”

From there, our housekeepers drove us back to the French Quarter where they parked one block from Jackson Square. It brought back the memory of the day before, which I had to quickly shove aside. I caught Jameson observing the corner leading to the park as we crossed to the house in front of us
.

A dim light was on in the front window as we climbed the stairs of
the
small
,
pink
,
frame house with white trim. We had to walk single file or risk accidentally kicking over one of the many potted plants lining the walkway. After
one
soft knock, the door opened to a lean, darkly-tanned woman wearing an abundance of jewelry. She smiled warmly and stepped aside
,
as if she had been waiting for us.

“Annemarie, we
’s
a little behind on our agenda fo’ the evenin’,” Miss Mabelle said in a tone softer and more apologetic than I ever believed possible from her. It actually made me trip across the rug
in
the hallway.

Jameson, who always seemed to have one eye on me, caught my elbow and helped me back up.
By the time I was
steady on my feet again,
he was
several strides ahead, readily avoiding any expression of my gratitude. I didn’t blame him,
but
I couldn’t shake the disappointment as his back became the center of my focus.

Annemarie beckoned us to the back of the house, her clinking jewelry being the only sounds she made as she skipped any greeting, introduction, or explanation.

We followed the smell of herbs until we found ourselves in a small conservatory just off the kitchen. Vines trailed the glass walls, nearly enclosing the room
that was
full of lush and colorful potted plants. In the center was a long wooden table blazing with candles, sending odd shadows across the foliage. Also on the table were glasses of wine, torn bread, and cheese crumbles
,
making me recall what Miss Celia had just explained about pleasing their Loa.

Annemarie’s cold, gentle hands took my elbows and positioned me at the side of the table. She did the same with Jameson, placing him so our shoulders
were
nearly touch
ing.

Part of me wished they would.

Through the course of it, I began to get the feeling that Annemarie was setting up for a ceremony
,
which prompted me to open my mouth and asked about it
, but
Jameson, who apparently was having the same feeling, beat me to it.

“What are we doing here?” he asked, suspiciously.

While Miss Celia completely ignored him, Miss Mabelle made a shushing sound. That irritated me
,
so I repeated his question. At that, our housekeepers narrowed their eyes at us
,
but Annemarie was the one who answered.

She lifted her palms to the sky and said in reverie, “Loa come to us as we seek protection for these children.”
Then,
Annemarie spoke a dialect completely foreign to me,
as she was
weaving from one side to the next, gyrating her arms above her head, and flexing her intonation
with demand and submission.

Something
happened
then
that I didn’t expect. Jameson flinched, drawing my attention to him.
At
that point, his head tilted back and his eyes rolled up.

“You’re hurting him,” I stated
,
anxiously
, moving
forward, around Jameson
,
and toward Annemarie, preparing to force her to stop.

“The Loa,” stated Miss Celia
,
in a calm, scholarly manner, “has arrived.”

Looking back at Jameson with his head still back
,
I understood what was happening. The Loa was channeling through him.

When AnneMarie was finished
,
she withdrew a cane from beneath the table and placed it on the altar.
Her
eyelids and arms lowered together
,
and her shoulders fell forward
,
as if she were bowing.

It was
several minutes before her head rose again and her eyes opened. When they did, Jameson finally came to and looked around, hazy eyed. Our housekeepers quietly moved to her side, thanked her for her help, and ushered Jameson back to the door.