aithne | Black Angel Crossroads: Where Power Lies

[Usual disclaimers apply: 1832 Louisiana, difficult cultural history, certain realities of race relations and slavery that can't be avoided. Proceed with caution, if you're sensitive.]

[Also, you're not mistaken if you think this feels like only half a story; it got too long for LJ and I decided to post this half first.]

Odile found herself once against sitting across from Gabriel in the brougham, this time not talking much, just sitting in companionable silence. Gabriel looked like he had something he wanted to talk to her about, but kept changing his mind on bringing it up. She was more than happy with that state of events. She could still feel his lips on hers in all-too-vivid memory, and next to her idle wondering if she was going to get to kiss him again sometime soon, a deep, howling fear was awakening.

He was white. She was not fully black, but black enough to count for most whites. She had seen so many girls and women start going with white men, thinking that this one was different, this one would treat them well. The lucky ones found themselves alone the moment a suitable white woman looked their lover's way. The unlucky ones disappeared quietly. She thought Gabriel was different, but so did every single woman she'd ever seen go with a white man. Was she just deluding herself?

Then again, no white man she'd ever met ever called a black man his brother without irony or anger, and Odile had seen enough of the two of them interacting to know that the trust between them was genuine. Gabriel, as far as she could tell, didn't think he was better than Benjamin because his skin was pale.

Still. I don't want my life to change. She'd always thought she'd eventually find someone to help her get pregnant, someone who would either not care about the child or wouldn't be in any position to interfere. She intended to live her life and eventually die, like her mother and grandmother, in the little house in the swamp she'd been born in. She might not know Gabriel too well yet, but she had an idea that he'd probably want to interfere in the life of any child she might have with him.

Odile had always been very aware of the lies women told themselves, and tried not to tell herself any of them. Trouble was, the man sitting across from her was handsome, charming in a lot of ways, and he'd as much as told her that he'd be very glad to see her on his doorstep any time she'd choose to come. For the first time, she thought that maybe a little bit of fibbing to oneself might not be all that great a sin, as sins were figured.

That particular thought was interrupted by the brougham creaking to a halt, Benjamin's voice calling to the horses. "Carriage blocking the road," he called down.

Odile slid the window open and looked out. There was a carriage there right enough, laid down on its side in the middle of the road, a pair of unsaddled horses nearby, four man standing around looking at the carriage. It didn't look right to her, not right at all. She pulled her head back in. "Something's wrong here. Ambush?"

Gabriel looked like he'd come to the same conclusion. He unhooked a hidden catch and slid open a compartment under the seat cushion. He pulled out two revolvers and handed her one handle-first, keeping the other for herself. Out of habit, Odile checked to make sure that the gun was loaded, and Gabriel did the same. Outside, she could hear Benjamin call, "You need help?"

"Ya, climb on down, we could use your strength to pull it upright," came the response. The brougham rocked as Benjamin climbed down, and Gabriel tucked the revolver inside his coat and climbed out, swinging his bad leg out and around and hopping from carriage to ground.

She watched him go and then rummaged at the cloth bag she carried, coming up with two charms. One was meant to deflect physical harm, causing bullets to go astray, weaving a shield out of coincidence. The other was a charm for clear thinking, meant to calm the emotions and allow rational thought to intrude on a rage. Odile was very good at that particular charm; there was one slave on Leroy's place that liked to hide them in his mattress and under the cushion of his favorite chair. She liked this particular recipe because it not only promoted calm thinking, but also neutralized some forms of black magic, especially if they were aimed directly at those it protected.

From outside there was shouting, shouting about the Petit boy and demons out of Hell, about the damned mambo protecting Barataria and the black magic on its borders. Sounded to her like someone had tried to come onto the land and been repelled, and Odile smiled thinly. She stepped out of the open door of the carriage, landing with a swirl of skirts on the damp dirt of the road, her head held high.

The men shouting shut up when they saw her, shut their mouths and swiveled their heads like they were schoolboys caught passing notes. She stared at each of them in turn, memorizing lumpy nose on one, jutting chin on another. So far, it looked like the guns hadn't come out yet.

Gabriel and Benjamin stepped back towards her, Gabriel waving Odile back into the carriage. Benjamin climbed up, and Odile swung back up and then offered a hand to help Gabriel in. "What's going on?" she asked quietly.

"So far they are just swearing at us. You doing something?" Gabriel asked.

"Just protective things. A charm against physical harm, a charm for clear thinking and against mind-clouding magic."

He smiled thinly and the brougham lurched into motion as Gabriel snapped the rains on the team. "The clear thinking might be working on them. They saw you and maybe decided they might get killed by black magic, as they call it. They are just the hired hands. I don't see Petit himself."

"Sent out here to ambush us if we left the plantation?"

He nodded, and then grabbed the edge of his seat as the ride got bumpy. Felt like Benjamin was going off the road, around the blockage. "That would be my guess. They are too scared to come onto the plantation."

"As well they might be. There are those protections up. Scared of me, are they? Hm." The ride smoothed out, and Odile relaxed, but only a little. That clear thinking charm had a range on it, only about thirty feet or so. If that had been keeping them from opening fire--

The report of a rifle answered that question. Odile swore as a bullet smacked into the wood above her head, and Benjamin gave the horses their heads. The shooting continued until they left the scene far behind; Odile starting and keeping up a chant, calling on Sobo and Erzulie to open up the power of the charm as far as it would go. The report of rifles stopped about thirty seconds before the charm crumbled into dust in her hand.

Odile stuck her hand out the window and let the dust go, a puff of ash into the air. Gabriel called up to Benjamin, who called back that he and the horses were all right. "Effective, that spell," Gabriel said, settling back down onto his seat, using his hands to lift and resettle his bad leg a bit.

"Sobo and Erzulie love me, right enough," Odile said with a smile.

"They're not the only ones," Gabriel said, and then in the dim inside the brougham blushed bright red.

Had he just-- Odile looked away, blushing and biting her lip briefly. "I didn't know...ah, never mind," she stammered.

There was a long uncomfortable silence between the two of them, Odile refusing to look at him, her shoulders stiff. Gabriel ventured, "Thank you though, you saved all our lives."

"Well, I'm glad I was able to. And glad we're all all right," she added, because she abruptly was.

"Carriage might never be the same but that we can fix," Gabriel said, essaying a smile. "I fear they are going to be there a lot."

Odile put her hands on her knees, finally looking at him again. "This isn't going to be the last time we're shot at, no."

"I hope you have a lot of those rituals."

She chuckled. "My specialty is protection, after all. I was planning on making some more charms anyway--both you and Benjamin should be carrying a couple, and I have an idea for the horses."

Gabriel had leaned back, putting his back against the wall of the brougham. "That would be nice. I am very glad you are living next to us."

"You chose a good place to move, after all. I just wish Maman hadn't died before you got here, she would have liked you, I think," she told him.

"You can ask her," he said, and smiled.

"Yes, well, I did get an answer on that one already, didn't I? Since you could hear her when she was in the lake and talking to me." She smiled back at him, trying to tease him a bit.

Gabriel flushed a bit again. "Well, I guess so. Can I ask you a personal question?"

Odile stilled, curling her fingers more tightly around her knees. "What do you want to know?"

"Can you read?" he asked her.

She looked at him, astonished. Where on earth would she have learned to read? "English? No, not very much," she said. "Why?"

"I have a few books I bring along when we go to town. I wanted to know if you wanted one, or if I could read one to you." He paused, weighed something in his mind. "Or do you want to learn?"

There he went again, treating her like some kind of white lady. For a moment, Odile felt the strangeness of this all anew, riding inside the brougham, the respectful way Gabriel talked to her. She shook her head. "I don't generally have much of a reason to know how to read. Hardly anyone I know knows how to either read or write. I'd like it if you'd read to me, though."

Gabriel smiled, and between the two of them they settled on a book that Odile didn't think he would have originally opted to read to her, a novel about a very silly woman who, from the sound of things, had her heart set on a completely inappropriate man. Odile stopped Gabriel often to ask questions about things in the story, which he answered to the best of his ability. So they passed the rest of the time it took to get to New Orleans, which was much more pleasant than the beginning of their journey had been.

Jean Bertrand, chief of police in New Orleans, was easy to find. He seemed to spend a lot of time in the mayor's office, the swaggering lord of a domain that as far as Odile could tell didn't even really belong to him but Jacquot Laurent, the mayor. He came out of the mayor's office surrounded by a cloud of underlings, a girl on each arm and several more trailing behind. The girls were probably quadroons, one of them could almost pass for an octoroon, pretty and richly dressed and almost certainly prostitutes. He went to a long lunch, a few drinks turning into a few more, an hour turning into three. He was dining and drinking out on the big veranda of a hotel, allowing Benjamin, Odile, and Gabriel to watch him.

"This is out of character, yes?" Odile asked.

"Not really," Gabriel said. "But the fact that he isn't sweating in a suit and tie is. He is usually running a handkerchief on his forehead almost every minute."

"Interesting. One of the signs of loa possession is being able to walk through fire or handle flaming rum without getting burned."

Gabriel cocked his head at a fuss happening across the street. "Looks like he is leaving with a few of the girls. He never was much of a ladies' man either."

Odile frowned. "Well, his wife died last year, takes some of them that way. But that's more like Kalfu, really. The loas like the pleasures of the flesh."

"I think you are right. I don't think that is him anymore," he said. "Now what do we do?"

She watched the man and the girls walk down the street, away from them. "Good question. The only really sure way to get Kalfu out of him is to make his body unsuitable for possession--kill him, mostly. But how to do it without anyone realizing?" She shook her head. "I don't really want to shed blood. But if I must, I must."

"Is he even alive?"

Odile spread her hands. "Depends on what you consider alive. He walks, talks, breathes, pisses; but there's a good chance that if Kalfu is ejected and doesn't come back that all of that will stop. His original soul's likely gone elsewhere. Kalfu wouldn't have wanted to chance being surprised by Bertrand wanting back into his own body."

"So he is dead anyway. We are just stopping a possession. When he burns out that body, it will die anyway."

It was a finer hair than Odile usually split, but she nodded. "Yes, and he'll have to prepare and take a new one."

"But that requires rituals and time he might not be able to afford."

"Especially not if we surprise him," she said. "I wish sometimes that the rituals didn't take quite so long to do. There's no way we could sneak one of those up on him. But if we could somehow accelerate the process of him burning out the body...well, it would work, but I'm not entirely sure that's a way I want to walk." It was quite a bit darker magic than she usually worked.

"What do you want to do?" Gabriel asked.

She took a long breath. "I think probably he needs to be surprised in an alley somewhere, or wherever it is he goes to find his girls."

"Or a girl taking revenge for stepping out with more than one." The afternoon light was making his eyes look greener than usual, Odile noticed, and then tried hard to stop noticing. "What's the problem of burning him out?"

Where to begin? "It's in a gray area. Technically, it's using the power of the loa to harm someone. Close to black magic, though not quite."

"How do you do it?"

"I'd do something like speeding up the aging process, sapping away the physical energy of the body. It's like bleeding to death, only without all the blood," she explained. "He's feeding on that life that's left in the body to keep him in it. So I would create a ritual to eat it first."

"It's either that, or a bullet and frame someone else," Gabriel said.

She thought about it. "To be honest, I'd prefer the bullet. I know the kinds of girls he seems to like. A lot of them carry weapons of some sort."

Gabriel was nodding. "It's got to be me, I think"

Odile blinked. Murder was murder, wasn't it? "Why's that?"

"If you or Benjamin kill him, there is no trial, no nothing. You will be killed."

"If we're caught, yes," Odile said, offhandedly.

"Yes," he said, and his tome made it clear that he wasn't willing to take the risk of it being one of them. "With me, if we get caught they won't lynch me right away. And you can find a way to get me out and we can leave."

He was crazy. But once Odile got to thinking about it, it made a bit of sense. "They'll think about it for a week and then hang you. Yes, we could get you out. Hide in the swamp for a while. Still a bad risk we're running, either way."

"I know. But it's the best way, in case something goes wrong."

She had to concede on this one. "You're right. I don't really like it, but you're right. I wish I could think of a way to do this that wouldn't be considered black magic. Even throwing Kalfu out and keeping him out would work, but there are nasty consequences to that--and it'll only work once."

"Might want to save that for the last one," Gabriel said. "So he is heading to his house with a lady currently. Do we take him now after he gets home?"

Odile shook her head. "He'll need to be alone. If he dismisses the girl for the night, then's the best time."

"So we wait."

"Yes. We might be able to find Remy in the meantime." She patted her pocket. "I brought the thing I made that will help me find him."

"Ah good. Let's go find a Remy," Gabriel said, and then tried not to look surprised when Odile pulled out of her pocket a small poppet, the one she'd made a few nights previously. She dangled it on a string, watching the little top hat she'd fashioned for its head swinging freely. She murmured to it, and its swinging slowed, the arc narrowing. Given a direction, Odile started moving, Benjamin and Gabriel trailing behind her.

The doll led her to the Vieux Carre, and from there to a rooming house. Odile could hear flute music floating out an open window. "Here," she said. "Stay here. Let me deal with him." The two of them nodded, and Odile mounted the stairs, following the music to its source.

She did not bother knocking, mostly because the door was half open. Remy looked up when she came in and in surprise lifted his mouth from the flute. "My oh my. It must be a lovely day for you to be visiting me," he said with a big smile. The room itself was large as they went but ill-kept, and Odile looking around thought that he must only sleep here, if that. There was bare, rough wooden floor, rickety bed, a table, and a rocking chair which the houngan himself was occupying.

Odile stifled her flash of irritation. Remy flirted with anything that walked by, he shared that with Ghede, and like Ghede he never meant it. "I'm sure it is, Remy. Mostly, I'm in town checking up on Antoinette. Did you find out what that hotel key unlocks?"

He sat back, tucking the flute into the crook of his arm like a petit bebe. "I did."

"And?"

The paint at the corners of his eyes crinkled and flaked. "And it unlocks the top suite of the Fairmont. The one reserved for the mayor and people that are in his favor."

"Surprise, surprise. Was she there?"

"Someone was. Sounded like her." Remy shrugged, and Odile was reminded just how much physical space this man took up; like Remy, he was tall and heavily muscled. She wondered what he looked like under the paint. "I wasn't about to go in. They were doing a bokar ritual."

"Also not a surprise. Without seeing, you probably couldn't figure out what sort of ritual it was," Odile said, thinking that he might prove her wrong just to spite her.

She was right. "They were strengthening the ties to this earth, and bolstering the energy of Kalfu by using the yellow fever victims. They die and no one is the wiser. They died of yellow fever, not black vodou."

Odile shook her head. "Not good news, but I expected it."

"Ah, but now we know of the why of the yellow fever," Remy said.

She inclined her head. "True enough. Using their deaths to keep Kalfu here."

Remy was favoring her with a direct look, evaluating. "Now, do you intend to stop him, or you be leaving?"

Smart money would say leave. But without her, she didn't know if Gabriel and Benjamin would survive. "Stop him, or die trying. How about you?"

"I think I will sit this one out. Maybe." He gave her a crooked grin. "No use of messing with the loa. They can get might mad." He reached in his pocket and tossed her something small and shiny.

Odile caught it. It was the key he'd found, it looked like. "They can, yes. Well, thanks for this, at least. I'll see you around, and say hello to Ghede for you when I see him." That last was delivered in a slightly acid tone, a swipe at Remy for declaring no sides at all.

If he winced, she didn't see it. "Say hello to Gabriel for me," he said, and raised his flute to his lips, blowing out a long note, then another. A small and wavery image of Gabriel appeared in the center of the floor, looking around.

Odile had been in the middle of turning to leave. At Remy's words, she turned back to him, then froze at the sight of the image. "You threatening me, or just showing off?" she asked in a calm voice.

Remy chuckled. "Me, I would never threaten you. A mambo and a houngan against one houngan. Never." He saw the flash of confusion on her face, saw her decide just to walk out, and smiled. "You never knew his mama, did you?"

A big woman with a fast hand, Gabriel had said. "No. Why, did you?"

The houngan leaned back again, flute still held in his hands. "Sure did. Amazing woman, that one. Power beyond anything I have ever seen. Never could figure out how she went from so-so mambo to force that walks with the loa in such a short time. But then I figured it out."

"So, how?" Odile gave him nothing, shuttering all emotion.

"Ah, takes strength and power to make gardes, and sustain them. Seen as many as three or four on a person. More than that can kill a man. Know anybody with more than four?"

She felt cold, despite the muggy heat of the day. "I do. Why?"

"How is he still alive, and why would anyone do that to him, unless they know something we don't? And still feeding, say, six gardes." Remy clucked his tongue, shaking his head. "He builds a statue and brings it to life. That is one powerful source, pure and sweet power. But nowhere to direct it. Now comes along mama. And suddenly she is the most powerful mambo. Think she was tapping into something?"

Her shoulders sagged, just slightly. "Tapping into his power, that he's getting from somewhere else. It would work."

"And she dies on the night that they aren't around, and she never teaches him the way. Greedy, I would say." He gave her one of those impish looks that reminded her so much of manifestations of Ghede. "How about you?"

"I say that anyone with enough power to do what he's done needs to be taught to control it themselves," Odile said, quietly.

"That going to be you?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. If he agrees."

There was a sly note in his voice. "Those rituals are pretty...intimate."

She raised an eyebrow. "And? I do know how these things work, Remy."

"Just reminding you. Baby born of such a union, would be a great one among us. Or a great threat." He lifted the flute again and started playing, and another image appeared on the floor. It was Gabriel and Odile, Odile in a dress the likes of which she had never owned, Gabriel in a spotless cream suit. They were dancing together. "Ah cotillions, such fun," he said, stopping is playing and watching as the image persisted for a few seconds more and then faded.

Irritated, Odile thought, And this is why me and Ghede have never gotten along. And I'm doing all this work to save his sorry ass why? "Now you're making fun, Remy," she said aloud. "I don't know what's going to happen. Gabriel might not accept the teaching. We might all get killed in the next week. But thank you for the information."

"That's my bet, but I never was very good at gambling." He grinned big at her. "Thank you for the vision."

"The vision?" she asked.

"Ah, of your beauty." He lifted the flute again and played a pretty rill, his eyes smirking.

Odile rolled her eyes. "Goodbye, Remy," she said, and this time turned and walked out without stopping, pulling the door closed behind her. She rattled down the first flight of stairs, then paused in the stairwell. There was a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, She'd never had to tell anyone before that their mother might have been using their power to do who knows what, and she wasn't really sure how it was going to go.

She closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath and trying to pull calm around her. Her conversation with Remy had been far more enlightening than she'd really been prepared for. When she had herself pulled a bit more together, she finished descending the stairs, coming out to join the two men who were loitering under a tree across the street. "We need to talk somewhere private. I learned all kinds of things from Remy," she told them.

They found a park, and Benjamin went to get coffee. Once he was back, Odile said, "Well, I found out the reason for the yellow fever. Seems Kalfu is killing them by sucking their life away and it gets blamed on the fever. And the key is to the top suite of the Fairmont."

"What's at the top of the Fairmont?" Gabriel wanted to know.

"The suite reserved for the mayor and those in his favor. Supposedly, there was a bokor ritual going on there last night."

"Which is probably Kalfu re-energizing himself."

Odile nodded. "Yes, I think so."

Gabriel stretched, cracking his knuckles. "Well, we know where he is, likely. At least a piece of him."

"One or two," she said. "Antoinette's probably holed up there, and I'm guessing one or two of the men who have the other pieces are there as well."

"I have a thought on the others," Gabriel said. She raised an eyebrow. "If you need yellow fever victims, who's the best people to know who is dying?"

She could see where he was going with this. "A doctor, likely."

He glanced at Benjamin. "Bet we have at least one doctor compromised." Benjamin was listening to them, drinking his own coffee, seemingly content to let them talk.

"There are a few in town. Remember, Leroy had that Yank out to his place the other day."

"So we should look in on the doctors sooner or later." He grimaced. "Which puts us in a spiral. Kill a doctor, more people die."

Odile shrugged. "There's always the really brutal way of telling which one or ones are possessed. Wait until the fever starts taking the doctors. The ones who stay healthy might well be possessed."

"Because they can't get sick, good point. That all Remy knew?" Gabriel asked.

The bad feeling had returned, and Odile gritted her teeth briefly. "No, there was more, but...I'm not sure how much I want to believe it."

"What more?"

She did not want to talk about this, but it was important that Gabriel know. Reluctantly, she asked, "Gabriel, what do you remember of the rituals your mama did? You said that they scared you, and getting the gardes hurt."

He nodded, and there was a strange look on his face. He looked like he didn't like remembering those days any more than she liked asking about them. "She would always take me with her to her rituals. But I don't remember a lot about them."

"Did she ever try to teach you anything?"

Gabriel looked down briefly. "No. Said this was a black religion and white folk had no business in it."

Odile fought the dread down, and opened her mouth. "Well. Remy mentioned that your mama went from being not particularly powerful to being very, very powerful in a very short period of time. And you carry more gardes than any one person should be able to feed--and managed to not only call and bind Noemi's spirit into the angel, but something else from the other side as well. I hate to say this, but I think your mama somehow tapped into you, instead of properly teaching you."

He looked confused. "You are telling me I should be one of you?"

"No. I'm telling you that you are one of us. Untrained, uninitiated, but it doesn't change what you are."

It took him a moment to answer her. "Mama did show me one thing," he said slowly.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Can I take your hands?" She nodded and put out her hands. He moved a bit so he was sitting right in front of her, and then looked down at his hands for two breaths, three, four. Then he took her hands in his.

Sparks began to communicate themselves between his hands and hers, and in that instant she could see him, all of him, everything he'd been in his life and everything he had seen. Then he was gone and the memory of him was gone too, and all Odile could feel was power. Enough power to do anything she had a mind to, simply there waiting for a guiding hand, to bend to her will as she wanted. Gabriel the man was gone, slipped away. With her own eyes she could see that he had slipped into some sort of a trance, eyes half-open, completely unresponsive.

She broke the connection, letting go of his hands. "Gabriel, come back. Please."

His eyelids fluttered and he woke. "And that is why I don't remember."

Stunned, Odile put her hands down on either side of her, reminding herself that the earth was there and still supporting her. "I see. Well. Do you want to know how to use this yourself? And how to prevent more accidents from happening?"

He was looking away from her again. "Yes and no. I don't want to, but I should know to stop things like the angel from happening again." He took a deep breath. "So yes, if you will teach me."

"I will. The initiation rituals are...well, let's just say that you and I are going to get to know each other quite well over the next little bit." Odile smiled at him, remembering her own initiation ritual. Hers had been with her mother, so the physical intimacy had been all maternal, touching and cuddling, a mother with her little bebe. With Gabriel, she thought, things were going to be quite a bit different.

"Even better, then." Gabriel smiled back at her.

Odile braced herself with her hands behind her, sticking her legs straight out in front of her. "You've been learning some already. And I know who you're a favorite of."

"Who's that?" he wanted to know.

"Papa Legba. Far as I can tell, even if you don't know it you're all bound up with him. Even to the point of using a cane. The loa all have their favorite people. Sobo likes Benjamin, and me some, too." She grinned at Benjamin, who inclined his head at her. "Erzulie especially likes me."

"And do Legba and Erzulie have a special relationship?" Gabriel asked.

It was such a simple, basic question...and it had no really good answer. She looked for the words. "It's a little complicated, but yes. They share the same source of power, two faces of the same coin. Some of the stories say that they're lovers, though she has three husbands as well."

Gabriel looked thoughtful. "That's interesting. I don't think I could quite get used to that idea. But they are loa after all. So if my mama used me... Can you? And does it help us?"

The thought filled her with a sudden anticipation, with horror quick on its heels. "I could, yes. I'm not sure I want to. It would help; you have enough power that, if it were directed, it could do a lot of things, include breaking Kalfu's bonds with the bodies he's taken."

"Is that not easier and safer to do than me shooting them?"

She tipped her hand back and forth. "Well. More legal, at least. Safer, at least at first."

Gabriel cocked his head at her. "What's the drawback?"

"If Kalfu gets wind that we're doing this, he'll hunt us down." And he has more resources than we do right now. "And do you trust me to not misuse your power?"

"Could you?"

She thought about it, opted for honesty. "Could I misuse it? Yes, I could. With that much power, I could do just about anything. Would I? I hope not. Maman and Grandmere would never forgive me."

He spread his hands. "It was never a issue of trust. You have saved me once already. I trust you with my life."

His words left her breathless. You barely know me, she wanted to protest. You walked into my life less than a week ago, why would you trust me? But, she reminded herself, they had been neighbors for years, and Benjamin knew her. She fussed with her headscarf briefly, thinking. "I want to teach you how to use your own power. But for now, if you're willing to lend me yours, we can at least take care of the piece of Kalfu that's in Bertrand."

Gabriel looked at Benjamin. "Benjamin, can you get us a hotel room? It's a lot more private there." He glanced back at Odile. "If that will do?"

"It will. We'll need a few things, but they should be easy to come by."

Benjamin discussed options with Gabriel, then left, and Gabriel went along with Odile to look for what she'd need. there were a few herbs she'd want, and some materials to make a poppet out of. She got lucky and found scraps of cloth that looked like the same sort of material Bertrand's suit had been made out of, as well as some corn husks and a twist of alfalfa hay.

What she had planned was a banishment with such a punch behind it that it would more or less rip Kalfu from the bindings that held that piece of him in that body and throw him so far beyond the crossroads that he would be years finding his way back. When the three of them had met once more, Odile set up the ritual, very aware that Gabriel was watching her every move. She tried to explain what she was doing as best she could, putting together a crude poppet that represented Bertrand's body.

"Some folk think you can make poppets represent someone so much that you can stick it with a pin and the real person will bleed," she said. "Doesn't work like that. What this is, is really an idea of Bertrand. It just happens to be an idea we can see and touch. It helps us guide what we're doing to the target."

"So we can't stick him with needles, then?"

"We'd have to be in the room with him, which would defeat the purpose," she said, and smiled. "Well, we're set. Let's begin."

She'd taught Gabriel a chant that all three of them used now, swaying back and forth to the rhythm of their voices in their bodies. Odile dropped quickly into that relaxed and alert state that ritual required, and Benjamin was close on her heels. Gabriel, too, was there, eyes open, consciousness slipping away as he fought with the conditioning that his mama had put on him.

Odile reached out and took his hand. It's time.

The power poured through her, and everything about Odile felt as though she were floating, rising towards the ceiling. Direct it. Kalfu. Go. She had to do this, close it off, it felt better than anything ever had in her life and that scared her, terrified her to the core--

Go.

Using the power was like wielding lightning, and she could feel the bindings snap, Kalfu ripped from his moorings and flung screaming beyond the crossroads. Her grip on Gabriel's hand was so tight and she could not let go, not yet, power coursing through her she could do anything--

She let go, and was thrown into vision.

A mansion in the swamp, surrounded by cypress trees hung with moss like velvet curtains. A graveyard, signs of recent burials, markings and charms to make the bodies stay put. And then a girl, her belly swollen almost to bursting, tied to an old iron bed. The room she was in was red, painted that way or maybe covered in blood, marks scratched in the walls, all bokor marks.

Then she was back, and she was so very cold. She was shivering violently as she closed the ritual, thanking the loa and her fellow celebrants. She told Benjamin and Gabriel about the visions she'd seen, afterwards. "Using that, we may be able to find the girl. Or at least get closer to her."

Gabriel nodded. "Good, and does Kalfu now know it was us?"

"I think we caught him by surprise, but that was a lot of power. He may figure it out sooner rather than later." She couldn't think about it too hard right now.

"But that leaves us with one less." He was looking at her with concern, and pulled a blanked off the bed to drape around her shoulders. "Why are you shivering?"

Odile shook her head. "It's difficult to explain. That was a lot of power, and it felt very, very good to use it. Now that it's gone, I feel cold. It should pass."

"Sorry, maybe we should find other ways then," he said, leaving his hands on her shoulders just a moment longer than really necessary.

She let out a long breath. She was physically warm, but the sensation of cold was persistent. "It'll be better once you have at least some control. For the moment, though, I only want to use your power if I really have to. I understand your mama a lot better, now."

"How so?" Gabriel asked.

"If I weren't guarding against it, the temptation to use the power to fix things that shouldn't be is very strong. The power wants to be used, and I can see why she would use it herself instead of trust it to a boy who was a bit stubborn and hot-tempered."

He looked like he wasn't sure how to respond to that. "Thanks, I think."

"You were a boy. All boys are stubborn and hot-tempered, I've found. Still stubborn, I think. And if your mama believed that white people shouldn't be taught the secrets, well, I can see why she did what she did." She smiled at him, but Gabriel turned away slightly, not wanting to hear it, it seemed.

"We ready to go home then?" he asked instead of continuing the conversation along those lines.

"I think so," she said. "Let's clean up."

A half hour later, they were in the brougham once again. Odile was still shivering, having a hard time shaking the sensation of cold. The carriage lurched into motion. "There's room enough for two on this seat," Gabriel said, a bit diffidently, opening one arm to invite her closer. "If you're still cold."

She took a moment to think about it. "I think so," she said. Gabriel moved over and she sat down gingerly next to him, tried not to stiffen up as his arm went around her shoulders. He didn't try for a kiss, didn't try for anything other than to pull her a little closer, sharing his warmth. It took her a little while to stop shivering, but once she did she didn't pull away. She liked how he felt against her, she decided.

At the turnoff to Barataria, Benjamin pulled the team to a half. "You two ought to come look at this," he called down.

In the road near the turn were the remnants of a demolished carriage, pieces of wood all over. The larger pieces had been dragged towards Maiden Fair, the Petit place, Odile could see from the drag marks in the road. The three of them followed the marks into a copse of trees, hidden from view of the road. They carried the lanterns from the carriage to light their way.

In that copse was a scene out of a madman's nightmare.

The pieces of the carriages had been made into Christian crosses, raised up and stuck into the ground. There were four of them, and on the crosses were the four men that had shot at them. They were fastened to the crosses with stakes made of wood through wrists and ankles. The smell of shit and death was overpowering, and in the yellow light of the lanterns Odile could see that the men had been belly-slit, their entrails pulled out and left lying on the ground.

They had not died easily, and they had not died quickly. Blood and other substances lay in dark pools directly beneath of them; they had been nailed up and then belly-slit. Odile raised the lantern and saw a pale flash to one side--a piece of paper, nailed to a tree. She stepped up to it, raising the lantern, and saw that it was a tarot card. Death.

With the card, the four crosses made a star shape on the ground, upside-down. Night insects shrilled, and somewhere close by a mouse screamed its last as something bigger than it caught up with it. Odile turned back to Gabriel and Benjamin. "Someone has a very bad sense of humor," she told them.

Gabriel's gaze was darting around the scene, and he was looking a bit pale--or maybe that was the lamplight. "Very, and why?"

She gestured at the scene, dead men hanging, staring down at their intestines. "This is the sort of thing a lot of good Christians think we mambos do for fun."

"So that someone's idea of blaming this on you?"

Odile nodded. "Quite possibly. Someone without a very good idea of what the practice is all about, but with a very good idea of what will get the whites around here all excited."

"Nothing we can do now," Gabriel said.

"No, not really. The question is, who did this?" She was looking around her, trying to comprehend it. Her Maman had occasionally been the target of such tactics when the Lafittes had been on Barataria, but they were limited to cats nailed to doors and got heads left on doorsteps.

"And why," he added. "Can I ask you a favor?"

She turned back to him. "Of course, what?"

"Would you stay the night in the manor? I will get you your own room, of course, but I would feel better if you were closer at least tonight."

A large moth dove towards the lanterns, spent a futile few seconds frantically beating at the glass of the one Odile carried. She lifted it to look; it was a pale thing with spots on its wings. She thought about her response as she watched the moth retreat, circle, slam itself hopefully into the invisible-to-it barrier between it and the flame. "I will. I need to check on the house and on Maman first, though."

"Not a problem. Let's go, then."

It didn't take Odile long to gather what she'd need--a comb, clothing for tomorrow, some things to restock her bag--and check on Maman, on whom her protections hadn't even been tested, much less broken. She gathered up the head, tucking it into a sack once more, and took it with her. She didn't want to spend the night so far away from it. Then she climbed back into the brougham with Gabriel, riding to the plantation house to spend the night.

The room that Gabriel showed her to was just across the hall from his, and one door down from Benjamin's. She shut the door behind her and went to settle her things, turning up the lamp that Gabriel had given her so she could see.

The room was large with east-facing windows and thick curtains to block out the light if the occupant wanted to sleep late. The wood in this room was all carved into fantastical curves, painted white and gilded on the edges, and the bed was piled high with embroidered pillows. There was a dressing-table with a skirt hiding its legs, a silver comb and mirror set, and a general impression that this room was meant to be occupied by a woman.

Odile would have said that this was Noemi's room, but Gabriel's wife had never lived here, and the room on the whole felt unoccupied. She frowned and proceeded to set up the head Maman was in up in the corner, weaving protections around her, and then draping a cloth over her. She then placed some quick protections on her window, and glanced at the door. Should she ask if she could put protections on the other windows of the occupied rooms?

Yes, she decided, and stepped out into the corridor to go to knock on Gabriel's door. She discovered it standing partly open, and knocked on the frame and craned her head around the door. "Can I put some protections on your window?" she asked.

Gabriel was sitting in the chair she'd slept in a few nights ago, looking at a large book--accounts, she thought. He looked up and smiled, closing the book and standing. "That would be welcome. Please."

She set up the protections, dabbing a bit of a mixture of herbs, rum, and blood under the sill of the window, muttering to feel the protections flare into life. When she was done, she stood and looked out for a little bit, at the occasional flicker of light in the darkness, lanterns that the workers carried moving around as they settled in for the night. "Out of curiosity, it looks like the room you gave me is for a woman. I don't figure you have maiden aunts coming to stay all that often," she said, turning a bit to smile over her shoulder.

"No, I don't. It was Noemi's stuff. I dragged it here from Atlanta."

She paused. It was Noemi's room she'd been given. Her voice sharp, she said, "And set it up near your room, just in case....what?"

He turned away, dropping his gaze. "I don't really know, Odile. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I think I wanted her to still be alive. Or that I could bring her back somehow."

There was an open wound in his voice, and Odile flinched, then flushed. "I'm sorry. It's been a long, strange day."

Gabriel looked back at her. "It has been, at that. I am glad you are here."

"Me, too. Strange as this all is. I think I haven't slept at home maybe ten times in my life." Most of those times had been all-night rituals that she'd led, after her mother died. "Happens, when you're living in the same house you're born in."

"I moved around a lot, until Atlanta. I don't think I slept in the same bed for ten times in a row."

She tilted her head a bit. Gabriel didn't like to talk about this time of his life; this was really the first time he'd volunteered any information about it, other than the bit about the chitlins. "Was it strange to settle down?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No, it wasn't. I didn't like the life Benjamin and I had before."

"He mentioned that you had a few run-ins with the local police over there."

Gabriel gave her a half-smile that made his handsome face look a wryly lopsided. "Oh, it was a time when we had little money and little food. We tried to make a living working, but the work that we could get was beneath a white man and too good for a black one. I was told that over and over." He spread his hands slightly. "We did what we had to to survive. Though we never killed anyone, we did cheat at cards a lot."

"And then you met Noemi," she added, quietly.

He inclined his head. "And life changed for the better and maybe for the worse, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Money is fine and it makes our lives easier and I can help people. But I am still the romantic. I would rather be poor and happy than wealthy and sad."

"Me, too," she said, thinking in the back of her mind that it must be nice to have even the option of being rich. She pushed the thought away. "Though, really, for someone like me rich and poor doesn't have much to do with the money you have. It has to do with how deep your roots go. I'll never want for anything, and everything I have goes back to the people I help."

"It's probably the best way to live."

"I think so," she said. She felt an abrupt urge to tell him about Mister Leroy being her father, tell him about the rape she'd learned of when she'd talked to her Grandmere, but held her tongue. It wasn't really any of his business, and he probably wouldn't thank her for the information. She wanted to talk to someone about it, but she thought it might be better off talked about with someone who might understand. "We should both sleep."

"We should." Gabriel held out his hands to her, and a little tentatively Odile reached out to take them. He pulled her into an embrace, almost cradling her against him, and without thought Odile lifted her head and kissed him. It was different than the kiss they'd shared before, soft and tender and with a definite feeling of both comfort and leashed anticipation to it. Afterwards, Odile stood still in his embrace for just a moment longer, feeling all the places where the heat of his body warmed her flushed skin. She stepped back, and he let her go. "Good night, Odile," he said.

"Good night, Gabriel," she said and retreated. She put up protections on Benjamin and Elisabeth's room, Anton's room, and the room that Ines and Isabelle shared. The girls were restless, chattering brightly, telling Odile that they shared a room because they could hardly sleep when they were separated. The two girls were quite alike, but Odile had always found it easy to tell the two of them apart.

After she was done with the protections, she returned to Noemi's room, changed into her nightdress, and curled up in the bed, adjusting the mosquito netting so there were no gaps. She'd thought she might lie awake for a bit, but instead she was asleep almost before she closed her eyes.

In the morning, Odile was up with the dawn thanks to the sunrise and the curtains she'd forgotten to draw, washing with the bowl of water provided and wrapping her hair up in a scarf once more. Breakfast was called when she was about done with that, and soon she had joined the family for breakfast once more. The only one who hadn't come downstairs was Ines. "That girl, I swear, she could sleep through the Rapture," Elisabeth grumbled and went to find her.

Odile paid it no heed, really, far more interested in her keen hunger and the bacon that was being served than the sleeping habits of an adolescent girl. The scream from upstairs changed her interest right quick, though.

She was hard on Benjamin's heels running up the stairs, followed by Anton and Isabelle, Gabriel behind them, having to take stairs slower than those with two whole legs. The scene in the girls' room was at once much less frightening than Odile had at first feared, and much more sinister.

Ines was gone.