The key worked, and Link heaved the round door open proudly. “See—Magneto. Told you.”
Usually I would’ve made a joke, but tonight I didn’t. Link was a whole lot closer to being Magneto then I was.
This Tunnel reminded me of a dungeon in an old castle. The ceiling was low, and the rough rock walls were wet. The sound of dripping water echoed through the passageway, although there was no sign of the source. I had been in this Tunnel before, but somehow it felt different tonight—or maybe it was me that had changed. Either way, the walls felt close, and I wanted to get to the end.
“Hurry up or we’ll lose her.” I was actually the one slowing us down, tripping in the darkness.
“Relax. She sounds like a horse walkin’ through gravel. There’s no way we’ll lose her.” It wasn’t an analogy Amma would appreciate.
“You can really hear her footsteps?” I couldn’t even hear his.
“Yeah. I can smell her, too. Follow the pencil lead and Red Hots.”
So Link followed the smell of Amma’s crossword puzzles and her favorite candy, and I followed him until he stopped at the base of a crude set of stairs that led back up to the Mortal world. He inhaled deeply, the way he used to when one of Amma’s peach cobblers was baking in the oven. “She went up there.”
“You sure?”
Link lifted an eyebrow. “Can my mom preach to a preacher?”
Link pushed open the heavy stone door, and light flooded into the Tunnel. We were behind some old building, the door etched into the chipped brick. The air was thick and sticky with the distinct stench of beer and sweat. “Where the hell are we?”
Nothing looked familiar. “No clue.”
Link walked around to the front of the building. The smell of beer was even stronger. He peered into the window. “This place is some kind of pub.”
There was a cast-iron placard next to the door: LAFITTE’S BLACKSMITH SHOP.
“This doesn’t look like a blacksmith’s shop.”
“That’s because it isn’t.” An elderly man in a Panama hat, like the one Aunt Prue’s last husband used to wear, walked up behind Link. He leaned heavily on his cane. “You are standin’ in front a one a Bourbon Street’s most infamous buildin’s, and the hist’ry a this place is as famous as the Quarter itself.”
Bourbon Street. The French Quarter. “We’re in New Orleans.”
“Right. Of course we are.” After this summer, Link and I knew the Tunnels could lead anywhere, and time and distance didn’t operate the same way within them. Amma knew it, too.
The old man was still talking. “Folks say Jean and Pierre Lafitte opened a smithy here in the late seventeen hundreds as a front for their smugglin’ operation. They were pirates who looted Spanish galleons and smuggled what they stole into N’awlins, sellin’ everything from spices and furniture to flesh and blood. But these days, most folks come for the ale.”
I cringed. The man smiled and tipped his hat. “You kids pass a good time in the City That Care Forgot.”
I wasn’t betting on it.
The old man bent further over his cane. Now he was holding his hat out in front of us, shaking it expectantly.
“Oh, sure. Okay.” I fumbled in my pocket, but all I had was a quarter. I looked at Link, who shrugged.
I leaned closer to drop the coin into the hat, and a bony hand grabbed my wrist. “Smart boy like you. I’d be gettin’ myself outta this town and back down into that Tunnel.” I pulled my arm free. He smiled big, pulling his lips wide over yellowed, uneven teeth. “Be seein’ you.”
I rubbed my wrist, and when I looked up, he was gone.
It didn’t take long for Link to pick up Amma’s trail. He was like a bloodhound. Now I understood why it had been so easy for Hunting and his Pack to find us when we were searching for Lena and the Great Barrier. We walked through the French Quarter toward the river. I could smell the murky brown water mixed with sweat and the scent of spices from nearby restaurants. Even at night, the humidity hung in the air, heavy and wet, a jacket you couldn’t take off, no matter how badly you wanted to.
“Are you sure we’re going the right—?”
Link threw his arm out in front of me, and I stopped. “Shh. Red Hots.”
I searched the sidewalk ahead of us. Amma was standing under a streetlamp, in front of a Creole woman sitting on a plastic milk crate. We walked to the edge of the building with our heads down, hoping Amma wouldn’t notice us. We stuck to the shadows close to the wall, where the streetlamp threw out a pale circle of light.
The Creole woman was selling beignets on the sidewalk, her hair styled in hundreds of tiny braids. She reminded me of Twyla.
“Te te beignets? You buy?” The woman held out a small bundle of red cloth. “You buy. Lagniappe.”
“Lan-yap what?” Link mumbled, confused.
I pointed at the bundle, whispering back, “I think that woman’s offering to give Amma something if she buys some beignets.”
“Some what?”
“They’re like doughnuts.”
Amma handed the woman a few dollars, accepting the beignets and the red bundle in her white-gloved hand. The woman looked around, her braids swinging over her shoulder. When she seemed satisfied no one was listening, she whispered something quickly in what sounded like French Creole. Amma nodded and put the bundle in her pocketbook.
I elbowed Link. “What did she say?”
“How should I know? I may have supersonic hearin’, but I don’t speak French.”
It didn’t matter. Amma was already walking back in the opposite direction, her expression unreadable. But something was wrong.
This night was wrong. I wasn’t following Amma out to the swamp in Wader’s Creek to meet Macon. What would send her a thousand miles from home in the middle of the night? Who did she know in New Orleans?
Link had a different question. “Where’s she goin’?”
I didn’t have an answer to that one either.
By the time we caught up with Amma on St. Louis Street, it was deserted. Which made sense, considering where we were standing. I stared at the tall wrought iron gates of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.
“It’s a bad sign when there are so many cemeteries they’ve gotta number ’em.” Even though he was part Incubus, Link didn’t look crazy about wandering around the cemetery at night. It was the seventeen years of God-fearing Southern Baptist in him.
I pushed open the gate. “Let’s get this over with.”
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 was unlike any cemetery I’d ever seen. There were no sprawling lawns dotted with headstones and bent oaks. This place was a city for the dead. The narrow alleyways were lined with ornate mausoleums in various stages of decay, some as tall as two-story houses. The more impressive mausoleums were surrounded by black wrought iron fences, with enormous statues of saints and angels staring down from the rooftops. This was a place where people honored their dead. The proof was carved into the face of every statue, every worn name that had been touched hundreds of times.
“This place makes His Garden of Perpetual Peace look like a landfill.” For a minute, I thought of my mom. I understood wanting to build a marble house for someone you loved, which was exactly what this whole place seemed like.
Link was unimpressed. “Whatever. When I die, just throw some dirt over me. Save your money.”
“Right. Remind me of that in a few hundred years when I’m at your funeral.”
“Well, then I guess I’ll be throwin’ some dirt on you—”
“Shh! Did you hear that?” I heard the sound of gravel cracking. We weren’t the only ones here.
“Of course—” Link’s voiced faded into the background as a shadow blurred past me. It had the same hazy quality as a Sheer, but it was darker and lacked the features that made Sheers look almost human. As it moved around me, even through me, I felt the familiar panic from my dreams crushing me. I was cornered in my own body, unable to move.