“No, not right,” Mfume said. “Legba is also in Sabine. A Legba. Growing to maturity. Finding its strength and hers.”
“And she knows?” Aubrey asked. “She’s okay with it?”
“She has always known,” Mfume said. “It is what her family has always been. Only now Carrefour intends to pull it out, to sever the connection between the rider and the bloodline that has protected it.”
“Why not just kill Sabine?” I asked. “I mean, since we’re being bloodthirsty and all.”
“Once the rider is vulnerable, it can be eaten. Its power can be taken on by Carrefour. Once it alone controls the crossroads, it believes it can take Legba’s place, and force the loa to renounce its exile.”
“Can it?” I asked. “Will they take it back?”
Mfume laughed. In the distance, as if in answer, a car alarm chirped.
“The political life of the loa is beyond me,” he said. “It’s possible that Carrefour is tilting at windmills. Or things might all go just as it intends. Unless someone stops it.”
“Meaning us,” I said.
Mfume stabbed out the last of his cigarette on the rail, tiny sparks raining down to the street below us.
“We are in the right place at the right time,” he said. “And so yes. Us.”
“Well,” I said. “At least we’re on the same side.”
“Are we?” Chogyi Jake asked. “It seems we all have similar goals, but our agendas aren’t all the same. Legba wants to protect itself and its offspring. We want to find Ex and get him out of harm’s way. Those aren’t really the same thing. And if I understand Joseph, neither one are what brings him here.”
“Your friend’s right,” Mfume said. “We are on the same path for the moment, but this is a marriage of convenience for all sides.”
“So what’s your agenda?” Aubrey asked. He managed not to make it sound like an accusation.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’ve come to redeem my redeemer,” Mfume said. “I intend to save Karen Black.”
TWENTY
The war council was held at the same table where Legba and I had made our pact. The candles and lace tablecloth were gone, and a cheap torchiere lamp had been plugged in, filling the room with rich halogen light and the smell of burning dust in more or less equal degrees. Amelie Glapion sat on her throne, surveying the room with a critical expression. Her nap had returned her to sharpness, but I was more aware of her as an old, fragile woman than I had been. To her right, Dr. Inondé looked like a mildly apologetic salesman. To her left, Sabine sat, her face still full with youth but managing to mimic her grandmother’s severity. Chogyi Jake, Aubrey, and I took the other side of the cheap folding banquet table, and Mfume sat at the head, both with the group and also apart from it. Daria was curled on her cot, a sleeping bag pulled up to her ears, snoring quietly.
Some kind soul had run out for coffee. I had a paper cup with café au lait just slightly too hot to drink. The others had drinks of their own, except for Chogyi Jake and Amelie Glapion.
It was ten thirty at night, and dark as midnight.
“We don’t know where she is,” Amelie Glapion said, “and she can’t find us neither. So that’s where it stands. Either we keep her held off until Sabine can watch out for herself. Or else we take her on.”
Sabine nodded. She knew what was happening. And what was more, I could see from the way she held herself that she accepted it. She was going to be the host of a rider for the rest of her life, and in this place, in this context, she thought it was a good thing. And God help me, I was starting to see her point of view.
“How long is it going to take for Sabine to pupate?” Aubrey asked.
The room went silent, all eyes turning to Aubrey as if he’d said something inappropriate.
“Excuse me?” Sabine said. I hopped in.
“How long before the loa in you is strong enough to fight off Carrefour?” I said. Then, “He’s a biologist. He talks like that sometimes. Don’t sweat it.”
“The longer it goes, the stronger it grows,” Amelie said. She was herself; I didn’t hear any trace of the rider in her voice. “The child will come into her own, but it ain’t all that different from real kids. It happens when it happens, you know?”
“Generally, the longer we can hold her off, the better it’ll be,” I said.
“Except,” Mfume said, planting the word like a flag. Attention shifted to him. “You mustn’t underestimate Karen Black. Once, I was able to keep a rough sort of track of her. Once, we were certain that we had time, that we could arrange this confrontation to fit our schedule. Instead, Carrefour has gathered new resources. It discovered us at the temple, and except for Miss Heller’s intervention might already have taken Sabine. And it has vanished.”
“Yeah, that was me,” I said. “Well, us. The wards where it’s hard to find with spells and cantrips and stuff? That was our fault.”
“We cannot assume that stealth gives us power,” Mfume continued. “Karen is very good at what she does. We may believe that we are safe only because she allows us to think it. The illusion serves her, and waiting gives her the tempo.”
“But we do know where she is, don’t we? We know where the safe house is,” Aubrey said.
“And she doesn’t know that we three are back in the game,” I said. “So she won’t know that’s compromised. If nothing else, we could send someone out to take a look. And if she’s not there, maybe Ex would be, and we could get him back too.”
“Ex?” Amelie Glapion said.
“My friend who’s sleeping with her,” I said. “The one we came back for. He’s another problem. He used to be a priest, and he knows how to pull a rider out of the host body.”
“So Ex like in exorcist,” Amelie Glapion said. “You’re telling me this bitch got a warded house and a working exorcist out of you?”
“And a van,” I said. “A warded van so she can move around without being seen.”
“And you got what?”
I felt myself blushing a little.
“She told me some stories about my uncle. And there was a favor or two she was going to owe me.”
“Owe you,” Amelie said.
“Yeah.”
“Owe you like not actually do for you, but maybe someplace down the line.”
“Like that.”
The old woman shook her head in disgust.
“Either this bitch really is that good or you’ve got to get a whole lot smarter,” she said.
“Little of both,” I admitted.
“But the safe house,” Aubrey said. “I know going out there’s a risk, but—”
Chogyi Jake leaned forward, his fingertips tapping the tabletop like raindrops. His expression was focused inward, the way it did when he was thinking through a particularly knotty problem.
“It may not be a risk we have to take,” he said. “I put the wards on the house and the van both. Ex and Aubrey here both helped, but I was central to all of them. If I can be used as a focus, perhaps we can break them through me.”
“What exactly did you do with them?” Dr. Inondé asked, and the conversation sailed over my head like a kite. Medial foci, ekagratva, veve, and primal aether bounced across the room with occasional pauses for translation and clarification. It was like Amelie Glapion, Chogyi Jake, Aubrey, and Dr. Inondé had turned into occult economists; I didn’t know what they were saying, and I was fairly certain anything I said was only going to make me look dumb. Instead I finished my coffee and leaned back in my chair.
There was a certain joy in disengaging from a conversation. It let me see all the things going on at the edges of the talk. The way Sabine leaned in whenever her grandmother spoke, as if she was trying to drink in each word. The way Amelie Glapion’s eyes darkened when the rider within her stirred and took interest. Mfume’s poker face, built in prison to give nothing away. The angle of Dr. Inondé’s head as he leaned forward, drawing something on a napkin for Chogyi Jake to look at. Mfume and Aubrey started up a side conversation about the geography around the safe house. Sabine said something about Soleil Noir and got shushed. Daria, on her cot, stirred, sat up, stretched.