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material has been known to have survived the first millennium!"
Until now apparently.
I mused.
>That's it! I need to be getting you outta my head and finding you another
ride back home,now .
>You are a distraction and you are using up conjure memory that I am likely
to
She had opened the book and was turning the pages as if each piece of
parchment had been dipped in excrement. Dozens of handwritten notes had been
scribbled in the margins in a variety of handwriting styles and inks. Two
notations seemed to jump off the page with unnerving vitality.
Additional coordinates:47°9' S 126°43' W and49°51' S 128°34' W .
Without setting the book down Mama Samm fished through her valise-sized purse
and landed her cell phone.
"Um," Irena said, "cell phones don't work down here. You can't get a signal."
"Can't, huh?" Mama Samm touched the phone to her forehead and whispered
something that even I couldn't hear. Then she hit number six on her speed dial
and within two rings Zotz was on the other end of the connection.
"Everything all right?" my erstwhile caretaker asked.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you the proper way to answer the phone is to say
'hello'?" Her voice lacked its accustomed snap.
"Caller ID," he answered. "I knew it was you."
"I got an assignment for you."
"Oh goody. My existence has no meaning when I'm not steppin' and fetchin' for
your beneficent consideration and past kindnesses."
"This is for Mister Chris," she said sourly.
"That's different; I actually am in his debt."
"I need you to do some research for us him. Can you go online without getting
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distracted by all the nasty stuff?"
He sniffed. "The fact that my studies of the human condition include research
on human sexuality a major factor in human motivation to both create and
destroy does not mean that I am a porn addict, madam. I merely seek clarity."
"Yeah? Well, I got some numbers for you to clarify. You got a pencil?"
"Gimme a moment."
While Zotz rummaged for a writing implement, I whispered in her um "ear" to
ask after our own, personal homeland security.
"Ready whenever you are, S.D."
"Before we continue I need to ask you a question," she said, shooting a
sidelong glance at Laveau's stepdaughter.
"What? Like Truth or Dare?"
"No. Like how's the fishing up your way? I hear it's so good the fish are
just climbing out of the river and into your boat. Are they still biting?"
"Uh, that's a big negatory there, Big Mama. But we are taking no chances.
I've got spear guns and firearms stashed everywhere, the weapons lockers are
unlocked, and I've rigged a dozen homemade depth charges. The fish finders are
alarmed and running night and day. No one's sticking their feet in the water
and anything sticks its head out, I'm taking it off."
"Good to know. I'm gonna give you four sets of numbers, now. They're
geographical coordinates in latitude and longitude. Do you know what that "
"I know what longitude and latitude are; just give me the damn numbers. And
tell me if 'his nibs' is all okay."
"He is. That's all I can say at the moment."
"Got company, huh?"
"You're smarter than you look. Of course, you'd have to be just to walk
erect."
"Yeah, I love you, too. Gimme the numbers: Olive's coming over shortly to see
if her nephew needs changin'. I'll make a run to the library then."
She repeated the four sets of coordinates, they exchanged a couple more
unpleasantries and she refolded her phone and dropped it back into her bag.
"Um, Miss Sammathea?" Irena tugged on our arm. "I know there's no love lost
between you and my stepmother. And this . . . book . . . means that she's
probably crossed a line that well there's probably no uncrossing. But if
saving the world could coincide with saving Marie Laveau from herself?" She
looked up at us with large, liquid brown eyes. "Well, that wouldn't be such a
bad thing, would it?"
Mama Samm gazed back down at her and smiled. I think the smile was meant to
be reassuring. I know that it took all kinds of effort. "Where is she, child?
Do you know where she's gone?"
Irena nodded. "I think so."
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"Tell me."
"Better than that, I'll drive you."
Now it was the juju woman's turn to lay her hand on the young girl's arm. "It
would be better if I went alone. Just tell me."
* * *
My host fumed all the way to the New Orleans' Museum of Art.
>Another five minutes and I would have figured it out on my own!
>The newspaper was lying right there! Opened right to the Arts & Culture
section for gods' sakes!
I agreed.
>What? Where?
>It's hard to concentrate with a babbling fool carryin' on inside your head.
Bad enough babysitting one. Now I'm babysitting two!
"You alright back there?" Irena asked from the front seat. "You haven't said
two sentences since we crossed Esplanade Avenue."
"I'm thinking, child." Mama Samm lifted the newspaper from her lap and
skimmed the trio of grainy photos accompanying the article on the NOMA
exhibition. "Marie Laveau said something about a Russian key. This exhibit
contains hundreds of religious icons and artifacts from Russia and it closes
tomorrow. The odds are, we're too late to prevent her from taking what she
needs for her sorceries . . ."
"But, if we can figure out what she's taken," Pantera's daughter
extrapolated, "it might give you a clue as to what sort of a spell she was
working on and how to counter it?"
Tap.
Mama Samm nodded but I just folded my nonexistent arms and glowered at the
back of Irena's head.
into the museum, find her key, get back out, and reach alternate shelter
before sunrise? I'm betting she's still holed up inside, somewhere.>
Tap tap.
Mama Samm nodded again, this time for my benefit. >Which is why I didn't want
her tagging along. The next time I see Marie Laveau, it won't be a "come, let
us reason together" kind of moment.
Tap-a tap tap.
Tap tap-a tap tap tap-a tapita . . .
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"Listen, I'm going to drop you off by the front door," Irena said, putting on
her turn signal, "because my umbrella's pretty small and I don't see any
parking places under the one-hundred-yard dash."
Thunder boomed in the distance and the tapping of random drops of rain on the
car roof moved from background noise to a roar of sound that essentially
drowned out any further conversation.
Oncoming traffic switched their headlights on.
Between the back door of Irena's car and the front entrance of the New
Orleans Museum of Art, I learned how to curse in Haitian, Yoruba, and some
humming-clicking dialect that the old juju woman refused to identify for me.
Maybe it was a passing squall. Rain in Southern Louisiana and the Crescent
City, in particular, was both common and transitory, sometimes occurring two
to three times a day with hours of sunshine sandwiched in between. This might
last twenty minutes, pass on, and we'd have a few more hours of daylight to
keep Marie at bay while we searched the museum for her handiwork.
That would be a typical weather scenario.
Unfortunately, typical had gone out the window with tentacle-faced beings
from other dimensions and dreamcasts from Deep Space Malign.
I asked, as she snatched up a brochure and began studying the
list of exhibition areas.
>We split up and begin searching,
vibrations.
I intoned as the thunder outside made an ear-splitting, tearing
sound. It stopped "raining." Instead, water fell out of the sky as if some
cosmic reservoir had, indeed, been ripped asunder.
>Irena and I split up,
entrance, looking like a drowned well certainly not a "drowned rat" as the
saying typically goes. Her long, dark hair was plastered to her head,
shoulders, and back so that the tips of her ears poked out like little
kitty-cat triangles. Similarly, her shirt was now reapplied to the sweet
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