“I understand,” I said.

“If what we did was a onetime thing, I can accept that,” he said. “If it’s more than that, I’d love it. I love you, Jayné. You’re funny and sexy and smart. And vulnerable in ways you seem totally unaware of. And you make me laugh.”

My chest felt hollow and full at the same time. I love you. The most common, used, trite words in the world, but my eyes were tearing up just the same. Aubrey wiped his thumb across them, and the world became a little less wavy.

“But seriously, I’m kind of messed up right now,” he said. “And it may take me a while to get my head back on straight.”

“Oh, I will so totally wait,” I said.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “But it would be great if you did.”

I leaned forward, slipped down to the floor, and wrapped my arms around him. We were both crying again. It felt wonderful and heartbreaking and a lot like relief. My uncle Eric broke it up.

“Hey. You’ve got a call.”

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, kissed Aubrey quickly on the cheek, and went to the kitchen. My pack was open where he’d left it. The cell phone was in the side pocket. The caller ID said it was my lawyer.

“Jayné, dear, we’ve had something of a lead. Amelie Glapion? The grandmother?”

“Yes?” I said, looking for a seat. There was no table in the kitchen. We’d have to take care of that.

“A title search shows she owns several properties around New Orleans. Rentals, it appears. Her financial position is tenuous these days. Not enough diversity in the portfolio. She married her fortunes too much to the city, and between the hurricane and the housing market… well, I’m sure you understand.”

“Then you have a good address for her?”

“Sadly, I have a half dozen,” my lawyer said. “Who precisely lives where is somewhat obscure. If one were the suspicious type, one might call it a shell game. I can have each one checked, but since you specifically asked that no contact be made…”

“No, don’t. Just send me the addresses and I can take it from there.”

“I thought you might say that. Did you know, by any chance, that Glapion was Marie Laveau’s married name?”

“Marie Laveau, like the Marie Laveau? Voodoo queen of New Orleans?”

“The very one. Amelie Glapion appears to be in direct apostolic line,” she said. “She’s the silent partner of something called the Voodoo Heart Temple. Despite the name, it’s a retail shop. I thought you might want it looked into?”

“Yes,” I said. “That would be great.”

“I’ll proceed on that as well, then,” she said. “And, dear? There is reason to suspect that Amelie may have powerful friends. Be careful.”

My lawyer had never said anything like that in the time I’d known her. Her tone of voice was flat and considered. It carried more weight than shouting would have.

“I will,” I said.

“Excellent. I’ll be in touch.”

I leaned against the kitchen wall, looking at the cell phone. Something was shifting uneasily in the back of my mind. Aubrey appeared in the doorway.

“Are you all right?”

“Just fine,” I said.

“You sure?”

“Not a hundred percent, no,” I said. “Middle eighties, maybe.”

“I kind of dropped a bomb,” he said. “I really thought you knew about your mother. The way Eric talked about it, I assumed it was common knowledge. I mean, not common. Family business.”

“Family business,” I said. The phrase tugged at me. Glapion was related to Marie Laveau, the most famous voodoo priestess of all time. Sabine was Amelie’s granddaughter. The thought fluttered in the back of my mind, soft and elusive as a moth. If I hadn’t been tired and jet-lagged, if I hadn’t had three kinds of emotional whiplash in the last half hour, if I’d gone to bed instead of dancing and drinking, maybe it would have come clear.

As it was, I didn’t figure it out until it was way too late.

ELEVEN

“They act like it will all come back,” Karen said as we walked across Jackson Square. “It won’t. Nothing comes back, it just moves on. The natural state of the world is recovering from the last disaster.”

She looked over at me, surprised by my laughter.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I have about five different things going on right now, and that describes all of them.”

It was the awkward hour of the morning, too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. Jackson Square was full anyway. Fortune tellers sat at folding card tables all around the square, each offering up some small divinatory specialty. Crystal tarot. Energy reading. Palm reading. Aubrey and Ex planned to go to the safe house with Chogyi Jake and perform the rites that would make our cargo van difficult for the loa to find. Karen and I had taken the job of checking the six addresses of Amelie Glapion; playing the shell game.

Only first, we were on our way to the Café du Monde for beignets and coffee. Gawking tourist girl, me.

The air was heavy with moisture, the wide sweep of the Mississippi just up a flight of stairs, echoing the cathedral directly across the square. On one side, the eternal hope and faith of religion, and across from it, the uncaring, amoral water that had drowned the city. Only not this part. Not here. So maybe the cathedral meant something more after all.

“It’s a mess,” Karen said. “There are still people paying property tax on houses that haven’t existed since the hurricane. They can’t get the assessors out fast enough. Gentilly. St. Bernard Parish. There are parts of this city that are dead. And it’s better now. Oh God, it’s better than it was right after the storm.”

“You sound like you love the city,” I said, then pointed at the tightly packed chairs under the awning. “Is that the place?”

“The very one,” she said with a confirming nod. “I wasn’t here before. I mean, I passed through once or twice when I was working with the bureau. But not since. Not until the rider decided to come back here. And no, I don’t love New Orleans. I respect it. I respect anything that can take a bad hit and not go down.”

Like my parent’s marriage, I thought. Like Karen herself. Or even the serial-killing rider we were hunting, for that matter.

I had meant to spend the evening after we got back from the safe house reading up about Legba and Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Heart Temple, and demonically possessed serial killers in general. Instead, I’d sent e-mail to my brother Curt. I didn’t say much, just hi, and I was doing fine and traveling a little. How were things at the homestead? In all the time I’d been hopping across the globe, I hadn’t talked to my family. I hadn’t even told them what Eric had left me. Writing to Curt was a step so small as to almost not exist, and still it was a big deal for me.

Somewhere along the line, I felt like I’d taken a big hit too, and that I was still standing back up. I promised myself again that tonight I’d do my homework. No more putting it off. Time to be professional. Maybe even after we were done with coffee.

We got a table, and an older Asian waitress took our order. Five minutes later, I was eating deep-fried dough in a thick coat of powdered sugar and drinking chicory coffee.

“I was thinking,” I said. “The whole thing with Marinette?”

“How is Aubrey doing?” Karen asked.

“He’s fine. Well… no, he’s really not,” I said. “But he’s going to be. You know?”

Aubrey. Another one for the list of hard knocks.

“I understand,” she said, sipping her own coffee. She took it with cream. I drank it black. “I’m sorry that happened. It’s… scarring. If there’s anything I can do to help. Even if he just needs someone to talk to.”

“I’ll let him know,” I said. “Thanks.”

“I feel responsible,” she said. “I was the one who led you in there. Even when you expressed concerns, I just pushed on ahead. I’m not used to working with people. Not anymore. I think I forgot what it’s like, risking someone besides myself.”