Aubrey yelped, but before he could gun the engine or turn the car to attack, Joseph Mfume’s long face was framed in the window, his finger turning a fast circle that meant we should roll down the window. When Aubrey did it, the thick, unconditioned air smelled like swamp and sweat.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Waiting for you,” Mfume said and looked back at the other cars. “And them as well, I take it.”

“I got some reinforcements,” I said. “She’s really here then?”

“Yes,” Mfume said. “I followed it from the house. Amelie? She’s…”

“Gone,” I said. “And Legba with her.”

Behind us a car door opened and closed, and then another. The cult preparing for battle. Mfume’s goofy smile looked strained and nervous.

“They have been in the shed for some time,” he said. “We have to hurry.”

“I know,” I said, then to Aubrey, “just park it here. We’ll walk in.”

“You have a plan?” Mfume said.

“That would be generous,” I said as I got out.

“I’ve got a bunch of general intentions and thirty or so people with cheap handguns and machetes.”

“More effective than intention alone, I suppose,” Mfume said.

The others were spilling out into the midnightblack street. The dome lights flickered on and off like a huge, understated Christmas tree. One car alarm chirped, and angry voices followed it. I felt some sympathy for whoever had made the mistake. We were all improvising here.

They gathered close, but I could see their eyes turning toward the gently curving drive that would lead to the safe house. I could feel them drawn toward it like moths toward flame; their queen was in danger, and they strained at the leash of my own tentative authority. I couldn’t hold them back any longer.

“Okay,” I said, my voice a stage whisper. “They’re going to be in the shed out back…”

“We gonna need three groups,” Aunt Sherrie said. “Omar, you take your crew and head around the left side through the trees, and don’t go fast. You go too fast, you make noise like that goddamn car alarm.”

“Sorry about that,” a voice said from the gloom.

“Don’t be sorry, just get your boys together,” Sherrie said. “Elijah? You take Nick and Majora and any two others you like and secure the house. Anybody in there, you just keep right on going all the way around until you hook up with Omar, but if it’s empty, you get in and hold it. Deny this bitch her fallback position, you understand?”

“Yes, Aunt Sherrie,” a man with a voice like a landslide said.

“All right, then. The rest of y’all come with me. That means you too, Miss Thing,” Sherrie said, looking at me. “We’re the ones going to bell the cat, and I am not doing that job by myself. Omar, I’m going to give you five minutes to get in position. If we have to fall back, Carrefour’s going to get drawn out, and you be ready to come in behind it. Now all you remember we’re trying not to kill the preacher or the horse. Preacher, you just hold him down or shoot him in the knee. Whatever. The horse… well, do what you can.”

“Um,” I said, blinking.

“Two tours in Afghanistan, one in Iraq,” Sherrie said. “I do not fuck around.”

I had the almost genetic impulse to say sir, yes sir, but I sat on it. Mfume stepped forward.

“I will take the rider,” he said. “Don’t kill her unless I have fallen.”

Sherrie cocked her head, then shrugged.

“You heard the man. Be careful with Carrefour until it kills this one. Then do what you have to do. Now let’s go.”

Half the cultists seemed to dissolve into the gray, moonlit mist, the others waiting to follow Sherrie’s lead. She smiled at me with wide, white, tombstone teeth.

“This is your party,” she said. “You go on ahead, we’ll follow you.”

Meaning, I understood, that if anyone was going to get shot from a distance, it was going to be me. I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly and nodded. Chogyi Jake and Aubrey came to my side, and then Mfume joined them. Five minutes, she’d said. They lasted forever and no time at all. Sherrie looked from her wristwatch to the drive, pointed at me, pointed at it. My throat was thick with fear and my blood felt like it was vibrating in its vessels.

I walked down the side of the path, the knee-high grass muffling my footsteps more than the gravel would have. The safe house slowly came into view, its windows glowing in the fog. No one confronted us but the Virgin Mary, looking more like a tombstone than ever. The shed was still hidden by the angle of our approach.

Aubrey trotted up to walk at my side, Chogyi Jake and Mfume followed close. Aubrey took my hand.

“I’ve got to stop getting us into situations like this,” I said softly. “I’m seriously going to get someone killed.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You really are.”

TWENTY-THREE

We made our way around the corner of the house. The white cargo van squatted at the back door, its windows black. I had the sense that it was watching us, though there was no one in it. The fog-wet grass soaked my shoes and the cuffs of my pants as I walked, cold and clammy and grasping. My shirt and hair were getting damp, and Aubrey’s hand in mine was the only warmth I felt.

The thick air also muffled sound so that even the handful of crickets seemed to be singing from miles away. The prison that we’d made from our shed was a looming darkness punctuated by intense points of brilliant white light-the line around the doorway, the slats of the tin vent. I squeezed Aubrey’s hand one last time and let it go. Hunching close to the ground, I moved forward until the dark, mist-soaked wood was almost close enough to touch. The voices got louder as I approached like someone turning up the volume knob. Ex, his voice hoarse, in a shouted litany. The higher, weeping voice of Sabine.

The world felt thin, changed, unstable as driving on ice. Whatever rituals Ex was doing to cast Legba out of Sabine’s body had brought the Pleroma or Next Door or whatever we called it close enough to feel, and it made my skin crawl.

Someone came up on my left. Mfume, and then a moment later, Chogyi Jake and Aunt Sherrie. This was it. The big moment. We would gather all the cultists together, kick in the door and hope for the best. I steeled myself, but my hands were tapping busily at my knees, like my body was trying to get my attention. I had Chogyi Jake and Aubrey, Mfume and Aunt Sherrie, and at least a dozen of Legba’s congregation. I was pretty sure, if it came to it, we could rush in and take them by force. A few cultists would probably die. Maybe Ex. Probably Karen.

So I had to try the other way first. I motioned Aubrey and Chogyi Jake to stop, then I waved Mfume and Aunt Sherrie closer.

“Get everyone around the shed,” I whispered. “Not in line of sight, but close by, okay?”

“What the hell are you doing?” Sherrie said.

“I’m going in,” I said. “I’ll get the others out if I can. Just stay clear until I give the high sign.”

Sherrie didn’t seem to like the idea, but she nodded.

“Your funeral,” she said, and I stepped up to the shed door and knocked.

“Ex! Karen! It’s Jayné! We need to talk!”

I waited for a hail of gunfire, but all I got was a stream of invective from inside the shed. I heard men and women scattering in the thick, wet darkness and held myself steady. When the door swung open, the light was blinding.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Karen said, and for the first time I recognized the deepness and power in her voice as a rider. Carrefour was speaking through her, and the mask was beginning to slip.

“I need to talk to Ex,” I said.

“Jayné?” he said from within. He’d stopped his chanting, but Sabine’s keening cry didn’t falter.

“Hey,” I said. “Sorry for the shitty timing. But… I tried calling your cell phone.”

“I lost it,” he said.