“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.
Yeah, I just bet you did, I thought.
My eyes were adjusting. Karen was more than a movement within the brightness, and Ex had come to her side. The shed was lit by four halogen work lamps, hissing and hot as a furnace, and the gloom around us seemed deeper by contrast. Ex looked exhausted. His skin had a gray undertone, and his hair hung in his eyes, limp and greasy. His clothes looked like he’d slept in them. He held a crucifix in one hand and a book bound in black leather in the other.
Karen, on the other hand, almost glowed. Her eyes were bright as a fever, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, with only one stray lock to soften her face. She was wearing what looked like military surplus gear-thick canvas pants and jacket over a ribbed white T-shirt. There was something inhuman in the way she held herself. Carrefour was so close to winning that it could taste the victory, only here I was interrupting the party. Once the young Legba was plucked out of Sabine’s body, Carrefour could turn on us all, but until then it had to keep the masquerade going.
I smiled as if I meant it and walked up like I assumed they’d let me pass. Karen almost held her ground, then with a growl like a dog ready to bite, she took a step back, and I went in.
The shed had seemed bigger when it was empty, but it was still a wide, high space. The halogen lamps burned in three corners, fed by bright-orange extension cords. A matte black shotgun lay against the wall like a presentiment of doom. The dirt floor was covered now with symbols in paint and earth like Amelie Glapion’s cornmeal veves. The designs seemed to move in my peripheral vision, and they filled me with a deep unease. In the center of the floor, a black iron ring stuck out of the newly poured concrete. Sabine was chained to it, bright steel links going to manacles at her wrists and a tight leather collar at the throat.
Her clothes, ripped and bloody, were the ones she’d worn at the ceremony, the ones I had seen her in only hours before. They were almost unrecognizable. Her eyes were puffy and closed, and she rocked back and forth on the ground, whispering to herself. Louvri le pót. Legba. Legba. Louvri. Please, please, Legba louvri le pót. I wanted to sweep over to her, to wrap my arms around her and comfort her and tell her it was going to be all right, even though I thought it probably wasn’t.
How had I ever believed this was a good idea?
“What’s going on,” Karen said. “Why are you here?”
“We got back this morning. I needed to see Ex,” I said.
“He doesn’t answer to you anymore,” Karen said, moving to him in a fair imitation of protectiveness. She took his hand, and he let her. The confusion in his expression hurt to see.
“You fired me,” he said, which wasn’t exactly the same as Karen’s statement.
“Yeah, I know. Look, could I just talk to you for a minute? Alone?” I gestured toward the door. If I could get him outside and out of the line of fire…
“No,” Karen said. “We’re in the middle of a ritual cleansing. Every minute we let it rest, the rider gets its control back over the girl. We have to get her free.”
I nodded and smiled as ingratiatingly as I could. It was a doomed effort, but I tried.
“It’ll only be—”
“What’s going on here?” Karen said. Her eyes swept the door and walls like she could see through them. “Where have you been? What do you want?”
“It’s okay,” Ex said. “I can handle this.”
She turned on him faster than a human could, a hand pressed to his sternum.
“Don’t you fucking move,” she said. “Something’s wrong here. Are you alone? Did you bring someone here?”
“Aubrey and Chogyi Jake are outside,” I said, nodding to the door. Karen lifted her head, sniffing the air like an animal. Ex stepped back from her, crossing his arms and frowning.
“I’d love to talk,” he said, “but I can’t.”
Sabine’s litany trailed away into a low keening. She looked up, her eyes no more than slits, as if she was seeing me for the first time.
“Jayné?” she said.
The silence that followed was like a thunderclap. The fear tasted like pennies and tinfoil.
“How,” Karen said, her voice low and dangerous, “does it know your name?”
“You’ve got the wrong rider,” I said. “Ex, get outside now.”
Before he could move, Karen dove, scooped up the shotgun, and whirled. The barrel was pointing at my head, and it was big as a tunnel. And then Ex was between us, shielding me with his body.
“Karen!” Ex shouted. “Stop it! What are you—”
“She’s with them,” Karen said. “She’s been taken over by them. Don’t you get it?”
Ex looked at me, fear and pain in his eyes, and I knew he thought it was true. He had walked away from me, and I had gone and gotten myself possessed by a rider, and it was his fault for not protecting me. Months of living in close quarters made every nuance of his expression legible as a book, and I felt a surge of desperate impatience with him.
“Ex, you need to get out of here right now,” I said. “Karen lied to us. She’s possessed. She has been from the beginning. It’s called Carrefour, and it’s the exiled rider. The thing in Sabine never left New Orleans.”
“But the girl’s possessed,” Ex said. “I know she is.”
“Yeah, that’s true. But it’s not as bad as you think.”
“Move aside, Ex,” Karen said. “She used to be Jayné, but she’s the enemy now.”
“I can save her,” Ex said. “I got the thing out of Aubrey, I can get it out of her too.”
He believed her. He thought I had a rider. Karen chambered a round, and Sabine screamed. I tried to step around Ex, but he shifted, staying between me and the gun. Some flying insect found its way into the furnace flame of the lamps and popped as it died.
“You can’t kill her,” Ex said.
“Oh,” Mfume said from the doorway, “I think she can. The beast within her is quite capable of murder.”
Karen turned, her face going pale as bone. Mfume didn’t flinch when the shotgun pointed at him; he raised his chin in defiance. I had never been so glad to see someone ignore my instructions.
“You can fight it, Karen,” he said. “I believe in you. I know that you can fight it.”
The blast of the shotgun was deafening. One of the halogen lamps burst in long, streaming flames. The doorway where Mfume had been was empty, and I couldn’t tell if he’d dodged the blast or been knocked back by it.
Karen screamed, a sound filled with rage and violence and joy. And like I had turned a switch, my body moved into action. I pushed Ex out of the way gently as lowering a baby into a crib, then hammered out one leg into the shotgun. Karen staggered back, trying to turn the gun toward me, and I kicked it again. I felt the mechanism buckle under my foot, and Karen slammed into the wall like a cannon shot, the wall actually cracking like something out of a cartoon.
Surprise widened her eyes, but only for a moment. Karen launched herself off the wall, swinging for me. I spun back as Ex tried again to put himself between us. Karen’s open hand drove into my side, and I felt the snap of my weakened rib even before I felt the pain. I landed hard on my ass at Sabine’s side. Ex was yelling something about being reasonable; Sabine was shouting desperately for Legba. Karen and I might almost have been alone in the room.
Her eyes were hard as marble, the little smile at the corner of her mouth ticked up a degree. Pale hair framed her face and made her beautiful. I knew that beside her, I must look like a drowned rat-fogsoaked shirt and jeans, black hair sticking to me like ivy on bricks. I had a hand pressed to my broken ribs. Every breath hurt like a bitch.