Busted Flush

The Tears of Nepthys

THE THIRD TEAR: NICK

Kevin Andrew Murphy

THE CAFÉ DU MONDE prided itself on beignets, chicory coffee, and never closing, even for hurricanes. Ellen didn’t know if the last was such a wise idea, but since Committee aces were like cops and got the two former items free, she wasn’t exactly going to complain, either. The wind wailed outside the iron shutters, and Ellen shivered. Her beaded flapper gown was not exactly suited to the weather, but then again she had a psychic allergy to off-the-rack.

Jonathan had no such problem, and had somewhere acquired a new sport coat. Ellen was about to comment on it when Michelle blew in, her latest Endora-style kaftan flapping around her currently svelte figure. “Zombies,” Michelle said succinctly. “They’re at it again.” She glanced to their table. “Grab your coffee. I’ll explain on the way.”

The explanation did not help much. All Ellen gathered was that A) Reverend Wintergreen had been holding a prayer vigil at the Superdome; B) buses were in the parking lot to evacuate people without transportation; and C) zombies had shown up, wreaking havoc.

Michelle found a spot at the edge of the parking lot. There were indeed a huge number of buses and an even more enormous crowd of people waiting for them, soaking in the rain. But havoc was a bit of an overstatement. “This is your fault,” stated Mayor Connick, storming up to them, rain dripping off the brim of his umbrella. He was not looking at Michelle or Jonathan.

Ellen looked up at him. “How do you figure that and what is ‘this,’ exactly?”

“You . . . the dead . . .” He gestured wildly to the buses. “Look . . .”

Ellen took his umbrella and went around to the nearest one, glancing for a moment at the crowd, black and white and, well, joker—Ellen wasn’t sure what race or even sex the individual with the shrimp chiton had started out as—but they were all looking with horror at the open door. Ellen glanced in. In the driver’s seat sat a nattily dressed young black man, a gold grill in his mouth and a bullet hole in his forehead. He was beckoning with one hand and gesturing to the back of the bus with the other, clearly miming Come in . . . come in . . . always room for one more.

There was a bit more commotion at the next bus. “The Power of Christ compels thee!” roared Reverend Wintergreen, waving a large silver cross. “Get thee behind me, Satan!”

Ellen refrained from pointing out that if he wanted anyone on the bus to get behind him, he’d have to stop blocking the door. Instead, she just looked over his shoulder, seeing another zombie bus driver, but instead of welcoming gestures, this one was flipping him off.

“Same thing as at the hospital,” Ellen said, “though these seem a bit friendlier.”

“Safe bet it’s this ‘Hoodoo Mama’ we’ve heard about,” said Jonathan, coming to join them along with Jerusha, Ana, Michelle, and the mayor, “but fuck if I know what her game is.”

“Ain’t no game, you fuckers,” said a voice, harsh but still clear over the rain, “it’s fuckin’ dead serious.” An ancient black woman moved herself forward from the crowd, her wheelchair sluicing through the puddles. “You ain’t got no call to take these poor fuckers, these old fuckers, these fuckin’ jokers, away from the only homes they know, take them off to fuckin’ Jesus knows where, have them sit around in the fuckin’ rain while you play preacherman and hero so they catch their fuckin’ death of cold like poor ol’ Miss Partridge here.”

“Who’s Miss Partridge?” asked Michelle.

“I’m Miss Partridge”—the old woman glared through rain-specked bifocals—“and you fuckin’ killed me, you fuckin’ lily-white lard-ass bitch!” Her frail arms pushed on the arms of her wheelchair and she stood up, straightening her crooked back with a crack of snapping bones. “Go ahead, blow me up, you fucker!” She stalked forward as Michelle stepped back, a bubble forming between her fingers, pretty as a snow globe. “I seen you on TV, I fuckin’ know what you can do.” She gestured to the crowd, waving to several news cameras. “Go ahead and show all these nice people the sort of bitch who’d kill a little old lady with a fuckin’ bubble!”

“Hoodoo Mama, I presume,” Jonathan said, looking at her.

“Who the fuck wants to know?” she snapped, glaring at him, her milky eyes magnified to near the size of her face.

Ellen presumed as well. She handed the umbrella back to Mayor Connick and in three paces was at the wheelchair. She turned and sat down, placed her hands on the armrests, feet on the footrests, and closed her eyes.

Miss Partridge opened them.

She looked around, taking in the crowd. “Lan’ sakes, it’s a miracle,” she breathed. “I ain’t seen this clear in years.”

Not quite a miracle, Ellen apologized. The wild card. I brought you back—you’re in my body—but someone else is using yours.

Miss Partridge’s shock was also kindled with anger and recognition. She wheeled her chair around to face where Michelle’s team and the mayor stood in a confrontation with her former body. “Joey Hebert!” she called sharply. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“Jesus fuckin’ H. Christ!” The old zombie woman turned, looking down at the woman in the wheelchair. “How the fuck do you know my name?”

“Don’t you be speakin’ blasphemy with my poor dead lips, Josephine Hebert,” Miss Partridge snapped. “I know your hoodoo tricks. I knew you even before, back when you an’ Shaquilla Jones was smokin’ joints and drinkin’ Mickeys under my porch an’ you begged me not to tell your mama.” She wheeled her chair right up to the zombie’s legs. “An’ I didn’t, so don’t you be sassin’ me now. You ain’t got no call to be abusin’ my corpse after all I done for you.”

“Fuck you,” the old zombie spat, “you ain’t Miss Partridge. You’re some rich-ass white chick.”

Miss Partridge raised one hand and looked at it in wonder. “Why so I is. But you sure ain’t me neither, Joey Hebert, even if you be talkin’ with my old lips.” She put her hands on the wheels of her chair decisively. “An’ I may be a white girl now, but I kin still tan your backside once I fine where you is.” She wheeled, scanning the crowd, and stopped as she came to a scrawny girl-child, not quite a woman, with a ring in her navel, a red streak in her hair, and her eyes unfocused and glassy as any zombie’s. “There you be. . . .”

She began to wheel forward but suddenly the connection was broken. Ellen felt claws around her throat, strong as a harpy’s, tearing her out of the chair, throttling her from behind, and then there was a deafening explosion. Something spattered the back of Ellen’s head and she fell to the ground beside the wheelchair, landing hard on her hands and knees, rainwater and blood splashing as the crowd screamed, nat and joker alike running in horror, trampling the press.

Ellen rolled, then Jonathan was helping her up, pulling her away from the headless corpse of the old woman as it staggered about in the rain, waving her gnarled hands, blood spurting from the stump of her neck. A bubble floated through the air and blew off her right arm.

There was a momentary echoing silence. Then, behind them, came the roar of the bus.

Jonathan shoved Ellen out of the way but was not so fast himself, the bumper throwing him to the ground, the wheels coming over his legs as the jauntily smiling zombie driver flashed Ellen a gilded grin. But rather than an explosion of red, the tires sprayed green, thousands and thousands of wasps flying out from under the undercarriage, swirling around her. Then came a horrible rumbling and a quaking of the earth and the bus moved another seven yards before its front end was swallowed up by a huge crevasse in the asphalt.

The second bus wheeled toward the panicked crowd, Reverend Winter-green waddling after it, waving his cross. “The Power of Christ compels thee!” He fell on his belly in the rain, a sad and tragic figure until the next moment, when his legs pulled into his body, his arms as well, and then a huge fleshy sphere wrapped in white linen rolled over where his head had been, gathering momentum until it struck the bus square in the side, tipping it over.

Vines began to erupt from the crevasse, pale green with purple blossoms, but ginormous, a cross-pollination of Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Shop of Horrors, overgrowing the whole fleet, stopping the last bus in its tracks, and sealing the zombies inside.

“Kudzu!” Mayor Connick cried aghast. “I told her to plant anything but kudzu!”

Ellen heard a soft moan behind her then and turned as Jonathan crawled out from under the first bus—or more horribly, half of him did. Like a bisected wasp, his upper torso struggled forward until Ellen hoisted him up, cradling him in his sport coat. “Are you okay?”

“No, but—” He paused, wincing. “Well, no butt. It got my butt and my upper legs. Help me, I—” He winced again.

Ellen carried him over to Miss Partridge’s wheelchair, the wasps swarming over him, forming a green lap blanket as the rain continued to fall.

“I’ve never really done this before,” Jonathan admitted shakily.

“You’ve lost your legs,” Ellen stated, horrified.

“No, just my pants.” Jonathan winced and the green wasps seethed. “Most of my legs are here, just not all the bits that connect them.” He gasped and squeezed her hand. “I can re-form pieces but . . .” Ellen just held his hand as he clenched his eyes shut tight and moaned in pain, and she watched as his paunch melted away along with most of the fat on his body, tiny lumps moving under his skin, moving purposefully down to what there was left of his lower half.

“Is everyone all right?” Bubbles asked, squelching over with someone’s umbrella. She’d ballooned up fatter than the Reverend and then some, evidently having stopped another bus.

Jonathan opened his brilliant eyes and stared at her. “Apart from losing my legs, just peachy,” he said at last. “You?”

She stood there, her kaftan now a skintight muumuu. “You lost your—”

“I think I can get them back. How’s everyone else?”

“Ana’s overdone it. Again.” From the sound of it, this was a regular occurrence. “The Reverend’s helping her. And the mayor’s blown a fuse but Jerusha can deal with him. The zombies don’t seem to be a problem right now anyway. They’re just slumped over the steering wheels like someone cut their strings. Or maybe they’re playing dead.” She paused, then looked at Ellen worriedly. “That old woman I blew up . . . Hoodoo Mama’s work?”

“Who else? I saw her at the hospital,” Ellen said. “Nick did, too. And Miss Partridge knew her from way back. Young girl, Creole-looking, red streak in her hair. Looks like a boy.”

Jonathan looked confused. “She was at the hospital?”

“You were paying attention to the vending machines.” Ellen glanced to the crowd, but Joey Hebert had vanished in the throng. “Do you have anything to sketch with?”

“You’re an artist, too?” Bubbles opened an exquisite Hermès bag with one fat hand and fumbled out a stack of glossy photographs and a Sharpie.

“Not really, but my mother was.” Ellen took them, photos backside up, as Bubbles came over next to her, giving her shelter with her umbrella. She raised her hand to her cameo, touching her fingers to the smooth wet stone.

There was a blink and a familiar presence, and Ellen thought her explanation all in a rush: Mom, please, it’s an emergency—I need a sketch.

“Well, nice to see you, too, dear,” Mrs. Allworth remarked, glancing to Bubbles, then looking at the end of the upended giant-kudzu-covered bus. “Where are we?”

New Orleans, but I swear, it’s an emergency. We need a sketch of this girl. Ellen remembered her, the girl Nick had seen in the waiting room, the glassy-eyed teen in the crowd, the child Miss Partridge had known and in some part loved, a dozen images.

“She’d be prettier if she didn’t frown like that.” Mrs. Allworth uncapped the pen. “Is this all we have to work with?”

Yes, Mom. But please. I’ve been practicing, but I’m only good with fashions, not faces.

“Of course, dear,” said her mother. “Anything for you.” With sure, swift strokes, she began to sketch a montage of Hoodoo Mama, aka Josephine “Joey” Hebert, one pose after another, angry, wary, sullen, none of them happy. “So,” Mrs. Allworth asked conversationally, “are you seeing anyone?” Ellen couldn’t shield a flash image of Jonathan, and Mrs. Allworth glanced over and raised an eyebrow. “Well,” she sniffed at last, “at least this one’s not dead, but honestly, young man, work on your posture.” She then lowered the edge of her sketch and noticed the wheelchair and the lack of legs. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I—” Then she noticed the lap blanket of poison-green wasps.

She turned away. “I’m not even going to ask.” With one finger, she lifted the choker from her throat, Ellen’s throat, breaking contact between skin and brooch, severing the channel.

“Uh,” said Jonathan as Ellen handed him the sketch, “nice to have met your mom?”

Ellen attempted a grin.

Jonathan looked at the images and his wasps did as well, turning as one to examine each face. A few crawled over them, then began to shake their rear ends, doing a waspish macarena. Then the whole cloud, the lower half of Jonathan Hive, took off, dodging raindrops. “Fly!” Jonathan called. “Fly, my pretties!” He turned to Ellen as she folded up the sketch sheet and slipped it in her purse. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

“I think you just said it to CNN,” Bubbles pointed out, indicating the lurking news crews.

The Reverend came over next, his suit split down the sides and ground with mud down the front and presumably the back, but otherwise no worse for the wear. “Oh, my poor boy,” the Reverend said, falling to one knee and grasping Jonathan’s left hand. “May I pray for you?”

“Got any prayers for people who lose their asses?”

“Samuel 6:5 and 6:17,” the Reverend said brightly. “God’s right ahead of you there.” He bowed his head, clutching his cross and his Bible in the other hand. “O Lord, please bless this poor sinner and fill him with Your Holy Spirit. Let him be filled and made whole. May—”

“Oh, my God,” said Jonathan, getting religion rather abruptly, staring at the dark sky transfixed, eyes so wide they were almost glowing. “Oh, my God. Brace yourself. It’s coming.”

Reverend Wintergreen bowed his head. “Are you seeing God’s Kingdom, my boy?”

“Worse,” breathed Jonathan. “Harriet.”

A swarm of wasps fell from the sky, clutching to Jonathan for dear life, and three seconds later, the wind followed, a raw blast of screaming fury. Ellen clung to the handles of Miss Partridge’s wheelchair, Jonathan only anchored by the Reverend holding his hand, and the next moment, the hand ripped free, crumbling away at the wrist into green motes, the rest of Jonathan eroding away as well until nothing was left but an empty wheelchair that was wrenched from her grip. Ellen was flung back, finding herself caught by the even greater mass of the Amazing Bubbles—Michelle, her rock in the storm, almost literally—and after an interminable interval that was probably just minutes, the first wave passed, Harriet lulling to a driving rainstorm.

“Jonathan . . .,” Ellen breathed, looking at the shamble of humanity. He was gone.

“Bugsy’s been scattered before. He has to save himself.” Bubbles held her. “Ellen, you’re my ace in the hole. I need you to track Hoodoo Mama. How are your detective skills?”

Ellen clutched the ermine-tailed purse still slung across her chest. “Professional.”

“Good. What I needed to hear. Meet me at the hotel at nightfall.”

Of course, it was not Ellen who was the detective, but Nick. She walked far enough back to the Quarter to find a bar where she could seek shelter, then took out his hat along with the sketch. Hey Nickie, Ellen thought. We’ve got a problem. She briefly filled in the details.

“Good detective work,” Nick complimented her. “You and your mom are hired.”

Nick, I’m serious. What do we do now?

“No great mystery, Elle. Just legwork. Ask around.” And so began what felt like a demented pub crawl, going from one shuttered business to another, pounding on doors until they found someone to let them inside and look at sketches. Josephine Hebert was known mostly by face. A few folk knew the name “Joey” and that she was sometimes seen around Congo Square.

Doubt she’ll be hanging out, Ellen thought, but she has to get her corpses somewhere.

“Good thinking.” They struggled to the nearest funeral home, where they found that Josephine Hebert had instituted a “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t get strangled by the zombies that walk out the back” policy. She was also in the habit of sending them home when they got a bit ripe, but the traumatized mortician neither knew nor wanted to know where she lived.

Nick went back out into the storm, clutching his hat. Halfway down Royale, Harriet hit again. A shutter tore off a building nearby and Nick dove to safety, in the process letting go.

Ellen watched his hat go flying down the street. “Nick!” she screamed, louder than the wind, rushing after it. But as fast as she ran, a hurricane was faster and the old fedora blew up Royale until it caught on a wrought-iron balcony, plastered against the metalwork a story up.

Ellen raced. The ironwork was twisted with roses and vines, painted black, cutting into her hands, but panic numbed the pain. She was almost to the balcony when Harriet lulled and Nick’s precious hat fell to the street. Ellen jumped down, stumbling, lunging for it. For Nick.

The wind rose up again, stealing him. Twice, she almost caught the circle of felt. Twice more, Harriet taunted her. Then the hat fetched up against the legs of a child. At least, the stature and the American Hero BRICKBAT children’s jumper said child. Above that was a rubbery ebony-skinned cross between a golliwog, a cyclops, and a sea anemone.

The joker child picked up Nick’s hat in his-her-its tentacles and held it.

“My hat!” Ellen called, rushing forward. “Give it to me!”

The child’s eye went wide above its fanged mouth and it ran, Ellen chasing, her own mouth open in a wordless scream. Only when the water overtook her did she realize that it had not been her the child had been running from, but the levee breach behind them.

She tumbled end over end, swallowing mouthfuls of the muddy Mississippi, then came up, gasping and sputtering. But a lifetime on sailboats and yachts made for a strong swimmer, and a midcalf silk dress was not the least practical garment when swimming for your life.

Nick’s hat bobbed a ways away, floating like a paper boat. The other direction, the child surfaced, squalling, thrashing its tentacles. Ellen knew drowning terror when she saw it. Despite having drawn a joker designed for water, it had never learned to swim.

She prayed for Nick to forgive her, but knew he wouldn’t if she made any other choice. Wouldn’t make any other choice himself. She swam for the drowning child.

Its tentacles whipped around her, almost drowning her in the process, but she ducked down and it released her. She surfaced and caught it from behind, letting it wrap its tentacles around one arm. It was hard going, but at last she got to solid footing. “You okay, honey?”

The joker child clung to her wordlessly, but seemed unhurt. Ellen glanced back to the flooded street. Blocks away, a speck may have been Nick’s hat. The wind blew. It was gone.

Her shoes were also gone, lost somewhere in the floodwaters. But she didn’t need shoes to hot-wire a car. At this point, she didn’t even need to channel Great-Aunt Lila.

The joker child seemed enthralled by this and Ellen was glad it found larceny so entertaining. She didn’t know what she felt. Joy at having saved another human life. Fear that she would never find Nick again. Anger that she had been forced to choose. Maybe grief.

Reverend Wintergreen was onstage at the Superdome, leading prayers. Ellen wasn’t the only one who had lost someone, but she knew him. “Oh, yea,” he said, looking down at what Ellen had brought him, “suffer the little children. . . . What’s your name, my child?”

The joker child gurgled wordlessly into the microphone.

“It’s PJ!” came a chorus. Actually, a duet—Ellen turned as Rick and Mick forced their way through the crowd of joker refugees near the front. The joker child wrapped its tentacles around both their necks. “You find PJ’s mama?” asked the one with the goatee.

“No,” Ellen said. She didn’t know whether PJ was Rick and Mick’s son or niece or maybe just some child they knew. “Uh . . . PJ was alone.” Ellen paused. It was a long shot, but maybe not that long. Mick and Rick had known everyone on the seedy side in Jokertown, and New Orleans couldn’t be that different. “I’m looking for someone, too.” She took out the sketch.

It was waterlogged but intact. The twins studied it. “Oh, yeah, that’s Joey,” said the one with the goatee. “Foulest fucking mouth in the Quarter. She lives in a red shotgun over on Treme. By the old St. Louis cemetery. Can’t miss it. Hoodoo marks chalked all over the front.”

“She’s Hoodoo Mama, right?”

Rick and Mick both laughed. “Joey?” said the first. “Nah, she’s just a street punk.”

“Hoodoo Mama’s this old Creole witch, blind as a bat and older than grave dirt. Calls up hellhounds to serve her, and the dead are her eyes, even the pigeons.”

Ellen nodded. As she left, a young black woman reached into a suitcase and handed her a pair of pink sneakers, which Ellen wore back into the storm to make her way to the hotel.

Nick was gone. Nick, the brave one. He’d been with her so many years, and now a piece of her heart had been ripped out, blown away by the hurricane. But when she stepped into the main foyer of their house at the Place D’Armes, she heard a voice. Not Nick’s, but . . .

“Jonathan!” Ellen cried, throwing her arms around him. “Oh, thank God. I—I lost Nick . . .” She hugged Jonathan, not knowing what else to do, and grief finally came in great wracking sobs.

“Sorry.” Jonathan sat with her on the couch, held her. “Um, he was a brave . . . uh . . . hat.”

“My, uh, condolences,” Michelle said, “I only just met him. . . .”

Ellen scrubbed the tears fiercely from her eyes. “I know where Josephine Hebert lives.” She took a breath. “She does dead animals as well as dead people. There were some pigeons the other day that I think were her spies.”

“The creepy ones on Bourbon Street?” Jonathan asked.

Ellen nodded. “She’s got a bunch of zombies, too. Checks them out like library books.”

“Well, I’m pretty much invulnerable,” Bubbles said.

“Nice to be you,” Jonathan said. “What if she suffocates you with zombie pigeons? She’s just a kid, anyway. You already blew up an old lady on CNN. Want to do a punk kid for an encore?”

“No,” Ellen said, taking a deep breath and trying hard not to think of Nick. “Personally, I’d like to wring her scrawny little neck. But Miss Partridge didn’t think she was all bad, and all we need is for her to stop pulling this shit.” She exhaled. “And the easiest way to do that is to get her on our side. We need to talk.”

Jonathan and Aliyah hid behind Bubbles as she knocked on the door of a chalk-marked red shotgun on Treme opposite the cemetery.

There was no answer. Bubbles knocked harder. A minute later the door was opened by a very tall cadaverous bodybuilder who loomed over Bubbles menacingly.

“Look, Morticia,” Jonathan said to Aliyah, “she has her own Lurch.”

“Fuck off,” the zombie croaked.

Bubbles only held up a beautifully scintillating bubble. “Listen,” she said, “we’d like to speak with Joey Hebert or Hoodoo Mama or whatever she wants to call herself, and we can do this the nice way or the not-so-nice way.”

“You fuckers got balls,” the zombie finally croaked, “but I ain’t playin’. You fuckers steal little kids.”

“Lilith was taking them to other hospitals,” Bubbles explained. “There was a hurricane coming.”

“Harriet.” The zombie stared. “The weather fucker kept sayin’ she was goin’ to Houston, but I guess you cocksuckers knew what you were talkin’ about after all.” He opened the door farther, stepping back.

It was an invitation of sorts, and as they walked in past more and more zombies, Aliyah paused, stricken. The third zombie was a girl, barely seventeen. She could have been Aliyah’s sister except for the cuts on her wrists. The American Hero T-shirt she was wearing showed the Jackalope from the current season instead of Simoon. Aliyah put out her hand, almost touching the girl’s face, then stopped, looking her own death in the face for the first time.

Her hand began to shake, her fingernails drifting into sand.

Take off the earring, Ellen thought. Now. I can handle this.

Aliyah didn’t have to be told twice. Even oblivion was preferable to the awful truth. And as she slipped the earring out with one hand, the sand snapped back into place on the other.

Ellen stood eye to eye with the dead girl. She was acutely aware that while Bubbles was invulnerable and explosive and Jonathan could turn into countless stinging insects, all she could do if the zombie decided to strangle her was scream and flail at it with her purse while trying to put on an earring—and even once she had the earring on, there were no guarantees that Aliyah would be any help. She missed Nick even more and for all the wrong reasons.

She sniffed then. Inside the apartment was the peculiar odor of lemongrass, and Ellen realized it was coming from the zombies. “That’s Van Van oil and Chinese wash,” a girl’s voice said to her unanswered question. “Us hoodoo women use it for rootwork.”

Ellen turned her head, looking away from the honor guard of zombies, across the room to where the young woman lounged in a purple wingback, flanked by two large, menacing, undead pit bulls and lit for mood or just lack of power by a dozen large votive candles marked with vodoun veve patterns. It was a pose calculated to intimidate and was doing the job admirably.

“It’s your crutch for making the zombies,” Jonathan surmised.

“Fuck no,” said Hoodoo Mama, “I just use it to keep the fuckers from stinkin’ up the place. Axe doesn’t last long enough. Sometimes fuckin’ old school works best.” She gestured to the matching purple couch facing her chair, its back in convenient throttling range of the zombie honor guard. “Have a seat. Let me get you some refreshment. You fuckers like beer-can chicken?”

“It’s pretty good,” Bubbles allowed, sitting in the middle of the couch. Jonathan sat down to the right of her and Ellen perched on the opposite arm.

Hoodoo Mama smiled proudly. “Nobody makes it like I fuckin’ make it.”

There was a thumping and banging then, from the kitchenette to the right of the couch, and the closest zombie, a woman in a KISS THE CHEF apron, went and opened the door of the refrigerator. A quartet of headless plucked chickens gamboled out of the bottom drawer trailing butcher paper, clambered up to the nearest counter by means of a stepladder, and proceeded to sodomize each other with beer cans provided by the zombie.

She offered the remaining cans from the six-pack to Jonathan and Bubbles, who passed, watching the chickens in horrid fascination. Ellen, however, accepted, smiling, and popped her can as the zombie served the last to Hoodoo Mama. It was a test, and when the girl raised her beer, Ellen did the same and drank. It was cold, refreshing, and what she needed.

“You think I can get a job at Brennan’s?”

Ellen shrugged and took another sip of beer, keeping the earring carefully palmed in the opposite hand. Bubbles and Jonathan continued to stare as the sodomized chickens proceeded to breakdance in a roasting pan coated with seasoning salt.

“You’re a fuckin’ cold bitch, you know that?”

Ellen chose to take it as a compliment. “I’ve been dealing with the dead for a while.”

“So who the fuck are you? I seen these fuckers on TV.” Hoodoo Mama jerked her beer can toward Bubbles and Jonathan. “I ain’t seen you before.”

Ellen gestured to her throat with the hand with the earring. “You can call me Cameo.”

The girl squinted at her. “You’re that fucker from the hospital!” The zombies all took a step forward. The zombie pit bulls bared their fangs.

Ellen came to her feet as well, armed with nothing more menacing than a can of weak beer and the earring of a hysterical teenage ace who’d probably be even less help. “So are you.”

“So what? You’re gonna electrocute me now?”

“I could,” Ellen lied, “but my power’s more than that. I channel the dead, and I channel their powers. You’ve already met my friend Nick.” A beer can was not a will-o’-wisp, but if she held it in her fingertips, it felt the same, and Hoodoo Mama could see the pose. “He’s the shocker.” She gritted her teeth, forcing herself not to betray any emotion or any hint that she would probably never be able to call Nick again. “But don’t worry, you got your licks in.”

“Heh,” Hoodoo Mama snorted, leaning back in her chair. “Guess I did.” She gestured to the zombies and they stepped back to their former positions, all except for the chef, who proceeded to put the chickens in the oven and adjust the dials.

“You ran over my ass, too,” Jonathan mentioned lamely.

The girl ignored him, still looking at Ellen. She took a sip of beer. “So,” she said after a while, “this morning, that really fuckin’ was Miss Partridge?” Ellen nodded. “Fuck,” the girl swore. “I really liked that ol’ lady. She was one of the few fuckers who ever gave a damn about me.” She rubbed at the corner of her eye and then slammed her beer, seeming to reach a decision. “So what do you fuckers want?”

Ellen glanced to Bubbles, who was sort of official spokeswoman, even if Ellen had been doing most of the talking. “Well,” Bubbles said slowly, “what we’d like is for you to stop screwing us up. We’re trying to save people’s lives here.”

“What about that fuckin’ vampire bitch, Lilith?” The girl glared. “She’s been stealin’ little kids. I ain’t read much of the Bible, but I fuckin’ know about Lilith the Child Stealer.”

There was a glance between the Committee members, and Jonathan was the first to answer: “She just thought the name sounded sexier than Teleporting Eurotrash Girl.”

Josephine Hebert handed her empty can to the chef zombie. “Okay, I’ll fuckin’ give you that.”

“You know,” Bubbles said, “there are two more storms. We could use your help.”

Jonathan opened, “The UN does have some money . . .”

“Fuck that,” Hoodoo Mama snorted dismissively. “You know how many fuckers die wearin’ wedding bands and fuckin’ diamond engagement rings? I’ve got a whole fuckin’ box full of bling.” She gestured to the mantelpiece. Amid the candles was a makeshift altar, with feathers and shells and the photograph of a woman who would have been attractive if not for the ravages of hard living. And beside the photograph sat an old wooden jewelry box.

Ellen stifled a ghoulish itch to open that box and see who lived inside it.

Bubbles sighed. “All we really need is a truce.”

Hoodoo Mama shrugged. “Okay, fine, you’ve got it.” She glanced to the three of them. “Anything else you fuckers want?”

There was a long uncomfortable silence with glances between Michelle and Jonathan, and between Ellen and the watchful eyes of all the zombies before she finally settled on Hoodoo Mama’s. “Can you really see through the eyes of the dead? Even animals?”

Josephine Hebert grinned proudly. “Fuck, yeah.”

Hope is a thing with wings. In this case, a dead pigeon. A whole loft of them. “I lost something when the levee broke,” Ellen told her. “A hat. An old gray fedora.”

“You fuckin’ want me to look for a hat?”

“Yes.” Ellen bit her lower lip. “It . . . it belonged to my friend Nick.”

Hoodoo Mama gave her a sly look. “You can’t work your mojo without a personal object, can you?”

“No,” Ellen admitted. “I know you don’t want money, but if there’s anything else, anyone you’d want to talk to . . .” She glanced to the photo on the mantel, the candlelight flickering over the tired woman’s face.

Josephine Hebert looked as well. “You’re a fuckin’ dangerous bitch,” she said at last, “but fine, I’ll keep my eyes out. But not because you’ll let me talk to my mama. I’ll do it because I saw what you did for PJ. You ain’t as cold a fuckin’ bitch as you let on.”

Ellen broke eye contact with the dead woman’s photograph to look at her daughter. “Thank you.”

Hoodoo Mama nodded, then looked at all of them. “So are you gonna get the fuck out now, or you still wanna stay for dinner?”

There was a second awkward silence, broken a moment later by a digitized version of “Tiny Bubbles.” Michelle looked to the zombies, then fumbled open her Hermès bag and got out her cell phone. Ellen glanced over and was able to read the text message just received: Michelle—Help, please. I’m in danger. Please come. I’m in Cross Plains, TX.—Niobe.

Bubbles quickly stowed the phone back in her bag but was visibly disturbed. “Would you be terribly offended if I took a rain check on the dinner? A friend of mine needs help.”

Hoodoo Mama flicked a hand. “Fine by me. Y’all should come for Thanksgivin’. I do self-bastin’ turkey.”

Back at the Place D’Armes Ellen let herself into her room. She didn’t like old rooms. They came with too much history, and this one was no exception. Whatever the reason, and today there was a particularly excellent one, the maid had not been in. Slowly, reverently, Ellen put her purse on the dresser, took out Aliyah’s T-shirt, and hung it up to dry. Then she picked up Nick’s jacket and sat down on the bed, clutching the fabric with both hands.

The tears came again, but there were no memories, none strong enough for her to call him back. It was an empty shell, without even a trace of the ghost of the man she’d made it for.

There was a soft knock on the door. “Who is it?” Ellen choked out.

“Uh, Jonathan. Can I come in?” She didn’t answer, and he took that for a yes. “Are you okay?”

“Do I look like I’m okay?”

“Not really, but you seemed kind of glad to see me earlier, and, well, I was thinking about what Nick said to me before . . .” He sat down on the bed beside her. “About how a man should treat a lady. I haven’t treated you very well.”

“It happens. When you were sleeping with Aliyah, I was thinking about Nick.”

“Ouch.” Jonathan sighed.

Ellen looked at him. “Were you honest when you said I was easy on the eyes?”

Jonathan grinned, his eyes twinkling poison green. “I think we both know the answer.” He reached out and touched her hair, which was in a state after the levee breach and the hurricane. “But I think we could both stand a shower.”

Ellen looked mournfully at Nick’s jacket. Then she set it aside. Nick was dead, had always been dead as long as she’d lived. To everyone but her at least and at last.

Jonathan was alive, and he wanted her. And if some bit of Nick’s wisdom, his gentlemanliness, his simple gallantry, had passed to Jonathan, then good. And even if not . . .

He tasted like nectar to her, to Ellen, with no other soul in between. He reached up, pulling her dress and her slip both down by the shoulders, working the zipper and letting the whole fall into a beaded pool around her feet. She did the same with his pants, his bony thinness making this simple, and a half minute later they were both stumbling into the shower, laughing as they worked the taps and got the right temperature, soaping and exploring the shape of each other’s bodies. Starting fresh, starting clean, with no other impressions.

The suds ran smooth down her body and he stroked her breasts, touching her nipples, bringing them full and alert until his talented tongue tasted each in turn, then traced his way down, and then up. Then he entered her, and embraced her, and they kissed, no ace powers except the honey of his taste and her hands on his back, feeling the impressions of the women who had touched him before. There weren’t very many.

They tumbled out into towels, Ellen letting him take the hotel robe. “Fresh linen,” she said. “It’s . . . a bit of a fetish of mine. . . .”

Jonathan grinned. “Easily done.”

He ducked out into the hall and a minute later came back with an armload of fresh sheets, stripping the bed and making it for her. She lay down atop the bed, naked, and they set to the second round of their lovemaking. Halfway through, Ellen reached out to the bedside table and retrieved the earring, the simple bit of silver and Swarovski crystal. She handed it to Jonathan. “Be a gentleman and do the honors.”

“But I was wanting to be with you.”

“And last time you were wanting to be with her.” She placed a finger on his lips, stilling them. “This way, you can be with us both. Care for a threesome?”

He grinned. “I contain multitudes. Sex with me is never that few.” He then leaned down and kissed her, then the next moment, slipped the earring into her ear. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. Your Prince Bugsy awaits.”

“Jonathan?” asked Aliyah. “What happened?”

Everything’s fine, thought Ellen. Hoodoo Mama’s not going to bother us.

Aliyah took stock of her body, Ellen’s body. “We’ve been having sex.”

“Just picking up where we left off.” Jonathan’s eyes twinkled. “You okay with that?”

“Oh, yeah.” She reached out and grabbed him.