Holy crap. People skulls. Like the paper map.
“The land was shaped like this.” She drew a long wiener-shaped island or isthmus.
“Barataria?” I asked.
Her eyes opened wide. “That was it. I thought they said Barktater.”
I had been to Barataria, and with all the hurricanes it was easy to see how a large boat got swamped. A house foundation was a lot harder to figure, unless receding water sucked all the sand out from under the foundation and the house above it capsized in place, the building lot itself now underwater, washed away, and the land never reclaimed.
“Oh. And I saw a fire in a bucket and a naked lady and some witches, but it was really confused.” She yawned again. “Mama wants to see the church where you found my angel.”
“Ohhh.” Hayyel might have been partially bound by Evangelina way back before I killed her and the demon she called. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s not, but the between place said she needed to make choices.” Angie’s shoulders shrugged. “And you have to give the Valentine box back to the witches. If you don’t, me and EJ’s dead.”
Valentine box. Heartbox.Dang.I hugged her to my chest and held Bruiser’s eyes as the sky outside brightened despite the rain clouds.
CHAPTER 19
Drooling on My Jeans
Just after dawn, against my better judgment, but knowing Angie’s visions couldn’t be ignored, Bruiser and I dropped the heartbox back off with Lachish in the newly repaired and properlyhedgednull prison. I had a bad feeling about letting it go, but the null ward in my closet wasn’t enough to keep the heart from growing, so... I couldn’t keep it any safer than the witches could. At least in the null prison it wouldn’t grow bigger lungs and maybe a brain.
And having the Heart of Darkness out of my house felt very freeing as the low-level fear generated by the detached organ was instantly gone.
***
At ten a.m., after a narrow band of rain cleared the skies, and after protracted discussions and inventive witch-cursing, our crew headed back to the Blessed Virgin church. We had no vamp guards, no Leo, but with most of the Truebloods—Molly, Big Evan, and Angie—in the car behind us, Liz and Cia in the car in front of us, and Quint and Eli’s handpicked human guards, their cars bracketingthe rest of us, we were as safe as we could get. Brute was in the car with Bruiser, Eli, and me, the werewolf snoring, his head on my thigh, drooling on my jeans.Yuck. But at least he didn’t still stink.
We’d be doing a B and E, in broad daylight, with two exhausted, sleep-deprived witches and a scary-powerful witch child who had convinced her parents that she had to be there. She had probably used her magic to get them to agree.
All this in broadfreakingdaylight.
What could go wrong?
It was a weekday and I fully expected there to be workers on site, but it was silent as the grave. With all the hurricanes and winter storms and the tornado that had torn through the state a few months past, every construction and roofing and electrical and heating-and-air crew in four states was booked solid, so nothing much was getting done except for rich people who paid a premium. The church was empty, no cars anywhere.
Into my earbuds, Alex said, “Security system is still not running, electricity is still out. Go in looking like workers. Bang around with hammers. Make it look good and get out fast.”
“Copy,” Eli said.
“Look like workers? With a kid?” I stepped out of the SUV. From the vehicle behind us, Angie broke away from her parents and skipped to me, happy and carefree and glowing with a nimbus of power Beast showed me with her vision. Angie was like a rainbow of energies today, purple at her head and sliding down to green at her feet. Thankfully only Beast could see the energies without opening aseeingworking, or Angie would have been stolen by enemies or one government or another long ago.
There was no way we looked like workers, but no one stopped us or even passed us on the street as we entered the church through the same method as before—Eli on a ladder, through a different window, out of sight from the street, one security team hidden on the grounds, and the rest of us through the side door and along the moldy hallways. The sanctuary of the church was dim and shadowed, with an arc of red and blue lights bright in a ceilingarch. The rainbow of color came through a crack where the protective plywood had pulled away.
Angie raced through the place, Brute lumbering on her heels, the little witch shouting, “Oh! This is pretty!” her words echoing in the high ceilings as she admired the gilt objects and the doodads used in ritual worship. I’d been brought up in a Christian children’s home. The worship taught there had been decidedly lacking in ritual, heavy on rules and sins, and rife with emotional enthusiasm. The gilt wasn’t overly impressive to me.
Brute stopped and raised his head high, whuffing in and out, sniffing. I watched him, wondering if he smelled an angel. Wondered if this place smelled different in daylight from the way it did in the dark. He dropped his head and trotted after Angie.
Molly asked, “Angie? Is this the place from your dreams?”
“It could be!” She pointed high overhead. “But there was a hole right there in the last between dream.”
Molly and Big Evan exchanged looks I couldn’t decipher. The ceiling where she pointed was intact, so it was either the wrong church or a prophetic dream. A dream to worry about.
“Mama, there’s gold everywhere!” Angie turned around and around, arms outstretched, staring at the stained glass and the gilt. “Ant Jane, this place is beautiful!”
The guys pulled the blue tarp off the white marble angels and plaster saints. Molly tapped her daughter on the head to get her attention and pointed to the statues. “Is the angel here?”
