Page 9 of Up in Smoke

In more recent years, the place had been dubbed the Puddle.

Saturday, May 30, 2043.

New Orleans, Louisiana.

The South.

Sandro fellasleep in Ryleigh’s car, a family four-door with delusions of grandeur. The Voodoo queen put the vehicle through its paces, weaving through the narrow streets as though she owned the place.

In reality, she did.

Whatever magic she weaved over the city made certain the way was clear for her. I spotted her influence in how people stopped for the yellow lights, how she never waited long at a red, and even in the behavior of the few pedestrians wandering the sidewalks.

No one dared to cross where she intended to go.

I suspected she used the dream catcher dangling from her rear-view mirror to clear her path, although I knew better than to ask. If she wished to tell me, she would. Otherwise, I would live with my curiosity and find some other way to prove my theory.

“Your pet has not fared well from the journey?” Ryleigh asked, slowing down as we reached the red-light district. Once upon a time, it had been called Storyville, but the place had undergone many a change since its birth. While the red-light district had been absorbed into the French Quarter, it still thrived, as the Voodoo queens knew better than to circumvent human nature.

As long as there were men and women, there would be men and women wishing to buy and sell sex, or so the queens decreed. At least their way, in their approved red-light district, the men and women doing the selling would have the best chances of being treated well by the men and women doing the buying.

In more recent years, the place had been dubbed the Puddle.

Ryleigh’s car splashed through more than a few puddles, and where signs warned drivers against going, she breathed a prayer and the waters parted, with thick red crystal forming over where she needed to go before dissolving into mist. I pegged the red diamond on her hand as the source of her power, a talisman few expected as most clung to the concept of fetishes rather than calling upon the very heart of nature.

“Nice red diamond,” I complimented.

“Thank you. It was a gift from someone I had helped last year. Quite the surprise, as I’d just seen someone in need of a helping hand. It is a mystery how the smallest of deeds can transform themselves into the greatest of blessings. Now that you have attempted to deflect, how fares your pet?”

“The boundary crossing is rough on him. Apparently, he passes out for a while and stays that way, and he wasn’t precisely coherent when he first woke. We waited for the rest of the plane to disembark. I thought he could use the extra few minutes. He’ll be fine.”

“Good, good. There is a convention, and the other queens will want to meet him. But I will have them be gentle if he is still influenced by the boundary. The game is no fun if our prey is unfit to provide us with a challenge.”

“I haven’t made things easy on him, either.”

“Oh?”

“It seems when I nap, he feels a need to check on me every twenty minutes, and he’d do so more frequently if his mother had not established rules, and her rules said every twenty minutes.” I would need to find some way to pay him back for that, especially as my fox struggled to rest when we were alone. “Add in the time I fainted on the steps, and it’s no wonder he’s a mess.”

“Ah, yes. I heard about the steps. Your metabolism increased again. You hadn’t guessed you needed to eat more?”

“No, mainly because I’d eat as much as I could and pass out due to the gunshot wounds. I would have figured it out after a while, but the Morettis had their entire flock of doctors examining me before I even managed to wake up from my unexpected nap.”

“We will take close care to watch out for you while you are our guest. How did he take the news of my condition?”

Sandro had loved the condition, and the closer we’d gotten to being able to head out to New Orleans, the more excited he’d gotten. “He considers it to be a honeymoon. I think New Orleans has charmed him even more than its queens.”

“She is a charming city, even when she slowly dies to the inevitable flow of time and the sea.”

I winced at the queen’s blunt admission New Orleans would one day die and give in to the relentless course of nature. “Has it been bad?”

“Yes. The Puddle is becoming more and more of a lake as of late, although we’re working on finding a way to raise the city or buffer it from the tides. The yearly thaws and the storms are growing evermore dangerous, too. We’re sinking. We’ve known we’re sinking for a long time, but it has become a painful reality for us. But we have a will and a way.”

I checked on Sandro, determined he truly slept due to his faint snore and steady breathing, and asked, “And the crystal city?”

Much like my Tulsa, I had given the Voodoo queen my word I would do what was best for the fledgling city beneath New Orleans. But unlike Mansfield’s Asylum, the New Orleans Voodoo queens wished for only one thing: that all might find safety within the jeweled sanctuary growing day by day beneath the faltering streets.

“That is part of what we wish to speak to you about, as you have seen Mansfield’s Asylum. And your prized pet helped to build it.” Ryleigh glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. “We have a hope he can sing our future to life during this pulse.”