With my adrenaline surging with hope, I turned to convince Erron to help us. “Listen, we need your hel—”
He cut me off. “No. Don’t waste your breath trying to convince me to join your cause. I’ve faced this foe before and got my ass kicked. It’s taken me too long to rebuild my life to throw it away again on a suicide mission.”
“That didn’t stop you the other night,” Adam said, his voice low and angry.
Erron looked at him. “A fist fight with a few Caste vamps is a schoolyard rumble compared to the massacre you’re courting if you don’t stop this summoning. Now, I wish you the best of luck, but I have a sound check to do.”
With that, Erron Zorn walked away.
“Fucking recreants,” Adam muttered. Then he flashed us out of the dressing room and back to Zen’s office.
24
Zen punched a couple of buttons and clicked the mouse until the picture of Maisie appeared on the large monitor. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on the periphery instead of at my sister’s ravaged body.
Rhea pointed to a sliver of stone in the upper corner of the shot. “At first we thought that might be nothing, but then we realized it’s the bottom of a stone wing.”
My eyes started to sting from squinting, but the shape was indeed vaguely wingish. I pulled back a bit to get a new perspective. “And there’s a foot, I think. A statue, maybe?”
“An angel,” Rhea said.
I looked at Zen. “Do you recognize it?”
She shook her head. “This is a Catholic city. Angel statues are everywhere.”
I made a frustrated sound, but Rhea said, “Wait for it.”
Zen zoomed again. Adam grabbed my hands and squeezed. I glanced at him in time for him to breathe, “Oh, my gods.”
My eyes jumped back to the screen. Beside me, Adam let out a curse that would make even Giguhl blush.
The writing said: Requiescat in pace.
“When we saw that, we realized that Sabina’s conversation with the zombie wasn’t totally wasted,” Zen said.
I frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You told us Kevin said ‘cat piss.’ ” Rhea pointed to the plaque. “Requiescat in pace. And the other part, about the big box— maybe Stryx meant a tomb.”
Adam bumped my arm. “Oh, gods, Sabina. What was the other part Kevin said?”
I was too distracted to answer. My sister was being held in a f**king tomb. In a sick way, it made perfect sense that Lavinia had Maisie hidden in one of New Orleans’s Cities of the Dead. Lavinia no doubt found it amusing and somewhat inevitable that our final battle would take place among so many symbols of mortality.
“Sabina?” Adam prodded.
I shook myself out of my morbid thoughts to answer. “Something about ‘Master, come,’ and then”— I paused, my eyes shooting to his knowing gaze— “Oh, my gods. All this time I thought he was saying my last name. But he was really telling us Master Mahan’s true name.”
Rhea and Zen exchanged a confused look. “I think you two better start talking.” Rhea said. “What exactly did the recreant tell you?”
I was so busy cussing at myself that Adam filled them in on Erron’s revelations about the leader of the Caste.
“Gods,” Rhea said when he finished. “Orpheus is going to have a stroke when he hears this.”
“But before we figure out how to stop the summoning,” Zen said, “we have to figure out which cemetery they’re keeping Maisie in.”
“Well,” Adam began slowly. “At least we know she’s in a cemetery, right? That should narrow things down.” As much as I appreciated him trying to put a positive spin on things, I couldn’t muster even a forced smile.
Zen clicked the mouse and the image zoomed out again. “I wish I shared your optimism,” she began. “Do you have any idea how many cemeteries there are in greater New Orleans?”
Adam shrugged. “A dozen?”
Zen shook her head. “More like forty.” As that sunk in with the weight of lead, she continued. “Some we can rule out immediately— like Holt Cemetery, the one Sabina and I were at the other night— but that’s maybe a handful. There’s no way we could search the remaining thirty or so by tomorrow night. And even if we could, we don’t have any way of knowing which crypt she’s in.”
Hearing the odds laid out in such intimidating numbers made my heart sink.
“There has to be a way. Lavinia wants Sabina to find this place.” Rhea tapped the screen. “It would take all the fun out of it for her if she failed. We must have missed something.”
Zen leaned back in her seat. “I’m inclined to agree with you, but I’m not seeing anything else in this photo that could point us to the exact place.”
She looked at Adam for confirmation. He hesitated and then shook his head. “I don’t see anything else, either.”
My fist slammed into the desktop, making the monitor jump. “I don’t accept that!”
Three pairs of solemn eyes looked at me with something bordering on pity. Rhea touched my shoulder. “Sabina—”
I shook her off. “No. Don’t tell me to calm down. We’re too close to getting her back to give up.”
“No one’s saying we should give up,” Rhea said, ever the voice of reason. “We just need to come at this from another angle.”
“Right. Maybe Rhea and Zen missed something when they cleaned the shop,” Adam said. “We can split up and scour the whole building.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “For what, Adam? It’s not like they left a brochure for the cemetery lying around. Lavinia wouldn’t want it to be that easy.”
“But you said it yourself, she wants you to find this place. There has to be another clue, and right now all we have is this picture to go on.”
I took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“You know what?” Rhea said. “Enough with this guesswork. I say we try to find Maisie using the best tools at our disposal.” When Adam and I stared at her blankly, she smiled. “Magic.”
“I already thought of that,” Adam said. He pointed to the picture and the cuffs binding Maisie’s hands. “The brass makes it impossible to trace her, because it blocks her energy.”
Rhea shook her head. “Not a tracking spell.”
“Are you saying there’s some voodoo spell that might work?” I asked, glancing at Zen.