Busted Flush

Who did not seem pleased to see Hive. “Bugsy, you’re wanted by the Feds.”

Jonathan shouldered his laptop bag over his sport coat. “Do you think they’ll have time to arrest a hundred thousand wasps in the middle of a natural disaster?”

“He has a point, my dear.” Holy Roller then turned to Ellen with a beatific smile. “Reverend Thaddeus Wintergreen, ma’am, at your service. And you’d be?”

“Ellen. Or Cameo. Or, well, someone else.” Ellen was tired of explanations. It was time to let another person do the talking. She took off her jacket and handed it to Jonathan. As she began to unbutton her blouse, Reverend Wintergreen averted his eyes. The Amazing Bubbles merely stared, remarking drily, “That shirt so does not go with that skirt.”

Aliyah laughed and embraced her. “Bubbles, I’m back!”

Michelle pushed Aliyah away. “Who are you?”

Aliyah turned a pirouette on the tarmac. “I’m Aliyah!”

Bubbles wasn’t buying it. “Funny. You don’t look a bit like her. Who are you, really? What sort of game are you playing?”

Holy Roller was no longer averting his eyes, now that the threat of overt nakedness had passed. “If this is a prank, it is a cruel one, Jonathan. Aliyah is with the Lord now.”

“Maybe,” said Jonathan, “but Cameo here is with the Committee. Jayewardene and I already played twenty questions with her in New York. She’s an ace. She channels dead people from, uh . . . well, jewelry and stuff. Hats. She’s Simoon. Sort of.”

The Reverend Thaddeus Wintergreen seemed willing to believe in miracles. “Can this be true?” he said cautiously. “The Lord works many wonders, but even so . . . Aliyah, is it really you, returned to us like some Lady Lazarus? How . . . how are you?”

Aliyah flicked one hand. “Oh, just great. I got to go sailboating with my mom. But it would have been a lot cooler if I, like, hadn’t been possessing the body of a forty-year-old woman.”

Thirty-something, Ellen corrected.

Michelle gave her a cold hard look, then turned back to Jonathan. “I’m sorry, no. This is creeping me out, and . . . oh, crap, here comes Mayor Connick . . .”

A stretch Hummer pulled up. Out stepped a handsome man about forty years old, with bright blue eyes, pouting lips, and a casually rumpled gray suit. “Mr. Tipton-Clarke.” Harry Connick Jr. nodded to Jonathan. “Welcome to NOLA. I never saw ya—but nice work on the Pyote story. An’ I guess this’d be the latest member of your Committee,” he surmised in a rich N’awlins drawl, extending his hand to Aliyah. “An’ jus’ who do I—”

“That’s Cameo,” Bubbles cut in. “She channels the dead. She’s Simoon right now.”

Connick’s smile vanished as Attractive Woman My Age was swiftly replaced by Creepy Possessed Lady. He released her hand like it was a dead fish, and not a very fresh one either. “Well then,” he said, “how many of y’all’re in there?”

“Uh, just me and Ellen,” Aliyah replied.

“ ‘The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise again,’ ” quoted Reverend Wintergreen.

Mayor Connick looked unhappy. “I’m sorry. The police get calls all the time about some hoodoo mama raisin’ zombies in the French Quarter. The last thing we need is some ace showing up who can actually do it.” He glanced at her clothes. “I have to say, I never would have guessed. Ya gotta be the least likely voodoo queen I’ve ever seen.”

“Well,” Bubbles said, still frowning, “I did ask Jayewardene for reinforcements. If Harriet changes course . . .”

The dead that walk and the wind that wails, Ellen thought immediately.

“The dead that walk and the wind that wails?” Ali repeated, confused.

Everyone looked askance. Osiris had a prophecy, Ellen explained. Zombies and hurricanes. “Uh, my uncle had a vision,” Aliyah paraphrased. “Hurricanes and, uh, dead people. My uncle’s Osiris. He, like, rose from the dead. . . .”

“Just runs in the family now, doesn’t it?” Mayor Connick remarked. “Doesn’t he have a lounge act in Vegas?”

“At the Luxor.”

“You know, the National Weather Service keeps sayin’ that Harriet is headed for Houston. It’s not that we don’t appreciate the help, but if it gets out that I’m evacuatin’ NOLA on the word of a Vegas lounge act?”

“Well,” Bubbles said, “I’m certain the secretary-general has other sources.”

“You and the Reverend be sure to mention that at the press conference. And when we get there, launch all the bubbles you can in the air, make a big show for the cameras. Remember, this here’s NOLA. If we want people to pay attention, what we need is li’l lagniappe. Before you go onstage, I’ll have a garbage truck ram you as many times as you want.”

The Reverend Wintergreen gave her hand a gentle pat. “I can do it instead.”

“What about me?” asked Aliyah. “I can help.” She stepped back, laughing defiantly, and raised her arms. “You can’t kill the wind!” Her fingers crumbled, blowing away into sand, the particles whipping around as the wind arose and she spun like a dervish as she drifted and shifted into the sandstorm of legend.