Busted Flush

“Oh,” said Jonathan Hive drily. “Can we see that on YouTube?”

“Yea, the dead shall rise to chastise the wicked, for Hoodoo Mama is their mother and the pigeons are her eyes!” Mick or Rick waved his Bible dramatically at some rather moth-eaten pigeons watching him from a nearby awning. “She’s older than grave dirt and comes riding a pale horse—a fucking dead one—but Jesus Christ Joker is my shepherd and I shall not want!”

“Pussy,” added his brother.

Jonathan began shepherding Aliyah away. “Lilith needs us at the Children’s Hospital by nightfall. She’s taking all the kids away, but she can only do a few at a time.”

The pigeons cocked their heads, one of them fluttering off, and Aliyah nodded, drained emotionally as well as physically. She let herself be led through an arch to the Place D’Armes, a small preserve of historic homes, and upstairs in one to her own private room. And with great relief, Ellen observed her take off the T-shirt and then, hesitantly, one earring, then the other.

Herself again, Ellen tuned the old Philco-style radio to soft jazz, then quickly and numbly took a shower, touching the fixtures as little as possible. Most were authentic eighteenth-century elegance, coming with a history. One Ellen was in no mood to relive.

Instead, she dried her hair, did it up in a crown braid, and donned a man’s suit, cool white linen, summer weight and sixties style. A tie hid her cameo and choker, and an old fedora slipped neatly over the braid. Hey, Nickie . . .

“Hey, Elle.” He took in the brick walls and spindly legged furniture. “Where are we?”

New Orleans. There’s a hurricane coming. She paused. I’ve joined the Committee.

“The Committee?” He chuckled. “Out of the sleeve and straight to the big league.”

Who needs American Hero? There was a knock at the door. That’s Jonathan. Get the earrings and shirt over there by the radio—we may need them.

“New look for you,” Jonathan remarked, surveying Nick’s suit. “Ellen?”

“Nick, actually.” Nick put out a hand, which after a moment Jonathan shook.

The cab ride to the hospital was unremarkable, as was the vending-machine coffee once they got there. Like all waiting rooms, the one at the New Orleans Children’s Hospital had pretensions to cheerfulness, with old kids’ issues of Aces! featuring a pre-teen Dragon Huntress on the cover. But the adults waiting silently were ashen, and even the children did not escape the pall. At the end of one row, a skinny Creole teen stared out the window, her face sullen beneath a backward Saints cap, a blaze of red-dyed hair sticking out through the gap. Her stick-thin arms were crossed, framing a chest even flatter than Ellen’s and the all-too-appropriate logo for some jazz band named Lost Souls.

Aren’t we all, thought Ellen as Nick read it.

“Same crap as at the UN,” Jonathan remarked, surveying the vending machines. His phone rang. “Hey, Lilith.” He listened, turning to Nick, green eyes wide. “Trouble.”

“Security to third-floor reception,” a voice from the intercom clarified. “We have a code white emergency. Repeat, code white.”

Nick followed Jonathan up the stairs and through the door and took in the scene: Lilith, her black cloak flowing, was struggling with a little boy not more than ten with red hair and freckles and his fingers around her throat. “—fucking kill you, you vampire whore!” His voice was cracking, grating with rage as he snarled, “Bloodsucking motherfucking cunt!”

Security stood in a circle, except the one guard lying on the floor. A few doctors and nurses and parents also stood stricken as Lilith and the boy struggled.

“Cocksucker!” The boy’s elbow shot out like lightning, smashing another guard’s nose.

Nick formed a will-o’-wisp, a tiny shocker, and tossed it across to ground into the neck of the enraged child. The boy spasmed but continued to strangle Lilith, so Nick sent another, and then a third, a larger one, enough to take down a grown man.

His grip slackened. Lilith twisted, lithe as a snake, flinging the child to her feet with a sickening crunch. “You’re dead, you little bugger!”

The boy snatched the hem of her cloak, clutching the fabric, pulling like he was ripping down an old shower curtain and choking Lilith with the laces as he pulled himself up. Green wasps landed on his cheek, stinging ineffectually, but a knife appeared in her hand then, a magician’s trick. Laces parted with a flash of steel, yards of black silk pooling to the floor. But the boy had his own trick and instead of tumbling down with the cloak, he grabbed Lilith’s long mane of raven locks, clambering like a monkey and whipping one around her neck to garrote her. Lilith’s knife was razor-sharp, but hair was strong, and like a cable, only cut strand by strand.