But just when the cruelness and rightness of that thought was solid and firm in my chest, everything stopped. Everythingthe wind stopped and the day went completely still. The insects froze in mid-flight, dropping from the sky and pelting me like hail.

I stayed crouched down like that, afraid even to move in case something I did started it all up again, but instead of more of the swarm, I heard a new sounda crackling noise as footsteps crushed the brittle bodies underfoot. Closer and closer. When the shadow fell over me, I finally looked up.

"What are you doing here?" I said, ignoring Odane's outstretched hand.

"You're welcome," he said, still holding out his hand like he was waiting for something.

"You're telling me that you stopped all that?" The ground all around my momma's property was covered with a thick blanket of the shiny, blue-black shells of the beetles.

He nodded, his face tense. "For now. But we need to go."

"I can't," I said, finally taking his offered hand and letting him pull me up. I was afraid to move because I didn't want to hearor feelthe crunching of the hard little bodies littering the ground. "Lucy's still inside."

"Inside there?" His brows flew almost clear to his hairline. "You'd have to be all kinds of crazy to go in there."

"It's my house," I said, suddenly and unaccountably angry with him for being there, for finding me so helpless and afraid. And most of all, I was angry for him being the one to save me when I wanted to be able to save myself.

"You're telling me you can't feel what's coming from that place?" he asked. "Black magic. Dark as anything I've ever felt." He practically shuddered.

I frowned. "I never did before, but I feel something now. I can't even get as far as the door anymore," I told him. "There's some kind of spell to keep me out."

He shook his head, his eyes still trained on the house. It's like he didn't even see the mess of bugs laying all abouthe only had eyes for the building itself. "No, it's more than that. There are spells woven all through this place. They go deep into the land." He looked at me then, suspicious-like. "You're telling me you can't feel any of it?"

"I grew up here," I said, like that was some sort of explanation, and maybe it was, because he didn't ask me anything else.

"Who'd you say is in there?"

"Lucy. The girl who came with Mama Legba and me the other day. Red hair. Carries a camera everywhere?" I added when he didn't seem to understand at first.

He was still staring at the house, like he was trying to decide whether to go in or to leave Lucy to her fate.

"I'm not going anywhere without her," I said before he could suggest it. From the look on his face, it sure did look like he wanted to suggest it. "What are you doing here anyway?" It was my turn to be suspicious.

"My mom saw something. She sent me over."

"Saw something?"

He nodded, still staring at the house like he was getting up his nerve. "Sometimes she sees things, and in this case, she must have seen you."

"We need to get Lucy out of there," I said. "She was supposed to come out a while ago, but I can't go any farther than this." My meaning was clearhe'd need to go in for me.

He let out a long, frustrated sigh. "Fine. You go on and get in your car. If anything else happens, you'll at least have something to protect you."

"Thank you," I said, meaning it as I retreated. The windows of the house were still dark. Lucy either hadn't heard all the commotion outside or something was wrong inside.

Odane looked back once to make sure I was in the car before he made his way toward the house, but he didn't look back again after that. Not when he made it to the top of the steps. Not when he disappeared inside.

I sat, my hands shaking and my skin clammy despite the heat of the closed-up car. Waiting. Watching.

After a few minutes, something shifted in the doorway, and a moment later, Odane stepped through carrying Lucy, unconscious in his arms. Not caring about the crunch of the bugs anymore, I jumped out of the car and ran as far as I could to meet them, my heart hammering in my chest and the guilt and horror of what I was seeing burning my eyes.

Odane carried Lucy easy as if she were a child. Her head flopped back, bobbing a bit as he walked, the wind lifting her hair as it hung listlessly. She was completely limp, except for her arms, which were wrapped around something she was holdinga dark wooden box.

Even unconscious, she was holding onto it like it was the only thing that mattered.

Fifteen.

By the time we got to Mama Legba's shop, Lucy still wasn't quite coherent. We couldn't take her through the front door like that without people noticing and asking questions we didn't want to answer or calling the police on us, so we shuffled her in through the back.

"Auntie O!" Odane shouted.

Seconds later, Mama Legba appeared in the doorway. "Odane?" Then she saw Lucy, limp and still mostly unconscious in Odane's arms, and her face flashed with confused worry. "What happened?"

Odane looked at me as he set Lucy down onto the low couch and waited, like he was giving me a chance to explain. When Mama Legba realized he wasn't going to talk, she looked at me, too.

"We went to my house," I told her, and before I could say anything more, she tore into me.

"You went to what house?"

"The house I grew up in. Lucy had this idea"

"Lucy did?" Mama Legba interrupted, glancing at Lucy's still figure and then back at me. "Why would Lucy think about doing a thing like that? She heard you talking about the spell that kept you out the other day. She should have known better."

"It wasn't exactly all her idea," I said, backtracking a bit. "I was thinking about maybe going out to Thisbe's cabin again"

"Thisbe's cabin?" Mama Legba's eyes narrowed even more, if that was possible.

"Are you going to let me finish, or are you going to keep interrupting me?" I snapped, my temper finally starting to melt some of the fear that had paralyzed me most of the drive over.

Mama Legba pursed her lips at my sass and then gave a wave of her hand to indicate that I should continue.

"Like I was saying, I had this idea to go to Thisbe's cabin, and before you say a word, I know it was a stupid idea, but we have less than two days before that aloe mixture you made might open up something bad and ... " I felt the beginnings of a breeze sliding across my neck and my voice caught in my throat.

"And what?" Mama Legba asked.

I took a second and tried to settle myself down. I didn't speak again until I was sure that no other wind was kicking up. I still wasn't sure what had happened out there at the house. I didn't think I'd called up those bugs, but I couldn't be certain.

Taking a final, steadying breath, I went on. "I asked Lucy to go with me to the cabin, but she had this idea that where we really needed to look was my house, because it was the last place my mother had lived."

"Actually, that wasn't such a bad idea," Odane said thoughtfully, like he was impressed we'd come up with it.

I glanced over at him, unsure of how I felt about his comment. I didn't need his approval, but even so, part of me was glad I had it.

"So you went to your house," Mama Legba said. She still didn't sound none too happy. "Did you get yourself through the door this time?"

I shook my head. "No, I still couldn't even go as far as the front porch, but Lucy could. At first everything was fine, but then ... " I took a shuddering breath. Just thinking about it and I could almost feel that unnatural wind and the sharply buzzing wings of the insects that had come down from the sky like a plague.

"Then everything wasn't," Odane finished for me. "I've never seen nothing like it, Auntie. When I got there, the whole place was covered in a swarm of bugs so dark you'd think night had fallen over that one little piece of land. Chloe was standing there like she couldn't go nowhere else, right in the middle of it all."

I'd been doing pretty well holding myself together until that point. All the way back from my house to the Quarter, I'd focused on following Odane's truck and I hadn't let myself think about the bugs. But at his description it all came backthe sound of their demanding wings, the sting of their shiny black bodies pelting my skin like bullets. The way they'd surrounded me, almost swallowed me in their dark mass. I had to close my eyes and take a couple of deep breaths to ward off the nausea that rose up in my stomach.

"And what was you doing there, boy?" Mama Legba asked, her hands on her hips and her attention, finally, not on me.

"Mom sent me," he said simply.

Mama Legba blinked, her expression tense. "Odeana saw it?"

Odane nodded, and Mama Legba sank into her chair.

"What?" I asked, not understanding why the mood had shifted so suddenly, so dangerously, in the room.

Mama Legba glanced up at Odane and then, after he gave a slight nod, she met my eyes. "My sister was born behind the veil. She got the second sight," she said reverently, like that was supposed to mean something to me. "Some babies is born in the caul, and they has the sightthe ability to see what will be. Odeana been having her visions since we was girls, but she only sees certain things. Important things. Usually, when she gets the sight, somebody's gonna die."

"She saw one of us about to die?" I asked Odane.

"I'm not sure exactly what she saw, but she yanked me out of bed and told me I needed to get myself to the address where I found you. I learned a long time ago not to question my mom when she's got a vision."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't question her this time either," I told him, and I meant every word of it and a whole bunch more that I didn't say.

"Me, too," he said softly, and maybe for the first time, his voice didn't hold even a hint of scorn. Then he turned back to Mama Legba. "I found Lucy in the basement. I almost didn't find her, thoughshe'd crawled through a smaller door that went down into a second cellar. It was so dark in there I couldn't see a foot in front of me. I almost turned back, but

I caught sight of the white toe of her shoe right before."

We all looked over to Lucy, who was curled on the couch and still holding the box securely in her arms even though she hadn't quite come to completely. Her eyes were open now, but she was sort of staring off.

Mama Legba went over and kneeled down next to her. Brushing some of the hair back from her pale face, she made some cooing noises to try and wake her. Lucy stirred a little, but only to adjust her hold on the box.

"Try to get her all the way awake while I make her something to help clear up her energy," Mama Legba said as she pushed herself up. "She's got mixed up in something dark and we need to be getting it off her."

While the tea was brewing, Mama Legba lit a smudge stick and wafted the smoke around. Little by little, Lucy's eyes began to look more focused. Little by little she stirred enough that we could get her to sip the tea. Finally, Mama Legba managed to get her to give up the box she was holding and set it aside.

When she was feeling well enough and her eyes had finally taken on their usual sharpness, Mama Legba settled herself down in the chair across from her. "You feeling better, Lucy-girl?"

She nodded and took another sip of tea.

"What happened, child?" Mama Legba asked.

I sat next to Lucy, to help keep her upright, but Odane took to lurking in the corner, a hip propped against one of the countertops, his arms across his chest. He had a look of utter concentration on his face as he listened.

"I went in the house," Lucy told us, her eyes far off, like she was remembering. "I looked upstairs first, but there wasn't anything that seemed important, so I decided to try the basement, like Chloe had suggested."

Mama Legba glanced at me, one dark brow raised.

"I wasn't allowed down there as a kid," I said, sounding more defensive than I meant to.

"At first I didn't see anything interesting in the basement either. Just a lot of old stuff, and I didn't think that Thisbe would leave something important sitting out in the open." Lucy paused long enough for another sip of tea. "But then I noticed the door. I almost missed it, since it was so dark down there and there were a couple boxes stacked in front of it. So I moved them and found this other part of the basement."

"That's where I found her," Odane confirmed.

Lucy's face went a little pink. "Thank you for that," she said.

Odane nodded, but he didn't add anything more.

"Anyway, I had my phone, so I used the light and went in." She hesitated then, and her eyes were far away and serious.

"Take your time, child," Mama Legba said, touching Lucy's knee.

She blinked a few times, then closed her eyes for a long moment, like she was trying to visualize it. "There wasn't any light in there at all," she said. "But when I pointed my flashlight up on the walls, they were covered in symbols. Kind of like the symbols that were on that tomb."

Mama Legba frowned. "You mean Thisbe's tomb?"

Lucy nodded.

"Wait," Odane said. "Back it up. Thisbe has a tomb?"

Mama Legba gave him an impatient look. "Last place they saw the old witch was in one of the cemeteries. She'd been hiding the boy's body"

"Alex," Lucy interrupted, glancing up at Odane to explain. "She'd kept his body in one of those old above-ground tombs, only it wasn't a normal tomb. It was all carved up with these strange markings, and they must have had some sort of magical properties, because they seemed to glow."

Odane thought about this. "I didn't see any markings in the cellar, but I didn't have a light. I tried to use my phone, same as you, but it was dead."

"Mine went dead, too," I told them. But when I pulled my phone out of my back pocket, sure enough, it was fine. Plenty of battery. Plenty of reception.

Still no other messages from Piers.

"So whatever happened must have done something to interrupt the power," Odane said, checking his own phone and finding it was also just fine.

"That's about all I really remember," Lucy told us. "I went down into the roomit had an even lower ceiling than the regular basementit was all made of dirt, like someone had dug it out by hand or something. And the walls, like I said, were covered with these weird inscriptions. There was an altar or something there, but it wasn't like yours," she told Mama Legba. "It didn't have anything but red candles that had been burned down to stubs and a tarnished silver bowl. Underneath the bowl, I found the box. I almost didn't notice it, because it looked like a stand or something for the bowl, but the second I picked it up ... " She frowned. "I don't know what happened."

"Sounds to me like you tripped some kind of alarm," Mama Legba said.

If Lucy had tripped an alarm, it meant that I probably hadn't been the one to cause those evil bugs. That realization made me feel a little better. Not much, but a little.