Gods of New Orleans (26 page)

The street didn’t empty before him, though. A pair came up from his left, almost rising straight from the ground it seemed, and then two more on his right. One of the pairs got hands onto Aiden’s coat. For a second he felt trapped in their strong grip. But he wrenched free and felt both tramps fall to the ground in a tangle behind him. The street was clear for a few feet and Aiden darted forward. Then, just as fast as he could move, a trio rose up from the street and blocked his path. Aiden’s heart beat a mad dance and he aimed his cart at the rightmost one.

He struck the man with his cart and reeled away from the blow, using the momentum to shift his path toward the edge of the street. If he could get onto the sidewalk, he might have an easier time escaping.

But they swarmed all around him now, and still moaning, begging him for who knew what, but Aiden knew it was something he didn’t have. He checked to see if the one he’d hit had gone down. He saw that one and two other men fighting with one another, rolling in the street. As they struggled, the street itself turned to mud beneath them. The thick sloppy muck spread out in a halo around the wrestling tangle of grimy coats and greasy hair. In a flash, the edges of the mud pool raced to either side of the street, capturing all the tramps it touched.

They all fought now, with each other and to free themselves from the growing pool. Aiden pushed his cart, aiming himself at the sidewalk because he could see it was still solid.

Theo Valcour’s deep laughter echoed across the night to Aiden’s ears, and at that moment, Aiden felt the wheels of his cart dip forward into the slime. He overbalanced, tumbling headfirst into the mud. His bucket tipped and a cold, greasy spray splashed over his hands and arms as they sank into the mud.

Aiden screamed. He fought with the mud and he screamed and cried, thrashing out with one hand just as the other arm sank into the black ooze up to his elbow. The tramps came to him then. They came across the mud somehow, moving in it, like they were a part of it.

Forgetting his cart and looking only for a clear path to the sidewalk, Aiden ripped his arm free of the muck and fought against the clutching and grasping hands. He swatted them away, kicked out with a leg and got his feet under him. The mud beneath him felt firm, but went soft the longer he stayed put.

Four tramps circled him now, mouths open, eyes hidden by bushy brows and floppy hat brims. And their hands were all reaching for him. Aiden flung a hand out to swipe at a tramp that came too close. His fingers caught on something and pulled. At first he thought it was the tramp’s coat, but then he saw the night air of the street fluttering like a curtain. And he saw the space behind the city, the mix of night sky and half remembered dreams. The tramps closed in, all of them groaning angry and violent in his ears. Aiden stepped into the hole he’d opened.

With that first step, Aiden learned he probably was supposed to take that letter from Mr. Brand, but he couldn’t figure how knowing that was supposed to help him now. All around him the tramps came through the curtain, flowing like water through a sieve until they filled his vision like an ocean. Aiden spun around and saw an open tunnel ahead. He ran as more tramps filtered through from the street and into the world behind the city.

Whatever Mr. Brand had wanted to show him, Aiden knew it couldn’t have been this. No way his old boss would do him this way. The tramps kept coming, and Aiden kept running. His feet didn’t stick like they had on the street outside, but he worried they would if he stopped for even a second.

So Aiden ran, and he thought about Mr. Brand. And when he got enough wind in him to do it, he yelled the man’s name and begged him for help.

Chapter 27

Even though Eddie was playing more shows than ever, Emma still hadn’t made it into a gala house since going to work for Bacchus. Tonight’s run was a full load of the girls and their chaperone. And Emma’s worry over where she was taking them had grown with each passing day. She’d tried talking to Eddie about it, but he denied or dismissed or just got angry as she’d ever seen him. The conversation never got beyond her telling him something smelled wrong.

“Ain’t nothin’ you need to worry about, girl. Mr. Bacchus pay us right. Set us up in this fine home. What you wanna ask trouble in for? What’s trouble gonna bring but more trouble?”

Tonight she thought about bringing trouble of her own and just waltzing into the gala house and checking things out herself. But Eddie’d warned her off that idea, too.

“Won’t let you in if’n I’m not playin’. Doorman got a list.”

Promising herself to find a way in somehow, Emma brought the
Vigilance
in slow above the gala house’s mooring deck. This one stood right beside the house itself, and calling this building a house was almost an insult. Lawns spread out around it on three sides, and the fourth backed up against a copse of oak trees. Wrought iron railings bordered the yard with lamps hanging from posts every so often, glowing bright and warm.

Emma had to force herself to stop staring at the mansion with its warm windows and the parade of guests in their finery and lace down at the front steps. The scene looked bright and cheerful, but Emma knew better. And she couldn’t deny the dread she was feeling as the gearboxes locked the mooring lines in place. After a short whirring and clicking, the airship bobbed against its tethers.

This deck was the nicest Emma had seen around New Orleans, nicer even than the mayor’s deck back in Chicago City. Just like the railing around the manor yard, gas lamps lit up the whole length of the deck, sending halos of warmth around the late evening. The planking looked polished and smooth, and a glimmering gangway swung out as the gearboxes maneuvered it into place with a set of levers.

Emma went to the door and worked the lever to fix the gangway to the outside of the cabin, waiting for the gentle bump that told her it was in place. She popped the door open to reveal brass handrails illuminating a golden path from the cabin to the deck below.

Along the deck itself, stanchions of brass and steel and velvet ropes made for waiting areas. As Emma stared in awe, the radio popped with the familiar cadence of tones that meant the
Vigilance
had the “all clear.” She could unload her passengers.

Emma went to the cockpit and confirmed. She fiddled with the radio headset for a bit, unsure if she should keep hush or try to help. The first chaperone she’d worked with, Miss Roche, hadn’t accepted her help.

This one answered Emma’s unspoken questions with a note of command in her voice.

“You just wait on me to come back, Miss Emma,” the woman said, standing up from Brand’s desk and motioning to the girls who were huddled against the rear of the cabin. “I won’t be but a minute getting these girls to the dancing hall.”

“Sure thing,” Emma said to the woman’s back, watching her parade the six girls out of the cabin and onto the gangway. It was the same group as she’d flown the first time, and Emma didn’t miss the signs of fear and worry they still wore under their thickened eyelashes and rubied lips. One of the white girls even lagged behind, leaning against the wall by Brand’s desk. She caught a cuffing around the ear from the chaperone.

“You get on now,” the woman said. “And don’t give me none of that sass like you did back at the boarding house.”

The girl moved to the cabin door. Before she put a foot outside, she turned worried fearful eyes to Emma. Before Emma could say anything, the chaperone came between them and took the girl firmly by the arm. With a look of warning in Emma’s direction, the chaperone pushed the girl before her and marched down the gangway.

Emma sat tight for a second, then jumped up and went to the cabin door. With its brass rails glowing golden in the gaslight, the gangway looked for all the world like a path to the heavens. Emma didn’t miss a beat thinking it was aimed in the wrong direction.

The chaperone stayed true to her word, coming back up the deck only a few short minutes after leaving with the girls. The chaperone’s eyes rounded with intent as she stepped along the planks toward the gangway. Emma backed into the cabin, fleeing that accusing gaze just as she felt guilty for letting the younger woman intimidate her.

What did Emma have to fear? She’d done as she was told, and Bacchus had already paid her for the flying, even fueled up the airship for her on top of the pay.

Emma’s hand found her coat pocket and she felt the roll of bills she’d tucked in there, money the krewe boss himself had given her, from his hand to hers. Not through Eddie like the times before.

The chaperone stepped into the cabin and held Emma’s eyes. The other woman’s lips pressed tight together and then flared open as she spoke.

“Don’t you never go looking at them girls like that again. You hear me? Never. Les’ you want the Birdman to come an’
take
your eye.” The chaperone snatched at the air like she’d pluck Emma’s eye out herself.

Emma’s chest heaved and she nearly spat back at the woman standing in the cabin doorway, like she could push her out with just the right words. But the words didn’t come, and wouldn’t come no matter how much Emma willed them to. She again clutched the money with the hand in her pocket and nodded, feeling the shame rise to her cheeks when she realized her bottom lip was trembling.

The chaperone moved into the cabin. Emma went to the door and worked the levers to release the gangway and pull the door closed.

“Good,” the chaperone said. “Now get us on back the boarding house.” She stepped to Brand’s desk and took her seat there again, yanking open the bottom drawer as soon as her tailbone hit the chair.

The woman made a disappointed grunt and slammed the drawer shut. “Ain’t got a bottle in there? What the hell it’s for then it don’t hold a bottle? Half useless, like a few other things round here.”

Emma ignored the taunt and sat in the pilot’s chair. She kept her eyes on the controls and signaled the gearboxes she was ready to go. The radio crackled and gave way to the usual series of chirps Emma had grown accustomed to. The gangway withdrew and the mooring lines released. With another series of chirps and clicks, Emma had confirmation that the ship was free and clear. She turned her attention to piloting the craft away from the gala house.

Down below, gaslight glowed from every window down the long side of the house. Inside, twirling silhouettes danced round and round the floor, like music box dancers cascading past the windows in a quickening flurry. Emma held the ship in a steady rise but still angled so she could watch the gala house through the cockpit windows.

“Why you keeping us aimed this way?” the chaperone demanded. “Mama Fontaineau’s boarding house off east, same as when we left to come out here.”

Emma held her tongue and turned the ship to the east. The gala house disappeared from view out the left window and Emma let it go. The feeling that she’d just delivered a flock of lambs to the slaughter didn’t leave her, though. It stayed with her the whole way back across the city.

She left the chaperone at the deck by Mama Fontaineau’s boarding house without so much as a “So long, sister.” The fury had built and continued to build as they flew, and the chaperone hadn’t done anything to change Emma’s mood, at least not for the better. By the time she had the
Vigilance
moored in her and Eddie’s neighborhood, the ache of anger in her chest had wilted to a dull sorrow, pressed beneath a heavy dread.

Emma walked down the street to their home and went inside, struggling to keep from folding over where she stood.

Settling into the chair in the front parlor, Emma fell asleep, dreaming of little lambs stripped of their downy wool and let to run through a nightmare of dark houses that erupted with flames from the windows.

~•~

Brand stands under a tree across the street from the Rising Sun and watches the jazzers and flappers having their fun. Light flares out of the building and the rumble and stomp of a good heel kick come to Brand’s ears across the night from the open front door and balcony windows. The two-story building looks solid and strong even in this run down riverside stretch of New Orleans. Somebody takes care of it, Brand knows. And that somebody is the man he met on the street the other day. His first delivery.

Vice
.

Bacchus owns the Sun, and a whole lot more of this town. Brand’s figured that out in the short time he’s been on the street. Wasn’t that hard, really, what with every mud man from here to Lafayette telling him that was how things were. Bacchus owns this gala house and plenty others.

He probably owns the people inside them, too. They just don’t know it yet. Or they don’t care.

Miss Farnsworth’s jazz man is in there with them, hooting it up and blowing on his horn in between sips of sherry or brandy or whatever else they’re pouring inside.

Looks like he’s having a glass of Janet and one of Josephine, too, from where I’m standing
.

Brand winces when a pang of hunger rips into his guts and stirs them up good. Worse than he’s felt before, even in the trenches. It’s been a long night of watching this jazz house glowing like a lighthouse by the riverside, and the night’s just getting longer. But Brand has nowhere else to go. Nothing to do but wait it out under this tree with his collar up and his hands wrapped in his frayed sleeves, while he hopes Miss Farnsworth’s jazz man is sober enough to carry a letter home in his pocket.

Since Conroy spurned him, Brand figures he’s got one of two plays with this new gig of his. He can deliver the mail like he’s supposed to, and slowly go crazy in the process until he’s sucking down mud for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Or, he thinks, as the jazz players slow down in the house across the way, he can find a patsy, someone who can do it just as good as him.

He doesn’t know how the gods will take it, him handing letters to the wrong people. But if he makes sure the patsy doesn’t do something stupid, like opening the letter, well, maybe Brand can go back to doing the only thing he feels good about doing anymore.