A MINOTAUR IN NEW ORLEANS: Part 2

THE hotel was called La Chateau Beau, The Beautiful House. It stood in one of the oldest and sketchiest neighborhoods, shrouded by oaks draped with Spanish moss. It resembled a Victorian house gone mad, with its frivolous towers and gables, all painted black. It had been built around a courtyard of exotic plants and a huge pool that mimicked a grotto. Tiny lights twinkled in the palm trees.
   Z.J. knew, as he and Nico moved out of the grand dame lobby and into the empty courtyard, that the hotel was a Fata haunt. The lobby had had two inhabitants; a pretty girl in a green satin flapper's dress, reading a book; and an elderly man who resembled Ian McKellan behind the desk. The man hadn't said anything to the two boys as they crossed the lobby.
   Z.J., observing the dark pool glimmering with reflected light, imagined that an Afanc could live in that. "We should leave."
   "What? We just got past Gandalf without a problem. I almost expected him to say"--Nico's voice deepened even further than his usual baritone--"'Thou shalt not pass.' And no one's here." He shucked his T-shirt and jeans. His swim trunks were patterned with pink sharks. Again, Z.J. did not judge.
   As Nico dove into the water, Z.J. looked around. He saw, beyond the tangle of vegetation, a Tiki bar glowing with lights and bottles. Old-timey music drifted languidly through the air.
   He thought he saw someone standing beside the bar, a shadow in a suit and top hat, and he went for the silver blade he kept in his denim jacket. He squinted.
   But it wasn't a figure, only a dark space between the trees.
   After an hour of enjoying the pool, Z.J. saw a few guests drift from the wild garden of the hotel. They appeared to be normal. Z.J. began to relax. He lay back in one of the deck chairs with a non-alcoholic sweet tea. Nico had gotten the drinks at the bar where a pretty brown-skinned girl in a halter top and jeans made an art of juggling bottles and mixer flasks. Nico had drifted back to talk to her. Her eyes were brown and didn't flash silver when they caught the light.
   Z.J. listened to the rustling of palm fronds and the music which sounded as if it were being played on a phonograph.
   Then he sensed a shadow blocking out the twinkling lights.
   "Mr. Jenkins."
   His eyes flew open.
   The deep voice belonged to an African-American man in an expensive suit. The light gleamed on his bald head. His eyes were dark, human. He was the same man Z.J. had seen earlier that day in the convenience store. The man smiled, swift and polite. "Boss would like  word with you."
   Z.J. didn't dare look over at Nico He reached for his clothing.
   "Ah-ah. Not that." The man, still smiling, held one hand out for the denim jacket with the silver dagger in it.
   Z.J. handed it over and pulled on his jeans and T-shirt. As he followed the man, he asked, "So who is your boss?"
   "You may call her Clementine."
   Only a first name. That was a bad sign. Z.J. didn't want to, but he asked, casual-like, "What's her real name?"
   The man said something in French, then added, gently, "The Mistress of the Beautiful House."
   Fata.
    "And what are you? Her Renfield?"
   "That's vampires. I am a man. My name is Bruce."
   "A man over eighteen who can see them."
   "I was a medium when she found me and asked me to work for her."
   "Is she one of the good ones or one of the bad ones?"
   "Now what would be the point of me telling you that when you don't know me?"
    "Good point. Is she a queen?"
   "What else would the Mistress of the Beautiful House mean?"
   Z.J. liked this man. He was sardonic, a word Z.J.'s mom often used to describe Z.J., along with 'smart-ass.' He braced himself as they crossed the lobby, glad his swim trunks had dried while he was lazing in the deck chair and his jeans weren't wet. It would have been difficult to be menacing with the seat of his pants damp.
   As a pair of red doors opened before them, he wished he hadn't let his guard down.
   They stepped into a private garden, where a figure in a black silk dress and spike-heeled shoes sat, her face shadowed by a sweeping hat with a short veil of black netting. She sat in a wicker chair beneath an arbor of grapevines. A few bees buzzed quietly around her. She sipped from the tea cup she held and raised her head, revealing a face that was meant to break hearts. Her brown skin glimmered as if with diamond dust. She said with a small curve to her lips, "You're a taltu."
   Z.J. was aware of Bruce deserting him. He was alone in the silent, bee-buzzing garden with a Fata queen. He was just as wisely afraid as he would have been facing down a Fata that had taken a monstrous form. "And you're a Fata queen."
   She set down her tea and uncrossed her legs and faced him and shadows grew from behind her in a swirling show that reminded Z.J. of the spines of some poisonous creature.
   "I need your help, Mr. Jenkins." She removed her hat, revealing rippling black hair curving from her face. Her silver eyes and semblance of humanity were unnerving. But Z.J. stood his ground, because he'd met an immortal witch doctor and fought a minotaur. The Fata queen said, "A girl has come to my city to kill me."
   "What did you do do her?"
   Clementine's eyes flashed. Then she sighed like any mortal girl and rubbed her brow. "I took her brother."
   Z.J. leaned against one of the columns, arms folded. He didn't speak.
   "He came willingly. He was sixteen, lovely and fierce."
   She looked eighteen and wasn't. Z.J. knew the Fatas were all cradle robbers. "So where is he?"
   "He became eighteen and left us. Left with knowledge."
   Z.J. asked, "What did you do to him?"
   Clementine lifted her chin and her face was cold. "What I had to do. I took the memory of us away from him."
   "So where is he?"
   "I don't know."
   "This girl who's coming for you--what's her name?"
   "Phoebe Thorne. I don't want her hurt. I want you to keep an eye out for her and convince her not to kill me. Then introduce her to your Black Scissors, since she already seems headed down that path."
   Z.J., as much as he hated to trust one of the children of night and nothing, suspected Clementine was one of the good ones. He said, "I'll help you."
                                                                         ***
  
   

A MINOTAUR IN NEW ORLEANS by Katherine Harbour and Zachary Jimerson

KID ROCK'S 'Bull God' blared from the decrepit black Chevy that pulled up in front of the auto repair shop where Z.J. Jenkins worked. He grimaced. His friend's broken radio and CD player were forever stuck on an '80's Favorites station.
   Z.J. opened the door and got in before any of the guys he worked with could hear the music. As the youngest mechanic at seventeen, he'd never hear the end of it. Nico grinned and made a horn sign with two fingers. "I love this song."
   "Don't embarrass me." Z.J. ran a hand over his closely shaven skull and peered into the rear view mirror as Nico swung the truck onto the street.
   "How is Kid Rock embarrassing? What d'you think they'll play next? Green Day or Alannis Morrisette?"
   "I don't know those." Z.J. slouched in the seat, narrowing his eyes as they drove past the convenience store. The African-American man who'd been idling in the convenience store across the street hadn't moved from the magazine stand. He'd been reading a copy of Time for the past two hours. He was too well-dressed to be a cop. And he wasn't one of the Others, because it was daylight.
   "You are not a connoisseur of classic music. It's Friday. Don't look so grim.That's Alannis." Nico, black hair slanting over one eye, tapped ink-painted fingernails on the steering wheel as a woman began to howl from the radio.
   Nico's mom was from Kenya and his dad was Native American, but that coolness was ruined by his having gone emo over the past year. Although Z.J. didn't judge his friends' life choices, this had been a tough call. Nico continued, "So, burgers? Then the pool at Hotel de Plaza?"
   "No. We can't sneak back into a place we got kicked out of."
   "And why did we get kicked out? Oh, yeah, because you thought there was an alligator in the pool and freaked out."
   "I didn't freak out." Actually, Z.J. had thought the creature in the hotel pool was an Afanc, but one of the man-faced alligator horrors hadn't been spotted in the 'New World' in centuries--it had been a guest on an alligator float and Z.J. had been drinking, which he never usually did. Alcohol lowered one's reaction time.
   He was paranoid,even after three Fata-free years, ever since the business up in Fair Hollow, New York. The Black Scissors--who only got in touch by mail or in person because he said the Fatas could hack electronic communications--hadn't dropped him a letter in three months.
   Life was good. Z.J. was bored.
   Nico swung onto the street where Z.J.'s mom's shop was located. She worked as a psychic. She wasn't. She was just good at guessing and great at a con.
   "I'll pick you up in two hours," Nico called as Z.J. stepped out of the truck. "Po boys and the pool at The Beautiful House?"
   He peeled out before Z.J. could say "Hell no" to the last part of his friend's suggestion--The Beautiful House was a hotel, old and grand and not on the national registry. Z.J. had his suspicions about it and its air of Don't come here.
   Z.J. slipped into his mom's shop, with its incense air and tinkling wind chimes. She'd furnished the shop in thrift store chic, which wasn't mirrored in the neat and modern apartment upstairs.
   "Z.J." His mom moved from beyond the red velvet drapes that hid the steps. "You missed dinner again."
   She swept past him, her black dress swirling, pearls glimmering around her neck. She patted his head on the way, even though she had to reach up to do it, since he was six-foot to her five.
   "You ate though, right?" He turned as she began switching on the mood lighting. Her serious clients tended to come at night.
   "Mac and cheese and hot dogs and sauerkraut." She looked up and the light from a chandelier slid across her glasses.
   "At least it's not green bean casserole again." He dashed up the stairs.
   "What's wrong with my green beat casserole?" she called after him.
   "It always tastes like incense."
   In his room at the back, which had once been an enclosed porch, he opened his locked wardrobe and, ignoring the weapons hung at the back, considered what to wear--most of his clothes were in a pile in a corner of the room.He had to move two stacks of books--unfortunately, the sorts of books he needed weren't available as ebooks because they were rare--to find a decent pair of jeans and his favorite T-shirt.
   He skipped the macaroni and hot dogs and microwaved a frozen burrito. He stood at the window while eating it, gazing out at the church across the street. It was lit up like the holidays although it was midsummer, the air swampy with heat. It was an old church, its round window a dazzling circle of sapphire, ruby, and topaz. He liked the way the light shone into his room at night. It was comforting.
                                                                        ***
Phoebe had gotten off the bus. She sensed the bad thing following two hours later, when the sun set. She didn't know how it had followed her. That meant it was a spirit, despite the shape it wore.
   She found a crowded cafe and ate there, cheaply. She didn't have much money left. She was seventeen. She hadn't exactly been saving up. She hadn't expected her dad to die.
   Her breath hitched. The French fries and po boy turned to lead in her stomach.
   She left the cafe and wandered the French Quarter, keeping an eye out for any sign of the creatures that had taken her twin brother. Despite the tattered bits of knowledge she'd scrapped together about them, she still had to go by instinct--that chill at the back of her neck, the feeling that the person before you wasn't really a person.
   The French Quarter, with its hordes of tourists and young people, would be a perfect hunting ground for their kind, so it was there she went. Her denim jacket, jeans, and boots were glamoured up by a rhinestone headband in her short russet hair.
   She had her weapons. She'd never killed anything before. The weapons were holy amulets and a small journal filled with spells she'd made up. Enough, she hoped, to track a faery queen and get her brother back.
   She spent her first night in New Orleans in a church, because the spirit following her wouldn't be able to get in. There were two other people there, praying, so she knelt with her head on her arms.
   She fell asleep.
   She woke to dim lighting and the votive candles flickering. The church was empty. She wasn't so tired now. She sat back and rubbed at her face.
   The voice that drifted to her from the entrance caused her stomach to heave. No. She gripped the wood of the pew.
   "Red rover, red rover, come on over."
   It couldn't get into the church. but she had to know...
   She turned and saw only a shadow beyond the open doors. The shadow was huge and ragged, as if it were scarcely holding itself together. That's how powerful it was. Yet it didn't enter.
   Sick and shaking, she rose and walked unsteadily toward the open doors. She clutched the heart pendant she wore around her neck. Carved from acacia, the pendant was almost as big as her hand.  
   The spirit was gone.
   The doors slammed shut before her . She almost screamed when she saw the two bloody hand prints on the wood.
                                                                        ***