PHOEBE had seen her.
The busy French Quarter was the one place Phoebe felt safe at night from the thing that was hunting her. She was shyly sliding past a flock of honey-haired girls in little dresses and platform sandals when she saw the regal girl moving through the crowds like a queen of the Nile. How could anyone not notice the silver shine of her eyes, the inhuman grace with which she and her four companions moved, as if they'd walked the earth for centuries, immortal monsters in human-like skins?
One of the young men swept his silver gaze across the crowd. A diamond glinted in the side of his nose and his skin glimmered. Phoebe looked quickly away and tried to hide herself in the mass of people.
The queen and her shadows moved onward and Phoebe followed.
***
Z.J. worked in his mother's shop on weekends. He liked to organize the various tourist trap junk, as well as the authentic voodoo/hoodoo/Wiccan/New Age items. The shop sold candles, spooky dolls, books, Tarot cards, and chintzy souvenirs. He'd convinced her to carry other items, which made her eye him warily sometimes, as if she worried he'd joined some sort of cult.
After last night's weirdness, he needed normalcy.
The girl who entered the shop before sunset looked fifteen, her dark blonde hair in two braids. She glanced at him, nodded once. He nodded back. She began to wander around the shop, hands in the back pockets of her jeans. She selected a deck of the most expensive cards and he moved behind the counter as she walked to him. She set the cards down and shrugged off her plaid backpack. "How much are these?"
"Thirty bucks." He squinted at her face. "Do I know you?"
"I'm visiting from New York."
"Where in New York?" He rang up the cards.
"Fair Hollow."
He froze. He met her gaze. He supposed she looked alarmed because he did.
Fair Hollow. Where a Fata version of a very dark A Midsummer Night's Dream had played out.
"I was there," he ventured. "Two years ago."
"Were you? I'm Anna." She held out her hand.
"Z.J." He had a feeling she knew. He tapped the Tarot cards. "Can you really use these?"
"They're for a friend." He realized her gaze was fastened on the black scissors tattoo he and the other taltu wore to let the Fatas know they'd best behave.
She leaned forward and whispered, "Are they here, too?"
"Silver eyes? Shadowy? Love/hate relationship with poetry? Yeah, Anna, they're here."
She solemnly accepted the Tarot cards and receipt. "I don't see them anymore."
"Anymore?"
She shrugged. "I can sense them, but only if they want me to."
"The ones I met here"--He thought of elegant and lovely Clementine--"seem okay."
She nodded. "Someone told me once that the one who rules here came from Ethiopia. That she's one of the good ones."
"Who told you--"
She shook her head and looked wistful. "I had friends, once, among them. Things changed. Good bye, Z.J."
He watched as she left.
***
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