A MINOTAUR IN NEW ORLEANS: Part 7

NICO, who had slept all day and seemed barely awake, met them at seven o'clock and drove them to The Beautiful House.
   "This is where she lives?" Nico peered doubtfully at the hotel shrouded in Spanish moss and dying light. "The loa queen?"
   "I want you two to wait here," Z.J. told them as they entered the lobby. He'd timed it right--the sun was just beginning to set. He was a knot of nerves and tension, felt like a razor blade.
   When Bruce walked into the lobby, Nico whispered loudly, "He looks just like a human."
   "I beg your pardon?" Bruce narrowed his eyes. He spoke to Z.J. "Did you bring a civilian into this?"
   Z.J. gestured to Nico and Phoebe. "One of your outcasts has gone after her."
   "Phoebe Marrs." Bruce bowed to her and she took a step back. "Clementine welcomes you." He turned to Z.J. "What 'outcast?'"
   "Minotaur," was all Z.J. said, and Bruce looked as if he'd just said 'The Devil.' Z.J. continued, "I want to speak to Clementine alone."
   Bruce led him to the private courtyard, where Clementine stood, elegant in a black evening gown. Her feet were bare. Z.J. didn't wait for her to speak as her silver gaze fell upon him. He said, "Why didn't you tell me you made Phoebe's brother into a Jack?"
   She sat on a low wall, hunched forward. "He was dying."
   "How?"
   "He was using heroine. When he was seventeen, he overdosed. I could not let him go."
   The Black Scissors had once told Z.J. the Fatas were not immortal as much as eternal. Immortal meant even though one's body remained young, the mind changed, became weary. The world transformed a person, a soul. Being eternal meant existing always, unchanged, remaining the same, like an insect in amber. Eternally youthful. No senility. No life lessons learned. Wisdom, perhaps, but only the kind that came with age.
   Clementine looked like an eighteen-year-old girl. She pretended to think like one. As many years as passed in the world, she would never grow or change. Z.J. said, teeth gritted, "So you yanked out his insides and filled him with magic."
   Clementine tilted her head. "No. That is the Dark Court's way. My magic flourished within him. I gave him my heart."
   "So he's not human anymore." Z.J. watched her. Her face remained expressionless. He told her, wanting her to feel his dread and knowing she wouldn't: "A minotaur is following Phoebe."
   A scream tore through the night. Clementine, rising, whispered furiously, "And you brought her here?"
   Z.J. was already racing toward the lobby.
   He burst through the doors and found Nico sprawled on the floor and the elderly desk clerk hurrying toward him.
   "Nico--"
   "I'm good." Nico shakily pointed to the open doors. "He dragged Phoebe out."
   "The minotaur--"
   "Not the minotaur. Some guy."
   "What did he look like?" Clementine glided into the lobby Nico stared at her as if she were the second coming. Then he said, "Dark hair. Very white. Dressed like The Crow."
   "Theo," Clementine said with a grim look. "Phoebe's brother."
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Clementine wouldn't go with Z.J., but she gave him a tiny glass ball filled with emerald light and told him it would lead him to Theo if Theo was nearby.
   When Nico volunteered to come with him, Z.J. told him to stay put. Phoebe had carried the mistletoe weapon. All that Z.J. had now were the misericorde, an amulet, and several small daggers.
   Clementine walked Z.J. to the gate in front of the hotel. "If the minotaur is seeking them..."
   "What kills a minotaur?" He turned to Clementine, who looked like just a girl in an elegant gown after a party.
   Softly, she said, "You lost someone to one of us."
   "Are you going to answer my question? If the minotaur is stalking Phoebe and it finds them--"
   "I cannot tell you how to kill one of my kind. Your Black Scissors doesn't know?"
   He turned his back on her and, holding the ball up in one hand, headed in the direction in which it seemed to glow the strongest.
   After a while, the ball lit up like a tiny sun as he rounded a corner and found himself in front of a warehouse splashed with gorgeous graffiti. The last time he'd entered a place like this, he'd also been alone, clueless, without any weapons, without any guidance.
   He felt something in his pocket and frowned. He reached in and pulled out a spool of red fishing line, stared at it. He began to suspect something and it made him stronger. He stepped into the darkness.
   The glass ball lit his way as he moved down a corridor of corrugate steel--someone had built a maze. Above were pipes and shattered light fixtures. Things echoed; metal groaning; scrabbling sounds.
   A voice.
   Z.J. dulled the sphere's light by wrapping it in a piece of fabric torn from his T-shirt. Then he unwound the fishing line and hooked one end to the handle on the door. He prowled toward the voice. He turned a bend in the makeshift corridor and winced when he saw a huge, horned head spray-painted black on the wall.
    The next voice sounded like a girl yelling. Z.J. ran toward it.
   A sleek shadow swung down from above and kicked him in the chest. Z.J. went down, scrabbling for the glass ball.
   A black-nailed hand snatched it up and raised it to the face of a boy his age, his hair a tangle, black triangles painted beneath his eyes. He was all in dark leather.
   Z.J. slid warily back.The boy cocked his head. "Who are you?"
   "I'm Z.J., Theo. Where's your sister?"
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A MINOTAUR IN NEW ORLEANS: Part 6

Z.J.'s mom's shop was still closed, so he and Phoebe went up the fire escape in the back and through the kitchen terrace doors. His mom was at church, so Z.J. attempted to make Phoebe breakfast while she wandered around the kitchen, gazing at the little paintings of fairy tale figures on the wall near the living room.
   "I have to open up the shop," he told her after they'd finished a pot of coffee. "We can talk down there."
   His first customer, five minutes after he turned the sign to OPEN and unlocked the door, was Anna from Fair Hollow. She and Phoebe regarded each other warily. Z.J. said, "She knows."
   Anna set the umbrella she'd been carrying on the counter. "I brought it for you."
   "It's very pretty." He doubtfully regarded the umbrella of bleached wood with its illustrations of Alice, the White Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter.
   "What, you think I'm simple?" Anna tapped the umbrella. "It's made of mistletoe wood."
   Z.J. took hold of the umbrella and ran his fingers across the puzzled-together pieces of wood. He touched the point at the top. "I can keep this?"
   "It's yours."
   He thought of stripping the umbrella of its frivolous bits and driving it through the minotaur's heart. But they don't have hearts.
   "Anna." He raised his eyes to the other girl. "Who gave this to you?"
   Her mouth curved. She turned and walked toward the door. Her voice trailed softly back, "A fool who is a king."She opened the door and vanished in the hazy sunlight.
   Phoebe walked over and looked at the umbrella. "How do you kill them?"
   "You were going to try and kill Clementine without knowing how?"
   She shrugged and cast her gaze down. "I thought blessed silver did it?"
   "Sometimes. Not if they're old. And I think Clementine is as old as the goddamn bible."
   Phoebe looked tired and drawn out. "And the minotaur?"
   "Minotaurs are ancient. But mistletoe . . ." Z.J. ripped the pretty Alice in Wonderland fabric away from the umbrella handle. "Mistletoe is deadly to them. I need you to leave New Orleans. Do you have anyplace to go?"
   She shook her head.
   "If I take you to Clementine, will you refrain from killing her?"
   "Will she tell me where my brother is?'
   That's when his mother returned. Z.J. introduced Phoebe as a friend. His mother asked Phoebe if she'd like her cards read and Z.J. said "No" and pulled Phoebe out the door.
   As they walked along the street, Phoebe told him how her twin brother had vanished when they were fifteen, that he'd sent her a letter telling her not to worry, he'd found someone in New Orleans who would take care of them, a young woman named Clementine. He'd promised to send for Phoebe.
   He'd never sent for her. She'd never heard from him again.
   "When did the minotaur begin haunting you?"
   "A while ago. I ran away, here, to find Theo."
   "What aren't you telling me, Phoebe?" He turned to her.
   She looked stubborn. Then she shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. He demanded, "What else did your brother say in the letter?"
   "He said there's a hidden world and he found a way into it. That he wasn't afraid of anything anymore."
   Z.J. felt as if his stomach had plunged into his boots. He didn't let it show on his face.
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