Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

Usually I would’ve made a joke, but tonight I didn’t. Link was a whole lot closer to being Magneto then I was.

This Tunnel reminded me of a dungeon in an old castle. The ceiling was low, and the rough rock walls were wet. The sound of dripping water echoed through the passageway, although there was no sign of the source. I had been in this Tunnel before, but somehow it felt different tonight—or maybe it was me that had changed. Either way, the walls felt close, and I wanted to get to the end.

“Hurry up or we’ll lose her.” I was actually the one slowing us down, tripping in the darkness.

“Relax. She sounds like a horse walkin’ through gravel. There’s no way we’ll lose her.” It wasn’t an analogy Amma would appreciate.

“You can really hear her footsteps?” I couldn’t even hear his.

“Yeah. I can smell her, too. Follow the pencil lead and Red Hots.”

So Link followed the smell of Amma’s crossword puzzles and her favorite candy, and I followed him until he stopped at the base of a crude set of stairs that led back up to the Mortal world. He inhaled deeply, the way he used to when one of Amma’s peach cobblers was baking in the oven. “She went up there.”

“You sure?”

Link lifted an eyebrow. “Can my mom preach to a preacher?”

Link pushed open the heavy stone door, and light flooded into the Tunnel. We were behind some old building, the door etched into the chipped brick. The air was thick and sticky with the distinct stench of beer and sweat. “Where the hell are we?”

Nothing looked familiar. “No clue.”

Link walked around to the front of the building. The smell of beer was even stronger. He peered into the window. “This place is some kind of pub.”

There was a cast-iron placard next to the door: LAFITTE’S BLACKSMITH SHOP.

“This doesn’t look like a blacksmith’s shop.”

“That’s because it isn’t.” An elderly man in a Panama hat, like the one Aunt Prue’s last husband used to wear, walked up behind Link. He leaned heavily on his cane. “You are standin’ in front a one a Bourbon Street’s most infamous buildin’s, and the hist’ry a this place is as famous as the Quarter itself.”

Bourbon Street. The French Quarter. “We’re in New Orleans.”

“Right. Of course we are.” After this summer, Link and I knew the Tunnels could lead anywhere, and time and distance didn’t operate the same way within them. Amma knew it, too.

The old man was still talking. “Folks say Jean and Pierre Lafitte opened a smithy here in the late seventeen hundreds as a front for their smugglin’ operation. They were pirates who looted Spanish galleons and smuggled what they stole into N’awlins, sellin’ everything from spices and furniture to flesh and blood. But these days, most folks come for the ale.”

I cringed. The man smiled and tipped his hat. “You kids pass a good time in the City That Care Forgot.”

I wasn’t betting on it.

The old man bent further over his cane. Now he was holding his hat out in front of us, shaking it expectantly.

“Oh, sure. Okay.” I fumbled in my pocket, but all I had was a quarter. I looked at Link, who shrugged.

I leaned closer to drop the coin into the hat, and a bony hand grabbed my wrist. “Smart boy like you. I’d be gettin’ myself outta this town and back down into that Tunnel.” I pulled my arm free. He smiled big, pulling his lips wide over yellowed, uneven teeth. “Be seein’ you.”

I rubbed my wrist, and when I looked up, he was gone.

It didn’t take long for Link to pick up Amma’s trail. He was like a bloodhound. Now I understood why it had been so easy for Hunting and his Pack to find us when we were searching for Lena and the Great Barrier. We walked through the French Quarter toward the river. I could smell the murky brown water mixed with sweat and the scent of spices from nearby restaurants. Even at night, the humidity hung in the air, heavy and wet, a jacket you couldn’t take off, no matter how badly you wanted to.

“Are you sure we’re going the right—?”

Link threw his arm out in front of me, and I stopped. “Shh. Red Hots.”

I searched the sidewalk ahead of us. Amma was standing under a streetlamp, in front of a Creole woman sitting on a plastic milk crate. We walked to the edge of the building with our heads down, hoping Amma wouldn’t notice us. We stuck to the shadows close to the wall, where the streetlamp threw out a pale circle of light.

The Creole woman was selling beignets on the sidewalk, her hair styled in hundreds of tiny braids. She reminded me of Twyla.

“Te te beignets? You buy?” The woman held out a small bundle of red cloth. “You buy. Lagniappe.”