A Necklace of Water by Cate Tiernan Read Free Book Online Page B

fluttered out from between the pages and seesawed its way tothe dark green linoleum floor. I picked it up and of course opened it. Maybe it was an ancient shopping list. Maybe a love note from someone.
    It was an address, scrawled in faded pencil, hard to make out. It said,
Mama Loup’s.
I didn’t recognize the address. Which meant nothing, because I was still finding my way around this city and constantly got lost on the meandering streets. I slid the book back onto its shelf, ducked under the gold rope again, and headed to the front door, where a stand held tourist stuff in case someone happened to wander in off the sidewalk.
    I pulled out a map of New Orleans and looked up the street, just out of curiosity. I mean, I’d found it in a book called
Beware
, in the restricted section of Botanika. The street turned out to be really short, maybe three blocks long, stuck between two longer streets that framed it like the letter
H.
It was on the edge of the Quarter, close to Rampart and Esplanade.
    I decided to go.
    It took me a while to find it, despite having looked at a map. I drove down the block, looking for a parking space, and I noticed how run-down everything looked here. New Orleans in general seemed to have a laissez-faire attitude toward litter and keeping public spaces tidy, but I was always shocked when I went through the poorer neighborhoods and saw how incredibly third world they looked. I was equally shocked by the fact that no one seemed to think this was unusual or alarming.
    This was one of those streets. Only four blocks from the bustling French Quarter, with its tour buses disgorging tourists by the thousands, this street seemed far removed from anyone’s attention. It was distinctly run-down, with crumpled wire hurricane fences sagging on their posts, trash and weedy brown grass clumps everywhere. It was mostly residential, and the houses here were small and unkept, with tiny, raggedy yards, peeling paint, shutters lurching on one hinge.
    After circling the block, I took a parking spot on the street that had at first seemed too far but now appeared to be a reasonable option. I sat in the car for a moment and said every protection spell I could remember of the ones Petra had taught me. I tried to protect the pathetic tin-can rental car, myself, the air around me, and so on. I was aware of people walking by, looking at me, a white anomaly in their neighborhood of color.
    I read the numbers on the address again, then got out of my car, locked it, and headed down the street. The address led me to a regular house, and I stood in front of it, frowning. Then I noticed it wasn’t a totally regular house. A strip of broken sidewalk led around the side, and there was a crude, handwritten sign that said
Mama Loup’s
with an arrowpointing toward the back. As I was wondering what to do, a woman came down the side alley and walked past me.
    “You can go on if you want,” she said in a friendly voice, gesturing toward the back, then passed me through the rusted iron gate.
    “Okay,” I said, still hesitating. Then I thought,
If I can’t even walk down a slightly spooky alley in broad daylight, how can I ever expect to take revenge on one of the world’s most powerful witches?
Did I want to do this or not? Had I thought it was going to be easy? That it would be clean and fun and light?
    Feeling disgusted with my lameness, I strode down the alley. Ragged bamboo fencing made a six-foot screen to one side, hiding the house from its neighbor. At that moment, the sun blinked out. I stopped and looked up to see that rolling thunder-clouds had filled the sky. Great. Because this place didn’t have enough atmosphere.
    A man came out, letting a screen door slam behind him. He brushed past me fast in the alley, head down.
    I stopped in front of the door. A single lightbulb in a rusted fixture hung crookedly over the doorway. The door needed painting, and the screen had several holes rusted out. I couldn’t see anything