The Wizard of Reckoning points his finger at me again, and my body screams in anguish, as if I’m on fire. It brings me to my knees, shutting my eyes against the searing pain.
“Just relax, baby. You be okay.” It’s Glory’s soothing voice. I open my eyes, and she’s shooting something into my IV line.
Glory? I hear it in my head, but I don’t know if I’ve said it out loud.
“Try to sleep.”
“Cameron!” Gonzo’s cowering behind the high hat, using the sticks like a cross in a vampire movie.
“Gonzo! We’ve gotta … gotta get out of here,” I gasp out.
Gonzo’s frozen with fear. He’s not leaving the safety of the cymbals. People are pushing and shoving, doing their best to escape the fire. The wizard sees us, and he’s coming.
“Gonzo, we’ve got to go now!” I scream.
Miss Demeanor rushes the stage and pulls Gonzo off the drums forcibly. “This way!”
She runs backstage to Junior’s dressing room. “But there’s no door here!” I shout.
“Yes there is.” She puts the nearly catatonic Gonzo down and flips on the planetarium projector. The sky fills up with tiny moons and planets zooming into the great unknown of the black hole. “Follow me.”
She walks straight for it, glittery and bright as a star, and vanishes. I can’t see a single spangle of her left.
“Holy mierda! Where’d she go?” Gonzo bleats.
“I don’t know!”
“This way,” she calls, and now I see her perched on a small, rickety ladder that climbs up to the ceiling.
The heat from the fire has reached us. Flames grab at the doorway and bring it down. I’m not sticking around to see what else they can do. I shove Junior Webster’s sunglasses and his horn into my bag and race for the hole. It feels like it’s pulling me in, but it’s Miss D. She grabs my hands and drags me to a hidden door in the shadows. One hard shove of her hip and the door opens. We spill out into the weak light of an alley.
The place is crawling with cops and firefighters now. Blasts of water belch from heavy-duty hoses. Miss D pushes us down the street, away from the fire, till we’re far from the crowds and standing by a streetlamp near a storefront for a psychic.
“You boys better clear on out of here,” Miss D says. Before we take off running, she grabs my hand. “Whatever Junior told you, you best do, cher. He’s never been wrong long as I’ve known him. And Cameron,” she adds.
“Yes?”
She flips the matches over in her hand. “Thanks for the light, baby.”
We run for blocks until we reach the edge of the Mississippi River. I’m bent over, trying to catch my breath. Gonzo paces, taking in nervous gulps of air.
“What. The f**k. Was that?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “That guy … what was …”
“I don’t know.” I’m not about to divulge that particular info to Gonzo. He’ll freak and head back for sure.
“He killed Junior Webster!”
“Maybe Junior was mixed up in something big—gambling debts or, hell, I don’t know,” I lie. “We just need to focus on finding Dr. X.”
Gonzo shakes his head. “This is f**ked up, man.”
“The sooner we get to Dr. X, the sooner I get cured and you get … whatever it is you’re getting, and we’re done. Agreed?”
Gonzo squints out at the water like he’s thinking it over. The dawn’s sending out the early team to ready the sky. Gulls dive down for breakfast beside tugboats shining on the river like floating bones.
“I’m hungry,” Gonzo says, and I guess we’re agreed after all.
The French Quarter’s emptying out. The garbage cans overflow with plastic cups and the streets are a wreck. Horse-drawn carriages clip-clop on the cobblestones, heading home for sleep. A truck idles by a warehouse entrance. Gonzo and I find an all-hours café where they serve crispy, hot beignets and mugs of chicory coffee that taste like it’s been made with airplane fuel and stirred with an old stick. But it warms us up and chases away what’s left of the night, so we drink it anyway.
“What was that thing he told you about his sunglasses?” Gonzo asks.
“He told me to bury them under the angel.” I take them out of my pocket and put them on the table. They’re just ordinary sunglasses.
“Which means?”
“I don’t know. He said once I did, I’d get a message.”
Gonzo eats another beignet. The powdered sugar coats his upper lip like a snowy mustache. “Dude, this is crazy.”