Catacomb (8 page)

The pain was a whisper, dull and annoying, like a voice coming in from another room. He almost wanted more of it, wanted the voice to be louder. At least if he could figure out where he hurt, then he might be able to fix it.

Dan twisted, flailed, but he was caught. He couldn’t do this again—he couldn’t be that vulnerable, caught, and outsmarted. First the Sculptor—no, Felix—and then Professor Reyes. He had to escape this time.

His first wish was granted. Pain roared through his hand, his arm, his shoulder, so acute and terrible it burned behind his eyes. Then his eyes opened and he came awake, lurching up out of his seat with a drowned man’s gasp.

“E
verything okay? You fell asleep.” Abby glanced over at him from the driver’s seat.

Dan grappled for understanding. Right. The cemetery, then a quick drive-through dinner. Now they were sailing through the night, and the last traces of metropolitan comfort were gone. They were so far south he wouldn’t be surprised to roll down the window and taste salt air.

“Dan?”

“I just had a weird dream,” he said, rubbing a hand over the patchy growth of whiskers on his face. He still couldn’t manage to grow even a half-assed goatee. “Where are we? I thought we were only a few hours from New Orleans?”

“Well, we
are
still only a few hours from New Orleans, but here’s the thing. There’s this library I really wanted to see. It’s the last stop I want to make before Uncle Steve’s, I swear.” Her brows lifted, one half of her mouth curving up in what he knew was a hopeful, testing smile.

“What did Jordan say?”

It was then that Dan noticed Jordan snoring softly in the backseat, his music audible from the headphones slung around his neck.

“I wouldn’t ask,” Abby said quickly, lowering her voice, “because I know Jordan is excited to see his uncle and move in, and we’re all ready to sleep in beds again, but they’ve got a whole box of stuff that belonged to Jimmy Orsini. It’s incredible it even survived.”

“Him again?” Dan took a lukewarm soda out of the cup holder near his knee and took a swig. “Abby, do you really think telling the definitive history of some gangster guy is going to make things right with your parents?”

He saw her stiffen at the cavalier way he described—or
attempted
to describe—her art.

Abby relaxed her grip on the wheel a little, taking a deep breath. “It’s more than that now. I’m genuinely interested in this. I mean, these local people, people like Orsini—everybody we’ve met has had some scary story or something about him, but where does that all come from? He’s not like Bonnie and Clyde or Al Capone, where you can find all this stuff about him online. It’s like he’s a real urban legend or something. How does that kind of thing happen?”

“Good question,” Dan said, yawning. “Yeah, maybe there’s something there.”

“It’s okay, Dan, you don’t have to pretend to be interested. Just let me make this last stop and then I’ll try and shut up about it.”

“I am interested, Abby, especially if you’re going to take a year off to really work on this,” he said. “It’s a big deal for you. I mean, it’s going to be your whole life soon, right?”

She nodded, smirking. “One day I’ll educate you about all this stuff.”

“Hey, I don’t make you read Goethe, right? I can like something about you without understanding it,” he said.

Dan sank down into the car seat, staring off at the road ahead. He smiled a little, glad at least that Abby and Jordan were there to cheer him up. It was impossible to imagine going through the surprises alone. Sometimes he was 100 percent certain they were meant to be a trio, that somehow, they’d find a way to stay close next year, even after their new lives took them away to new adventures, new goals.

“So where is this library, anyway?” Dan asked.

“It’s in a city called Shreveport. It’s closed for the night, so we’ll have to pitch the tent again and go first thing in the morning.”

Immediately, Dan wished he hadn’t asked. He knew the name Shreveport. It was the last city where Micah had lived before going to New Hampshire. He’d never returned.

Jordan had been confused to wake up in Shreveport instead of in New Orleans, but he’d gotten over it pretty quickly.

The city was beautiful, overlooking the Red River and teeming with culture—a welcome break from all the flat expanses they’d seen from the road. The library was in a neighborhood a few miles outside of the city proper, and the route took them past one historic mansion after another.

Abby consulted the phone in her lap, then handed it to Dan. “Mind navigating? It’s already in the GPS.”

“In a quarter mile,” he said, mimicking the robotic voice of the GPS app, “turn left onto Shady Oak Road. Your destination will be on the right.”

She laughed, slowing on a street filled with old shops and restaurants before following his directions. “That bakery on the corner looks cute. And oh, look! They have an ice-cream shop.”

“It’s nine in the morning.”

“Never too early for ice cream,” she said with an impish smile.

They turned into a parking lot the size of a Post-it note, stopping right up against another squat brick building. Only one other car was there, a red Chevy truck in decent condition.

“Jordan,” Dan said, turning to poke his friend in the shin. “We’re at the smallest library we’ve ever seen. You’re coming inside to keep me company.”

“Mmf. Can’t I just stay in here and sleep?”

“No,” he and Abby replied in strict unison.

The nearby bakery let off a tantalizing perfume of baking bread. That was enough to perk up Jordan, who was promised a doughnut if he managed to stay awake for the duration of the library trip. Dan and Jordan fell into step, letting Abby race ahead, a Starbucks latte from earlier firmly in hand.

Jordan’s phone buzzed as they passed through the doors of the library and into a thick miasma of dust and old, wet paper smell.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jordan whispered. “That lady actually got back to me?”

“Who?” Dan asked absently. He gazed around at dozens of display cases, most of them showcasing Civil War weapons and uniforms. At least seventeen different Confederate flags fluttered down from the crossbeams of the ceiling. A cheerful young woman in a flannel shirt and denim skirt greeted Abby, lapsing into chitchat with her immediately. She had an adorable, Dolly Parton twang.

“The journalist, the one who wrote about your mom and dad? I did some Googling. She’s not working for the
Whistle
anymore, but she’s still in newspapers. I got her new email address from the
Metairie Daily
and told her we’d come across some old letters she wrote.” Jordan paused to read the message on his phone. “She says she wants to see them, but she’ll only meet in person.”

“It’s something,” Dan said noncommittally, but his palms began to sweat. There was no denying it; he wanted to meet her as soon as possible. “We should set up a time to meet her when we get to town.”

“Roger, I’ll ask about her schedule.”

“Will you two be okay if I head back to the archives for a few minutes?” Abby asked, waiting with the library worker next to the reception and intake desk. “I swear I won’t be all day.”

“We’ll behave,” Jordan promised.

Abby smirked and followed the girl down the corridor and through a pair of swinging doors. Two open archways led off in
opposite directions from reception. Dan drifted through the one on the right, hands in his pockets, his thoughts far away from the shelves upon shelves of musty-smelling books.

A few limp puppets spilled out of a crate in the corner, surrounded by low, child-sized bookcases filled with suitably colorful titles.

Dan went to the grimy window overlooking the parking lot. There was no sign of a motorcycle, just the quiet stretch of shops and one of the bakery assistants taking a smoke break on the back steps.

“Man, the South is messed up,” Jordan muttered. Dan found his friend a few shelves away, perusing a glass-cased display of open photo albums and vintage books. “Like, what about that says fun to you?
Revelers Take to the Streets in New Orleans. . . .
I’m sorry, but I would not revel in an outfit like that. That is not an outfit for reveling.”

Dan examined the photograph in question and its description, laughing quietly. The row of men in hoodies and primitive animal masks did, in fact, look less like a party and more like a horror show. He couldn’t make out anything behind the eyes of their masks—rabbit, cat, pig, fox—and the dead stares of the animal faces seemed to follow him as he slid away from the case.

“What are you doing?” Dan said, noticing Jordan and checking to see that they weren’t being watched. Carefully, Jordan had plucked at the brass latch on the display case. It wasn’t locked, and the case swung open.

“Nobody’s here, and anyway, I want to see if there are any pictures from around Uncle Steve’s house. He lives right there in the city. He’d get a kick out of it.”

At least Jordan had the sense to handle the old book gingerly, drawing it out and placing it down on the next case over. Jordan turned each page delicately, revealing more photographs of “revelers” in the animal masks. Dan watched the descriptions of the photos go by—
Jazz Festival on Bourbon Street Draws Record Crowd
;
Riverboat Runs Aground, Five Dead
;
Jimmy “Spats” Orsini to Hang on March 3
. . .