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ONE

THE CRUNCH OF OUR SHOES on asphalt, leaves, and debris was loud in the quiet of Coliseum Street Violet, Henri, and I had little less than two hours before nightfall, two hours before the February chill would invade the sun-warmed bricks and pave streetlamps, when the predators, both natural and supernatural, would wake and begin to hunt

We had to hurry

A barely-there breeze h the Garden District I saw it ently from the li lihostly dancers

The GD was a sehborhood populated by squatters, s that preferred to stay hidden By day it was a beautiful, overgrown jungle, a strangesplendor But at night the GD was downright still, as though the entire neighborhood was holding its breath, hoping like hell it’dthe street were old mansions, so and waiting, daring one to cross their eerie thresholds and lay clai it mildly As someone who’d felt lost and abandoned most of her life, this place spoke to me In a weird way, I related to those old houses and their wild, overgrown gardens They were dark and neglected--exactly how I’d been for so long How I still felt at times, because, honestly, I had a hell of a lot of darkness left in me to deal with Only noasn’t lost

And I wasn’t alone

I’d found my home and I’d found my family

When the city flooded fifteen years earlier, some of the water never receded from the lower half of the GD In those areas, nant water Statues, streetlamps, iron fences, and even the southern tip of Lafayette Cemetery had become fixtures of the shalloaround tombs and exposed bones, round-up toe bone of the infamous clairvoyant, Alice Cromley, and was shown the day Athena cursed my ancestor, the beautiful and devout Medusa, with an unjust, unwarranted punishment

The cemetery had played host to our first battle with Athena and her grotesque oddess had shown on I’d one day become It was a memory I wished time would erase, but so far, the memory hadn’t even dimmed The muted pain of whathtless streamers aroundso close and intimate in, quiet exhale, shovingtheonna do when he grows too big to carry," Henri said as we continued toward Audubon Park and the Fly

I smiled at the picture Violet made as she walked in front of us Pascal, her s us and bobbing with each step His ator way, and his eyes seelued on me Violet’s Mardi Gras mask was pushed back onto her head The white feathers on each side of the s She wore a black dress that caray checks, the other solid black

"Don’t know," I answered with a shrug "Leave him home with some raw fish and the remote control?" Because with Violet that could totally be a reality She was a strange little girl with huge dark eyes, pale skin, and a short black bob that she cut herself

Andshe had fangs

In the years since Athena had slammed her wrath into New Orleans with twin hurricanes, the Novem--nine of the city’s oldest and ht the ruined city and its surrounding land frooverns paranorend to those outside of its now privately owned borders

But knowing all that, knowing ods, and vampires, Violet was in a class by herself A true s She never said In fact, she didn’t say much But when she did, you paid attention

That tiny kid with her love of all things Mardi Gras had stabbed Athena in the heart to save oddess trying to turn her into a gorgon, but the curse hadn’t touched Violet, couldn’t touch her, and when I’d asked why, her answer had been a simple, "It just didn’t"

Eventually the swamp squeezed in on the debris-covered road Brackish water spilled over in places, our shoes squishing on layers of soaked leaves and vegetation A few cypress trees had grown up through the water, their knobby roots sticking out like rounded, black pyrarew everywhere It was beautiful to look at, but not so as ers and spider mites

I could handle the swaination wander Thatfocused on our destination Siht? Deep breath in, another one out No proble da our path

"You know," Henri began, turning to wait for me to catch up, "I bet they’re more scared of you than you are of them"