"Fiona taught it once, and I got it. Well? I'm good, right?" Madison said proudly.
"You are," Rai nodded, then frowned. "Which means your talent is now exposed to Fiona."
"It's fine." Madison waved it off, then suddenly smiled. "You should've seen her face when I pulled off mind control on the first try. Thanks to your reminder, I made sure to mention my heart murmur afterwards. Never thought that thing that's dogged me since childhood would become a lifesaver."
"Free one-on-one tutoring from the Supreme isn't a bad deal either," she added, consoling herself.
"Good," Rai exhaled.
Fiona knew the Seven Wonders criteria; she would likely stop fixating on Madison. As for Zoe, Queenie, and Nan, Fiona's eyes would probably turn their way next.
Trouble came one after another. Rai sighed.
A warm fragrance slipped in. Madison, lightly dressed and all curves, leaned close, eyes soft. "Rai, you were waiting for my texts all night. I'm really happy. No one's ever cared that much about me. My awful parents never did; they only ever took my money."
"Let me pay you back. Relax and enjoy."
"I…" Rai started to demur about the hour and the fatigue, but Madison was already a step ahead, sinking down.
He drew a sharp breath, and the words died.
It was happening. So be it.
Could he even keep up? He was tired tonight. Not in peak form.
Maybe add a point?
He did have fresh containment points from last night's minotaur.
No. Points were hard-earned. He had to plan them, spend each one where it counted. No more casual dumping like before.
Except…
Whatever Madison had drunk tonight, she was relentless.
I mean, here we go again.
[Physique: 1.4] → [Physique: 1.5]
…
…
[ID: 003]
[Name: Bastien]
[Type: Minotaur Stitch-Construct]
[Status: Contained]
[Abilities: Brute Strength; Stitching]
[Notes: A pitiful manservant seduced by his mistress's daughter, discovered by the mistress, then tortured and even sewn with a bull's head while still alive. Though the voodoo queen punished the mistress, Delphine LaLaurie, she could not save him, and in the end remade him by voodoo into a neither-man-nor-spirit construct to keep by her side forever.]
"The voodoo queen's tastes are weird," Rai said.
Morning. He had crashed after the long fight and no more. Waking now, he flipped to the updated page of the Containment Book.
Even on short rest, 1.5 Physique had him fully recovered fast.
He skimmed the new entry, then turned to his own page.
[Containment Points] had gone from 0 to 50. Add the 10 he had burned on Physique last night. Bastien had yielded 60 total, far less than Heather's 100.
He glanced past the unspent 50 to [Abilities]. Alongside Telekinesis, two new options were shown: Brute Strength and Concilium.
Brute Strength was one of Bastien's traits, a passive that would add +0.5 Physique. Sounded nice, but unlocking a second ability now costs 80 points.
He'd figured it out. Ability cost scaled with how many he had, not how strong each one was. The first ability had cost 50, the second would be 80, and the third and fourth would only climb.
That made him more cautious. Paying 80 points for an effect he could get by spending 50 straight into Physique was not efficient. For him, Brute Strength was a pass.
Bastien's other trait, Stitching, allows a stitched construct to recover even from severe trauma with crude sutures. Like Heather's ghostly powers, it was race-locked. He could not learn it.
Madison, though, kept surprising him. After last night's union, her freshly awakened Concilium had appeared in his unlock menu as well.
Add that to Pyrokinesis and, later, whatever else she would master. Madison alone could take care of his whole ability need.
He closed the Book without spending. With ability costs rising, he had to think through his path. More abilities were not always better, especially with low Spirit. Pyrokinesis worked for him now, but unlike Fiona's infernos, his lasted only a short time.
[Spirit] and [Physique] could not be neglected.
He would plan the split. No more last-second dumps like yesterday. If emergencies came, he'd allocate on the fly.
"Rai, darling, time to go."
"I can't wait to see the gators."
"Delphine, are my snacks ready?"
Voices rang outside the door.
"Coming," Rai called back.
He moved fast.
Fifteen minutes later, everything packed, Rai rolled his Chevy out with the girls aboard, heading for the nearby swamps.
Upstairs at the window, watching the car disappear, Fiona glanced at the bull's head on the table and smiled.
"Time to send an old friend a reply."
--
As one of New Orleans' famous attractions, the swamps and wetlands spread across the outskirts.
Tourists can book with tour operators, ride flatboats into the marsh, and take in the scenery and wildlife, gators, seabirds, water snakes, turtles, and even eagles.
You can also self-drive.
Not wanting to be packed in with the crowds, Rai and the others chose the latter.
They may have overestimated themselves.
"Does anyone know where we are right now?" Rai asked, glancing at the dense trees crowding both sides of the road as he drove.
"That's really not a question the guy at the wheel should be asking," Madison said dryly.
She raised her phone, saw zero bars, and made a face. "No signal. Rai, what kind of nowhere did you drag us into?"
"Nowhere? Weren't we going to Lafitte National Park?" Queenie said around a mouthful of snacks, a beat behind.
"I saw a side road on the GPS that would get us there faster, so I took it," Rai explained. "Turns out sometimes you really can't trust the GPS. Now it's lost itself."
"I'll check the map," Zoe said, pulling out the paper backup and spreading it open. Rai eased to a stop, leaned over the map, and traced the path he'd taken.
"Looks like this road isn't even marked," Zoe said, puzzled.
"Pretty normal," Queenie said. "New maps are like that, half the back roads aren't on them. Get yourself an old map from decades ago, and it's way more detailed. Where I'm from, nobody's dumb enough to buy the new ones."
"Noted," Madison nodded solemnly. "The old maps hide all the powder drop spots."
Queenie's face darkened a shade. "Shit. Can't you be quiet for thirty minutes?"
Madison's mouth curved. "I am being quiet. I was merely moved by your revelation."
Zoe, sitting up front, sighed, pressed her fingers to her temple, shoved the map into Rai's hands, and climbed out. She opened the passenger door. "We're swapping seats."
No way was she riding shotgun for another hour of those two sniping.
"No problem."
Madison flashed an OK sign, swung her long legs out of the car, and slid into Zoe's former seat. She blinked at Rai, took the map from him, stuffed it aside, and said, "Keep going. The grass isn't reclaiming this road, so cars use it. If we keep on, we'll hit people."
"Finally, a decent suggestion."
Rai nodded to Madison, checked that Zoe was settled in back, and rolled forward.
Fifteen minutes later, a rusted road sign appeared up ahead.
"Collinsburg? Does anyone know that place?" Rai asked.
Zoe, like him, was new to town and shook her head. Queenie just waved off any geography questions.
"I know a Collins," Madison said. "Suzanne Collins wrote The Hunger Games. I even auditioned for the lead in the film. Maybe she's connected to this place?"
She finished with a cheeky grin.
Which was to say, no help at all.
Rai rolled his eyes and pressed the gas. Whatever Collinsburg was, a sign meant human activity ahead.
Zoe, though, had latched onto Madison's earlier mention. "Lead auditions? What are those like?"
Madison shrugged. "What do you think? You put on something pretty and pose in front of a bunch of old men. They call it testing your acting."
"I thought acting mattered," Zoe said, guileless.
Madison laughed. "Sweetie, you can walk into any LA workshop and find a dozen people who can act as well as an Oscar winner. 'Casting for acting' is the biggest joke in Hollywood."
"So that's why your acting's bad," Queenie cut in.
Madison turned, gave Queenie a slow once-over, and smiled brilliantly. "In Hollywood, a pretty face or connections really does beat acting."
"And you still didn't get the part. You're washed up," Queenie said, blunt as a hammer.
Madison only lifted her hands. "I won't play nice with those old creeps, that's all."
"Alright, ladies, Hollywood time's over. We're at a gas station," Rai said, cutting in.
He stopped the car next to the petrol pumps. Madison, wearing a hat and sunglasses, looked at the old, broken-down shop and wrinkled her nose.
"This place is a dump. Bet it's all cobwebs and rats inside. You go, I'll wait here."
Rai waved and headed in with Zoe and Queenie, passing a wooden placard out front that read No Gas.
"Welcome. No gas. The fridge is broken. Doesn't cool," said a friendly-looking bald guy in his fifties.
"Hi. Do you sell paper maps? We got turned around. We were headed to…" Rai began.
The owner was friendly, showed them a map, and told them where they were. "You're way off. The roads out here are bad. It will take you a long time to turn around."
While they talked, Queenie prowled the shelves for food. Zoe wandered and stopped before a towering humanoid gator statue, scythe in hand.
"What's this?"
Zoe examined the gator-man and reached to touch the hide.
A voice right behind her made her jump. "Careful. If you don't want the gator-man to eat you, don't touch it."
Zoe spun. A scrawny old man was grinning at her with a mean twist.
She took him for a jumpscare type and kept her temper. "Gator-man? Like Bigfoot?"
"Bigfoot? Just a pack of wild men putting on a show," the old man sniffed. "But the gator-man is the true master of these swamps. Every gator, even the dead ones, are its eyes and ears. Touch that hide and it will sense you. And it loves the flesh and blood of the young most of all."
"I've heard that story from my granddad a hundred times," Queenie said, drifting over and, to prove a point, running her hand over the real gator hide on the statue. "Only back home it's a pig head, rabbit head, goat head."
"I touched it. So where is this gator-man? I'd like to meet him."
The old man's face went iron-blue. He drew breath for a tirade, but the bald guy caught his arm and offered an apologetic smile. "Old John likes to embellish."
"Knew it," Queenie said, looking smug.
"Though it's not all fake," the bald man added. "Legend says the gator-man did exist once, and it ate everyone who lived here. No one in Collinsburg is a true original resident."
"Including you?" Rai asked, returning.
"Including me, including Old John, including everyone in Collinsburg," the guy said gravely.
"Never thought about moving? If a horror like that is lurking nearby," Rai said.
"Believe me, some things are worse than death. Besides, the gator-man hasn't shown for years. We mostly use the story for tourism now, to draw in young folks like you."
He glanced around the shabby shop and chuckled at himself. "Not that we're any good at it."
He reached for a shelf, pulled a flyer, and handed it to Rai. "The Grimley Haunted House, supposed home of the gator-man, with the story of how he changed from man to beast. It used to charge admission. Now, if you want to see it, just go."
Seeing them look over the leaflet, he grinned wider. "Since you're off-course anyway, why not go there? It's all the same for a trip, plenty of swamp and plenty of gators."
"Haunted house? The gator-man's home? Let's go," Queenie said, brightening. Ever since Madison had been bragging nonstop about battling a ghost, Queenie had been itching not to be outdone.
Zoe was tempted too.
Rai weighed the girls' faces. The setup felt very much like one of those movies where young people head into the boonies and make every wrong choice, but they were already out here. No point wasting the whole day backtracking.
As for danger, he glanced at his company and smiled.
"Boss, how do we get to the Grimley Haunted House?" he asked.
The owner cheerfully drew them a route.
…
Outside, Madison tank top, cutoff shorts, hat and shades, the whole look lifted her phone and waved it around.
"What kind of hellhole has signal this weak?"
She wanted to post a few cute selfies to Facebook for what fans she had left, but gave up and dropped the phone, annoyed.
"Hey there, sweetheart. All by yourself?" A horse-faced guy trudging past with a toolbox wolf-whistled and showed a set of yellow teeth.
Madison gave him a single glance, then looked away without a word and went back to her phone.
Low-quality male human. Not her type.
"Spicy," the horse-face said, undeterred, and started toward her. The shop door creaked; the bald proprietor came out with Rai and the others. The horse-face hesitated, curled his lip, and slunk off.
Rai and the trio rejoined Madison and piled into the car.
"Change of plans," Rai said, handing Madison the flyer. "We're detouring here first, then camping nearby."
"Grimley Haunted House?"
Madison's mind jumped to an afternoon she and Rai had spent visiting New Orleans' haunting hotspots. She rolled her eyes and read on: an old, stale shocker of a love story. The only "novel" bit was that the leads were biological siblings.
"The Baoting siblings lived carefree deep in the swamp, keeping the line going. One day, a giant gator bigger than any normal one attacked and ate the sister and the baby in her belly."
"Grimley went berserk, tracked the giant gator deep into the marsh, fought it, then ate its flesh raw along with the sister's half-digested remains. God, disgusting."
"So that's the story? He eats gator meat raw, mutates into a gator-man, and becomes a bloody legend hunting for fresh blood and a bride?"
Madison flicked the flyer away. "Make that into a Hollywood movie and you'll lose your shirt."
"I thought it was kinda compelling," Zoe murmured, a little crestfallen.
"Trust me, Zoe. If you were the producer, you'd bleed money," Madison said solemnly.
Zoe: "…"
"Alright," Rai said. "Call it a historical building visit. Won't take long. The guy said there are intact boats nearby too we can paddle out into the swamps. That was the whole point of the trip."
"Fine," Madison said.
They followed the hand-drawn route toward the Grimley Haunted House.
…
Inside the station, the bald guy was jotting down the day's take. The horse-faced man came in, toolbox in hand, sweat streaking his cheeks.
"Pa, are they the new sacrifices?" he asked, respectful and eager.
"They're in luck," the bald man said, smiling kindly.
The horse-face brightened. "It's their highest honour. I'll go round up the boys?"
"Go on. Blood is blood."
"Blood is blood."