Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Ghost
The wound on Phoenix’s shoulder won’t stop bleeding.
I press my hoodie against it, hard enough that she grits her teeth.
Phoenix doesn’t make a sound, of course she doesn’t, but I feel the tremor in her legs.
She’s still standing like nothing can break her, but her skin’s pale and clammy under the streetlight, and I know the truth.
She’s running on fumes.
I don’t ask if she’s okay. I know the answer I’ll get.
Instead, I keep the pressure steady, kneeling in the wreckage of someone’s back courtyard.
There’s a broken jazz sign on the wall behind us, some forgotten mural of Louis Armstrong painted over with a spiral.
Blood smears across the bricks where we fought our way out.
“You shouldn’t’ve gotten hit,” I say.
Phoenix huffs a quiet laugh. “Tell that to the bullet.”
I look up, but she’s staring past me, past the wall, past the blood. She’s somewhere else.
“Talk to me,” I say. “That thing… it wore Reese’s face.”
Her jaw tightens. “It wasn’t him.”
“No,” I agree. “But it remembered him. Moved like him. Smiled like he did, right before you pulled that knife.”
Phoenix killed Reese. I know she did. His body was still warm when I closed his eyes behind the bar. But tonight, I saw him blink with stitched lips and blood on his hands. That wasn’t a memory. That was something else. That was real.
“C’mon, this way. We need to find somewhere to stitch up Phoenix.” Viper cuts into our thoughts.
Phoenix and I follow her down a couple more alleys until we reach an old shop two blocks off the Quarter.
It has boarded windows and a lingering smell of dust and incense.
Viper takes watch at the back. Phoenix sits on the floor, peeling off her jacket with shaking fingers, and I get to work on her shoulder.
The bullet went clean through, thankfully. But it left a whisper behind. I don’t say that out loud. I don’t want to feed the idea. Still, her skin’s cold, and I swear the wound looks darker than it should. Like something’s feeding on her blood.
“You ever seen someone come back like that?” I ask, low.
Phoenix shakes her head. “Only once. In Syria. Village hit with something we weren’t briefed on. Kids walked out of graves. Command shut it down, and we never spoke about it again.”
My stomach knots. “And now?” I ask.
She finally looks me in the eyes. “Now I’m speaking about it. With you.”
Mama Dusk’s charm burns in my pocket like a lit match, but I haven’t touched it since she gave it to me. I can feel the shape through the fabric. Small, jagged, warm. Warmer than it should be, like it has its own pulse.
I pulled it out once, earlier, when Phoenix was dozing against the wall. It looked like bone, carved with those spiral lines dug in like someone scratched them with fury. Wax clung to the edges, blackened by fire. I’d asked Mama Dusk what it did.
She just smiled with her dead-coal eyes and said, “Buys you time. Five seconds, maybe ten. Depends on how bad they want you.”
Didn’t say who they were. Didn’t have to.
There was something about the way she looked at me when she handed it over, like she was already grieving. Like she knew the charm wouldn’t be enough. Like she gave it to me anyway because we were past the point of saving and just hadn’t realized it yet.
I should’ve thrown it away. Should’ve said no, told her I don’t believe in ghosts, or demons, or charms carved from the ribs of forgotten saints. But the truth is, I believe her.
I believe every damn word. Because when Reese blinked at me with sewn lips and that spiral painted across his face, I felt something in my chest pull tight, like a thread being yanked. Not fear. Not quite. Recognition.
Whatever this thing is, it knows me. Knows who I was. Who I tried to stop being.
And if that charm buys me five seconds, I’ll take them. Hell, maybe I’ll need them all.
It’s nearly midnight. Phoenix leans against the doorframe, her breath tight from the pain, but she doesn’t flinch when I say, “I’m going to the cemetery.”
Her head lifts. Eyes are sharp now. “No, you’re not.”
“Someone’s painting those spirals for a reason. They’re doing it tonight at the cemetery. You heard her.”
Phoenix crosses the room in three strides and shoves me back with her good arm. “You’re not going alone.”
I stare down at her. There’s blood on her temple, sweat glistening across her collarbone. She's the most beautiful disaster I’ve ever seen. And I want to shield her from every goddamn piece of this.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“So are you.”
I laugh. It’s bitter and raw. “We’re a mess.”
Phoenix doesn’t answer. Just steps closer. Her fingers find mine. “If this thing kills you,” she says quietly, “I don’t crawl back from that.”
Her voice cracks on the word “that.” Barely. But I catch it.
And I know that whatever this thing is, whatever Vale stirred up, it’s not just hunting her. It’s hunting both of us. Together.
The sky shifts when we reach St. Roch. Not just the clouds, but everything.
The color bleeds out of the night, turning it this deep, oppressive gray that presses in like fog, even though there isn’t any.
The air’s thick, humid, and wet like it always is in New Orleans, but there’s something wrong with it tonight.
It clings too hard to the skin. Feels like breathing through soaked cotton.
It’s quiet. The kind of silence that’s not empty but listening. Like the city’s holding its breath. Waiting for something to break.
We crawl over the wrought-iron fence like thieves, the iron cold and slick beneath our hands.
We land behind a tomb, boots hitting damp ground with a soft thud.
The gravestones stretch in front of us like broken teeth, chipped and crooked, leaning in strange directions as if they’re trying to get a better look.
Some are cracked down the middle, others sinking slowly into the earth like they’ve given up fighting.
The air tastes like copper and mildew, making my stomach twist.
Phoenix moves ahead of me, crouched low, her silhouette sharp even in the half-light. She scans the rows like a soldier sweeping a war zone. Then she stops.
“Do you feel that?” she whispers.
“Yeah.” I feel it at the base of my spine. In the way my skin crawls without reason. In the way every shadow seems to lean toward us, like they’ve noticed we don’t belong. Like they’re curious. Like they’re hungry.
It’s not just fear, it’s the sense that we’re being noticed. That whatever’s on the other side of the veil knows we’re here, and it’s reaching, slowly, like a hand groping through dark water.
“Something’s waiting.”
The further we move into the cemetery, the less the ground feels real beneath my boots. It’s soggy in some places, cracked in others. I keep one hand on my gun, the other brushing the charm Mama Dusk gave me in my jacket pocket.
It’s warm now. Not hot. Warm, like a pulse. Like it knows something I don’t.
Phoenix lifts a hand to signal a stop. I drop beside her behind a wide marble tomb, my breathing is shallow.
She points between two crumbling mausoleums, and a light flickers.
But it’s not fire. It’s different. Too bright in the center.
Flickering at the edges like it’s glitching in and out of reality.
I hear chanting before I see them. Low. Rhythmic. Wet. Like it’s being pulled from a throat that doesn’t want to speak.
Phoenix inches forward, and I follow her lead. We slip between two rows of gravestones, close enough now to see them.
Five of them in dark red, almost black cloaks. Standing in a tight circle around a spiral etched into the dirt. Not drawn but carved deep, bleeding into the earth. I swear the edges twitch like they’re alive.
Each of the cultists holds something: bones, knives, a piece of flesh I don’t want to identify. One of them is holding up a skull that looks human. But smaller. Too small.
The chant gets louder. Their voices overlap, weaving into something guttural. The spiral begins to glow from the inside out, faint red at first, then brighter, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Phoenix mutters, “We need to stop this. Now.”
She moves to step forward, but I catch her wrist. “Wait,” I breathe. “Look.”
From the spiral’s center, something rises.
It’s not smoke. Not shadow. It’s like… flesh and fog at the same time.
A form trying to take shape, arms that aren’t arms. A face that keeps sliding, trying to remember what it was.
The cultists keep chanting. One of them starts cutting his own arm, letting the blood drip into the spiral. The glow intensifies.
And then it sees us.
The thing in the center doesn’t have eyes, not in the way we do, but I feel it. A direct, intimate stare. Like it’s memorizing our taste.
My fingers close around Mama Dusk’s charm. The warmth is burning now.
Phoenix rises, and so do I. She opens fire without a word.
The first cultist hits the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, twitching once before going still.
The spiral flashes brighter, almost angry, like it resents the interruption.
Phoenix fires one more shot, fast and surgical. The second cultists drop.
I take the others. My aim is cleaner, rage anchoring me. The one with the skull jerks backward, blood spraying across the spiral.
The chanting doesn’t stop. The last one, the biggest, falls to his knees and finishes the words. His voice cracks like bones splintering.
The spiral flares white.
Something screams. Not in the air, but in my head. I drop to a knee, eyes clamped shut. Phoenix grabs me, yelling something I can’t hear over the shriek echoing inside my skull.
Then… it stops. Silence.
I open my eyes. The spiral is gone. Just dirt now. The bodies are still there, but whatever they summoned, it didn’t finish coming through. Didn’t get what it wanted.
I reach into my jacket and pull out Mama Dusk’s charm. It’s cracked down the middle. Charred around the edges.
Phoenix meets my eyes. “That thing… it almost made it.”
I nod, chest tight. “Almost.” That feels like the worst word in the world.