Mona Lisa Overdrive Read Online Free PDF Page A

had ended too.
    Her second life had been a short one, fast and very strange. A man called Turner had
     taken her away, out of Arizona, and had left her with Bobby and Beauvoir and the others.
     She remembered little about Turner, only that he was tall, with hard muscles and a
     hunted look. He’d taken her to New York. Then Beauvoir had taken her, along with Bobby,
     to New Jersey. There, on the fifty-thirdlevel of a mincome structure, Beauvoir had taught her about her dreams. The dreams
     are real, he’d said, his brown face shining with sweat. He taught her the names of
     the ones she’d seen in dreams. He taught her that all dreams reach down to a common
     sea, and he showed her the way in which hers were different and the same.
You alone sail the old sea and the new
, he said.
    She was ridden by gods, in New Jersey.
    She learned to abandon herself to the Horsemen. She saw the loa Linglessou enter Beauvoir
     in the oumphor, saw his feet scatter the diagrams outlined in white flour. She knew
     the gods, in New Jersey, and love.
    The loa had guided her, when she’d set out with Bobby to build her third, her current
     life. They were well matched, Angie and Bobby, born out of vacuums, Angie from the
     clean blank kingdom of Maas Biolabs and Bobby from the boredom of Barrytown.…
    Grande Brigitte touched her, without warning; she stumbled, almost fell to her knees
     in the surf, as the sound of the sea was sucked away into the twilit landscape that
     opened in front of her. The whitewashed cemetery walls, the gravestones, the willows.
     The candles.
    Beneath the oldest willow, a multitude of candles, the twisted roots pale with wax.
    Child, know me
.
    And Angie felt her there, all at once, and knew her for what she was, Mamman Brigitte,
     Mademoiselle Brigitte, eldest of the dead.
    I have no cult, child, no special altar
.
    She found herself walking forward, into candleglow, a buzzing in her ears, as though
     the willow hid a vast hive of bees.
    My blood is vengeance
.
    Angie remembered Bermuda, night, a hurricane; she and Bobby had ventured out into
     the eye. Grande Brigitte was like that. The silence, the sense of pressure, of unthinkableforces held momentarily in check. There was nothing to be seen, beneath the willow.
     Only the candles.
    “The loa … I can’t call them. I felt something … I came looking.…”
    You are summoned to my
reposoir.
Hear me. Your father drew
vévés
in your head: he drew them in a flesh that was not flesh. You were consecrated to
     Ezili Freda. Legba led you into the world to serve his own ends. But you were sent
     poison, child, a
coup-poudre …
    Her nose began to bleed. “Poison?”
    Your father’s
vévés
are altered, partially erased, redrawn. Though you have ceased to poison yourself,
     still the Horsemen cannot reach you. I am of a different order
.
    There was a terrible pain in her head, blood pounding in her temples.… “Please …”
    Hear me. You have enemies. They plot against you. Much is at stake, in this. Fear
     poison, child!
    She looked down at her hands. The blood was bright and real. The buzzing sound grew
     louder. Perhaps it was in her head. “Please! Help me! Explain …”
    You cannot remain here. It is death
.
    And Angie fell to her knees in the sand, the sound of the surf crashing around her,
     dazzled by the sun. The Dornier was hovering nervously in front of her, two meters
     away. The pain receded instantly. She wiped her bloodied hands on the sleeves of the
     blue jacket. The remote’s cluster of cameras whirred and rotated.
    “It’s all right,” she managed. “A nosebleed. It’s only a nosebleed.…” The Dornier
     darted forward, then back. “I’m going back to the house now. I’m fine.” It rose smoothly
     out of sight.
    Angie hugged herself, shaking.
No, don’t let them see. They’ll know something happened, but not what
. She forced herself to her feet, turned, began to trudge back up the beach, the way
     she’d come. As she