Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods Read Online Free PDF

plan for the materials stolen. Shortly into my recitation, Ms. Laroux took the mug back from me and produced a canvas bag.
    “Put those in this and wait a minute while I get my own kit together,” she said as she made for the back room, heading past a shattered wooden door.
    True to her word, one minute later Laroux emerged with a leather jacket over her wrap, jeans instead of her skirt, and her own laden bag slung over her shoulder.
    “You say you have a way to track your sister?” she asked.
    “Yes. Though, as I am unfamiliar with the spirits of the area, it may take some time to reach an understanding.”
    Laroux smiled. “Let me handle that. Just get whatever it is you have that will help us pin her down, and I’ll call up the locals.”
    She righted a toppled table and laid out several half-melted candles from her bag, along with divinatory bones and more, quickly assembling a ritual altar.
    “You should probably take a step or two back. They might have the same first thought I did, given the family resemblance.”
    “Perfectly reasonable. She and I both take after the look of our grandmother. The Idahoan Greenes favor our great-grandfather’s coloring, which put my grandfather out to no small degree—”
    “Jake?” she asked.
    “Sorry?” I asked, startled by her interruption.
    “No offense, but I need to focus, and that doesn’t include details about your distant relatives.”
    “Ah, just so.”
    I left Laroux to her devices, instead dwelling on the places Esther might choose for the drawing of the other circles. To capture enough energy, she’d need to properly triangulate the ley lines of the city, which would mean casting a fairly wide net. Given that her first site was near the middle of Central Park, she might choose sites in either downtown Manhattan or northeastern Queens.
    Alternatively, she could draw a wider triangle including New Jersey, or with Queens and Brooklyn. Without knowing the second point, prediction was nearly impossible. But I had no desire to merely wait for her to kill again. And triangulation was not her only possible tool. There would be people here who knew the location of the Hearts.
    “You don’t know where the Hearts of New York are kept, do you?”
    “I know the people who know where they are, yeah.”
    “Then you must tell them immediately that Esther Greene has come to the city, and that they are all in terrible danger.”
    “So that’s what she wanted the surveys for,” Antoinette said. “This is bad.”
    “Very bad.”
    Antoinette made a quick round of calls while I put my supplies in order. With luck, the guardians of the Hearts would rally and send Esther running back home, tail between her legs.
    If only it could be that easy.
    Her calls complete, Antoinette lit several candles and poured a generous portion of whiskey into a bowl. She took a large breath, and then spoke.
    “Papa Legba, opener of ways, hear my call. I wish to speak to the spirits of this place, the old friends of my mother, Cynthia Laroux, who was one of your devoted mambos for fifty years.”
    The light in the room dimmed, and I felt far less alone as presences loomed large on the edge of my mind.
    We had our spirits at home, but they were servants, living near us but not among us. As we were to the Gatekeepers, the spirits were to us. All things within hierarchies, certain of their place.
    Except me.
    The air grew hot, and I felt the presences grow stronger. Three figures filtered into sight before Antoinette, each vaguely human in form and dominated by one color. The largest was olive green, the next the black of shadows, and the third the red of a blood moon.
    “Called, we answer,” one of the spirits said, the sound seeming to come from the whole room rather than any one place.
    “Who is this? Is this the defiler?” asked a different voice, higher and brighter in tone.
    The red-tinted spirit grew close, filling my vision. Its form was vast, but still vague, more an impression