Page 17 of Up in Smoke

Did you have fun with your dressing adventure?

Sunday, May 31, 2043.

New Orleans, Louisiana.

The South.

Not even severalpieces of chocolate could spare me from the lethargy clinging to me. Shortly after Sandro carried me out of the House of Blues, I lost the war along with consciousness. I woke sometime later on an oversized bed capable of devouring at least five people. Sandro read a book beside me, glancing my direction when I yawned and stretched.

“Before you ask, it’s Sunday morning skirting afternoon, and you missed breakfast. Ryleigh anticipated you’d be out for a while longer before you woke up ravenous. I brought you into Ryleigh’s home and put you to bed, where I enjoyed almost eighteen hours of sleep.” Sandro set his book aside and joined me in stretching. “I didn’t want to leave you alone, so I’ve been keeping the leash rule intact. Ryleigh thinks I’m being ridiculous, but she’s also pleased I haven’t wanted to leave you. She’s glad we’ve both been down and out for the count, though. It is letting her deal with the chaos in New Orleans.”

“What chaos?”

“Well, when just about everybody was in bed, the city got a fairly major rearrangement. In some ways, playing the entire symphony may have been a mistake. In others, I’m damned glad it had panned out that way.” He shrugged. “The songbirds in the city had a rough time of it, but there weren’t any fatalities.”

The lack of fatalities put me at ease. I sat up, raising a brow over how I’d gotten into a pair of my silk pajamas. “Did you have fun with your dressing adventure?”

“It would have been a lot more entertaining if my vixen had been awake. Alas, it was a business transaction rather than a pleasurable pursuit. I was more worried about you being comfortable. And I was a gentleman and didn’t remove your bra until after I had you in your new shirt. It was a little tricky freeing you from the straps, but I managed without sacrificing your dignity. You were passed out so hard you didn’t even stir while I battled to free you from that torture device. I left your panties alone for obvious reasons.”

My fox whined her disappointment in my head, but I sided with Sandro on the matter.

I wanted to be fully present for anything pleasurable he had in mind.

“Did your symphony work?”

“It worked a little better than I anticipated, but I gave it over an hour versus the initial fifteen minutes I’d planned before I decided to do the entirety of it. Intent matters, and I suspect the magic read my future plans for how to build them a sanctuary similar to Asylum. Their sanctuary is little more than a shell right now, but it seems I reinforced and altered the work they’d done, drained out all the water, and made sure the water wouldn’t be getting in except through allowed channels. The city will need water, but fresh water and not the polluted and brackish garbage that often gets in. They also don’t need any hungry wildlife. I tapped the water table, so they have a nice little river flowing through the place now with enough leeway they shouldn’t flood out should the water table rise. I even managed to install their fresh air vents, although they’ll need work. And unlike Asylum, this sanctuary will be redundant. It’ll have mechanical and magical protections.”

“And all you needed was an eighteen hour nap?”

“Ryleigh thinks you worked Voodoo in conjunction with my symphony, but there isn’t really a way to confirm it. Apparently, pulses scramble their divination magics to a certain degree. The pulse is over, however, which is a good thing for everybody. Even the ghosts seem to be quiet for a change.” Sandro got out of bed and headed for a nearby armoire, opening the doors and eyeing his collection of suits. “I’m thinking I brought too many suits now. Ryleigh is more casual than I thought she’d be.”

“Ryleigh does what Ryleigh wants to do.” I got out of bed, taking a few test steps in case my legs decided to fail me again. They cooperated with me, and I rummaged through the nearby dressers in search of jeans, t-shirt, and a bra. I discovered a spacious bathroom connected to the bedroom, with a jet tub large enough to fit four comfortably. “Oh, she gave us one of the good suites.”

“She figured you needed to be pampered after the auction, and I’m sure my mother has informed them of our general enjoyment of sharing the hot tub together. It’s not quite a hot tub, but we’ll make it work. We’ll get this suite when it’s time to pay up our six months of general labor building the sanctuary. The foundation I made will work in an emergency, and the symphony seems to have made it fairly durable. I don’t know if the pilons they need are in place yet, but the Voodoo queens can do their divinations to find out if I need to reinforce their sanctuary to the bedrock. But for the moment? New Orleans is safe enough.”

“And right at the start of storm season, too.”

“Yes. Even the airport has been reinforced, although it was technically out of the zone I’d meant to work with. Ryleigh’s pretty happy with me right now, as are the other Voodoo queens. They’ll do their part. They’ve already started their divinations, and Ryleigh says they’re having good luck. The main choir is in Miami, and one of the Voodoo queens is taking an entourage there to deal with them. Unfortunately for the choir, the queen headed over has zero interest in playing fair, so they’ll be eliminated before they realize they’ve been hit.”

“That’s one of the few ways you can deal with a choir, Sandro. You have to hit them before they can hit you.” I eyed the tub, debating if I wanted to soak before deciding against it. “How long until we can head to Tulsa?”

“Getting to Tulsa is going to be a problem,” Sandro warned me. “It looks like the choirs deliberately destroyed the rail lines after the last goods shipments came in. That will leave Asylum—and only Asylum—with a six month supply, which is roughly how long it’ll take for the tracks to be repaired. We can’t fly in. There aren’t any functional airports or pilots foolish enough to venture into the Alley. We’re going to have to get there on foot or by horse.”

“By horse?” I blurted.

“By horse.”

“Why not a four-wheeler?”

“We’d run out of gas long before we got anywhere close to Tulsa. At least horses might get us there—and horses have a chance of surviving on their own if we let them loose. Otherwise, we’re stuck walking, and it’s a long hike to Tulsa. Ryleigh thinks Mansfield is solidifying his hold over Tulsa and finalizing his plans to take over the Alley. That’s the only reason she can think of to cut off the train routes. Well, that plus doing some hefty damage to the West’s trade possibilities.”

“What about the northern Alley?”

“Every single train route from top to bottom has been disrupted, right up to the northern edge where the East and West clash. And with the boundary fluxes so strong up there, hardly anybody is willing to try that route. It’s just not safe.”

With a three hundred mile boundary zone dividing the East and the West north of the Alley, I couldn’t blame anyone for dodging that nightmare. “What a mess. Do you think Mansfield is going to attempt to take control of trade between the quadrants through reworking the Alley to his liking?”

I could see the asshole doing that with zero care of how many lives he ended in the process.