Brown Girl in the Ring

Her heart was free.

can’t ask you to forgive me. Nobody could.

The knowledge was uncomfortable.

some level in her dreams, she’d been aware that the lifesaving organ had been placed in her body, had felt relief and a sense of welcome toward the donated heart.

Mami called it the flatiron building.

Rudy screamed as the weight of every murder he had done fell on him.

ll bearing the marks of Rudy’s knife on their bodies. A man dragged himself along the floor on the stumps that had once terminated in hands and feet. Melba held her own skin draped over one arm

With a flash of instinct

Gros-Jeanne woulda tell you that all she doing is serving the spirits. And that anybody who try to live good, who try to help people who need it, who try to have respect for life, and age, and those who go before, them all doing the same thing: serving the spirits.

You can’t stop me,” she told it sullenly.
“You right, doux-doux. And I can’t stop the shadow-catcher, neither,” it said, jerking a pencil-point chin in the direction of Rudy. “He did make up he mind long time to turn to the dark side. We lose he now. We can’t talk to the ones who won’t talk to us.”