Makeshift altar clean and empty, Gabrielle hurried to Divinity’s worktable for a couple of blessed candles, some holy water, and an incense brazier. Digging through the woman’s collection of roots and herbs, she also scooped up a handful of tobacco leaf, a chunk of frankincense resin, and a little bottle of dragon’s blood ink.
A small wood carving of a penis nestled in among the brightly painted saint statues caught her attention. Just the thing for the randy loa of the dead. Smiling, she added it to her little pile of goodies.
From the kitchen, she fetched a couple of slices of sourdough bread, grumbling at the lack of peanuts—one of the Baron’s favorites—then poured a cup of cold coffee from the carafe on the counter. She discovered a bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum in the cupboard above the quietly humming refrigerator and was surprised, but pleased, to see hot peppers floating inside.
A quick count revealed the hot pepper tally as twenty-one, a perfect offering for Baron Samedi, gatekeeper to the world of the dead.
And given the hot-peppered rum, it seemed that although Divinity was a hoodoo rootworker and not a Vodou mambo or even a voodoo priestess, the woman was, if nothing else, a hoodoo prepared for a client’s any request.
Satisfied with her plunder, Gabrielle returned to the living room, knelt in front of the coffee table, and dumped her offerings onto its polished mahogany surface. With the ease and sure-handedness of decades of practice, she laid out the offerings—bread, black coffee, and rum. Although she wished she were working at her own altar with its vévé-and-cross-etched spirit pot, she had no choice but to make do with what she had.
A life hangs in the balance.
Rising to her feet, Gabrielle unstoppered the small blue bottle of holy water, then dipped her fingers into the consecrated fluid. She walked the room, murmuring a protection spell—Where this sacred water is cast, no thing of darkness or evil can last or can endure this water pure—and flicking holy water into the corners, and on the thresholds of the doors and windows.
She paused to sprinkle both a scowling Cash and the sweet-dreaming Divinity, before anointing the items on the altar and then replaced the cork stopper on the bottle of holy water.
Kneeling once more, Gabrielle lit the mingled frankincense and tobacco piled on a charcoal round in the brazier with a wood match, then touched the flame to each of the three candles in turn. The pungent aroma of sweet leaf tobacco and musky incense wafted into the air.
Grabbing one of the magazines from where she’d placed them on the hardwood floor, Gabrielle placed it on the coffee table beside the upright carved wood dick. Then, dipping her finger into the red, cinnamon-scented ink, she drew a cross and a coffin outline on one of the magazines’ back page.
With the Baron’s symbols—cross, coffin, and phallus—etched on paper, Gabrielle twisted open the bottle of Captain Morgan. The eye-watering odor of peppered rum curled into the air and, blinking, she fanned a hand in front of her face.
Cash emitted a duct-tape muffled complaint—lipsmushed words that sounded something like: Jesus Christ! I can even smell that shit over here.
“Hush, boy,” she said. “This rum ain’t for you—or any mortal man. It’s a gift to the Baron. Now keep quiet while I work.” She nodded in satisfaction as Cash rolled his eyes, but otherwise remained silent.
Divinity snored, oblivious.
After voicing the Litany of the Saints and the Lord’s Prayer, Gabrielle crossed herself, murmuring, “Au nom du Père, le Fils, et le Saint Esprit, I call upon you, oh mighty Baron Samedi, all-knowing loa of death and resurrection, gatekeeper to the world of the dead, to humbly ask for a young man’s life to be spared.”
As she spilled a little of the peppered rum onto the bread, her skin rose in goose bumps, suddenly chilled. The energy charging the room’s atmosphere wasn’t the tranquil and hushed sense of the sacred that usually followed a blessing or protection spell and invocation. No. This energy was dense and dark and coiled like a python around a twisted oak branch, waiting.
And very, very wrong.
Heart thudding, Gabrielle lowered the bottle of rum to the table and carefully scanned the room, but saw nothing out of place, nothing amiss. Except …
As her gaze returned to the makeshift altar, she noticed that the smoke from the brazier had thickened, spreading throughout the room like a roiling nicotine- and frankincense-scented thundercloud. The hair lifted on the back of her neck.
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty,” she prayed, grabbing the bottle of holy water and rising to her feet, “Creator of heaven and earth.”
“Dat nice and all, but I t’ink He be too busy stroking Hisself to pay much mind to yo’ prayers,” a nasal, masculine voice said, then a night-skinned man wearing a black fedora with a purple band, sunglasses, and a purple shirt beneath what looked like a well-tailored black Armani suit stepped from the thundercloud of smoke. “A cock dat large—an eternal fucking cock—needs beaucoup attention, ma belle femme.”
Standing in front of the sofa and the sleeping Divinity, Baron Samedi thrust his silver-handled walking stick between his legs as a visual aid. Waggled it up and down, in and out.
“Mmmph-mmft!” Cash exclaimed.
Gabrielle somewhat agreed with the young outlaw’s Holy shit assessment.
Despite the loa’s requested presence, everything still felt very wrong to Gabrielle, dangerously off-kilter. From outside, she heard the low rumble of distant thunder. She carefully unstoppered the bottle of holy water, keeping her attention fixed on the Baron and his hip-thrusting pantomime.
“Thank you for answering my call and listening to my petition,” she said. “A young man named—” Gabrielle’s words withered in her throat as the Baron moved with striking cobra swiftness to stand in front of Cash.
Mr. I-Don’t-Believe-in-Juju’s eyes widened. His eyebrows disappeared into his sweaty hairline. He hopped his chair back across the hardwood, but the Baron remained right in front of him as though the toes of his black leather dress shoes were duct-taped to the chair legs.
“Mmmph!”
A grin split the Baron’s lips. He tapped his walking stick against the top of Cash’s blond mullet, then the loa vanished. Cash stiffened, his eyes rolling up white in his head. He slumped in his chair, the ropes knotted around his ankles and wrists keeping him more or less upright.
Before Gabrielle could say a word, Cash straightened up in the chair, yanking free as though the ropes binding him had been braided out of butter, then rose to his feet. He ripped the duct-tape from his mouth and dropped the wilted gray strip to the floor.
Holding out his hands, he wriggled his fingers, then lowered his arms. “Pasty,” he declared. “But a fine cheval all de fucking same.” His nostrils flared. “Ah, I smell de rum.”
“Here,” Gabrielle said, lifting the opened bottle. She hadn’t expected the Baron to possess Cash, but then, she hadn’t expected him to actually manifest for an invocation of mercy either. “I humbly ask for a life, a young man named—”
The Baron laughed. “Let me drink first, woman.” He strode over to the coffee-table altar and snatched up the bottle of rum from Gabrielle’s hands. With a lewd wink, he tipped the bottle back and poured the hot-peppered rum down his gullet in one long, throat-stretching swallow. The peppers’ sharp smell spiced the air.
Rum gone, the Baron saluted Gabrielle with the emptied bottle. “T’anks fo’ de drink,” he said, his silver-handled walking stick shimmering into his right hand. “And if I wasn’t married to my beautiful Maman Brigitte, I would fuck yo’ sweet pussy till you begged fo’ mercy.” Another lewd wink, then a sigh. “But I be married and I got motherfucking work to do.”
“My petition …”
“Ah, oui. Since Jackson Bonaparte already be in his grave, I t’ink it best to keep him dere.” The Baron laughed again, but the humorous warmth was missing this time. This time the loa’s laughter cut through the air like a razor-edged shovel. “The sonuvabitch had it coming,” he said, sounding
in that moment exactly like Cash.
But that was impossible. A possessed cheval remained that way until released by the loa. They had no voice of their own, no say, no—
“And you were right about that rum not being for any mortal man,” the Baron continued in Cash’s voice. “Hoo-ee! It was hot enough to set my throat on fire and burn my gut to ash. Good thing I ain’t mortal no more, huh?”
Gabrielle stared, mouth dry, heart pounding.
Scooping up the bread and cup of coffee from the altar, Baron Samedi sauntered back into the smoke, then smoke, loa, and the man he rode vanished as thunder cracked overhead.
Oh, Bon Dieu! How was this possible?
Feeling faint, Gabrielle pressed her fisted hands against her chest as though to keep her heart from pounding its way free. She stared at the woman snoring on the sofa in front of her, wondering how to tell her that Cash—the man who watched as her nephew was buried alive—not only housed the loa of death, but controlled him.
And he still hated Jackson Bonaparte.
SEVEN
A DESPERATE AND BRUTAL FIGHT
Found you, Daddy.
An image of Cielo flared behind Jackson’s eyes—ears pricked forward, intelligence and concern in her eyes (one blue, one brown), her muzzle lifted as though sniffing the air—and prodded him from the half-dreaming twilight he’d tumbled into, poked at his awareness until he was no longer dreaming.
Here, girl …
He woke up. Unable to breathe. Unable to see. Unable to move.
Panic writhed through Jackson, wriggling like worms underneath the skin, then memory flared like heat lightning across a summer-scorched sky, and he remembered the whole damned nightmare.
The desperate and brutal fight in the yard with three men he’s never seen before—two black, one white, all deadly—wondering who hired them even as he swings the baseball bat at their heads.
Being forced out of his own goddamned pickup, wrists bound, and marched in front of a freshly dug grave, a cold sweat bathing his body.
Falling to his knees as his feet are kicked out from under him. Pain ripples along his scalp as someone grabs a handful of hair, jerks his head back, and pours a potion down his throat—a dark liquid smelling of graveyards, oranges, and decay. Jackson gags, struggles to pull free. Fails.
Refusing to look at him, to meet his eyes, the white dude slices at Jackson with a pocketknife—arms, thighs, chest, belly, scalp. Blood pours, stinging, into his eyes. Slicks his skin. Soaks his shirt, his jeans. Warm and wet and sticky.
“Careful, asshole! He’s supposed to bleed out slow.”
A numbing cold curls through his veins, crackles across his thoughts, slows his heart. And even before they kick him into the grave, Jackson knows he is beyond fucked.
The earth weighed down on Jackson like a lead-lined blanket, pushing him further toward its dark, moist heart, slowly crushing from his aching lungs what little air he’d managed to keep. Dirt clogged his nostrils, clung to his lips, and coated his tongue despite the arms he’d managed to crisscross protectively over his face as the bastards had shoveled soil on top of him.
All business, those sons of bitches. No laughing. No teasing final words. Just the solid schunk of shovel blades into the ground, followed by the cascade of dirt on flesh and denim.
Hell, he could understand that—why waste breath on a tricked-up dead man? But who the fuck would go to so much trouble? None of the crews or dealers he liberated goods from dealt with hoodoo or voodoo—as far as he knew—they’d just plug two into the back of his skull, then dump his body into the bayou.
Another image of Cielo filled Jackson’s thoughts. He smelled sunshine warm in her fur.
Daddy. Digging.
A tendril of hope rooted itself in Jackson’s heart. Good girl, you.
Six feet above, he heard howling—a sudden blow-down, maybe, or Cielo singing as she worked. His body itched and burned and spasmed, his thoughts spinning like a steering wheel ripping a three-sixty turn.
Panting for air, Jackson slipped underneath the surface of dreams again and plummeted into a cold and endless twilight. And remembered another day, another savage storm.
“The wind is scaring me, Jacks!” Jeanette yells, locking her arms tight around Jackson’s neck as he carries her across the yard to the Dodge pickup. Her long dark pigtails, rain-soaked and thick, whip against his face.
“Moi aussi! But I’m glad I’ve got you to keep me safe, p’tite peu,” Jackson teases, despite the tension knotting his belly. “Do you think we could stop and change places? You carry me to the truck?”
“No, silly.” Jeanette tightens her stranglehold around his neck. For a split second he feels like he can’t breathe, but the sensation vanishes when his sister giggles into his ear. “And don’t call me ‘little bit’ no more. I’m turning seven tomorrow, so I’m big now.”
“Big enough to carry me?”
“Uh-huh. I just hafta shrink you with a backwards magnifying glass, then tuck you into my pocket.”
“Got that backwards magnifying glass with you?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Looks like I’m gonna hafta keep carrying you, then, bebelle.”
“Okay.”
Jackson loads his baby sister into the pickup, rain soaking him to the skin despite the dark blue slicker and rubber fishing boots he wears. The wind slams into him, a bully’s hard, ruthless shove, and he plants his feet wide in the driveway as he fights to keep his balance. Gulf-warm water needles his face, stings his eyes, sucks at his breath.
“Get your butt in the truck, Jacks!” his mama yells over the wind’s ever-increasing shriek as she struggles to open the driver’s door and climb in behind the wheel. Her cinnamon curls, café au lait skin, and green slicker glisten with rain. “We need to get the hell outta here before it’s too late.”
Jackson gets in, and pulls Jeanette onto his lap. Shivering, she wraps her cold, wet arms around his neck. Ten-year-old Junalee sits next to Mama, her dark hair rain-soaked, wet tendrils plastered against her face and neck. She glances at Jackson, and he sees his own fear and doubt reflected in her amber eyes. Sees it validated in the worry furrowing Mama’s brow.
It’s already too late to leave.
At fourteen, Jackson’s weathered a handful of hurricanes—some in Houma, before his folks split, the rest in Morgan City—and he feels like an old hand. But not today.
Today butterflies whip up a storm inside his gut and his body thrums with the need to run, to hunker down and hide.
Hurricane Gaspard was supposed to make landfall in Texas at Corpus Christi. Morgan City only expected heavy rain and wind, and Jackson helped Mama make sure they had plenty of canned goods and bottled water on hand. Made sure the generator was primed and that bottled propane was at hand in case something went wrong with the generator.
By the time the weather service realizes that Gaspard has no intention of making landfall at Corpus Christi and has changed its course with unheard-of speed, arrowing for the Cajun coast instead, Jackson barely has time to nail plywood up over the house’s windows before the wind’s intensity makes it impossible for him to wield a hammer, let alone remain on a ladder.
Papa calls just before the landline goes out. “Get out of there. A monster’s on the way. Tell your mama to head north, cher. I’m heading your way, me. I’ll meet y’all on the road and follow until I’m sure—”
The line crackled, then fell silent.
Jackson passed Papa’s instructions to his mother, but instead of the usual argument—Dat man. Still be t’inking he can tell me what to do—she just nodded, face grim, and told the girls to get into their rain gear.
The truck rocks in the wind like a boat bobbing on rough water as Mama steers it down the driveway for the road. The windshield wipers are useless and would only be stripped from their housing if turned on, so Mama peers through the water and leafy debris sheeting the windshield, interpreting the shapes and shadows beyond it with an unerring confidence th
at eases a little of the tension in Jackson’s knotted muscles.
Jackson locks his arms around Jeanette, squeezing her tight against his chest, when a shrieking gust of wind catches the truck’s underside and tips it for a moment before dropping it back onto all four tires. Just as his pulse is throttling back down, another fierce gust broadsides the truck and flips it onto its side.
Jackson’s head and shoulder smack into the passenger window and then his breath explodes from his lungs when weight—Mama and Junalee—slams into him. Jeanette squeaks.
The wind shrieks in a powerful and eerie rise and fall cadence, the sound as loud as a freight train hurtling at high speed toward disaster. Jackson feels his heart pounding but doesn’t hear it even internally. The hurricane has drowned out all other sound.
Hurricane Gaspard now composes their universe. Nothing else exists.
Lightning fills Jackson’s vision with eye-slitting white brilliance. A door slams, the sound quickly swallowed by the howling wind. Maybe headlights, not lightning?
He hears Papa’s voice, screaming his mother’s name, “Lucia!”
Jackson struggles to suck in a breath of air and …
… and choked as dirt poured into his windpipe.
Jackson tried to cough, but his empty lungs spasmed, sucked in more dirt. Suffocating. Pain seared every inch of skin as though his body were a cushion for thousands of burning pins. White stars and black flecks danced behind his closed eyes. But even as his mind and lungs craved and struggled for air, his body remained still, his heart untroubled. And dread burrowed deep inside of him.
Maybe I’m already dead.
A familiar and frantic whoo-whoo bounced against his dirt-muffled ears. Hands or maybe paws brushed at his face. And light glimmered against his eyelids. Hands hooked around his shoulders—hot palms, a bruising steel grip. Hauled him out and up into buckets of rain, the dirt—no, mud now—making a wet, sucking sound as he was yanked out of the grave.
“Breathe, you,” a rough male voice insisted, accompanied by more whoo-whoos. “C’mon, boy. Breathe. Open yo’ eyes.”