by Stacy Green
“I don’t care!” Annabeth’s scream pierced Cage’s ears. “You’re a liar. Damballah’s not real. None of the Loa are.” She shoved Alexandrine out of her way and stalked into the entryway, grabbing her backpack. “I’m done with this shit.” She slammed the door.
Stunned, Cage moved to follow her, but the priestess held up her hand. “Give her a few minutes.”
“How often does that happen?” Bonin asked.
“It’s become more frequent since Charlotte got sick,” Miss Alexandrine said. “She helped her recognize the signs of an outburst. And she isn’t normally so physically violent. All of the stress is tearing her apart, poor child.”
“Are you going after her?” Cage asked.
Alexandrine’s eyes settled on him, and the sensation of being completely exposed washed over him. “I think you should. She admires you. She’s probably halfway to the cemetery by now. It’s where she goes when she’s upset.” She pointed at Bonin. “Take her with you, or you won’t be allowed in.”
Heat blistered Cage’s scalp as he waited for Bonin to find a place to park. Thirty minutes to closing, in the heat of the day, and tourist groups still littered St. Louis No. 1. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and glanced at the guard at the main entrance. The Archdiocese no longer allowed tourists to wander freely in the city’s oldest cemetery—only family members and guided tour groups were allowed in. Cage debated flashing his badge, but since it still said Mississippi, he knew it would be worthless to the gatekeeper.
“Had to park a block away. We should have walked, but it’s too damned hot.” She held up the pass allowing her to visit her relatives’ tomb along with her badge and marched past the security guard.
Claustrophobia set in as soon as Cage stepped past the tent at the entrance. Tombs of all sizes and styles clogged the cemetery, with only inches between many of the above-ground vaults. Footpaths zigzagged in no particular pattern, destroying his sense of direction.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” he asked Bonin.
“Alexandrine said the family tomb is in the middle of the cemetery, just off the main alley. If she’s there, we should see her.”
She pointed to the white, pyramid-shaped tomb near the front entrance. “That’s the Varney tomb. Used to be the center of the cemetery before the city expanded in the 1800s. We follow the path to the tomb’s right.”
The wall vaults surrounding the cemetery’s perimeter made the place feel cut off from the rest of the world, and Cage felt insignificant amid the sea of congested vaults filled with generations of people who helped create New Orleans.
Decay was everywhere he looked. Aging tombs, some of the brick ones so degraded only small sections of the base remained. Dried up weeds tangled through many, and some were no more than a pile of rubble. Wilting flowers rested in front of the iron gate of a double-tiered, marble tomb.
“Where’s the Voodoo queen?”
Bonin smiled. “There are many Voodoo queens buried here. But Marie Laveau’s tomb is that way.” She hooked her thumb over her left shoulder, but he couldn’t get his bearings. The maze-like layout put him in a trance.
Or maybe it was the heat. “Christ. It’s got to be twenty degrees hotter in here.”
The alley snaked to the right, the heat intensifying. His sunglasses did little to detract from the hazy sun.
Ahead, a figure dressed in white crouched in front of a granite tomb.
“You go ahead,” Bonin said. “She doesn’t trust me. And I should visit my grandparents while I’m here.” She headed down the path to their left, quickly disappearing among the giant stone monuments.
Cage hovered a few feet from Annabeth, sweat stinging his eyes. Tourists filed past him, some looking dangerously close to heat stroke. No one seemed to notice the girl in the white dress sitting on the ground.
It was too damned hot to mess around.
Cage sat down next to her. She didn’t flinch, her eyes barely drifting in his direction. He focused on the tomb. Like so many of the tombs, a black iron gate surrounded the marble, part of its fleur-de-lis ornaments rusting. The vault had two levels, the bottom section much larger than the top. Most of the exterior was in good shape, although some of the marble had eroded from the extreme weather, and black mold had worked its way into some of the nooks and crannies.
“Sanité.” Cage read the name on the front. “Your Gran’s family tomb, right?”
“Charlotte Gaudet’s family tomb, yes. She would have been the seventh generation of a prominent Voodoo family buried here.”
“Really?” Cage wiped the sweat from his eyes.
Annabeth appeared unbothered by the heat, although her dark hair stuck to the back of her neck and a fine sheen of moisture covered her face. “Her ancestor, Jean Henri Sanité, fled Haiti during the Revolution and brought his Voodoo with him. Handed it down for generations. Long before any famous Voodoo queens, people came to the Sanité family for prayer and ritual and to learn how to connect with Spirit. It’s an honor to be interred here.”
“But Charlotte chose to be cremated so you’d be protected.”
Annabeth nodded. “The last person to be buried in this tomb was Charlotte’s grandmother—the one who witnessed one of Marie Laveau’s last rituals as a little girl.”
“That’s got to be at least a hundred years ago.” Cage studied the fading granite tablet on the front of the tomb, counting eleven family members. “What about Charlotte’s mother?”
Cage chewed on the question he probably shouldn’t ask.
“You’re wondering how so many people could fit into the thing, right?” Annabeth said. “After a year, the remains can be taken out and pushed to the back of the tomb to make room for new. They burn the coffins.” A wistful smile spread over Annabeth’s face. “Only those who learned the ways and prayed to the Loa rest with Sanité. Charlotte learned the ways from her grandmother, but her own mother shunned everything. So did Lyric’s mother. But Charlotte embraced it, and she taught it to Lyric before she disappeared. She started teaching it to me once I was able to keep things straight—re-teaching, she said. Passing down the knowledge to her last descendent meant everything to her. Lyric, I mean.”
Cage finally understood. “It wasn’t just about wanting her granddaughter back. She knew Lyric was gone, and she didn’t have anyone to carry on her family legacy.”
“It was everything to her. Sanité and the ancestors would never allow me to pray to them or to act as family, especially with Charlotte sacrificing her Spirit to protect me. I can’t carry on her family legacy.”
“Charlotte disagreed,” Cage said. “Maybe it’s less about blood and more about devotion. Honor her wishes and set her free.”
She finally looked at him with watering eyes. “How?”
“We find the kidnapper. You can put her ashes in with her family, and her spirit can join the ancestors.”
“The ritual didn’t work.”
“Didn’t Miss Alexandrine say to give it time and have faith?” He smiled and nudged her shoulder. “Besides, since when is any prayer automatically answered?”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t even believe in Voodoo. And now I don’t know if I do, either.”
“Yes, you do. You’re just impatient and exhausted.” Cage shifted around to kneel in front of her. “You’re a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for. The only way for you and Charlotte to find peace is to bring this bastard in, so I’ll support whatever you need to believe for that to happen.” He pulled the white doll out of his back pocket. “I think you’ll need this.”
She slowly reached for the doll.
He stood and offered his hand. “Let’s go back to Miss Angeline’s. It’s too damned hot here.”
32
I stroke the soft feathers in the white doll’s crown, staring into her black, stitched eyes. Where’s her power? Why is the ritual taking so long?
Cage says he wants to take me to a hypnotist in Tulane tomorrow before we go to Jas
per. I don’t want to go under, but Cage is stressing about the news people finding out. Some reporter already tried to talk to Miss Alexandrine, and she scared him off by chanting some spell nonsense.
He says we don’t have time to just rely on the ritual. Hypnosis might speed it up.
Poor guy. He’s trying so hard to respect Voodoo when it’s obvious he thinks it’s all a crock.
But Cage is worried about my kidnapper going back and covering my tracks. I’m not worried about him coming after me. Cage will keep me safe. But I don’t want to be hypnotized. The idea of being totally powerless like that makes me want to puke.
Believe, believe, believe.
At least Cage trusted me enough to let me stay with Miss Alexandrine. Bonin looked at him like he’d lost his mind, but Cage said I’d be better off here. I promised him I wouldn’t take off. I won’t let him down.
I rub my hands across my face and trace the scar that runs along my hairline to my saggy jaw. I reach into my mouth and fish out the partial denture. Six teeth shattered when my face slammed the pavement.
I don’t want to look at the pictures Annabeth’s—my—parents gave me, but I reach for them anyway. That pretty girl smiling at the camera isn’t me. I’ll never remember all of her life, and I sure as hell won’t look like her again.
“Stop that now.” Miss Alexandrine was in the doorway, wearing a pink nightgown that didn’t fit.
“Your gown is too short. Bend over and I’ll see your hoo-ha.”
She burst out laughing. “You’re the only person I’d ever allow to speak to me that way.”
“Only ’cause you feel sorry for me.”
“Feeling sorry for someone’s a waste of time,” Alexandrine said. “So is feeling sorry for yourself. Doesn’t change anything. Faith and doing what needs to be done is the only way to make life better.”
“So why do you let me talk to you that way?”
“Because that’s who you are, and I love you for that.” She comes over to smooth my hair and sits down beside me. “The ritual isn’t some magic spell that will bring everything back. It might come in pieces over time. But if you believe it will, if you leave your heart open, I promise it will work.” She takes the pictures and flips through them. “You look like your mama. Even though your skin is closer to your dad’s coloring.”
“She looks like her mother.” I point at the droopy side of my face. “I look like this. And no ritual’s going to fix that. I need more surgery, and I don’t even know if they’ll help.”
Alexandrine sighed. “You had so many surgeries when you first came home. I think once Charlotte got you out of that hospital, she never wanted to go back. And the medical bills …” She shook her head. “Charlotte was thinking about selling the family home in the French Quarter to pay them off.”
“She did all of that for me just to save her family legacy? She knew she couldn’t fool the Loa.”
“Is that what you think?” Miss Alexandrine looks at me with watery eyes. I’ve never seen her cry, not even when Gran died. “Maybe at the very beginning, in the hospital, she considered that. But she loved you. She wanted you to get better and live your life.”
My throat knots. “I miss her.”
“Me too.” Miss Alexandrine clears her throat. “You going to Texas with Cage tomorrow?”
“I told him I would. He thinks I can help.”
“So do I, but he’s a married man. With a baby.”
“I know that!”
“I see the way you look at him.”
“He’s gorgeous,” I say. “I saw you checking him out too.”
She grins. “At my age, that’s called admirin.’ You look like you want to jump him.”
“I already told him I would if he wasn’t married.”
Miss Alexandrine laughed. “It’s not the wanting to jump his bones that worries me. Don’t be falling for a man you can’t have.” She pushed to her feet and stretched. “Rest. Let your mind start to heal.”
Right.
I wish I’d grabbed my sleeping pills from Gran’s house.
I shoot off the pillow. Sweat soaks the back of my neck. My chest feels like it’s going to explode.
I fumble for my cell phone and Cage’s business card. Hopefully he’s not a heavy sleeper.
“Yeah?” He sounds groggy and confused. It’s almost three a.m.
“I need you to meet me at Charlotte’s house.”
33
Cage killed the engine in front of the small cottage on Madison Street. The lights streaming from the windows flashed off, and Annabeth burst out the front entrance holding a set of keys and a small box. She locked the door and ran to his car, jumping into the passenger seat.
“I dreamed about Lyric again,” she said. “And she talked to me.”
“What’d she say?”
Annabeth pushed her hair off her face, still clutching the box. “It was hard to hear her, like we were underwater or something. But she told me to get this. It was in her room, hidden in the back of her closet. I guess Gran didn’t know about it.”
“She told you this in the dream?”
Annabeth shook her head. “No. Maybe. I just knew when I got here that I needed to search her room. Her spirit must have come to me.”
“Or your memories are starting to surface.”
“Because of the ritual.”
“And your open mind.” Cage didn’t care how she remembered as long as he had a trail to follow. “Tell me more about the dream.”
She closed her eyes. “We were somewhere dark and smelly. In a big, black space, and then I saw a wooden door. Lyric opened the door and told me to run.”
Cage’s head spun as he tried to piece together what she’d told him. If Lyric was a victim, why was she able to unlock the door? Why didn’t she leave with Annabeth? “You were locked in a smelly, dark place with a wooden door. Maybe a shed, or a barn.”
Annabeth gently lifted the lid. “This is the real Lyric. The one she kept from everybody but herself.” She held up two dried, white roses that were tied together with a string. A small, square pamphlet was tucked between the delicate stems.
“Her mother’s funeral program,” Annabeth said. “I always felt guilty for not remembering my own mother. But now …”
“You have a mother who loves you deeply,” Cage said.
“I’ll talk to her again after we solve this case.” She grinned, her emotions changing with whiplash-like speed. “Guess I’m a detective now too.”
“No,” Cage said. “You’re just the informant.”
She rolled her eyes and lifted a picture out of the box. Someone had clumsily cut the right side of the photo off. “This is Lyric’s mom. She was light-skinned, just like Lyric and me. Gran used to say that every man in New Orleans wanted a light-skinned Creole like us.”
Annabeth kept digging through the small box, commenting on each trinket Lyric had kept. She stopped mid-sentence.
“What’s wrong?” Cage asked.
She stared straight ahead, a torn and faded card gripped tightly in her right hand.
“Shit.” Cage stopped the car and grabbed her chin. A chill burst through him.
Annabeth’s dark eyes appeared vacant and fixed.
He checked her pulse; it was fast, but not crazy fast. Her breathing seemed to be normal, and she held on to the painted card like her life depended on it.
“Annabeth.” Cage took her face in his hands. “Look at me. Snap out of it.”
Finally, she blinked.
“Say something,” Cage said. “Let me know you’re okay.”
“Purple flowers,” she whispered.
God, did she have a stroke? How much more misery did this girl have to deal with?
Annabeth exhaled and leaned limply against the seat. She held up the card. It had been ripped down the center, showing only part of the black queen cradling a child. “This was Lyric’s.”
Cage reached for it; her left hand snapped up to block him. “Don’t touch it.�
��
“Okay.” He backed off, keeping his hands where she could see them. “What is it?”
She caressed the ripped card the same way a mother gently handles a newborn infant. “It’s a Tarot card for the Loa Ezili Dantò.”
Of course it was. “And the Loa are again?”
“The spirits we pray to. God is worship, but we can’t really talk to him. Instead we pray to the Loa. We give them offerings in exchange for their help.” She held up the card. “This Loa is one of the most powerful. It makes sense why Lyric would have this, although I don’t know why it’s torn in half.”
“So this … E-zily—”
“Ezili,” Annabeth corrected him.
“Right. What’s so special about her?”
“She is many things,” Annabeth said, “but a mother above all. She can be tough and wild, but she will love and defend her child until the end. She doesn’t take anyone’s shit, and she tells things straight up. She fights for anyone who’s been beaten down and mistreated but especially for women and children.” She looked at him, her eyes wide and shining now. “Lyric’s emotions imprinted on this card. It has a psychic connection to her.”
Cage could guess where this was going, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I had a vision.” Her eyes seemed to become alert. “Lyric.”
“A vision?” Or her memories had started to filter through because she was ready to accept them. If Lyric had this half of the card in her box, maybe she had the other half with her. Annabeth could have seen it at some point during her captivity. “What did you see?”
“Lyric. Not like her pictures, but older. Her face wasn’t totally clear, but it was her.”
“Annabeth—”
“Lyric is alive.” She held the card to her lips. “And she told me to look for the purple flowers.”
34
He stared at the TV. The same gray-haired anchor who’d been sitting at the front desk since as long as he could remember told the story.
The neurologist said she might remember. That she might be able to bring a terrible person to justice.
