The King of Bones and Ashes

by J. D. Horn

  “Oh, God,” Alice pulled back. “I’m sure my family won’t observe that hideous custom.” A piece of dried flesh, an organ, a bit of bone. Parts of a witch that still held magic after death, at least until the ritual of dissipation that returned any residual magic to the realm from which it sprang. A Hand of Glory, a real one from a witch, not just a counterfeit one obtained by temporarily charging a hand amputated from an executed convict, had long commanded fortunes from non-witches. Alice had heard from others at Sinclair that now even witches were relying on relics and other forms of necromancy to bolster their failing powers, but this was the first time she’d ever been confronted with it.

  “Oh, my dear. Everyone does it these days. Your grandfather certainly would,” Delphine said, then smirked. “Your grandfather certainly did. You’re going to find that he quite literally hid a few skeletons in his closet.” She shook her head, her mien one of bewildered amusement. “Just look at the horror on your face. What good is it to let all that power go to waste, when there are so many in need? Think of it as recycling.”

  “No.”

  “You’ve been raised to get along without magic,” Delphine insisted, refusing to accept Alice’s response. “It would mean nothing to you, but to me it could prove invaluable.”

  “No,” Alice repeated, moving to step around Delphine, but even as the witch’s glamour flickered once again, revealing the crone underneath, she moved to block Alice’s steps.

  “You’re being selfish.” Her face flashed red as desperation turned to anger. Whether it was due to her age, her supposedly fragile mental state, or her sex—or perhaps all of those things—Alice intuited that the Brodeur woman had judged her to be the easiest touch in the family. Or maybe she’d already failed with the others? “Besides, I’m sure your father has been snipping off bits and pieces for years now. Pieces not noticed by the casual observer.” A look of cruel glee rose in Delphine’s eyes. “Remove the corpse’s shoes. Pull off his socks. See if the old man has even a pinkie toe left to him. No, I bet your father has been at it for years.” She held out her hand, her first and middle finger mimicking scissor blades. “This little piggy went to market.” She brought the blades together. “Snip. This little piggy went to town.” Again. “Snip.”

  Alice looked on in horror as the camouflaged hag carried on making cuts in the air and cackling. Those lingering in the area turned at the sound. Alice had never actually heard a witch’s full-throated cackle before. It was this black-hearted screech that earned witches a bad reputation. For the first time it struck Alice that perhaps her father hadn’t just cast her aside. Perhaps he’d been trying to protect her.

  “There she is.”

  Alice turned at the sound of her Uncle Vincent’s voice. He stood there, his black eyes sparkling. Vincent Marin couldn’t have looked anything less like the typical depiction of a witch. He wore old blue jeans, battered flat-bottom boots, and a short-sleeved blue plaid shirt. A royal-blue ball cap covered his thick salt-and-pepper hair. He held one arm out to the side, an invitation for her to hurry into its crook, which she gladly accepted.

  “Sorry, I meant to be here to catch you coming through security.” His steely arm pulled her in, and she pressed her face against his chest. Of course, Uncle Vincent had come to see her home. He hadn’t forgotten her after all. She could count on her fingers the number of times she’d seen her father since he’d sent her away. It was Vincent who visited, who video chatted with her at least once a week. Who had purchased her freedom.

  “You’re looking well, Delphine,” Uncle Vincent said. When Alice glanced over her shoulder, she saw the older woman’s face had transformed to a mask of beatific kindness. She turned back to look her uncle in the eye—and was happy for the glint of mischievousness she saw there. “See you again soon, Delphine.” He released Alice from his embrace, but only after the older woman had begun making her way to the exit. “What was she after this time?”

  A wave of exhaustion caught up with Alice. The evening ferry from the island, the ride to the airport, a late flight—they called it a “red eye”—to Charlotte, a transfer from Charlotte to New Orleans. An evil sorceress out to purchase her grandfather’s bones. “A relic,” she said and shuddered at the thought.

  “Not surprised. Celestin Marin is dead, so the buzzards were bound to start circling.” The corner of his mouth curled up. “You know they call a group of buzzards a ‘wake.’” His half-hearted smile flatlined. “Fitting, ’cause we’re heading to Celestin’s wake, and you’re going to get to lay your sweet eyes on the fattest buzzards of them all.” He glanced down at his watch. “But first, you should brace yourself.” He gave her a wink. “Fleur’s asked me to collect your cousin Lucy, too. She should be landing any moment now.”

  TEN

  Cardboard boxes lined the back wall. The boxes contained salvageable stock. Items that hadn’t been shattered or tattered or urinated on.

  Two large gray garbage cans sat in the middle of the room, ready to be emptied into the bed of Isadore’s pickup. Was gonna take six, maybe seven trips to the Gentilly dump before the mess got cleared out, and they were only just getting started.

  It was hotter than hell, and Remy’s tuneless whistling was starting to work her very last nerve. Lisette had shut off the air-conditioning since the window where her mother had painstakingly drawn the vèvès was now nothing more than a gaping hole with only a single pane, the upper right, still clinging to the remnants of its casing. No use trying to cool the whole of Chartres Street. Sweat dripped down her brow, and she wiped it away with the back of her glove.

  Amidst the chaos of sorting and dumping, Lisette had managed to find a few silent moments, when Isadore was at the hardware store, when Manon was hovering by the counter of the corner café trying to charm a fellow who had no more interest in her than a frog has in spit curls, before Remy rolled out of bed and meandered—boy had too much of his grandfather Alcide in him for his own good—his way to the shop. In those moments, she had stood in the center of the damage, calling to her mother with a broken voice. There had been no response. There, in the silence, a sense of loss as deep and dark as what she’d experienced the day they found her mama’s body out on Grunch Road had knocked her to her knees. Knocked her down so hard, she could barely breathe.

  More than two decades after Lisette’s mother’s death, she finally seemed gone.

  Vèvè was born on July fourth, 1976. Lisette had been small—four, going on five. They’d driven up, her mother and she, to City Park to pick up the keys from the building’s owner, an elderly white man with a bent back and watery blue eyes, in a starched white shirt and wide red tie. Blond children—his grandchildren, Lisette now reckoned—had swarmed around him, calling for his attention, begging for coins to buy sno-balls from a passing vendor. The old man had been put out, Lisette remembered, about having to attend to business on the holiday, on a Sunday, no less. He’d dropped a few choice words in her mother’s ear as his mottled hand dropped a large round ring with two keys into her hand.

  Her mother had thanked the old man, apologized for interrupting his family picnic, and handed over the money order covering the first three month’s rent. Then she’d announced, brooking no argument, that the money order was short for the three days she had been promised, but not granted, access. Lisette remembered it like it had happened yesterday—the tone in her mother’s voice, the look in the old man’s eyes. The building had changed hands a few times over the years, passing into the ownership of a limited liability acronym in 2008. Still, every time Lisette wrote the rent check, her imagination lent the old man’s features to the faceless corporation.

  Lisette didn’t remember what type of business had been in the space before it became Vèvè. Maybe she’d never known. But the built-in shelving that framed the shop’s tight aisles had already been in place. As soon as her mother unlocked the door, Lisette had burst in, running in wild circles through the aisles, slapping the shelves as she passed them. She’d kept this up
until her frenetic activity had gotten the best of her mama’s nerves, and then she’d been ordered to sit on a wooden footstool in the corner. Her mama had quizzed her on the loa—their likes and dislikes, their domains and how to seek their favor—as she set into those shelving units with lemon oil and soft cloths, polishing them until they glowed in the late-afternoon light.

  Three of those shelves had now been utterly destroyed. Sledgehammered, or maybe just kicked, into kindling. Dark rectangles on the floor testified to where they’d once stood. Isadore and his employee, Santos, one of the Honduran guys who’d come to the city after Katrina and put down roots, had already carted the remains of two of them off in his truck to the dump in Gentilly. The third was still scattered, part of it filling one of the gray cans, the rest of it strewn across the floor.

  Remy hunched over the second can, fishing through its contents, digging out shards of glass that had once been panes in the front window. He was placing some of the larger pieces, ones that still showed identifiable bits of vèvès, into a plastic tub she used to mix up the contents of the premade gris-gris bags.

  “You be careful not to cut yourself,” Lisette said. Remy was eighteen now. By legal standards a man, but she couldn’t help but see him as her boy. Maybe she always would. “Last thing I need right now is to have to rush you off to emergency.”

  “Not gonna cut myself, Mama,” he said, glancing up at her with the smile he’d been using to get out of trouble since he took his first step. Boy had the damned prettiest lashes she’d ever seen on a man. Pretty black eyes, too. Eyes he got from Alcide. He lowered a bit of glass into the tub, then ran his finger through his thick hair. Those dark curls were a gift from Alcide, too, and God knew he’d also gotten his way with women from his grandfather. Lisette’s mother had always said she was probably the only woman who could’ve saved Alcide from himself. Seemed she was right: no other woman could compare to Soulange Simeon for the former Casanova. After losing her mother, Alcide had clung to his late wife’s memory rather than remarrying.

  Now Lisette looked at her own son, wondering if there was a young woman out there who’d be capable of doing the same for him. God knows, there seemed to be plenty of girls who wanted to try. Women loved artists. Had mad affairs with them. But then they’d go and marry the orthodontist instead. At least the smart ones would.

  Isadore’s truck pulled up in front of the shop. In place of the broken wood he’d hauled away, the back was stacked with sheets of plywood. He walked into the shop, then bit his tongue when he saw Remy digging through the trash cans. Isadore looked over at Lisette. She shrugged. There was nothing they could say now about their son that they hadn’t been saying to each other since he was four. He was a good kid. A real good kid. Just hard to get focused.

  Isadore turned and studied the opening where the windows had been. Loko’s vèvè, the sole survivor, cast a shadow on his face, a fitting mark—Lisette decided, for a certified master arborist and owner of the city’s most in-demand landscaping company. “Can you save that one?” she said.

  “Of course,” Isadore said, coming up and planting a kiss on her forehead. He nodded at Santos, who slid a ladder close to the opening and began to work the pane from its casing. He worked it side to side, with great care, until it slipped free. He handed it down to Isadore, who carried it over to Lisette.

  “Maybe we can reuse it?”

  “Maybe, but not likely,” he said, stroking her arm in comfort. “The new window, it’ll look like the old one, like it has separate panes, but it’s gonna come as a single piece.”

  “I’ll frame it then,” she said and held it up toward the light flooding in through the opening. Seeing it as it had been, one last time. She lowered it and carried it behind the counter. She wrapped it up in the Bubble Wrap she used when fulfilling mail orders, then slid it into her purse.

  “We’re going to board the hole up now,” Isadore said, leaning over the counter. He stood and patted Remy on the back, a silent signal to assist.

  Lisette nodded, then turned and watched as Isadore and Remy held the first board in place so Santos could drill it into the wall. The scream of a drill filled the air as it sent screws chewing through wood, the wood blotting out the sun in revenge for its wounds. It all seemed terribly familiar somehow, like when they were preparing for Katrina, though now the boards weren’t there to prevent damage, but rather to cover damage that had already been done. The men would cover the door next. Its safety glass hadn’t been broken, but was filled with cracks and fissures. It, too, would have to be replaced.

  A humming sound sent her gaze up to the overhead lights. She drew a breath and waited for Isadore and Santos to tackle the door, but to her surprise she heard the truck start up. She crossed to the door just in time to see it pull away. She could see the back of Remy’s head between her husband’s and Santos’s. The three of them had taken off without even a word.

  Across the way, Lisette caught sight of a new arrival, a woman a less critical eye might consider beautiful, but even from a distance, Lisette could read an odd mixture of entitlement and desperation in her features. She was of a certain age, although her hairstyle, with its thick, dark bangs falling almost to her eyes, suggested that she hoped to pass for younger.

  The woman stood across Chartres, staring at the shop, her face partially obscured by shadow. She cast a glance to the right, then stepped into the street, coming toward Lisette. A brief shimmer, perhaps a prism of light caused by cracks in the safety glass, caught Lisette’s eye. For an instant, the woman’s face seemed transformed—her skin appearing so dry, so taut, that she put Lisette in mind of the mummy exhibit the art museum had hosted back before Katrina, when Manon was still small and fascinated by all things Egyptian.

  The bells on the cathedral began ringing out the hour as Lisette opened the door, and the bell that still hung over the door joined the chorus—a discordant and drowned-out alert that was forgotten as the new arrival stepped over the threshold. Her presence filled the room as if she were its only rightful inhabitant.

  “We’re not open . . . ,” Lisette began.

  “Good afternoon,” the woman said, tilting her head and brushing back her bangs. A coquettish gesture, which Lisette found charming in spite of the fact that she found no charm whatsoever in coquettishness. “Well, no,” she said, “what a foolish thing to say.” The woman’s apologetic smile fell flat as she surveyed the wreckage. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “You’re not to blame,” Lisette heard herself saying, an automatic response that she felt she should make, that she wanted to make. Lisette struggled to understand the source of her visitor’s charisma.

  The woman shook her head. “What a terrible world we live in.” She crossed behind Lisette, going over to examine the boxes lined up against the wall. “I’ve just purchased this building. Yesterday, as a matter of fact.” She looked back and offered Lisette a benevolent smile. “I suppose that makes me your new landlady.” Her eyes ran over the boxes of goods, then scanned the damage done to both Lisette’s wares and the space itself. “Sentiment aside,” she said, “how much is this all worth? Your entire stock? Any fixtures you personally own?” She looked back over her shoulder at Lisette. “Everything on display and anything else you might have set aside for the more, shall we say, discerning customer.”

  Lisette shook her head, half trying to clear it, half to signal her confusion. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “Then let me make myself clear, ma chère. How much would it take to get you to walk out of here right now with nothing but the clothes you are wearing and the shoes on your feet? To turn everything here over to me en bloc?”

  “Even the mess?” Lisette said with a chuckle. Her eyes took the same path the woman’s had, over the shop’s few remaining goods, over the piles of broken merchandise, over the desecrated remains of her once cherished personal possessions—items she’d always sworn were not and never would be for sale.

  “Even the mess,” t
he woman said, her tone firm as she emphasized each word. She pointed down to the dark rectangles on the floor that marked the destroyed shelves’ former positions. “I see something has already been taken,” she said, crossing the floor and holding her hand out over the empty spaces. “The missing shelves don’t matter to me, but not another splinter, not another shard should be removed.”

  Isadore understood Lisette’s ambivalence toward this place. He’d told her countless times that if she wasn’t happy, she should let go of Vèvè, sell the business, maybe even just shutter the doors and walk away. They could get by on his earnings. The thought had tempted her, even deeply once or twice, but with Manon finishing her business degree and Remy starting college this fall, intent on an MFA, she knew it would be a tight stretch without her income. At least that’s the lie she had always told herself. Now she knew it was because it was here at Vèvè that she still felt connected to her mother. A connection that appeared to be broken.

  What was the store worth if her mother had been banished from it? This strange woman was offering to take the burden off her hands—even the cleanup—despite Lisette having two years left on the latest three-year lease. Certainly the contract would’ve been transferred as part of any sale. It had always happened that way in the past. Lisette’s common sense told her it made no sense. And then it did. “Ah, you just want us out of here.” She thought of the “Go Back to Africa” message she’d spent the morning cleaning off the door, a door that was going to have to be replaced anyway. “Maybe Vèvè is gonna be a bit too much trouble for you. Gonna rent this space out to some nice dress shop, run by some nice white lady.”

  The woman stood taller and pulled her shoulders back, the picture of affront. “Oh, no. You couldn’t be more wrong.”

  “Then why would you want it?” Even disregarding the damage done to Vèvè, there were at least four other shops like hers in the French Quarter’s seventy-something square blocks, most of them clustered around its center of Orleans Street. And as much as it piqued Lisette’s pride, even before the vandalism, her shop wasn’t the Quarter’s best—not by a long shot—though she remembered a time, back when it was under her mother’s direction, when Vèvè had been the Vieux Carré’s finest.