by AJ Merlin
“They want your surprise,” the woman sitting with Baron Samedi called, no louder than she had to. “They wanted to see your face just as it is now. But now that is done, and we wish to talk.”
“About what?”
“About everything.”
Chapter 3
Everything was a broad topic, though I did not say as much. What did I have to discuss with supposed deities? My heart fluttered in my chest as if it was trying to fly back to New Orleans.
My fingers curled and uncurled on the smooth railing under my skin, but I pushed myself away from it to look instead at the five Loa.
Except for the man standing beside me, all of them shared the red eyes of being vampires. Why was he different?
“What could you have to talk to me about?” I asked carefully.
The woman on the sofa gestured graciously to the chair sitting in front of her. “Won’t you sit?”
Was it really an invitation?
“Thank you,” I allowed, hesitantly walking to the cushioned chair and perching carefully on the edge of it. My hands rested on the wooden arms, and I stayed ready to push myself right back to my feet.
“I understand you must have questions,” the woman said. While all of them appeared to be in their late twenties to early thirties, she had the oldest air to her out of them all. Her skin was warm, a rich caramel, and her eyes were like rubies set against her face. Her black hair curled loosely, cascading down her shoulders and nearly to her waist.
All of them were dressed formally in clothes that looked perfect against the lush and luxurious setting.
In my jeans and t-shirt, I felt sorely out of place.
“If you’re really the Loa, why care about me?” I asked at last. “It’s obvious I have very little knowledge of your culture, and I don’t have any practitioners in my family.”
“True,” the blue-eyed man chuckled behind me. “You’re as Wiccan as they come.” He said it like an insult and I fought not to sneer in response.
“Then let me introduce my family. I believe you know he is the Baron Samedi.” She rested her hand on the man’s shoulder who’d brought a rooster to my yard. He beamed.
“Behind you stands the Baron Kriminel.” At her words, the blue-eyed man swept me a low bow. He was the most muscular of the group, when the rest of them were willowy and lean. Everything about him simply screamed different. Like Samedi, his hair was cut very close to his head.
“And at your other side is Marinette Bras Cheche.” That couldn’t be her full name. Maybe it was a title, instead.
Marinette did not bow. She stared at me, her eyes bright and her mouth pressed into a line like I had done something to offend her. She did not speak, and I did not offer any words of my own.
“You should care the most whether or not I like you,” Marinette promised suddenly, breaking her silence.
“Because…why?” I asked, unable to find even a half plausible reason.
“Because you are a wolf.” She didn’t say more than that, and I didn’t pry. I wasn’t going to shudder at the implied threat. Frankly, I was looking to move past the posturing.
“Nibo doesn’t share our interest in you,” the still unnamed woman went on after leveling a look at Marinette. Her hand flicked to indicate the man who sat on the far side of the fountain. From here, I couldn’t see much of him, and he didn’t seem to care about changing it.
“And I am Maman Brigitte.” My gaze found her again, and as I watched, she brought a lit cigar to her lips.
Making a mental note to research the Loa when I got home, I impatiently waited for her to finish the long drag on the cigar.
“I’m George,” I introduced, when it was evident she was waiting for me to speak.
“You are Georgette Levasseur,” Maman Brigitte corrected. “The first summoner in your line in generations. I knew your great-great-grandmother.”
“Just…George,” I corrected automatically. “Only my mom calls me Georgette.” I kept my voice firm. She did not deign to correct herself. The rest of her words sunk in a bit more slowly.
“Was she your friend?” I asked, surprised. I’d never met any of my grandparents, and certainly no one further back.
A smile touched the woman’s lips, and she traded a look with Baron Samedi. It was obvious she knew more about my family than I did, and the thought made me both uncomfortable and unprepared.
“Your ancestress and I were not friends,” she informed me dryly. “But I held much respect for her.” Her eyes searched mine, and her lips parted as if she would continue.
Then she pressed her lips together before lifting the cigar to her lips again.
Baron Samedi glanced at her but remained silent.
“I wish to see how alike the two of you are,” the Loa continued, smoke trailing from her lips like a dragon.
“What do you mean?” My skin prickled. “I’m a summoner, like her. I don’t know anything more about her.”
“And you have her three favorite cards, do you not? The Moon, the Chariot, and the Devil.”
“I do.” I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going. The wind that carried the smells of the ocean whipped my hair around my face suddenly. The sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the patio in orange light, but none of them seemed inclined to move for better light.
“Then show me.”
I shook my head. “Tell me why first.”
“Because she asked you very nicely,” Marinette murmured from somewhere behind me.
My fingers clenched on the armrests of my chair, and I fought not to jump upward and demand to go home.
“I don’t mean anything by it.” Maman Brigitte’s eyes were strangely goading. “I just want to see.”
Seeing the cards wasn’t going to put me in danger. I could summon the physical cards to me at will. It was a simple task to pull them from my magic, after all.
But that didn’t make it a good idea. Maybe she’d help me, or give me some information on my family. On the other hand, what if she meant something less helpful by her words?
I brought them to me anyway, lifting my hand and willing the three cards to appear. When they did, I held them splayed in my grip so that she could see the faces of the three arcana, but didn’t go further than that.
She was not going to touch them. Letting her see them was as far as I was willing to go.
Thankfully, she didn’t ask. She looked at the cards, her red eyes steady and unblinking. Baron Samedi at her side looked at me instead, studying my face like she studied the cards.
It was unnerving, and I looked away after a few seconds had gone by.
“They like you,” Maman Brigitte said at last, surprising me.
“Like…me?” I asked. “But they’re just Arcana. They can’t like anyone.” Just like they couldn’t make decisions or have expectations. Just like they couldn’t pull magic from me and act of their own will.
Her gaze slid to mine. “Do you really think that?”
“That’s what I learned,” I replied carefully.
“More’s the pity that there’s a list of things you must unlearn,” she said, not unkindly but still with a firm edge to her voice.
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged daintily, shifting her legs under her layered black dress so she could lounge on the sofa and take another drag on her cigar.
“Could I be so rude as to ask you to summon one of them for me?”
Rude wasn't the word I would’ve used. I didn’t owe her my magic, nor should I have to make a spectacle of myself.
But was it such a good idea to say no?
“And then you’ll tell me why you care so much?” I bargained in reply.
Maman Brigitte nodded easily at my demand. “Of course.”
When I moved to focus my magic on the Chariot, she spoke again. “Not that one.”
Startled, I looked into her eyes. Had she known which card I was summoning? And why did she care?
She was grinning now, the
look less friendly than it had been a moment ago. “Not that one,” she repeated.
“I didn’t know you had a preference,” I mumbled as I zeroed in on the Devil.
“I do. And it isn’t for that one, either.”
I let out a breath in a huff, displeasure curling my mouth down at the edges. “Why do you care so much what card I summon?” I asked, unsure if I really wanted to know or was just stalling in my denial.
“Why do you care so much about what card you summon?” She turned the question on me unerringly.
Slowly, I got to my feet, shivering in the dimming light and breeze. Movement near my left shoulder caught my eye, and when I looked around, I saw that the Baron Kriminel was pressing some kind of switch on the fountain.
The lamp posts around the patio slowly came on, their glows almost as orange as the fire that still flickered in the pit.
At least now I could see. And I could feel warmth resonating from red coils on the lamps. Still, I wasn’t willing to believe he’d done it for my benefit.
Baron Kriminel offered me a wry grin, and leaned against the railing with Marinette Bras Cheche once more.
“I don’t have to perform magic tricks at your whim,” I said slowly. “Especially since you still won’t tell me what you want.”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “You don’t have to do anything I ask of you. You can continue as you are now, and perhaps the next time you summon the Moon, the wolves will kill someone you care about instead of an old woman who deserved it. All the while, you will be able to do nothing but beg it to stop.” While her tone never changed, her words were frank and…scary.
I was terrified that she was right.
I didn’t know what to say. I looked down at the white stone, eyes on my shoes. “Then why ask me to summon it, if you already know?”
“Because there is only so much I can know without seeing it for myself.”
“If my control over the Moon is as bad as you say, what’s to stop it from killing you? Any of you?” I asked carefully. I hadn’t meant it as a threat, but I seriously didn’t know just how well I could control the Moon if I summoned it here. Especially with how on edge I felt around the Loa.
A low chuckle ran through the group. As if I’d made a joke that was universally amusing.
“If your little spell can kill any of us, then we do not deserve to be here, cher,” Baron Kriminel informed me.
“Fine,” I mumbled, letting the Chariot and the Devil dissolve before focusing on the Moon. Like this morning and the night in the cemetery, the magic leapt too easily to my reaching grasp. It was just too eager, and it gave me pause.
But they’d asked for it.
I pushed my magic into the card until it disappeared in a shower of sparks. As they had this morning, the sparks grew into the shape of a ghostly wolf.
Unlike this morning, the wolf did not stand and stare at me.
It whirled on Baron Kriminel and advanced, half-transparent fangs bared.
“No!” I cast my power towards the wolf, but it simply shrugged off the power.
When I tried again, with the intent of splitting the magic into small pieces and casting it away, a second wolf appeared on the patio, this one on the low table in front of Maman Brigitte and Baron Samedi.
It growled just as loudly as the first, face a mask of aggression.
“Stop it!” I tried again, twisting and pulling at the magic. Like before, when they’d killed Colette, nothing I did seemed to have any effect.
Maman Brigitte stared into the face of the closest wolf, eyebrows drawn together as if she could see more than just the Form itself.
“Even if you were not so afraid, I think this summoning would have gone poorly,” she remarked at last. “You just don’t understand the card, do you? No…” She reached out and the wolf snapped at her. Maman Brigitte merely twisted her fingers away.
“Could you decide quickly what you’re going to do with them?” Baron Kriminel asked. “I’m not letting it bite me.”
“Can you not get rid of them?” Now Maman Brigitte looked to me, her face edged with surprise. “I was expecting the lack of control, but the inability to dispel the magic?”
“I…I can sometimes,” I said in a small voice. “But I tried, just now, and that’s why there are…two.”
Marinette barked out a laugh, completely unperturbed at the wolf dangerously close to Kriminel.
“Am I wasting magic on this, or not?” The Baron Kriminel asked again. When I glanced at him, I saw that his questioning gaze was fixed on Maman Brigitte.
“No,” she sighed, sitting forward in her seat. When she raised her hand, something rectangular glittered in her fingers, about the size of a–
“What is that?” I breathed, knowing damn well what it was.
Maman Brigitte didn’t answer. She twirled the Arcana in her hand, just as it caught fire and burned up within seconds.
In the time between the card vanishing and the explosion of green flame on the patio, my head screamed the big fact of the night at me.
Maman Brigitte was a summoner.
Heat washed over me, rocketing me back to reality as the flames twisted and swelled to form a shape. Fear swelled in my chest, causing my heart to pound, and another wolf appeared beside the first.
Now all of them focused on the greenish-black minotaur that had formed from the dying flames.
Or what my brain thought was a minotaur. Green-black skin melded seamlessly into a bone-like face, and a long tongue dripped spit from its too-wide jaws. Both of its hands were gnarled and clawed, and it stood easily six feet tall.
I was absolutely terrified. None of my cards had this kind of effect. None of them appeared in such a violent way.
How powerful was she?
“No!” I shrieked, throwing a hand out to my wolves when they all leaped onto the minotaur. It snarled, lashing out at them with a backhanded sweep.
I had expected it to knock them back.
I had not expected it to shatter them. A sound like breaking glass met my ears as the wolves vanished, and then I felt it in my magic.
It was as if someone had sucker punched me straight in my soul. Hard.
I was driven to my knees with a gasp, my lungs fighting to take in more air.
When I finally looked up again, mind cold with terror, I found that the creature was gone and Maman Brigitte had risen to her feet.
“Do you know why it did that?” She asked very patiently as she closed the scant distance between us. Her black dress whispered against the stone, and I could only shake my head as my limbs shook.
“It reacted to your fear. The others trust you to protect yourself, but not the Moon. Any other card you obtain will be hit or miss in this way as well, once they come to know you.”
“But they’re just cards,” I breathed. “My mom taught me that…the cards are just vessels to be filled with magic.”
“Your mother taught you a common misunderstanding. There are so few of us, and fewer still with arcana, so most do not care to right the lie.” She let out a long sigh. “Though you are the first I’ve met that hasn’t realized it sooner.”
“How do I make them stop?” I asked, getting to my feet finally. “I can’t have them summoning themselves and killing people.”
“You can’t,” she agreed, suddenly shrewd.
I didn’t like it.
“I can help you,” the Loa went on. “But there will be a catch.”
Caught off guard, I stared at her for a second before shaking my head frantically. “No, no catch. No more favors. If I’ve learned one thing this month, it’s that.”
“It’s not a big catch,” Baron Samedi put in. “We don’t even have to call it that. How about…quid pro quo. You help us, we help you.”
“Help…you?” I repeated. “You’re the Loa, aren’t you? Why in the world do you need my help?”
“Yes, I agree,” Baron Kriminel intoned. “Why do we need her help, again? Especially after that underw
helming performance.”
“Because when I asked, you expressed disdain at spending your days in the city among mortals,” Maman Brigitte pointed out. “But please, Kriminel. Do let me know if that has changed?” She raised her eyebrows in question.
He smiled at her, but it was not friendly. “It has not. In reflection, please. By all means. Ask the witch instead of one of our followers.”
“Ask the witch for what?” I broke in. “Because there’s a big list of things she is not going to do, no matter what kind of help you’re offering.”
The last rays of sunlight faded, leaving us only in lamplight and the glow from the fire.
It made the Loa seem eerie.
Turning to glare at Baron Kriminel, I was startled to see that in the flickering light, he looked almost skeletal. As if his bones were painted against his dark skin.
But then the light wavered, and the strange look to him was gone.
His grin widened.
“Here.” Maman Brigitte reached out, her hand around something that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Her fingers uncurled and I was able to look at the object, only to be taken aback.
“Is that a jaw bone?” I asked, reaching out very carefully and picking up the shiny, black jaw. Maybe a skunk, or some other small creature? It was small, barely as long as my hand, and a chain was looped through a small hole in the bone. The exterior was cold and smooth, like it had been dipped in something. “Why, umm, are you giving me a jawbone?”
“It is a little bit of magic I worked for you. I’d thought originally it was too strong, but after seeing your summoning, I am sure it is not,” Maman Brigitte mused. “When you wear it, should you summon any of your cards and they go out of control, it will end the spell and send the Form away.”
“So, what happened with the wolves won’t happen anymore?” I clarified.
“That is the idea. I hope you won’t need it long, but the magic won’t run out.”
I started to put it on, then paused. “This isn’t a trick, right? This won’t hurt or anything?”
“I have no need to trick you.”
