by G A Chase
She wasn’t fooling anyone. A crowd covered in mud and screaming along with the songs beat a sedate morning group of coffee-toting hipsters and fellow exhibitors waiting for the raucous evening performances.
“Don’t worry, Polly. We’ll wake them up.” Kendell snuck one of her specially prepared cursed objects under each of the band members’ microphone stands.
The bandleader hoisted herself back onto the stage. “You’ve got our little caffeine boosts ready, my adorable little witch?”
“Just don’t go knocking over the microphones, and we’ll be fine.” She couldn’t begin to explain the curse or what the objects did for their playing, but every band member had suffered under the Laroques. Whether they knew better than to ask or were too afraid of the answer, no one pushed Kendell about her superstitious rituals prior to a killer performance.
Polly put her arm around her cherished guitar player as they looked out across the grassy field. “We are going to rock this place.”
It was hard not to share Polly’s exuberance. The practice sessions had never sounded tighter. Minerva on drums and Scraper on bass laid down a rhythm that shook the walls in the detached garage of the Bywater shotgun double. Lynn’s fingers moved like a grass fire over the keyboards, igniting every musical note. Even Polly belted out the lyrics with a wild abandon that would have made a lesser singer hoarse the next day.
The announcement over the racetrack’s PA system let everyone know the gates were open and the festivities were about to start. Polly had instructed each band member to round up as many friends and fans as possible for their big debut. Kendell knew they had all done their best to make sure they weren’t the only band playing to an empty field. But with so much open space, they’d be relying heavily on attracting listeners based on their playing more than their reputation.
As she looked out at the faces, she noticed Myles front and center, leaning against the portable metal barricades. Even though she’d just left him a few hours earlier, seeing him standing there gave her a sense of serenity that somehow didn’t interfere with the energy she relied on for playing.
Starting with Lynn’s keyboard intro into “Something’s Got a Hold on Me,” the musical set became one continuous number with one song transitioning into the next. By preventing the normal reaction of applause, the band fed the growing energy of the audience. And as those in attendance danced out their appreciation, more joined in.
The magical items worked like emotional amplifiers on the musicians. Unlike previous encounters with the dark energy, however, Kendell maintained her control. The curse was hers to command. But as Polly belted out the lyrics of “Proud Mary,” Kendell still found it hard to contain her emotions. She was just glad she only had to pour her feelings into her guitar and not attempt to sing the words about the river and people who were so much like her extended family. Out in the crowd, she saw Myles gently swaying with his hand on his heart. He understood.
She’d anticipated the excitement and how that might affect her playing. Rehearsing had combated that anxiety. Relying on the power of the curse for the performance was like riding a bucking bronco, but gaining control beforehand had given her self-confidence. The one thing she hadn’t expected was the raw emotion generated by the audience. Being on stage at the Scratchy Dog limited the energy to those who could squeeze into the nightclub, but out at the fairgrounds, the energy swirled around her like a gathering thunderstorm. And her playing was like the lightning bolts discharging the energy from everyone around her.
The ninety-minute set passed so quickly Kendell felt like they were just warming up, but from the shouts and applause of the audience, she knew the performance had been epic.
36
Myles was so crashed out the next morning Kendell was able to shower and dress without disturbing him. With him working nights tending bar, and her schedule constantly changing at the café, it wasn’t unusual to leave before he got up or wake to find he’d already left. They changed apartments based on their sexual desire. Hardcore rip-the-clothes-to-shreds scenarios like those of the previous night were for his place. Sweet, loving, mostly cuddling affairs she liked to conduct at her apartment, where Cheesecake could snuggle up once they’d finished their people time.
Kendell kissed him lightly on the forehead before heading out. She needed to stop by her apartment and let Cheesecake know everything was okay. The pup didn’t like being left alone all night, but then she didn’t like Kendell coming home amped up on curse-infused adrenaline either. And Myles did have a point—it was easier having sex without Cheesecake’s whining from the next room.
She zipped the small yellow scooter down the familiar streets of the Quarter, enjoying the cool morning air on her face. There had been no talk of moving in together. She enjoyed her sanctuary as much as Myles valued his. The time for living with him would come, of course, but she was in no hurry. The distance between the two apartments wasn’t that much of a challenge.
Cheesecake barked and danced her greeting on seeing Kendell. “It was only overnight, silly. You’d think I’d been gone a week. Let’s get you some breakfast. Then I’ve gotta scoot. Today’s the day I’m getting rid of those things you hate so much.”
While Cheesecake devoured her meal, Kendell double-checked the shoe box with the baron’s possessions, which she’d stashed in her canvas backpack. Modifying the items and using the energy at performances had been an interesting adventure, but she knew the time had come to be free of their influence. Having both Cheesecake and Myles lose that damn look of concern would more than balance out the attraction of being a musical dynamo. Besides, she and the band didn’t need the dark energy to play well. Myles was right. It was becoming a crutch.
In spite of knowing that she was giving the Laroque family what they wanted, she breathed a little easier as she swung her scooter toward the high-rise office buildings of the Central Business District across Canal Street. She’d play her hand, and with any luck, the Laroque family would forget she existed.
Lincoln Laroque’s office wasn’t hard to find. She locked up her motorbike and walked into the grand lobby, feeling like a schoolgirl asking to see the CEO of some major corporation for a class project. After a few receptionists and an elevator ride, she found herself standing in a penthouse office with a commanding view of the city.
“I have what you want.” She pulled out the tattered cardboard box from her canvas bag and tossed it onto his glass-and-metal desk.
He leaned back in his ergonomic office chair and motioned toward the seat opposite him. “You look calmer than you did yesterday on stage. That was quite the performance.”
She really wasn’t in the mood for small talk. “Thanks. For everything. Now that you’ve got what you demanded, I’ll be on my way.”
“How’s your boyfriend?” He didn’t seem to notice the impertinence of his question.
“I don’t see what business that is of yours, but he’s fine.”
“You don’t like me very much, and I understand why. But I’m not your enemy. I know you used the power of the curse for your playing. It wasn’t hard to miss. In order to have that kind of control over the voodoo relics, you must have found a priestess. As there aren’t a lot of practitioners who know what they’re doing, I’d guess it was Madam Delphine de Galpion. You should know that her knowledge isn’t as complete as she might want you to believe.”
Kendell settled back into her chair. “Are you saying you’re willing to answer some questions?”
“You’ve been treating me like I’m the ultimate bad guy. I’m not. Honestly, I’m just as much caught in the middle as you are, though there’s no reason for you to believe me. Politicians are just the public face of power. Those who really pull the strings are seldom seen. I realize I need to earn your trust. Ask me what you want to know, and I’ll answer what I can.”
“You’re using the adage the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Even if that were so, why did you demand the seven objects?”
He opene
d the box and began unwrapping the otherwise everyday items. “I may look like I’m in charge, but when it comes to the elders of my family, I’m still just a messenger boy. Why do you suppose my family wanted these things?”
She remembered how the woman on the paddle wheeler had ordered him around as though he were her son. “Isn’t it obvious? Someone from your family, maybe not you personally, killed Marilyn Fontenot with the baron Malveaux’s pipe tool. That proved that anyone from your family could be killed and it could be made to look like an accident. Between the power plays, money, and history of where you come from, there are a lot of skeletons you’d like to keep buried.”
He toyed with the watch chain by wrapping it around his wrist. An urge grew in her to try and mentally pull it tight to see what would happen. “Interesting premise but wrong. Those in power have much easier ways of keeping our family in line. They expected you to play with the curse. That’s been their plan all along. I’ll bet right now you could wiggle your nose at me, and this gold chain would slash open my wrist. Isn’t that so?”
She sat stunned for a moment. “You expected me to modify the curse?”
“As the descendant of both the Malveaux and Broussard lines, you’re one of the few people who could. That is what my family discovered with the pipe tool.”
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that they’d figured that out. She and Myles hadn’t exactly tried to hide their investigation. “But why?”
He pulled a battered leather diary from his vintage briefcase along with a set of copied pages. “That’s the big question. There’s no secret that I’m angling for political office. As you mentioned, I need to be sure there aren’t any family secrets that might come back to haunt me, either figuratively or literally. I’m putting myself in considerable danger by giving you these copies. I know Delphine likes seeing the original source material, but that’s too big a risk. I’m only showing you the original diary so you can confirm the copies to be genuine. I could take these pages to her myself, but I couldn’t be sure she’d tell me the truth. In return for giving you these, I’m hoping you’ll trust me enough to tell me what she says. For your sake, don’t take too long.”
Kendell inspected the cover page to see the elegant cursive handwriting of Marie Laveau. “This is one of her missing journals?”
“According to family legend, she called it the key. It’s not written in English or any other language we’ve been able to identify. All I know is it lists the work she performed for the baron Malveaux. Those in my family who hold the real power have some pretty strange ideas of what’s in there. I need you to find the truth before it’s too late.”
* * *
In the large courtyard, Kendell leaned against her scooter, wishing she could scream. Instead of being done with the curse, she’d just been handed another mystery—one she suspected was even direr than what she’d just solved. In the early morning, Madam de Galpion would be fast asleep, but some things couldn’t wait.
She gunned the small motor on her bike and headed back to the Quarter from the Central Business District. At least, in the narrow streets and old buildings across Canal Street, she felt at home. Myles would still be sleeping. She couldn’t handle explaining to him how she’d been duped into yet another paranormal nightmare. The best she could do was find out from Delphine what was in the pages, assuming the woman could read them.
The voodoo priestess looked about as happy to see her as Kendell had felt in Lincoln Laroque’s office. But Delphine’s mood changed from tired irritation to excited curiosity once Kendell pulled the pages from her backpack.
“It’s in code. We need answers, and we need them fast.” She didn’t see much point in apologizing for waking her up—again.
“I have some ledgers Marie used for explaining her codes. It may take some time to decipher all of it. If you could leave these with me—”
“There’s no time. I was only given the pages to figure out the Laroques’ ultimate endgame. Lincoln implied I might be in danger.” His seemingly innocuous question about Myles’s welfare had worsened her anxiety. It was as if he was implying Myles might be the one in danger, but that wasn’t a possibility she wanted to face.
Delphine headed to the back of her shop. In her brightly colored sleeping wrap, she appeared far less formidable than when Kendell had faced her across a table loaded with burning incense. “Isn’t that always the way? These curses lie dormant for generations, but once they’re discovered, there’s never any time. Acting without all the information creates unknown problems.”
“I’m not holding you responsible for anything we did. But now that we have the key, maybe we can get ahead for a change.”
Delphine stopped at the door to her voodoo hideaway. “Key?”
“That’s what Lincoln said his family called that book. It must have to do with being able to decode her curse, don’t you think?”
The dark woman proceeded into her library. “Hopefully, that’s the case.”
Her words didn’t inspire confidence in Kendell. She remembered Myles’s recounting of his time with Delphine and how she’d referred to Kendell as the key to the curse. But if the key was really a book, what did that make Kendell?
She fetched diary after diary from the shelves at Delphine’s request until the table looked ready to sag under the weight. With each new volume, the woman made more notes in a brand-new ledger. After an hour of research, she set her pen down. “Do you know where Myles is?”
Kendell had expected some explanation of the book, not another question about her boyfriend. “He’s probably still sleeping. We had a pretty intense night. I think I wore him out more than usual.”
Delphine slowly closed the book. “You’re not going to like what I’ve found. You’d better take a seat.”
Since everything had worked as planned in modifying the curse, Kendell couldn’t imagine the voodoo expert had found anything that terrifying. “What is it?”
“I called you the key to the curse. That wasn’t quite accurate. The objects would be closer to being the key and you the lock. And I’m the one who unlocked the door.”
“The door to what?”
Delphine began drawing on a piece of paper. “You remember the seven women we met in Myles’s journey to Guinee? There are seven gates to Guinee, each guarded by a loa of the dead. The baron Samedi guards the final gate and is thought to be in charge of all the others.”
So far, the explanation sounded like something Kendell could find in a quick online search. “What does that have to do with the curse?”
“It’s better if I work this out one step at a time. The baron Malveaux trapped his women in Guinee as tributes to the other loas.” She drew a female symbol next to each of the male symbols on her drawing of the gates. “This allowed the gates to be kept open for baron Malveaux, but he was still unable to cross from the afterlife back to this one. That door still had to be opened.”
Again Kendell wanted to scream. “I don’t understand.”
“Every time you took on the energy of the curse from one of the objects, you were taking on a piece of the baron’s soul. But you’re not the end point, only the door through which the energy has passed. No matter the belief system, sex is one of the strongest forces in existence. It creates life. By having sex with Myles when you were so filled with energy, you were transferring that piece of the baron’s soul to your partner. The objects worked like seven little magnets to draw the baron back through the seven gates to this plane of existence.”
She had to find a way to regain control. “But we modified the curse in those objects. I’m in charge. I can send him back.”
“He has the upper hand and apparently has since the beginning. We’ll find an answer, but don’t be surprised if Myles isn’t at home when you get there. If he is, bring him straight here.”
37
He struggled to his knees in the old slave quarters. His head hurt, and his eyes burned. They were sensations he had missed. It took two attempts
to direct his mental orders into physical actions that resulted in him standing. As he looked at his attire, he wondered if the slave quarters weren’t just a coincidence. He needed to get some air.
It took very careful movement to make it down the stairs without falling. But once out on the street, his real frustration set in.
“Those are cars,” his host said.
“And you’re an idiot.” The last thing he needed was advice from his host. If he wanted input, he’d ask for it.
The whole scene gave him a sense of despair. Why would anyone think that pebbles embedded in black tar looked better than the cobblestones they covered? Maybe that would be the case if it was one continuous surface, but with the cracks, potholes, and patches, the roadbed looked more like a beggar’s garment that had been mended too many times than a street.
But as bad as the roadway was, the cars were even worse. Where was the grandeur? They all looked so dismally the same—plain, ordinary, pedestrian. It was as if there were no class system at all. Perhaps that was progress, but he found it depressing. With nothing to admire, why would people strive for better?
He turned down Royal toward the towering marble building he knew so well. Even the high-class street was filled with interlopers who seemed more intent on gawking than admiring the magnificent structures. Though as he inspected what had become of the elegant homes and businesses, he wondered why no one had bothered with their upkeep beyond the street-level shops.
At least the bank had been well maintained. Walking through the intricate wrought-iron gate felt like finally returning home. In spite of his stiff legs, he bounded up the stairs like a kid and pushed open the towering wood doors.