“Which is why I don’t take the ceremony lightly. It’s also why people are scared to come here. Word gets around.”
“If you think I’m going to let some snake spirit possess me, you are off your rocker.”
“I doubt Danballah would be interested in you. I was thinking more along the lines of—”
She traced a finger through the heart, her touch smudging whatever had been used to draw the symbol on the wall. “Deesse de la lune.”
The candles fluttered again in a nonexistent wind. As I gazed into their wavering flame I murmured, “That just might work.”
Chapter 32
I tore my gaze from the flames. “You’ve done this before, right?”
“A few times.”
“Anyone spend the rest of their days mumbling and drooling? Any former customers sitting in a corner of the insane asylum doing this?” I took my index finger and wagged it back and forth across my bottom lip, making the crazy noise from childhood.
“Not yet,” she said.
“Great.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t dangerous, and maybe we shouldn’t do it.”
I considered her warning, but I wanted to know the truth. I was tired of being confused.
‘‘I want to ask more than if I’m under the influence of a love spell. I want to know if there’s a loup-garou and, if so, where can I find it?”
“You don’t exactly ask questions.”
“What then?”
“You’ll be her—or she’ll be you. As one.”
My skin went a little prickly, a little cool. “What if she doesn’t want to leave and I’m stuck with voices in my head forever?”
I wondered momentarily if that was what was wrong with schizophrenics, then shook off the notion. Not every person who heard voices could have been a participant in a voodoo-loa ceremony. That would have been on the news.
“Relax, Diana. Erzulie is a goddess. As much as we enjoy our time on earth and fight not to leave it, to her this place sucks.”
She probably had a point.
“Ready?”
Was I? “Yes.”
Cassandra knelt next to the flat stone, which resembled an altar, picked up the clay bowl, and started to mash the ingredients together with a pestle.
“What should I do?” I asked.
“Open your mind.”
Easy for her to say. My mind had been closed for most of my life—especially to stuff like this. But I sat on the floor and tried to breathe deeply. Hyperventilating would probably scare away the loas.
Cassandra spread the concoction on the altar, then she spread some on my forehead. I cringed, but she didn’t stop. Instead she began to chant in another language. Luckily, the stuff was pink and smelled like flowers. If it had been blood, I’d have been out of there.
She picked up a rattle that appeared to be encircled with bones—I didn’t want to know whose—then shook it. Lazarus hissed, and she scooped him out of his box. In front of the veves she stopped and tapped the heart with the rattle. “I ask you, Legba, to open the door for the spirits.”
The wind returned, swirling through the closed room, skimming the candles, lifting my hair. Something pushed at my forehead, something I couldn’t see. I closed my eyes. Instead of black, there was a wash of silver, like the full moon shining on a still lake. I heard the lap of the water, smelled it, too, could almost feel the cool, gentle drift on my skin.
Let me know the truth, I thought, and opened my eyes.
The candles went out. Every last one of them.
Open your mind.
“Cassandra?”
“I’m here.”
“Did you say something?”
“I said, ‘I’m here.’ ”
“Before that.”
“You heard Erzulie. Listen to what she says. Hold on. I’ll light the candles.”
I wasn’t sure how to open my mind. I wasn’t the touchy-feely type.
A cool finger brushed my forehead. Open.
I closed my eyes again and imagined a door. Reaching out, I turned the knob and pushed it wide. On the other side a woman waited. She was tall, voluptuous, with mahogany skin and the best Afro I’d ever seen. I expected her eyes to be dark, too. Instead they glowed silver. Her body was covered in a loose white robe that looked really comfortable, as did her sandals.
She beckoned, and I stepped into a midnight garden. “Where am I?”
“Physically, still in the temple, but your mind has joined with mine.”
Her voice was as lovely as she was, smooth, calm, the voice of a woman who knew her own strength, her own place, all the answers.
The garden was filled with flowers in colors I’d never imagined. The moonlight caused them to appear as if they’d been painted with rain. But the air was warm, comfortably moist, like the last day of summer before autumn descends.
“Are you Erzulie?” I asked.
“What is it you wish to know?”
Was that an answer? For her, probably.
“Am I under the influence of a love spell?”
“Perhaps.”
“Is there a loup-garou?”
“What do you think?”
This was not going well. “All I want is the truth.”
“And the truth you will have.”
She led me down a rock-strewn path. Not the usual gravel but a hardscrabble gray rock that reminded me of the moon. As we walked, her robe changed colors, reflecting every shade of the moon—white, silver, blue, gold, even red.
Erzulie’s lips curved as she pointed to one flower amid a hundred others, the bright red petals unmuted by the night. A fire iris. “Take a piece and the truth will come to you.”
“I thought the fire iris was bad luck. That they attracted animals.”
She turned her cool, silver eyes in my direction. “The truth comes with some risk.”
I guess everything worth having did.
As I tore a tiny petal from the fire iris, the now-familiar scent of cinnamon in flames tickled my nose. “Which truth are we talking about?”
I turned. The garden was empty except for me.
I blinked, and I was back in the temple. The candles were lit Cassandra stared at me as if transfixed.
“Which truth?” she whispered.
I opened my hand. In the center of my palm lay a bright red petal. When I opened my mouth, two voices came out—mine and Erzulie’s.
“All of them.”
Chapter 33
“What happened?” Cassandra asked. “Are you okay?”
I wasn’t sure. I’d been here, but not here. Myself, yet not myself. The sensation should have been frightening; instead it had been...
“Comforting.” My voice was my own again. I no longer felt... full.
“What was comforting?” Cassandra asked.
“Erzulie. She’s like...” Again I groped for a word to describe her.
“A mother.”
I tilted my head. “If you say so.”
My mother was nothing like Erzulie.
Cassandra refrained from exploring that avenue, thank goodness. Bending, she untwined Lazarus from her ankle, then dumped him into his box.
“Tell me everything,” she ordered, so I did.
When I was finished, Cassandra bit her lip, and her forehead crinkled. I began to get uneasy. “What?”
“You went farther than anyone else ever has. Most only hear the voice of the loa, become a little scrambled. You traveled to Ife.”
“I didn’t go anywhere. Did I?”
“Not physically.”
“I just traveled to Ife in my head.” I paused. “What’s Ife?”
“There’s a town called Ife in Nigeria, but the one you went to is a legendary place, the Mecca of vodoun, where the revelations of the loas came to the first faithful.”
“And what about this?” I unfurled my fingers to reveal the petal of the fire iris that I’d picked in a place I hadn’t actually gone.
“I can’t believe you
brought a piece back.”
“What does it mean that I did?’
“Not sure.”
“Wow. You’re as helpful as she was.”
Cassandra ignored me. I wished I could do that whenever someone was annoying. Instead, I always felt compelled to sarcasm them to death—or at least until they went away.
“Keep the petal nearby,” Cassandra said. “Any questions you have should soon be answered.”
“Just like that? Poof. I know the truth?”
“Got me.”
“What happened in the past when you performed this ceremony?”
“The loas came, inhabited someone else, and answered their questions.”
“Truthfully?”
“Loas don’t lie.”
“Then why didn’t she answer me?”
“Maybe you had too many questions. Maybe she didn’t know the answers. Maybe you could only discover the truth by seeing it yourself.”
“Maybe this is all bullshit.”
Cassandra tilted her head, and I had to admit, if the previous hour had been bullshit, it was extremely convincing bullshit.
“Never mind.” I tightened my fingers around the petal. “I’ll just wait for the answers. Should be along anytime now.”
“You believe?”
I considered the question, remembered what had happened, where I’d been, how I’d felt.
“Yeah.” How could I not?
“I need to do some research,” Cassandra said. “Make some calls. Find out why you traveled to Ife. How you could have brought something out.”
“Isn’t there both good and bad voodoo?”
“They’re mirror images. Can’t have one without the other.”
“So Erzulie might have been bad.”
“No. The loas are all about truth. It’s the maker of the magic who brings about good or bad. We call the evildoers ‘ones who serve the loas with both hands.’ ”
“You used both hands.”
“It’s an expression. Don’t you trust me?”
She appeared so crestfallen, I wanted to reassure her, but I didn’t want to lie, either. “I’ve never dealt with voodoo, Cassandra. For all I know you could have been calling Satan himself. He could be running around New Orleans having a grand old time.”
“He already is,” she said dryly.
“Ha-ha.”
“You spoke to the loa, Diana, which means the good or the evil intent came from you. Are you evil?”
“Sometimes.”
“That just makes you human. When you asked for help, direction, truth, did you ask so you could use the result to hurt someone else?”
“No.”
“Then go in peace.”
I glanced at my watch and my eyes widened. “It’s almost morning.”
“Time flies,” Cassandra said. “Let me put that petal into something before you ruin or lose it.”
She rustled through the mess on one of the shelves and came up with an empty gris-gris bag.
“Do you have those lying around all over the place?”
She didn’t bother to answer, just held open the bag.
“Will it work in there?”
“Of course.”
I guess I had to take her word for it.
“How will I know what’s true?” I asked.
“You just will.”
“That is so not helpful.”
“It’s like love—you’ll just know.”
“I’ll know the love I’m afraid is contrived is real because I’ll just know? That makes no sense.”
“What does?” As usual, she ignored my scowl. “If you find a charm, destroying it should break the spell.”
“What does a charm look like?”
“Could be a gris-gris, or maybe a fetish.”
“Which is?”
“A small figure—wood, bone, maybe stone, even cloth—fashioned into the shape of a person. Many cultures use totems for luck, for curses or charms—both good and evil.”
“All right,” I said. “Find something weird, destroy it, and the magic is gone.” Although how I would destroy stone, I had no idea.
“Or you could just leave it be.”
“Why?”
“Is being in love with him so bad?”
“I need the truth, Cassandra. That’s just the way I am.”
She nodded as if she’d known I’d say that. She probably had. “If Erzulie said the truth would be revealed, it will. I’m not sure how, or why, or when, but have faith.”
“Faith has never been my strong suit,” I muttered, and left.
If I’d had faith in Simon none of this would have been necessary. But if I hadn’t had it then, in him, how could I have it now in someone I barely knew and in something I didn’t trust?
Never one to put off what I could do today, I drove past Adam’s trailer, but his car wasn’t there. I even walked out to the shack, but it was empty. So I set up a trap in the clearing where Charlie had died. Scene of the crime and all that. Besides, I didn’t have a better idea.
I also had my doubts the snare would work. If a werewolf had human eyes, it might have a human brain, and then the beast would know better than to creep into the cage and let the door close behind it. However, I planned to be sitting in a tree with my loaded tranquilizer gun. If I had to, I’d shoot the thing, then shove it inside myself. There was more than one way to skin a cat. Although I’d never actually figured out a second way.
I spent several days tramping through the swamp in the heat, went to town a few times for supplies. Then I endured as many nights with very little sleep, lying alone on the floor, listening to weird noises and faraway howls that should be coyotes but weren’t. I hadn’t seen Adam, and I’d kind of stopped looking for him.
I’d been gung ho for the truth, but the more time that passed, the more time I had to think about things, the more afraid I became. What if he’d misled me about something important? Something I wouldn’t be able to forgive.
What if Luc had cast a spell over me, and what I felt for both of them was a lie? I didn’t want it to be a lie. Caring for Adam and his son was the first thing that had felt right in a long, long time.
I considered Cassandra’s suggestion that I just let everything be. It wasn’t a bad suggestion. However, what if there wasn’t a spell? What if I truly loved Adam and he didn’t love me?
I considered all the questions that had no answers as I took a sponge bath in the tributary in front of the mansion. I never had managed to rent another hotel room. I fell asleep eating a sandwich on my sleeping bag. I must have been near meltdown, because I didn’t wake up until sometime after sunset and only then because I sensed I wasn’t alone.
My heart kicked up a notch, but before I could fully panic, I saw someone silhouetted I front of the window. I’d know that shape anywhere.
“Adam.”
He didn’t answer, just crossed the room and lowered himself onto the sleeping bag. Hell, let’s be honest, he lowered himself onto me.
The only thing adorning his upper body was his bracelet. I liked him best that way. His khakis were soft, his body already hard. Despite the clothes, we fit together just right. Pressure, friction, heat. What more could a girl ask for?
Truth.
In that moment, I understood that I couldn’t go on without knowing it. Where was that petal?
I kept one hand on his shoulder while the other crept around like Thing from The Addams Family. I was distracted by Adam’s lips crushing mine, his tongue sweeping into my mouth. I wore loose shorts and his fingers skimmed my thigh, drifted higher, slipped beneath. His thumb stroked in a rhythm to match his tongue, and I forgot about the gris-gris bag.
After my makeshift bath, the high temperature had made me opt for a thin light green camisole. I hadn’t even considered a bra. So when his lips closed around my nipple, the moist heat encircled me as if there weren’t anything between us but air. Not long after, there wasn’t.
He hadn’t spoken, had barely looked
at me, and I needed him to, so I touched his face. His eyes met mine at the very first thrust. My free hand clenched, as did my body, and my fingers brushed the gris-gris.
I gathered the small bag into my palm, and a breeze swirled through the room. Scented with cinnamon, it whispered indecipherable words but left behind a feeling of certainty.
Whatever else might be a lie, this was the truth.
Chapter 34
My eyes snapped open. How long had I been asleep?
I lay on my sleeping bag, alone—nothing new there. What was new was the crescent moon centered in the window, a bright silver slash against an indigo sky.
Showtime.
I’d rather Adam were with me, wouldn’t mind having him around while I spent the rest of the night in a tree with my dart gun. But he hadn’t offered and I hadn’t asked.
In fact, neither one of us had said a word. He’d behaved as if he were drawn to me even though it was wrong, stupid, destructive. He’d behaved like a man who couldn’t help himself, and that wasn’t love. But it was something.
I dug out some jeans and a dark T-shirt. As an afterthought I tucked both gris-gris in my pocket. Alligators I didn’t need, and one never could tell when the truth might come in handy.
The dart gun was loaded, but I put some extra darts into my backpack, along with a bottle of water and some cookies. I could be out there all night. Last, I opened the cooler I’d bought in town yesterday and withdrew a long white paper-wrapped package from the ice.
The trek to the clearing was uneventful. Though it would be too much to hope for that the loup-garou was poised to step into my trap, nevertheless, I approached quietly, just in case. However, when I pushed through the tall grass, the only thing I saw was an empty cage.
Not that it was easy to see it, if I do say so myself. I’d positioned the apparatus, large enough to hold five grown men, beneath a particularly weepy-looking cypress tree. After I rearranged the moss and the ground cover, the metal was almost impossible to distinguish by the simple light of a crescent moon.
I tossed the contents of my white paper package inside. “Fresh steak ought to entice you.”
Wolves preferred live prey, but they weren’t against a free meal when they could find one. Me, I couldn’t stomach tying up a live creature to await a bloody death. Prime rib would have to do.
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