“Go home to bed and be damned,” Henri snarled into the phone. To me he said, “I don’t care. I’m keeping Montmorency. And when I have this power”—he brandished the video camera—“when the gods speak through me, I’ll have even more!”
He tried to reach into his coat pocket, but he had his phone in one hand and the video camera in the other. Finally he flung the phone to the ground, panting, and plunged his hand into the pocket.
“Now,” he panted. “The spray paint. Say the prayer. Or I will strangle her.”
BAZ
“Are we ready to fix the vibe?” I was pushing, but I was worried about her. Yoni looked frazzled. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was pooped.
“I need a focal point.” Her gaze wandered the dressing room. When she looked at that weirdly mangled chair, she glanced at me guiltily, then quickly away at her makeup table.
I looked, too.
Sprinkled all over on top of all the tubes and jars of glop for her hair and face, the hair dryers and the shakers full of sparkle, was a dark layer of . . . rose petals?
And a white square. She picked it up.
“Oh, good grief,” I said. “Can’t he keep that kid on a chain?”
She read the card aloud. “Yoni, you bring us all love. Thank you. Sophie.” She looked up. “The kid’s really very sweet.”
“She’s really certifiable. Did she wreck your bouquet?”
Yoni glanced toward the catering table. “Nope.” She stood up and walked toward it. She turned the vase this way and that. “But she gave me an idea.”
“Oh, good.” If I ever did find a way into Yoni’s life, apparently I was going to have to make room for the stalker kid. As well as all Yoni’s lame-ass relatives.
Yoni seemed to be counting the roses. Her eyes were sparkling. “Come here!”
“I don’t trust that look in your eye.” But I went.
She wrapped herself around me. “We’re going to make roses,” she said as her mouth covered mine. “Lots”—kiss—“and lots”—kiss—“of roses.”
VEEK
I sensed the caul as if I myself were sitting in Henri’s pocket.
Henri took it out and shook it at us. It pushed me, like a wind in my face, like a lake of mud about my knees. This time, I didn’t struggle with it. According to Mme Vulcaine, it contained my own force, my own strength. I must own it—or let it defeat me.
Samedi had said, You stayed a little while, just long enough to put down roots. And it was true. I looked down at my feet. Those roots spread like a spiderweb of the senses, crackling away in all directions toward every box car, every flophouse, every hollow under a patch of trees behind a vacant factory—and toward Montmorency, the center of my heart.
The force of Henri’s will sucked at mine like a whirlpool in the river.
I relaxed against the force, thinking, I own you, I love you, I am you. And the force split like a river around a boulder, rushing harmlessly past me.
Sophie went still.
I said, “No. You won’t harm Sophie. I am charged with defending my bois and my people. She is one of mine.”
I was born where you were born, I thought. Samedi gave me this power. Montmorency flows in me like water through the marsh. Sophie gave it to me with her love.
The river stopped passing me by and began to empty into me. Thirstily, I drank it up.
My power.
“I am one of yours!” Henri roared. “And I command you!”
I shook my head. “You won’t command me in this.” With every word, strength returned to me. “Sophie’s marrying me.”
Sophie squeaked, ran to me, and threw her arms around me. I smelled the clover of the marais in her hair, and my strength grew tenfold.
“I am the vicomte. She is my woman. You also are one of mine, and your power derives from me—unless I withhold it. Now. Give that to me.” I held out my hand for the caul.
He only laughed.
I reached into my private marais and called upon my place, my roots in my place, and my power in my place. I saw clearly now how he was bound to me by his own roots in Montmorency. “Give it to me.”
Sophie let go of me and stood back. I heard her breath hiss in.
Henri shivered. He raised the caul over his head. “Take it if you can!” he cackled.
I put my hand out.
The caul caught fire.
Henri screamed and dropped it.
Sophie darted forward. I put out the fire with a thought. She snatched up the caul and handed it to me.
Her father wept with rage, nursing his burned hand.
“That’s one,” I said, putting the caul in my pocket. “Two.” I pointed a finger like a pistol at the lights he had erected around the circle. I brought my thumb down, bang, bang, bang, and three of his four lights went out with a pop and a puff of smoke. Darkness fell on the limestone circle. Only the fourth light shone, casting long shadows behind us. “Three.” I looked around on the ground for the document I had signed. I pointed at it, and it burst into flames.
Sophie’s father tried to stamp out the fire, until his trouser leg began to burn.
I said, “Do you want me to destroy the camera?”
Henri backed away and wrapped his arms around it. In the light of the one remaining lamp, the whites of his eyes showed. “You are like him. That Baron.”
“The way a mouse is like an elephant,” I panted. My heart beat fiercely. “I can take care of my own.”
“You want to make me ordinary,” he accused. The poor man. If only he knew what contact with me and mine was likely to cost him!
“No one can do that,” I said.
He lifted the camera. “I have proof!”
“What’s done is done. I should know.” I turned to Sophie. “You saw.”
“We are witnesses, Papa,” she said, as coolly as if he hadn’t tried to choke her twenty minutes ago. “It really happened.”
Sophie’s father pulled himself together. He lifted his head to the sultry night air. Slowly he scanned the bulk of the theater building behind us, the distant highway with its bright lights and rushing traffic, the immensity of the lake, and the silent, black trees around us. He stiffened. “Who’s that?”
I turned my head. “That’s my witness.”
“What?” Instantly Henri was suspicious. “What do you hope to prove?”
I drew in a long breath. “That I am worthy of my position.” Straightening, I called out, “Well, Madame?”
“I conceded nothing!” Henri began, but he fell silent, as Mme Vulcaine walked out of the darkness under the trees.
No one spoke.
Her eyes were small with judgment. For once I didn’t fear her. Now, also, I saw her own fear, because it was leaving her as she examined me. In spite of all the powers Samedi had raised in me and Jake had fostered in me, I wished I knew one hundredth of what she knew. I’d made a lot of promises to the lwa. Now I would need her help.
She looked at the circle of white stones, all a little tumbled after Samedi’s casual handling.
She looked at the veve spray-painted on the grass.
She inspected Henri impassively, toe to head and back, and grunted.
Her glance fell on Sophie, who swelled with obvious pride in the mambo’s regard, and flicked away, even as I flinched protectively.
Then she looked at me. “Li se konplé tout bon.” After a long moment she added with a smile, “Welcome back to the family.”
Sophie whooped and hugged me.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. My eyes closed with relief. “Thank you,” I whispered. She would help me! With her approval, I would be much less anxious going back to New Orleans to meet the descendants of the family I abandoned, to pray and tell stories over Jake’s body, and learn at last what vodou ways Jake had not taught me, backhanded, over the years.
“So,” Henri grumbled, “you’re convinced he’s our lost cousin?”
Our lost cousin? Was my heir admitting kinship with
Mme Vulcaine? That gave me a mad idea. I murmured it to Sophie while Henri was busy.
Mme Vulcaine must have heard my thought. “Your cousin and mine?” She looked at Henri with amusement. “One little moment serving the Baron, and now we are cousins?”
He stammered, “I had—since we—I would make it worth your while.” He met the mambo’s eyes and then his gaze faltered and dropped to the camera in his hands.
“He wants to learn the vodou ways,” Sophie said. As usual she was ahead of me.
Henri looked the mambo in the eye. “Well, Madame?”
“Do you understand that you do not control the spirits? They possess you. You are only the vessel. It will be a long time before you can call on their help.”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” Henri said impatiently.
“He doesn’t, you know,” Sophie told her. “He has been maddened by power.”
Mme Vulcaine said indulgently, “He will come to no harm. We specialize in balancing what is unbalanced, in vodou.”
“And I also will study with you,” Sophie added.
Madame rolled her eyes. “That would be wise.” To Henri she said, “The teaching is expensive.”
“I have an excess of funds,” Henri said proudly.
She glanced at me. “You must give up more than that.”
I put my finger to my lips. I wanted my title, but I didn’t want her to take it from him.
But she said it. “You must concede your claim in Clarence’s favor.”
As I’d expected, Henri bridled. “Why?”
“Because that’s my price for teaching you,” the mambo said flatly. “I suppose you could seek instruction in another house. You could show them your little moment.” Her gaze flickered contemptuously to the camera in his hand. “But they would ask you, what was the occasion of this moment? And what will you say? ‘I was busy robbing a jam bois and kinsman of his birthright when Baron Samedi possessed me.’” She shrugged.
Henri’s face fell.
“Clarence can give you my number when you are ready to bargain,” she said kindly. She looked at me as if to say, Over to you. “I must go home to complete Jacob Pierre’s funeral rites.” Her tone reminded me that I would be expected to attend those ceremonies as well.
I had my hands full, here and now. But I bowed.
She gave me another little smile and walked away through the shadows under the trees.
YONI
We ended up enlisting all my bodyguards, the backstage carpenters on the deck, and the band, except Jimmy, who looked at Baz, looked at me, and said, “I suppose I gotta let him use my bass again.”
Baz grunted, “Thanks, Jimmy,” as he staggered past, carrying a huge urn overflowing with red roses.
Onstage, I explained. “Guys, I think we want them flanking the band, with the wind machines in the far upstage wings. I’ll point stage left and Baz will enter. Then you let ’em rip.”
Cousin Joe ran to my side, holding his iPhone and giving Baz an ugly look. “Jesus, Yoni, you really fucked up. People are leaving. The Twitter coverage is brutal.” He read off his phone, “‘I ran out crying!’ What the fuck did you do?”
I wanted to kick his butt up around his neck like a collar, but we had a show to finish. “I’m on it, Joe. Tell ’em to bring in the gold shimmer curtain while we’re setting up, okay? And find a mic for Baz here. And tell Sound.”
“Gold ain’t gonna cut it this time,” he muttered, sending a panicky glance at Baz, but he went out.
We finished our preparations. The curtain went up.
I made my entrance quietly. The buzz from the audience rose. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Baz slink onstage behind Max and take his position next to Jimmy.
Now that I felt better, I could sense the terrible mood in that giant room. It stank of pain and self-pity.
I snuck a peek at a monitor. Yes, it showed that the exits were all open. People were trickling out. Now that I had returned to the stage, they stopped and looked back.
Showtime.
Jimmy gave the signal and we started slowly: “Baby, Come Home.”
I couldn’t watch the monitors during this song. I was too emotional. Baz was there, backing Jimmy with his sour-apple bass. In another two bars he joined me on the vocals, and I lost contact with planet Earth. This was music the way I liked it best, hung like a big feather boa on the Statue of Liberty, swaying loose, flying free, anchored by a ten-ton bass line and a blues beat.
I sang it to Baz. “Baby, come home, all is forgiven.” I turned toward him.
His expression was raw and open.
My chest heated up.
When we finished, I reached back for his hand. He didn’t take mine. Funked. I stepped forward for one quick bow and then scampered off, signaling another emergency break.
But the monitors gave me better news as I ran after Baz.
Joe held up his phone from backstage left. “They’re coming back to their seats! And, hey, the roses were a good idea. How do you think they do that special effect, where the petals keep falling off but more keep growing?”
I waved at him and ran.
BAZ
I was retching in her dressing room when Yoni’s hands drew my dreads out of the toilet and tied them behind me.
“Okay, how was that?” she said. She didn’t say, You asshole, or even, Man up, wimp.
I pulled my head out of the bowl. She looked concerned.
I wiped my mouth. “You must be really nice to work for.”
“Because we can scratch the fast reprise.”
I shook my head. “You need it.”
She frowned. “How about the bows?”
“Fine,” I was about to tell her, but that turned into another bout of dry heaves. Ashur, Ashur! When the convulsions stopped, I knelt on the floor, resting my forehead on the porcelain.
She squatted next to me. “You don’t have to talk now.”
“No. I’ll tell. It won’t take long.”
I remembered the Cubby Bear last night. Ashur, Ashur! The bloody heads bobbed, their eyeballs fell out, their hair was matted with brains and dried gore, their dead jaws flapped as if they joined the fifty thousand living voices screaming my name.
“I didn’t tell you everything about—about Aphrodite.”
“Of course not.”
“She—the goddess—got to me at a point when I had just realized that I had to retire or die. Something happened.”
Yoni didn’t move, but a single warm ocean wave of comfort wafted out of her and washed over me and pulled gently away.
“I had stopped leading armies myself. My three youngest generals had just come back from hitting the city of Hazura. They brought me captives, tribute, wild animals, treasure, livestock, weapons—anything they could seize and carry. Books, even. I was big on books. Clay tablets to you.”
“Get to the throwing up and passing out part.”
“We had all these new units recruited from Gebal and Qatna, very young, full of piss and vinegar. The generals had had this idea that the boys should bring home trophies. Make a big gesture at the parade, in front of thousands of citizens of Nineveh. Proof of the power of the Ruler of the Universe.” I pointed. “That was me. They marched into the square and stopped in front of the viewing stand and opened their rucksacks and stuck their trophies on the ends of their swords and spears and raised ’em up in the air all at once. It was superbly choreographed. Very impressive. Fifty thousand decaying, severed heads jerking into the air all at once, and fifty thousand soldiers cheering me. Some of the heads were from women and children.”
I bowed my head, squeezing my eyes shut, but the picture still splashed in color across my memory.
“You understand, I set the standard there. In my teens, I conquered a neighboring country and brought their king home with a chain strung right through holes punctured in his jaw. I made him crawl through the streets in front of my chariot like a dog, on his hands and knees. He lived the rest of his life in a dog kennel.”
I added tiredly, “I won’t talk about what my armies did to civilians.”
I spat into the toilet. “When did it stop being fun? At seventeen I reveled in it. Somewhere along the way I lost my taste for it. But there are always more seventeen-year-old soldiers. That’s what I realized that day. I couldn’t civilize the world. People would go on doing this.
“I realized that I’d made myself Ruler of the Universe. I couldn’t retire. I was ass-deep in projects. I had to do a tour for the CD. Look at some screenplays.” I sneaked a look at her. “I wasn’t ready to die.”
She frowned thoughtfully at her knees. “You stood it until you were in your fifties. I won’t make it that long.”
“You think performance will make you hurl someday?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I hurled this morning.”
I sat back on my butt on the tile and wiped my chin again. “I’m sorry I added to the bullshit in your life.”
“Never mind,” she said briskly. “Is this why you crashed and burned The Mesopotamians?”
I nodded. “Our first concert at a big venue. Our big break. Lolla-fucking-palooza, right out there in Grant Park twenty years ago this summer.” I stabbed my finger toward the north. “Some bright asshole got them yelling ‘Ashur! Ashur!’ and I—I lost it.”
My mouth tasted like vomit. “From then on, I medicated against freakout in the usual ways. And pretty soon I was playing concerts drunk, making scenes, blowing gigs. ‘That’s not done.’ Isn’t that what you said?”
She got up on her knees and leaned forward, putting her hot fingers on my shoulder. My shoulder was icy-clammy. I was grateful for her heat.
She said, “I don’t know what good I can do, but maybe I can help. C’mere, big boy.”
“I just threw up,” I reminded her, but she didn’t try for a kiss. She wrapped her arms around me and hooked her chin over my shoulder. Out of respect for her makeup and her sparkly concert duds, I didn’t touch back.
Her heartbeat thumped from her chest into mine. It was like that kiss we’d used to make roses half an hour ago, only a lot more. I remembered how great we sounded together. I smelled roses, which was a big improvement on the toilet next to me. I was grateful for her touching me.
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