The King of Bones and Ashes

by J. D. Horn

  Vincent wandered around, looking at the makeshift displays, casting his eyes over the reclaimed merchandise, the few bits and bobs that hadn’t suffered damage, mostly mass-produced plastic souvenirs, but also dozens of books. The shelves where the books had been lined up had for some reason been left untouched.

  “I heard about what happened here,” he said. “I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help.” He paused. “You know my crew could get this place cleaned up in no time.”

  “I don’t think we could afford you.”

  His shoulders dropped. “Gratis. No charge. Take this place down to its bones, if you’d like.” He raised a hand and pointed around at the tight aisles, the high, battered built-ins that gave the shop the feel of a maze. “Give the old place a better flow.” He nodded at the wasted space against the back wall, sacrificed to a stairway to nowhere. The upper floor had been given a separate entrance forty years ago or more. “Free that up. Make it better in here than it was before.” It was funny. Until the break-in, Lisette had considered this space as integral, inviolate. Vincent’s desire to break down and rebuild, even in an attempt to help, felt almost like a second act of violence. “I’ll even cover the materials,” he said, turning his gaze up to the “Readings by Soulange” sign. Lisette thanked whatever force in the universe had caused the vandal to overlook it.

  “I loved your mother, too,” he added.

  The word “too” hung in the air and attached itself to the rest of his sentence. It changed the whole thing from an expression of affection for her mama, to a declaration of love for her. Then there was the way his gaze sharpened on her. The way his nostrils flared. They served as witness to the fact that his feelings were not entirely a thing of the past. “Let me do this for her.” He took a step closer. “Let me do this for you.”

  Though he stood at a safe, respectful distance, he was leaning in almost imperceptibly, and there was a slight twitch in the thick muscles of his arms, as if he were readying himself to open them wide, if only. If only she would take that first step.

  Lisette shook her head. “I don’t think we could afford you.”

  He nodded, then he crossed before her and went behind the counter, looking up at the “Readings by Soulange” sign.

  “They were such great friends, our mothers,” he said, tracing her mother’s name with his finger. “Mother would’ve never hurt Soulange.”

  She felt a pang of guilt, even though she had nothing to feel guilty about. “I never said she did.”

  “No,” he said, “but I know it’s what you think. Or at least you did at the time.” There, in his gravelly voice, buried beneath the hurt, Lisette uncovered a layer of anger. He grasped the edges of the sign, and for a moment, Lisette feared she might lose this last bit of her mother, too. But he only straightened the plaque before lowering his hands.

  Lisette’s mama had taken the St. Charles streetcar to the Garden District to meet up with Laure Marin that day. The two women had been scheming about something for weeks. But while Lisette had assumed the two were meddling, planning to apply joint pressure to get Lisette to agree to the big wedding they both wanted, she’d never suspected they were involved in something truly dangerous. Somehow the two had ended up miles away, out on Grunch Road in East New Orleans. That’s where the police had found them—her mama dead, and Laure Marin, her hair gone white as snow, mumbling some bullshit about Babau Jean.

  She’d held on to her mother’s faith, perhaps more out of loyalty than true conviction, at least until Katrina. That wave of universal suffering had crashed over her city and washed away what was left of her faith in magic, but, still, it was Laure’s story about Babau Jean that had put the first crack in her levee. Lisette might never learn what happened out there, but even on the day she’d felt pretty damned sure the bogeyman hadn’t killed her mama.

  “I don’t know what I thought at the time. It was so long ago,” she said. “And I know even less what I think about it now.”

  “But you must have some idea. Or at least a theory. What do you think they were getting up to?” Vincent looked back over his shoulder at her. “I know you were in too much pain to talk about it back when it happened,” he said, his lips quivering up into a sad smile. “Hell, you didn’t want to talk at all. At least not to me.”

  It was strange that whenever Lisette thought of the days surrounding her mother’s death, she remembered them in black and white like some old movie. Her therapist thought it was a sign she was trying to repress the memories by making them seem less real, and there was no denying it hurt like hell to go back to those days.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He must have read her pain on her face. “I meant to help make things better, not stir up old ghosts.”

  Lisette listened, waiting. That should’ve been her mother’s cue—or at least the cue for the voice in her head—to speak. To make some dry comment. She . . . it remained silent.

  “But I’ve always wondered,” Vincent continued. “Did Soulange share anything with you?”

  She shook her head. “No, Mama didn’t tell me anything,” Lisette said, which was true enough, even if it felt like a lie. Her mother had said nothing to her while living, but since then, her mother—or at least the voice in her head that sounded like her mother—had told her not to grieve her death, that between Laure and herself, she’d been the luckier of the two. “I don’t know what they got themselves into.” She forced herself to pause. To regain control before speaking again. “I’ve come to understand,” she said, weighing her words, “that our mothers both had vivid imaginations, what with their talk of spirits and spells.” She felt sure this would put a lid on the subject, but Vincent seemed even more intrigued.

  “What spirits? What types of spells?” He leaned forward as he asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” She wondered at his earnestness. “It’s all nonsense anyway.”

  His expression changed. His head tilted forward, his lips pulled together, his eyebrows moved in toward each other and up. He looked like the textbook picture of concern. “You don’t believe?”

  “Oh, Vincent,” she said, and laughed at his serious expression. “There’s no magic in this world. Not real magic.”

  He turned and came around the counter, then reached back and grasped the edge of it. “Well, there’s certainly much less of it than there used to be.” He looked down the bridge of his nose at her. Expectant. Waiting, it seemed, for her to acknowledge his words. As if he were part of a secret society, and he expected a response that would show she, too, was in the know.

  She drew a breath, shaking her head, intending to offer some platitude about gilded memories.

  “You seem so sure—”

  “No,” she cut him off. “I’m not sure about anything.” It surprised her that a grown man, a man who built things out of stone and steel, could still be caught up in childish fantasy. But he’d grown up hearing the same stories she had, and for him, she could tell, they were as good as gospel. She’d lived long enough to know you can neither argue nor embarrass a man out of his beliefs.

  “Delphine Brodeur.”

  Her mouth fell open, shocked as she was to hear the woman’s name on Vincent’s lips.

  “She believed,” he said—and his choice of the past tense struck her. “She came here looking for magic. Real magic. Strong magic,” he said.

  “I sensed that she’s a true believer, but how the hell did you know about—”

  “Was,” he said. “Was a true believer. She’s no longer with us,” he said, answering one question, raising a thousand others. “You know, she was sniffing around here,” he continued before she could ask them, “a long time before she ever poked her nose in. She believed you had something invaluable. Something you inherited from Soulange. Something that rightfully belongs to me.”

  Lisette’s eyes darted around the shop. “There’s nothing special here. Nothing she couldn’t have found in any of the other Voodoo shops in the Quarter.” />
  “She thought there was. She was certain of it. That was why she sent her man Carver to bust the place up. To spook you into selling.” He paused, one eyebrow rising. “Not that Carver didn’t enjoy his work.”

  The shock made her knees weaken. She reached out and caught hold of a shelf, bracing herself. She thought of the broken windows, the mostly misspelled racist scrawls, obscure combinations of symbols and numbers, the meaning of which she had intuited even though she’d never encountered them before. That damned swastika.

  The way the bitch had looked her right in the eye and called herself a friend. “Delphine was behind this?”

  “You look surprised,” he said. “You shouldn’t be. Delphine never considered herself a racist—might’ve even protested if anyone had called her on it—but she sure had no trouble aligning herself with them. She wound her man Carver up and set him loose. On her own, she might not have ended up where her man did, turning a simple act of intimidation into a hate crime. But she knew where he’d take this, and she was fine with it as long as it served her purpose.”

  Lisette sensed movement and heard the heavy tread of Vincent’s work boots as he came closer. Soon, he stood directly before her. She felt the temperature of the room drop, though it had been hot in there most of the day since she’d cut back on the air-conditioning to save on the electric bill. She wrapped her arms around herself, surprised to see her own breath form a mist. “But they’ve paid a price. They’ve both been punished.”

  “How could you know? How could you know any of this?”

  “Because I’m the one who punished them.”

  “I think you’d better go.” Lisette lowered her eyes, not wanting to see the strange glint that had risen in his.

  Vincent nodded, but he didn’t move. Instead he leaned back, looking at her through narrowed eyes. “Do you really know nothing of the Book? Of your mother’s actions?” She recognized his tone, a cautioning incredulity. She’d used it enough when her children were young. When she knew they were hiding something, dissimulating, and she wanted to coax the truth out of them before they strayed into a full-fledged lie.

  “I don’t know,” she began, shaking her head.

  He looked down on her. Considering her. “All right,” he said, the warmth returning to his voice. “I believe you.”

  The door opened, and her eyes darted toward the sound, expecting to find Isadore there. Relieved before she saw him. But instead of her husband, she saw the brunette woman, the one who’d visited the shop with her friends the day before the break-in. She held a thin red book.

  “I told you that you were wasting time,” the brunette said, addressing, Lisette soon realized, Vincent. “The fool knows nothing.” She raised her hand in the air, moving the book she held in a widening spiral. “Nothing.”

  A large black bird—a raven? a crow?—swooped in over the woman’s head. A second bobbed up on the floor behind her, struggling on unsteady legs. It flapped its wings and bounded to the reconstructed altar, where it pecked away at the remaining convenience-store sweets Lisette had put out as a quick and easy offering for Erzulie.

  “I sense a blood lock,” the brunette said, raising both eyebrows, then turned her gaze on Lisette.

  “A death to seal,” the bird sang, hopping up and down on one foot. “A death to open.”

  The first bird stationed itself in front of the door, and it began to grow, to shift, before Lisette’s wondering eyes—its feathers flattening first into flesh-like scales, then smoothing into fair skin. Ice-blue eyes shone from behind a flattening beak. Blond hair jetted up like water from a fountain, then fell around a now normal-looking woman’s naked shoulders. The cool blonde. The brunette’s friend.

  At the sight, Lisette felt a sense of serenity descend upon her. The vandalism. It hadn’t triggered a breakthrough; it’d brought on a breakdown. But that was okay. If she was mad, if she had hit rock bottom, she’d be able to start clawing her way back up.

  “Blood like hers,” the brunette said, nodding toward Lisette. She clapped her hands in happy anticipation. “She should certainly fit the lock. If her mother’s death created the seal, then none better than hers to break it.”

  “No, sisters,” the fair woman said, holding up both hands, now quite human, and kneading the air. Her eyes focused, and she walked over to the altar, a small smile rising to her lips. “It’s more complex than that.” She swooped her arm across the folding table, brushing the bird, the candles, and the remaining crumbs to the ground. The raven cawed angrily, and even pecked at the blonde’s hand, but the woman disregarded its displeasure. “This one, she’s of no use to us.” She grasped the edges of the table, yanked it up into the air, and flung it to the far end of the shop. “But there is one here who is,” she said, running her hands around the now-empty space, a space once held by her mother’s true altar. She turned to face Vincent. “The spirit of the Simeon woman. She’s here. She’s hiding, but I can feel her.”

  Lisette’s eyes darted around the room. She didn’t see her mother. She didn’t feel her.

  “Soulange,” Vincent said. “Of course. She’s the piece of the puzzle Delphine sensed was hidden here.” He spun around, his eyes wide, wild. “Well, come on, you bitch. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  His challenge was met with silence.

  “All right, then.” Vincent sighed, and reached out to touch Lisette. He took her chin in his hand and forced her eyes to meet his. “When I took his heart, I never expected to feel his pain.” His grip tightened, squeezing her chin like a vice. “This will hurt me more than it hurts you,” he said, “at least if you don’t struggle.” He raised his hand, forcing her up on her toes.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” she gritted the words out from between her teeth.

  His hand slid down, catching her throat in large calloused fingers. She grasped the first weapon she could reach, one of the few unbroken statuettes, a figurine of the Marassa twins, the three torsos sharing a single lower body. She reached back and swung it as hard as she could.

  It shattered as it connected with Vincent’s temple, a sharp point lacerating his cheek, the skin peeling away in a flap. It must have hurt like hell, but he didn’t cry out. He released her, catching at the flap of skin, pressing it back into place.

  There should be more blood. The words drifted through her mind unbidden. The women dove at her, but Vincent held out his other hand, warning them off, stopping them.

  He grunted, growled—the sounds coming out of him were not human. He lowered his hand, and the flap of skin fell again. His hand reached up, impatient, and caught hold of it, pulling it up and out. Lisette felt her stomach begin to churn as Vincent’s face peeled away to reveal a pale white mask. She watched in disbelief as the man before her grew taller, Vincent’s thick muscles lengthening, growing thinner. This . . . this creature tossed aside the mushy flesh that had once been Vincent’s face. The bird hopped over and began pecking away at it.

  Lisette forced down the taste of bile. She began backing away, grasping the shard of the statuette with both hands, swinging it in a wild zigzag.

  The pale creature glided across the room without taking a single step. He held out his hand to Lisette, and her paltry weapon crumbled to dust.

  “You have brought this,” the creature said, though his voice was no longer Vincent’s baritone, but a shrill, whispery whine, “on yourself.” She felt herself caught up in the air, her arms and legs shooting out like an X, then he began pulling her apart, her fingernails loosening first. She heard herself screaming.

  A wall of fire, blue like the tips of a gas jet, instantly shot up between her and the monster. Lisette tumbled to the ground. When she lifted her eyes, she saw the monster was backing away, a figure, blue like the fire—a part of the fire—advancing on him. The women and their bird fled from the fire, screeching as if they themselves were being burned.

  Lisette heard words. Powerful words. A chanting. Her mother’s voice.

  �
��Mama?” she said as the creature who’d attacked her seemed to grow smaller, sliding backward—not so much out of the shop as into another space that shrunk around him until it closed and disappeared.

  The fire turned toward her . . . and spoke. “All right, girl,” her mother’s voice said. “Are you ready to listen to me now?”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Lisette didn’t know what the hell to think.

  The hot blue flames faded, leaving Lisette’s mother standing there as clear as day. She rushed to her mother and threw her arms around her, only for Soulange to evaporate like a wisp of smoke.

  “It doesn’t work like that, baby,” her mother’s voice sounded around her. Lisette watched as her mother’s image reassembled itself. She looked, Lisette realized, exactly as she had the last time Lisette had seen her alive. “You want something to hold, you’ve got to give me a chwal to ride. You should know that. Or have you forgotten everything I taught you?”

  “No, Mama,” Lisette said, thrilled to be in her mother’s presence, no matter how impalpable, but still burning with a sense of shame. “I haven’t forgotten anything.”

  “No, you just stopped believing in it.”

  Lisette froze, looking into the eyes she’d longed to see for so long. “Yeah, Mama. I did.”

  “I don’t fault you, my sweet girl.” She shook her head. “Not one bit. In your shoes I might’ve done the same.”

  “Why have you never shown yourself to me before?”

  One eyebrow raised, an expression Lisette well remembered. It meant her mother was about to put her in her place. “Would that have helped? Really? When I felt you losing your faith after the storm, I did what I could to let you know I was still here, trying to guide you. I talked to you, but would you listen? No. You went running off to some psychiatrist to yammer about what a bad mother I was to you.”

  “Oh, Mama, no,” Lisette said, reaching out to touch her mother, remembering herself the instant before her hand passed through the phantasm. “I never said anything like that. I never said you were a bad mother. Never.” She said the word with conviction. A small smile rose on her mother’s lips. “It’s only I thought I was losing my damned mind.”