by Opal Carew
“I missed the part where your going with him could have saved him.”
I shot her a glare. “I’d have saved him.”
How I wasn’t sure, but I’d have tried. And if I’d failed, I’d be dead, too. Sometimes—hell, most times until I came here—I wished that I was.
“He’s gone now,” she said, “and you need to move on. Quit sabotaging your chance at a new life by clinging to the old one.”
“I have to find the loup-garou. Prove that Simon wasn’t crazy. Clear his name.”
“All right. Then maybe you can move on.”
I considered her words, which were an echo of my own earlier thoughts. Maybe I could. Except— “How do I know if what I feel is real?”
“You really believe Ruelle put a hex on you to make you love him? I thought it was all sex, all the time.”
“Not all the time,” I muttered, though she did have a point.
“There might be a way to discover the truth.”
“How?”
“A ceremony.”
“Voodoo?”
She lifted her eyebrows and didn’t bother to answer.
“What do I have to do?”
“Come to the temple. We’ll ask the loas if you’re under a love spell.”
“That works?”
“So far, whatever I’ve asked, they’ve answered.”
She was starting to scare me.
“If they say you’re not being influenced by magic, will you quit fighting the feeling and tell the man you care?”
I wasn’t sure. Adam had said he couldn’t love me, that I shouldn’t ask him to.
“Diana?” Cassandra pressed.
“Let’s just do whatever voodoo that you do, and then we’ll see.”
“Promise you’ll give him a chance.”
“What difference does it make to you?”
She put her hands on her hips. “I’m not going to waste a perfectly good voodoo ceremony on someone who’s too stubborn to reap the benefits.”
“Okay. Fine. Let’s get it over with.”
“Take a breath. Slow down. The temple is peaceful. You might enjoy your time there.”
Instead of heading out the back door, Cassandra returned to the shop and picked up a wooden bowl. She proceeded to add items from her shelves, then turned toward the snake cage.
“Whoa,” I said, my voice a bit slurred from the alcohol. “No snake.”
“We need him for the ceremony.”
“I hate snakes.”
“Consider him Danballah.”
“I know I’m going to be sorry I asked, but what’s Danballah?”
“The Great Serpent Father of the loas.”
“A god.”
“More of a spirit. In vodoun there was an original supreme being known as the Gran Met. When he finished his work and returned to the other worlds, he left the loas behind to help the people.”
I’d been raised Catholic, though I hadn’t practiced since I’d left my parents’ house. Nevertheless, all this talk about gods made me twitchy. “You don’t really believe this, do you?”
“You can’t ask me to perform a voodoo ceremony for truth, then wonder if I believe.”
I very nearly pointed out that I hadn’t asked her to do anything, but she was on a roll, so I let her go.
“If I don’t believe, then what in hell am I doing here? For that matter, what are you?”
“All right. You believe.”
“Gotta believe in something,” Cassandra muttered, and shoved the bowl into my arms.
I didn’t see it coming and bobbled the thing, nearly dropping it. “Hey!”
“You wanna hold the snake?”
“Nope.” I waved my hand. “Carry on.”
She pulled Lazarus out of the cage, murmuring softly. He took one look at me and hissed. The feeling was mutual.
“Think of the loas like saints.” Cassandra led the way from the shop, through her living area, and out the back door. “They’re a kind of bridge to the supreme being.”
“I can see why the Catholic Church was so snarky about voodoo. A snake spirit is a far cry from a saint.”
“Didn’t Saint Patrick charm the snakes out of Ireland?”
“Watch it when you talk about Saint Patrick and Ireland,” I muttered.
Cassandra spared me a smile. “When the slaves arrived they were baptized Catholic right off the boat, and their religion was outlawed, so they secretly combined the two and got—”
“Vodoun.”
“Exactly.”
Behind Cassandra’s shop lay a partially enclosed courtyard filled with plants, flowers, and a fountain. The ground was hard-packed earth—no grass, no stones, no pavement. A door had been set in one wall; Cassandra opened it.
“No lock?” I asked.
“On a temple?” She flicked the light. “Besides, most people are scared to come in here with me. They certainly wouldn’t come without me.”
“Terrific,” I said, and followed.
I stopped just inside the door. The room was so full of stuff, I didn’t know what to stare at first. Cassandra placed Lazarus in a cardboard box near a flat stone covered with candles and smaller, more colorful flat stones. She proceeded to light the wicks, and I continued to stare.
Surrounding the stone were flowers, pebbles, tiny flags, and charms. The walls were decorated with brightly colored symbols: a cross, a heart, a snake, a box of some sort. Long, thin.
“Is that a coffin?” I asked.
“The drawings are veves. They act as magnets, to draw the loas to the earth. The coffin is the symbol of Baron Samedi. He is Saturday, the day of death.”
“I’d think you would want to avoid that one instead of magnetically sucking him into your personal space.”
She gave me a look that I recalled from my third grade teacher—extreme annoyance from a very patient woman. “Death is powerful, and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
“Then why does everyone try so hard to escape it?”
“It’s human nature to fear what we don’t understand. I try to see death as a beginning.”
“Of what?”
“Who knows?” She finished the candles and joined me. “A new plane, a different world, an adventure.”
She could be right, but I’d rather wait as long as possible to find out.
“The cross is for Legba,” she continued, “god of the sun and the way of all spiritual communication.”
I could see why that would be handy.
“The heart is Erzulie.” Cassandra met my gaze. “Goddess of the moon.”
A warm wind seemed to brush my skin. I’d have thought I was imagining it, except the candles fluttered.
“She likes you,” Cassandra whispered.
“Will that help?”
“Won’t hurt.”
“What about the snake?” I glanced at the python on the wall, whose bright green eyes seemed to shine.
“Danballah.”
The snake god. Spirit. Saint. Whatever. I should have known.
“Now what?” I asked.
“The ceremony brings the loas to earth; then we ask for guidance.”
“How, exactly, do they come to earth?”
Her gaze slid from mine. “They inhabit another living being.”
For a second my brain refused to accept the information my ears had heard. But only for a second. “Possession? Are you nuts? That’s dangerous!”
“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 murmur
ed, “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 y
ou 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.”