Black Heart Loa (26 page)

“I’ll never tell. Not Mama. Not Papa. No one. Ever.”

And she hadn’t. At six years old, she’d kept Jackson’s secret; and as she’d grown older and that night of fireflies and wolf whispers had grown dimmer, she’d come to believe that Jackson’s words had been a little kid’s make-believe fable, one she’d been eager to share in during a time in their lives when anything was possible: swamp monsters, giants, dragons, and
loups-garous.

After all, their mamas had already showed them that magic was real.

Kallie’s heart pounded hard and fast, stole her breath. Maybe it had never been
make-believe
. Maybe Jackson had told her the
truth
that long-ago summer night.

But then, why had he never mentioned it again? Never again breathed the word—
loup-garou
?

“Shug?” Belladonna repeated. “You fall asleep standing up and with your eyes open? Talk to me, girl.”

“Le Nique,” Kallie said as the resurrected memory receded once more. “Ever heard of it? It’s a place, a town.”

Belladonna considered, then shook her turbaned head. “Nope. Why?”

“I think—thanks to the goddamned Baron—I might have a lead on Jackson.” Hope flickered to life, a soft firefly glow. “I gotta talk to Gabr—dammit!—
Divinity
and see what—”

“No, uh-uh, you don’t,” Belladonna said, stepping forward and grabbing Kallie by the arms. “Here’s a list of the only things you
gotta
do: get in the shower, eat something, and catch some sleep. It doesn’t have to be in that order, but each thing on that list will be done. If you want to help Jackson and Layne and the rest of Louisiana, then
you need to take care of
yourself
first.” Belladonna’s voice dropped into a dangerous purr. “You hearing me, Shug?”

“Yeah, I am, but—”

A warning light sparked in Belladonna’s eyes, a challenging
Don’t even think about crossing me, I
will
ruin your day
gleam. “I
said,
” she purred again, “you hearing me, Shug?”

Survival instinct kicked in and Kallie gave the only answer she could. “Yeah, yeah, I’m hearing you.”

Belladonna looked her over, then released Kallie’s arms and folded her own over her towel-draped chest with an imperious ease that Divinity would’ve envied. “Mmmhmm. That’s right. Now, get your fanny in the shower.”

D
ivinity finished cleaning the
last of the gravel from the abraded road rash stretching along Layne’s right side from rib cage to hip—as though his jacket and T-shirt had rucked up as he’d slid down the road. She daubed a salve smelling of lavender, beeswax, and astringent comfrey onto his cleansed skin, then stepped back so Gabrielle could bandage gauze over the rawest sections.

“I t’ink dat’s it,” Divinity said, wiping her fingers on the white cotton towel draped over her shoulder. “No broken bones, no internal injuries, just one serious knock to de noggin. He be one lucky nomad, him.”

“That he is,” Gabrielle agreed. “Good thing he was wearing a helmet. Even though nomads are exempt from helmet laws, they seem to be pretty good about protecting their skulls.”

Carrying the basin of blood-pinked water over to the sink, Divinity snorted. “Dat was major foolishness, de federal government making dat treaty with de clans. Dey should hafta abide by de same laws we do.”

Gabrielle gave a chuckle devoid of humor. “That’s funny coming from an identity thief.”

Jaw tight, Divinity emptied the basin in the sink, set it on the counter, then turned around to face the mambo, arms crossed over her chest. Gabrielle’s red-scarfed head was bent over her task, her hands smoothing and taping squares of gauze intermittently along Layne’s side.

“You were in Haiti. And I had need, me.”

“So you’ve said. You were protecting your niece. I understand all that.”

“Den what do you want from me?”

Gabrielle straightened, then swiveled around, her fingers squeezing around gauze pads and medical tape, her expression composed, her eyes full of icicles. “An apology, to start.”

Divinity met the mambo’s cold gaze and lifted her chin. “I already gave you one. But if you want anudder—”

Gabrielle’s composure gave way to indignation. “You did not. You
never
apologized. In fact, you said you had no regrets.”

“I be t’inking yo’ ears be fulla cotton, ’cuz I
know
I told you—” An old-fashioned
bring-bring
ringtone from the pocket of her skirt cut off Divinity’s scathing retort.

Holding Gabrielle’s narrowed-eye glare as well as serving up one of her own, Divinity pulled out her cell.
“Oui?”

“I couldn’t reach you at home,” Addie greeted, her voice wound pigtail tight. “But I didn’t think you’d be at the botanica, what with all the mishaps. Finally dawned on me to try your cell.”

“Well, I
am
at de botanica,” Divinity said, “taking care o’ someone who took himself a bad tumble. What news you got?”

Addie drew in a deep breath, then said, “It’s been
confirmed. The wards have become storm magnets and they’re luring Hurricane Evelyn to the Louisiana shore like those sailor-luring nymphs who tried to snare Odysseus.”

“But didn’t de ward hoodoos undo de wards? I t’ought dat had been decided—”

“They tried,” Addie said in a near whisper. “The wards refused to be undone.”

Divinity’s blood turned to ice in her veins. “Sweet Jesus.”

“We’re having a meeting here at my place at ten tonight—as many hoodoos, conjurers, voodooists, and voodooiennes as I can round up—to see if we-all can’t come up with a solution before Evelyn drops in on us. Are you and Kallie going to need a ride? I’m sure I can find someone traveling through your neck of the woods to pick you up. Oh! And could you let Kallie’s friend know too? The mambo-in-training?”

Divinity’s thoughts returned to her missing nephew.
He’s out dere alone, maybe hurt, maybe trapped, and he ain’t got no hope but me and Kallie.

As much as Divinity wanted to help Addie and the others, as much as she wanted to keep the hurricane from devastating the unprotected coastline, as much as she wanted to restore magic to its natural rhythms, blood came first. It always would.

“I’d like to come,” she said finally, “but have me a patient to tend to, plus I have t’ings I need to take care of—t’ings dat won’t wait. Kallie and Belladonna are still at dat carnival o’ fools down in New Orleans,” she lied, “so I ain’t expecting dem back until tomorrow. But”—she paused and gave a frowning but listening Gabrielle
an inquiring look, a lift of the eyebrows—“I’m sending a friend in my place in de meantime, a mambo from Lafayette by way of Haiti.”

A muscle ticked in the mambo’s jaw, but she nodded.

“Oh,” Addie replied, her tone somewhat surprised. “All right. But if anything changes—”

“Den we’ll be dere as soon as we can,” Divinity assured her.

After the call ended, Divinity filled Gabrielle in on the wards and the meeting. The mambo looked shaken. “Bon Dieu,” she whispered. “And they’re sure? About the wards?”

“So Addie said.”

Gabrielle nodded, then put the crushed gauze pads and medical tape down on the bedside table. Turning, she drew the blankets up over Layne. She sat down in the rocker angled beside the bed, closed her eyes, and rocked, furrows creasing her brow as though she were deep in thought—or praying.

We can use all de prayers we can get—provided dey don’t backfire too.

Divinity crossed to the shaded window facing the street. With a tug at the bottom of the shade, she rolled it up to the window’s midway point.

Rain poured again, falling hard from a ragged gray sky, filling the gutters with leaf-littered streams and puddling on the pavement and sidewalks. Cars—few and far between—shushed along the glistening street. Even with an apartment as buffer between the botanica and the building’s roof, she heard the steady drum of rain against the shingles.

She scrutinized the people hurrying along the
sidewalks in front of the storefronts across the street—Irene’s Café, Rouses Market, Bayou Cyprés Noir Pharmacy, and, for what was truly ailing you, the Hair of the Dog Tavern—relief trickling through her when she didn’t see anyone who looked out of place like a goggle-eye perch in a banana tree.

One thing Divinity knew for certain, her sister hadn’t acted alone; knew Sophie had lacked the strength to remove a soul and replace it with a
loa
—and a wild one at that—all by her lonesome.

Thing was, Divinity had no idea who her sister’s partners in crime were. Or where they were. She’d intended to keep Kallie hidden from them as long as possible—preferably forever. But now she felt time slipping away from her.

I will never forgive you, Sophie. Nor will I ever understand why you did it. What you hoped to gain.

With a sigh that gusted up from the far reaches of her soul, Divinity drew the shade back down and walked over to her worktable. She’d never felt older or more tired.

She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out the unfinished poppet with its purple button eyes, then placed it carefully on the table among the leaves and herbs. The air was redolent with the smells of sage and sulfur and bitterweed.

Divinity stroked the brown yarn hair between her fingers, smoothing it, remembering with a sharp pang brushing the thick, dark waves of Kallie’s hair when she was younger and how it had flowed like silk through her fingers.

Back when I was first getting to know her, my sister’s daughter, dis wounded and angry fourteen-year-old girl, dis violet-eyed stranger. My Kallie.

Divinity’s chest tightened. She drew in a deep breath, her fingers resting against the poppet as though for comfort, and considered her options one more time—which, with the magic misfires, had become extremely limited.

Her original plan to bind Kallie and, hopefully, the
loa
to the poppet, chaining both to her will, now seemed impossible without the necessary spells to weave the binding.

Another option would be to potion Kallie up and keep her unconscious until a method to remove the
loa
without harming her could be figured out.
If
such a method existed.

Of course, the option Divinity hated to even entertain—Kallie’s death—would be a surefire way to remove the
loa,
since it would refuse to remain in a lifeless body. But right now, without the proper tricks to bind and contain the
loa,
killing Kallie would be senseless. At the moment, for better or worse, the
loa
was at least contained inside her niece’s flesh like the ghosts were inside of the nomad.

Divinity stiffened.
Sweet Jesus.
Spinning around, she regarded Layne, a new possibility wheeling through her mind.

The question was, would it work? A Vessel housed the dead and, as far as Divinity understood, the
loa
inside Kallie wasn’t one of the
Gédé,
wasn’t the spirit of someone who had once lived, then died.

It was an elemental spirit. One born of darkness and strife and cruel intent. A black heart
loa
.

Divinity padded across the room, stopping beside the nomad’s bed. She studied his relaxed and sleeping face—a handsome one, for true, with its sharp cheekbones and lips curved for kissing.

He was designed by nature to take spirits in, then send them on. Could he do the same with a living
loa
? Tendrils of hope threaded through Divinity.

She glanced over her shoulder at the poppet lying on the table. She might have to risk a binding spell if the nomad couldn’t take in the
loa
. Maybe if she reversed the spell—made it a freedom trick instead of a binding one—it would work.

As soon as de nomad wakes up, we gonna have a nice long chat, us.

Now to look for Jackson while Kallie rested. Divinity went to the front of the store to fetch her cards and shells. She had every hope a reading, a divination, would be accurate, since it wasn’t accomplished by magic or spell or potion.

It was accomplished by intuition.

A knowing that glittered liked stars in heart and mind.

Once in the consultation room again, Divinity sat down at her worktable. She consecrated the cockleshells with blood and herbs, lit a candle and offered up prayers to the saints, then went to work.

Boy, where are you?

B
elladonna had been right.
Not that Kallie had any in tention of telling her so.

The hot shower had sluiced away her exhaustion, easing her taut muscles, and Belladonna’s flowery shampoo and conditioner had her hair smelling of jasmine and honey instead of swamp mud.

With a bowl of Cap’n Crunch in her tummy, she felt more alert, and dressed in a pair of black leather shorts and a black tank top that hit her midriff—the only things of hers she’d been able to ferret out of Belladonna’s closet—she’d even stretched out on the sofa while running Layne’s clothes through the washer and dryer.

But she hadn’t slept. Not after watching the news on TV.

HURRICANE EVELYN NOW APPROACHING CATEGORY FOUR WITH WIND SPEEDS OF 130 MPH
.

With a new projected trajectory indicating that the storm was headed for the Louisiana coast, Kallie had a niggling suspicion that the wards
were
acting as beacons and/or magnets for the hurricane, guiding it straight to them. She also thought of Jackson howling in the wind,
fists clenched and grieving, and the cereal she’d eaten turned to stone in her belly.

She texted him another message, hoping against hope that he would see it, wishing her messages to be a beacon for him, a night-light in the darkness.

HOLD ON WE’RE GONNA FIND U
.