Chapter Four
I figured Murphy would argue semantics. Instead he murmured, “Touché,” and followed me into the tavern.
“When can we leave?” I asked.
“As soon as I buy supplies.”
“I’m supposed to hand over the cash and believe you’ll come back?”
Anger flashed across his face. “I agree to do a j ob, I do it; otherwise I wouldn’t live very long in a place like this.”
Third-world countries such as Haiti did possess a “hang the horse thief” mentality. I couldn’t say I blamed them. People had very little; they protected what they did have with a vengeance. Literally.
“All right.” I reached under my shirt to extract money from the belly bag where I kept it. Murphy’s gray-blue eyes followed every move.
“When can we leave?” I repeated.
“Sunup.”
My watch read well past midnight. He obviously wasn’t going to patronize any of the retail establishments in town.
“Are you hiring bearers?”
“No one would come.” His eyes met mine. “You still want to go?”
“Nothing could make me stop.”
He continued to stare into my face for several seconds more, as if trying to figure me out. Good luck.
“All right then, I’ll see you at sunrise.”
I returned to the Hotel Olafsson, stopped in the lobby, and roused the manager. Edward had made certain I’d be able to draw funds whenever I might need them. I obtained a money order for the agreed-upon amount, then headed to my room.
As soon as I flicked on the light, I knew someone had been inside. Not the maid, either. They usually didn’t draw symbols on the wall over the bed.
Bright red. Could be blood.
I crossed the floor and swiped my index finger against the plaster, then stared at the glistening residue.
Probably was.
I didn’t plan to wait around for an analysis. I didn’t plan to call the authorities and tell them about it. I had to meet Murphy, and the police would not be amenable to letting me leave once they saw this.
In Haiti, everyone and their grandchild knew that drawing the icons of a coffin and a cross called the loa Baron Samedi, Lord of Death, gatekeeper to the other world.
Loas are the immortal spirits of voodoo. A bridge between God, known as the Gran Met, and humankind, they resemble the saints, angels, and devils of Catholicism.
And in a coincidence that probably wasn’t, Baron Samedi also oversees the process of changing the dead into zombies and the shape-shifting of animals.
I wasn’t sure what this meant, but I was sure I wanted to get out of here before I found out. I turned away from the wall and something crunched under my shoe.
Dirt lay strewn from the doorway to the bed. I’d been dancing in the stuff since I walked in.
The whisper of a thousand voices surrounded me. I staggered, feverish and dizzy. Someone had sent the dead.
Not just any someone. Only a bokor can perform this most feared of all black magic spells.
The sorcerer gathers a handful of graveyard dirt for every spirit sent to enter the body of his victim. The amount spilled on the floor of my room explained why I heard so many voices, why I felt innumerable hands pushing, pulling, and pinching me, the pressure in my head as the spirits attempted to invade my mind.
If they succeeded, I’d go insane and then I’d die. The only way to end such a spell was by the interference of a powerful voodoo practitioner.
Wait! That was me.
Struggling to think past the pain, the voices, the confusion, I searched for an answer and thought of a plan.
Each loa has a light and a dark side, Rada and Petro, respectively. To call the dark side requires blood, usually of a large animal, often a pig.
My gaze went to the drawings on the wall. I bet the owner of that blood had oinked at one time.
Baron Samedi is a Gede, a spirit of death. To send him away, I needed to summon a spirit of life, and there was none stronger than Aida-Wedo, goddess of fertility. Conveniently she was also the wife of
my guardian spirit, Danballah. I had never had a problem summoning either one of them, sometimes even when I didn’t want to.
Muttering a prayer that tonight would be no different from any other, I thrust my hand into my bag, sighing with relief when my fingers closed around the tiny piece of chalk I kept there.
Gasping and grunting against the pain, fighting the insane images of blood, darkness, and isolation that flickered through my mind, on the floor I drew a rainbow—the symbol of Aida-Wedo, who rules the realm of new life.
“Help me,” I murmured.
The spirits howled inside my head until my eardrums ached. For an instant I thought I’d only pissed them off; then light fell over my face.
A rainbow spilled into the room, the colors so bright I could see nothing else. Soft music drowned out the grating voices as peace surrounded me. Aida-Wedo’s rainbow was the calm that followed every storm.
The whispers and the pain faded. When the colors went away, so had the bloody symbols on my wall.
As soon as I stopped shaking, as soon as I could breathe normally again, I called Edward. Though he preferred e-mail for updates—the old man had a powerful fixation with the Internet—I’d put my foot down at taking a laptop to Haiti. What was I going to do with it while I was trekking up a mountain?
Since I hadn’t brought a cell phone, either—as if one would work here—I placed the call from my room.
“Mandenauer,” he barked. Edward never bothered with “hello” or “good-bye.”
“Sir.” I resisted the urge to stand up straight and click my heels. Edward always had that effect on me.
“Have you found the answer?”
I very nearly said, What was the question ? but Edward had a serious humor deficit.
No doubt being a spy in WWII had cured him of the urge to laugh long ago, and fighting monsters for the past sixty years hadn’t improved his disposition. I’d been told he’d lightened up lately, but I found that hard to believe.
“I haven’t even been here a day,” I muttered.
“What have you discovered?”
“There’s a man who knows how to raise the dead.”
I didn’t need to tell Edward the guy could be evil personified, at the least slightly insane, or that I was
headed into the mountains with an opportunist to find him. I also didn’t need to tell Edward I’d been threatened. What was he going to do about it?
“Has something happened?” he murmured.
How did he always know everything? Perhaps it was just the wisdom of age, though I doubted it.
Sometimes I wondered if Edward was human himself.
“I’m fine,” I said, though that wasn’t what he’d asked.
“Tell me, Cassandra.”
Something in his voice made my eyes prickle. Before I burst into tears and lost my Jäger-Sucher membership card, I blurted out what I’d found in my room, and what I’d done about it.
“You’re sure you didn’t imagine the symbol? You’ve had a long trip, a difficult life.”
I stilled. No one was supposed to know about my life. “What did you say?”
“You think I would allow just anyone to work for me? That I would not investigate your background before you appeared in New Orleans?”