Black Magic Woman (14 page)

“But you didn’t look at that? That was kind of the info I thought would help me out.”

“It will, but I wanted to know who D’Abo
is.
Where did he come from? If he’s supposedly so powerful, why isn’t he more well-known? Does he have enemies? And if so, how healthy are they?”

Daphanie considered all that and nodded. “Sort of a ‘know thy enemy’ thing, then.”

Corinne nodded. “And thy enemy’s enemies.”

“So what did you find out?”

The woman’s eyes lit up as she flipped open her folder. “Oh, all sorts of juicy little tidbits.” She flipped through a couple of pages and slid out a copy of a black-and-white newspaper photograph featuring a beaming Charles D’Abo flanked on either side by a city councilman and the mayor of New York. “Is this the idiot from the nightclub?”

Daphanie nodded. “That’s him. Is he actually friends with the mayor?”

Corinne snorted. “As if. From what I can tell, D’Abo doesn’t have that kind of juice in this city. I think this was just a lucky break for him at a fund-raiser for the neighborhood where his business is located. He was standing in the right place at the right time to get some attention.”

“Hmm. He seems to have quite a talent for that,” Daphanie observed.

“Bitter,” Corinne teased, setting aside the photo and pulling out several pages of photocopied newspaper clippings. “Now this is the stuff I found interesting. I definitely wanted to get a look at D’Abo’s temple, or whatever you call the place where witch doctors do their voodoo.”

“A
hounfort,
” Asher said.

“What?”

“It’s called a
hounfort,
” he repeated. “The ritual space for the congregation.”

“Oh, right. Well, I wanted to check out his
hounfort,
if that’s really the right name for a former tavern, brothel, and drugstore that now sells charms, potions, and bad incense out the front door while bringing live chickens, the occasional goat, and regular parades of worshippers in the back.”

“Chickens and goats?”

“Illegally, of course, but D’Abo is apparently one of the minority of voodoo practitioners in Manhattan who still adhere to the old traditions of the occasional animal sacrifice.”

“Yuck.”

“Yeah, I have to agree on that one. Apparently, it’s something they don’t do in front of the ‘tourists,’ so I haven’t been able to find anyone yet who’ll talk about those rituals, but I was able to dig up some info about the more public ones.”

“And?”

“And they sound pretty standard from what I can tell. Not that I’m any kind of expert on voodoo,” Corinne said. “Attendees have a feast, make offerings to the gods or
loa
they intend to honor for the evening, then there’s a whole bunch of drumming and dancing intended to invoke the spirits to join the party. The goal is for one of the spirits, at some point in the evening, to take temporary possession of one of the dancers. They call it ‘being ridden.’ Then the spirit can be asked for advice or favors or blessings or whatever. Different spirits have different personalities and demands that have to be met before they’ll appear, so things can vary a bit around the same theme.”

In the back of her mind, Daphanie could swear she heard drums, beating out the strange, familiar rhythm of her dreams.

She shook her head to clear it and looked at Asher. “I thought you said whatever D’Abo practiced was some kind of bastardized form of the standard voodoo or Afro-Caribbean religious thing.”

“From the few people I’ve talked to so far, I’m pretty sure parts of it are,” Corinne agreed, “but those parts are the ones involving the animals and the stuff not many people want to talk about.”

“Oh.” A wave of frustrated disappointment swept over Daphanie. Everywhere she went looking for answers these days, it seemed like she only wound up finding more questions.

“Wait,” Corinne said, suppressed excitement coloring her voice. “I haven’t gotten to the interesting part yet.”

“What’s the interesting part?” Asher demanded.

“Well, you made D’Abo out to be such an egotist that I expected to dig up lots of stories about how he’d struggled his way out of poverty to build his spiritual empire by the sweat of his brow. Even if it was all a bunch of hokey, it’s still what I expected to hear.”

“He was ‘born a poor black child’?”

Corinne nodded. “Exactly. But that’s not what I found. As it turns out, D’Abo didn’t so much build anything as he inherited it. Not from his parents, or anything like that, but from the people he studied voodoo with. The temple D’Abo supposedly controls has existed in New York since 1797.”

That took Daphanie by surprise. She’d expected the same story Corinne had, all about struggle and sacrifice and building his army of followers from the ground up. After all, it made a guy sound more like a guru if he collected his acolytes based on the power of his words and his personality than if he’d just inherited them from the guy who came before him.

“I didn’t think Manhattan had a big nineteenth-century voodoo cult,” she said mildly.

“We didn’t. We only had one voodoo priestess, who was apparently a transplant from New Orleans.”

“Well, of course she was.”

“Yeah, D’Abo’s temple apparently sprang up around her. He’s just the latest head honcho.”

Asher nodded. “I think I remember hearing something to that effect.”

“So does that mean I don’t have to take him seriously?” Daphanie asked. “I mean, if he’s more of a figurehead than an actual big, bad muckety-muck—”

“No so fast, grasshopper. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

Daphanie battled back her impatience, but she employed not much grace while doing so. “Let’s not string along our friends, either.”

“Sorry.” Corinne flashed an unrepentant grin, but sobered quickly. “I’m not ready to dismiss the guy quite yet, especially not until Graham and De Santos report back. He might not have founded his little army of darkness, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he lacks the power to lead it. Besides, I’ve been thinking about that dream of yours.”

Daphanie didn’t bother to ask which one. She’d only ever told Corinne about one dream, the one she’d had in the exact the same detail every night this week. She hadn’t mentioned that to Asher yet. She didn’t even like thinking about the dreams, let alone talking about them.

Asher frowned. “What about Daphanie’s dream?”

“I’m not sure. It’s just stuck with me, is all, and the more research I’ve done this week, the more I’ve started to think that it sounds awfully like an accurate description of one of the ceremonies at D’Abo’s temple.”

Frowning, Daphanie examined the thoughtful look on her friend’s face. “What do you mean? I’m fairly certain that the place in the dream didn’t feel like the inside of a building. It didn’t even feel like I was in the city. It was more like being out in the middle of nowhere. You know, all crickets and crackling fires. There was no feeling of walls around it. More like … I don’t know, a tent.”

“Well, I don’t know either.” Corinne shrugged. “I’m just telling you that the more I read about D’Abo, the more I felt like I was reading someone else’s account of your dream.”

“So, what? You think this guy is somehow … controlling my dreams?” She felt Asher lay a warm hand on her shoulder and found herself leaning toward him, absorbing the comfort.

“I think that’s unlikely,” he murmured, his tone soothing. “If D’Abo had that ability, I imagine he would already have sought some greater action than just the dreams. He would have influenced you in some other way, and I see no evidence of that.”

Corinne huffed out a brief sigh. “I’ve gotta say, I’m relieved to hear that. In circumstances like this—meaning anything having to do with the Others—I get a little suspicious about stuff. I don’t know what D’Abo is capable of. Magic is still almost as new to me as it is to you. But if Asher says you’re okay, I’m going to take his word for it. Still, if I were you, I just think I’d keep my eyes open.”

Daphanie pulled a face. “Even when I’m asleep.”

Asher squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry. That’s my job, remember? I’ll make certain nothing happens to you. Trust me.”

Daphanie nodded, then found herself going very still inside her own mind. She did trust him. The knowledge hit her like a sledgehammer to the forebrain, but it was there, solid, instant, and undeniable. She trusted Asher completely. After just a few short days of sitting in his glowering presence and wishing him to Hades, something inside her had decided to acknowledge that she felt safe with him. She knew in her core that he would never do anything to harm her and would, in fact, do everything in his power to protect her.

The surety of it nearly sent her reeling.

“You shouldn’t listen to me anyway,” Corinne said, her eyes on Asher’s quelling expression. “I have a natural predisposition toward paranoia. Plus, I’m a reporter. I think everything is a conspiracy. But honestly, I was just trying to help.”

Daphanie forced herself to focus on her friend and nodded. “I know you were. And I do appreciate it. Like you said, I’m better off knowing what I’m up against.”

“Just remember, you’re not up against anything alone.” Corinne gathered her papers back into their messy pile and flipped her folder closed. She nodded toward Asher. “In addition to the big guy, here, you’ve got me and Missy and Graham and Rafe and the whole crew on your side. And I’ll keep digging, too. Something is nagging at the back of my mind about this whole situation, and I just can’t put my finger on what it is. I hate that feeling. Which means I’m not going to let this drop until I figure it all out.”

“Thanks.”

Corinne dismissed Daphanie’s word with a wave of her hand and stood to make her way out. “Don’t thank me. This is what friends do.”

Daphanie slipped out from under Asher’s hand and walked her friend toward the door. “Still—”

“Of course, friends also tell each other all the juicy details about their sex lives. Especially when they involve big, strong men with faces like Renaissance sculptures and asses you could bounce a quarter off of.”

Daphanie caught her friend’s wiggling eyebrows and shoved her playfully out the door. Even as she shot a quick glance over her shoulder to see if Asher had overheard. His expression remained as bland as ever. Which told her nothing.

“As if,” she teased back, keeping her own voice hushed. “Go get your own sex life, D’Alessandro, and stop trying to live vicariously through mine.”

“Oooh, so you and the Yummy One have a sex life? Already? Damn, girl, you work almost as fast as I do!”

“Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know. Good girls don’t kiss and tell.” And with that, she closed the door in the other woman’s face, still grinning.

Determined to get the last word, Corinne laughed at her through the thick layers of steel. “Maybe not,” she called, her voice muffled but clearly intelligible. “But bad girls have more fun!”

Eight

In the end, every human being needs to make a choice: do I continue to live my life the way I’ve always lived it and simply keep my distance from the things and creatures who frighten me? Or do I take a chance and see where this new adventure of a life among the Others will lead me?

—A Human Handbook to the Others,
Conclusion

She kept her eyes closed and her head tipped back toward the apex of the tented ceiling, showing the
loa
no fear and no shame. Again, she smelled incense and charcoal and the sweet, earthy scent of burning tobacco. Her people offered only the finest, grown not two miles away in the English’s cherished fields.

Her pulse throbbed, filling her head and trickling down the back of her throat like the rum she’d taken in Their names. Her heart beat louder, tempo increasing, urgency rising as the rhythm of the drums drove them all faster. Her feet pounded against the cool earth, the grit of dirt clinging to her soles. It was a new feeling for her, this cool, dry earth, different from the rich delta soil she’d been used to, but the dirt didn’t matter.

Neither did the air matter, cooler here, thinner, for all the complaints the white men offered when the summer sun beat down on them. They were weak. They would not have survived in the thick, tropical humidity on which she had suckled. At home, fire had been a gateway and a duty, but here, the glow of firelight became a thing of beauty, a necessity that kept the biting chill from drawing her away from Their arms.

Now the drums beat faster. Voices sang louder, driven by the drums, driven by the spirits. In the morning, the farmers and traders in the town at the tip of the island would whisper of dark rituals and dangerous spirits in the distance, and she would laugh, knowing the truth would only frighten them more than their ignorant speculations.

She felt a familiar rush of fullness within her. Her
gros bon ange
began to shrink, making room to let the greater Ones in. She could feel the power welling up within her, feel the excitement, the exaltation. She lifted her arms to the roof and gave herself over to the communion with the divine, the dark, the eternal. She felt His
ange
settle over her like a heavy weight, thick and ancient with power, and when her eyes snapped open, they were His eyes, dark with menace and bright with intent.