me to safety. A new strength flowed through my muscles, an ability to do whatever I needed to in order to survive. “I don’t know,” I answered as the car began to slow down. We must have been close to our destination, Russell’s house.
I still didn’t know what was going on, or anything about my most recent life.
But I had figured out how and when I got the marker. That man in the bar.
He’d run his fingers down my arm.
Then my hand stung.
He’d put that marker in me. Whoever he was, he was looking for me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Angelique:
I’ve been here before. A whisper memory rushed over me, made me feel weak, helpless. I shivered as we drove through wrought-iron gates covered with wisteria and wild bergamot, past lonely columns set like sentinels along the winding carriage road. Abandoned slave quarters stood to the left, a fleur-de-lis carved in the sagging door. Many considered the stylized iris to symbolize either the Virgin Mary or the holy trinity. But it didn’t mean that here.
There was little, if anything, holy here.
Russell lived in one of those antebellum mansions built in the mid-1800s. Tucked away in a secret corner of the city, filled with all the magical beauty of the bayou. Here the Mississippi River branched into one of the countless slow-moving streams lined with crape myrtle and camellia, oleander and oak; Spanish moss dripped from the trees like syrup; yawning alligators slithered through the freshwater marshes. Legends say that the estate belonged to one of the first New Orleans’ voodoo queens, a woman with an exotic blend of Haitian, French and African slave blood; that her mother was one of the filles du roi, mail-order brides sent by King Louis XIV for his settlers. She left a touch of gris-gris throughout the property that couldn’t be erased. Carved in the trees were recipes for her renowned fetish bags—spells that would revive love, bring wealth, heal the sick.
Perhaps she left a curse behind as well.
My legs shook as Chaz led the way up wooden stairs. Plantation shutters stood open at the windows and incandescent light filtered through.
I wasn’t going to survive the night. Something in me was going to die, some innocence, some part of me that I had been clinging to like a raft in a turbulent sea. It was going to wash away and drown, and at the same time something else would be born.
Inside the house, children laughed and danced, and their sounds echoed through the centuries.
I had a child once.
Joshua.
Chaz and I crossed the threshold and my past lives began to unwind, a spool of flesh-and-blood memories tangling around my feet and arms, a thread of images that turned serpentine, that coiled, ready to strike and bite. Each pierce of venomous fangs brought a visceral rush, an encyclopedic volume of smells and sounds.
I found myself pinned to the wall from the weight of it, unable to move or speak. Trapped in my own delight and horror, I was unable to stop its progression.
Around me, everyone began to dance to the slow-fast-slow rhythm of zydeco music.
Inside me, another dance began. The dance of life and death.
The dance of penance and pain.
The dance of remembering.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Chaz:
She stood in front of a full-length VR mirror, adjusted the projection as she tried on one outfit after another. A rapid procession of glittering, shimmering pink and white concoctions melted into one another as she pushed the remote control faster and faster. Her entire wardrobe zipped by in a blur of silk and satin and sequins. When it finally came to a halt, she was wearing a Mardi Gras hat with gold beads and lavender feathers, a black body stocking and a pink tutu.
She stamped one foot, pouted, then said the line that every woman learns at birth.
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
My five-year-old, almost-six-year-old, niece glanced up at me.
“What you have on is perfect,” I said, pretending to be serious.
Isabelle giggled then climbed up on her bed and started jumping like she was on a trampoline. “I know,” she said breathlessly between bounces. “It’s my favorite. I think I should wear this.”
“I agree completely,” I answered. I had been sent upstairs by Isabelle’s parents, a delegate with the untoward duty of persuading Her Royal Highness into coming downstairs to her own party. I fell into that strange and temporary category of grown-up uncle/best-friend confidante. Isabelle wasn’t old enough to know that one day soon she would only share her secrets with other little girls, women in