Chapter Thirty-Two

The three of us stood in a half circle around the only stone marker in the graveyard, as the sun dipped below the trees.

Edward shone a flashlight across the surface. The years of sun and wind and rain had worn off the name, if there’d ever been one there at all.

“You’re sure this is it?” I asked.

“Only someone of extreme importance would warrant a stone,” Diana said.

“That doesn’t mean the voodoo queen was buried here.”

“Look at this.” She indicated the far side of the marker, and I bent down next to her.

Chalked Xs marked the white surface, just as they marked Marie Laveau’s tomb at St. Louis Number One. People believed if they drew the Xs, scratched the ground three times with their feet, or rapped three times on the grave, their wish would be granted.

Obviously the person buried here had enough power to help devotees from beyond the grave. I only hoped she could help us.

“OK,” I agreed. “You’re certain this is our voodoo queen and not another?”

She straightened. “Why don’t we ask her?”

“Do you know her name?”

“Not really.”

In the process of unpacking my bag, I glanced up. “What do you mean, ‘not really’?”

“She’s referred to only as the woman of great magic. Is that a problem?”

“Could be. In everything I’ve read it says you must repeat the name of the dead three times to call them out of the grave.”

“Is that what Mezareau did?”

My forehead creased as I recalled the symphony of names swirling through my head. “I think so.”

“What do you mean, you think so?” Edward demanded. “Don’t you know?”

I hadn’t told Edward much about the night of the last full moon. I liked my head attached to my shoulders just the way it was.

“I know the ritual,” I said, which wasn’t an answer, but it was all that I had.

“What if we don’t call her name?” Diana asked.

“Either she won’t come,” I threw out my arm, “or I might raise everyone here.”

Edward cursed in German. “Out of my way.” He elbowed me aside.

I frowned as he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, then laid it atop the stone. He ran a pencil quickly back and forth across the page. Diana and I exchanged glances; she shrugged.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Grave etching. I used to do this as a teenager on a boring Saturday night.”

Which, somehow, didn’t surprise me.

“Her name was…” He frowned, straightened, and turned the paper in our direction.

The word Mawu had appeared in the midst of the pencil marks. Creepy.

“What’s that mean?” Diana asked.

“Mawu was the creator goddess of Dahomey.”

“Which was?”

“A great empire in West Africa where most of the slaves in Haiti came from. The Europeans referred to the area as the Slave Coast because the Dahomey had a great army and they conquered most of the tribes surrounding them.”

“Then sold their enemies into slavery,” Diana said.

“As well as their own people. The Dahomey were way ahead of the pack in getting rid of undesirables—namely sorcerers and priests. They didn’t take orders very well.”

“Which meant the religion was transported to Haiti.”

“And from there it eventually came here.”

“So the religion of Dahomey became voodoo?”

“Pretty much, with the addition of whatever other gods and goddesses the slaves wanted to add.”

“All fascinating information,” Edward murmured, “but what does it have to do with us?”

“Mawu wasn’t just a creator goddess; she was also a goddess of the moon.”

We tilted our heads upward and stared at the rising full white moon.

“I guess that explains why Henri was so freaked out by my name,” Diana murmured. “He was cursed by a moon goddess; then I show up with basically the same name, different language.”

“Funny he never mentioned the similarity.”

“Henri didn’t mention much beyond how he wanted to kill me, or screw me, maybe both at the same time, drink my blood, bathe in it, yada yada.”

Henri had been a real laugh riot.

“He didn’t seem the type to give a shit about the names of his slaves or what they meant,” I said.

“Knowing him, he changed her name to Susie and left it at that.”

“Probably,” Diana agreed. “Now that we know her name, let’s get moving.”

“How do you intend to put her back?” Edward asked quietly.

“Huh?”

“Once you raise the voodoo queen I cannot allow her to leave this graveyard.”

“Someone might notice a dead woman walking,” Diana said. “Even in New Orleans.”

“There’s, uh, something I didn’t tell you about the bokor ’s zombies.”

Edward lifted a brow and remained silent, waiting.

“They aren’t exactly zombie zombies.”

“Cassandra,” Diana said, “you aren’t making any sense.”

“They live again, as if they’d never died. They appear completely human.”

The two of them stared at me as if I’d lost my mind; then they started to laugh.

“I’m serious!”

“OK.” Diana managed to control her mirth; then she pointed to the grave. “Show me.”

I glanced at the sky—completely dark, except for the perfectly round moon. I picked up the knife and slashed my arm.

“Damn it!” Diana exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

“The ritual.” I let the blood drip into the bowl, then quickly wrapped my arm. “Back up.”

I did as Mezareau had taught me, filling a second bowl with water from a bottle and sprinkling it in a circle around the grave—me on the inside, Diana and Edward on the outside. I shook my ason and recited the chant.

“Come back to us now. Come back. Death is not the end. Live again as you once lived. Forget you ever died. Follow me into the world. Come back to us now. Come back.”

I slammed the rum, tossed the cup over my shoulder, and lifted the bowl full of blood. I waited for the dizziness that had occurred the last time, but it didn’t come. Which was just as well. Since I had to complete the ritual on my own, I needed all my wits.

Tipping the bowl, I watched the blood tumble through the air and darken the ground that comprised the grave.

Nothing happened.

“The name,” Edward murmured.

Oh, yeah.

“Mawu. Mawu. Mawu.”

That worked like a charm.

The ground tumbled outward, the brown dirt marred with what appeared to be white sand. The earth trembled. I glanced at the others.

Diana was staring, horrified, fascinated—at me. Edward peered calmly at the ground. I followed his gaze and my mouth fell open.

What I’d first thought was sand had solidified into bones. That hadn’t happened in Haiti, but then those people had been newly dead, not dust.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the sight. The bones moved on their own in a j erky march toward one another; when they met, they knit together. At any moment I expected to hear an old-time chorus of “Dry Bones.”

The knee bone ’s connected to the thighbone.

I shook my head. Now I’d never stop hearing it.

A skeleton emerged atop the grave. Wet, sucking sounds erupted and flesh appeared from nowhere.

Slowly, the figure took the shape of a woman and rose.

But she didn’t look right.

Her hair had grown back in patches, leaving bald spots all over her head. The ebony flesh had returned, but not all of it, so there were holes here and there where white bone shone through. Her teeth were rotted, her eyelids closed. Would her eyes grow back?

“Oh, yeah, that’s gonna pass for human,” Diana muttered.

“Shut up,” I said, and my voice shook. What had I done wrong?

The zombie’s eyelids opened, and her eyes gazed into mine, dark, endless pools of sorrow. Make that: What had I done?

“Master,” she said. “How may I serve you?”

“Master?” Edward murmured. “I don’t believe I like the sound of that.”

I didn’t, either.

“You’re Mawu, the voodoo queen?”

“Yes, master.”

“Why are you calling me master?”

“You raised me from the dead to be your slave.”

“No.”

Her head tilted and part of her nose fell off. Diana made a gagging sound. I wanted to do the same.

“That is the only reason to raise a zombie. It is why we so fear becoming one.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My people were slaves. Only death could release us. To become a slave after death is what we fear the most.”

“Ask her,” Diana interrupted. “We don’t know how long we have.”

“Mawu, you cursed a man. Henri Ruelle.”

She wrapped her skeletal arms around herself and rocked. “I called on the moon to make him a beast.”

“How do we unmake him?”

Her lips tightened and she spit out a tooth. Lovely.

“He was evil even before the curse. Why would you release him?”

Henri had been a people-owning, selfish prick of a rapist. But this wasn’t about him.

“We know what he did to you,” I said gently. “He deserved to be punished. But… Is it true that when Henri dies the next male in line becomes a loup-garou?”

“Of course. That is how these things are done.”

“It’s been a hundred and fifty years. There’s a man and his son who don’t deserve this.”

“Is Henri still suffering?”

Elise had tried to cure him, but since Henri had been cursed and not bitten, the cure hadn’t worked very well. Henri now spent a lot of time screaming mindlessly behind the bars of his cage.

“He suffers horribly,” I said.

Mawu smiled, not a pretty sight. “Good.”

“We were told only you could end the curse.”

“No.”

“Make her,” Diana murmured, her face intense. “She’s your slave.”

I winced. “But—”

“Cassandra, think of Luc, if not Adam. Think of me. Order her to release Henri. That’s why we did this.”

I didn’t want to force the poor woman to do anything; she’d been forced enough. But Diana was right.

This entire fiasco of a zombie raising would be for nothing if we didn’t get what we’d come for.

Edward encouraged me with a dip of his chin, so I did what I didn’t want to do. “I command you to remove the curse of the crescent moon from the Ruelle family.”

“I did not mean I would not, master; I meant I could not.”

Diana made a soft sound of distress, and I lifted one hand to silence her. “I was told the voodoo queen who did the cursing could remove it.”

“That is not true. Only by committing the ultimate sacrifice can a curse be lifted. Only then will Henri and his descendants be freed.”

“What’s the ultimate sacrifice?”

“Only Henri can decide that.”

“Hell,” Diana muttered.

“Exactly.” Mawu turned her attention to me. “Is there anything else you require of me, master?”

I waited until Edward and Diana had moved off a few feet, then put their heads together and started to whisper, before I asked, “Do you know why you came back like this?”

“You called me out of my grave.”

“The bokor who taught me the ritual raised the dead to live again—as warm, complete, breathing, thinking people.”

She nodded and her earring came flying off. I moved closer, squinted. Make that her ear.

“I have heard of this. To change the shape of the dead—their very nature—a bokor who can change his or her very nature is needed. A lougaro.”

My heart stuttered. The word was both familiar and slightly different.

“A what?” I managed.

“Shape-shifter.”

“Werewolf?” I whispered.

“A lougaro can be anything.”

Of course it could.

Edward was suddenly right next to me. “What did she say?”

Nothing I wanted him to hear.

“She said I was mistaken,” I blurted. “The dead can’t be raised to live as before.”

“No shit,” Diana muttered, but Edward contemplated me with an expression bordering on pity. I wondered, not for the first time, how much he knew.

“You must never raise the dead again,” Mawu said.

“What about those who shouldn’t be dead?” I asked.

“Who are you to say who should and should not die? Only the Gran Met can decide that.”

In theory, I agreed with her. In truth, Sarah shouldn’t be dead.

For a walking corpse Mawu was very perceptive. She grabbed my arm. I could feel every bone in her hand pressing against my skin. I fought not to pull away, afraid I’d take several of her appendages with me.

“Death is just the beginning,” she whispered.

“Of what?”

“The next adventure in our path.”

The far-off shriek of something large and furry made all of us turn our heads.

“Bobcat,” I murmured, really hoping I was right.

Mawu’s face became fearful. “Please put me back, master. Quickly.”

“Do you know how to return her to the grave?” Edward asked.

I lifted my hand and blew salt into her face. A bright light nearly blinded me as she burst into a million silver sparkles. When I opened my eyes again, the voodoo queen was gone. I began to stuff my utensils into my bag.

“According to Renee,” Edward said, “only a bokor can raise the dead.”

“So?”

He stepped into the circle and pressed a silver crucifix to my forehead.

I j erked away. “Knock that off!”

“You just raised the dead, which makes you an evil sorcerer.”

“You told me to!”

He sniffed. “That doesn’t make you any less evil.”

“I’m not evil. Or at least I’m not any more evil than the next person. And you can quit poking me with silver.”

I wiggled my fingers, which I’d kept adorned in silver rings ever since I’d met Henri. Then I lifted my knife and pointed to the wound I’d made with it.

Edward shrugged. “Who is to say silver works on a sorcerer anyway.”