“Marie, we’re ready for you.”
Marie blinked herself out of her troubled thoughts and stood. Olivier had drawn a large circle with ritual powders that smelled of licorice and vanilla, along with other earthy herbs. In the center was a candle dressed with cascarilla. He stood on one side of the circle, opposite Candace. Both were barefooted.
Marie reached into her pocket to grip her chicken claw gris-gris for a moment then took a deep breath. She nodded and walked to her place near the candle. Bowing her head, she said a prayer to her family’s god, her ancestors and to the Christian god, whose teachings she still heard every Sunday morning.
When she was finished, she started to shuffle around the candle in a simple dance.
The two other House leaders began to sing quietly, Candace in her native Swahili and Olivier in French. Marie listened to their voices as they called to her ancestors to help them. They danced around her, near the inside edge of the protective circle. Their discordant melodies synced, and energy surged through her, a sign the spirits had agreed to help.
Marie flung her head back and readied herself for the blackness that always came when the spirits possessed her. The scent of the candle and potions filled her senses while the singing warbled as if traveling through water to reach her. She was fading, being replaced by a spirit.
The darkness came. It was like sleeping, except that her body was awake while her mind stepped away to allow the spirits to communicate in a language others could understand.
After a moment of pitch black, a vision formed. She saw the white zombie walking the dark streets of New Orleans with the grace of a ghost, dressed in a glowing white dress. She appeared to be following the Red Man, a mysterious figure in a maroon robe whose quick step soon outpaced the girl and Marie. With a flare of red, he disappeared from Marie’s dream, slipping easily out of her mind while the white zombie stayed.
The beautiful girl from the Fourth House stopped and bent over to touch the booted foot of a bum passed out against a building.
The man’s foot began to rot then fall a part. The deterioration crawled quickly up his body, consuming all of him, before he crumbled to a powder right before Marie’s eyes.
She stepped back, repulsed by the touch. She was able to use power channeled by spirits to kill small animals for sacrifice, just by looking at them.
But the magic she’d just seen was different.
The building the bum leaned against began to rot next, then crumble.
Everything the white zombie touched rotted and died: people, buildings.
Jayden. He was across the street, frozen mid-step.
As if she just noticed him, the white zombie started to cross the two lanes separating her from Marie’s grandson.
“Stop!” Marie shouted, chasing the vision in her dream. “You cannot have him!”
The zombie turned.
Marie stopped suddenly, afraid the girl meant to hurt her.
“Please! He is free of the curse. Leave him be!” Marie pleaded.
“He is both curse and prophecy,” the girl replied. “Just like you. Our families are linked and will remain so. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. Only the Chosen, Warriors and Devil can.”
For a moment, Marie was too stunned to talk. The white zombie had never done more than threaten her before.
The girl turned towards Jayden once more.
“Wait!” Marie said quickly. “Tell me – who is the Chosen? The Devil?”
“Good luck finding them.” The girl began walking. “Before I do,” she said over her shoulder.
Marie opened her mouth to speak or scream and warn her grandson.
She was wrenched awake. The external world was too real, too fast, and she crashed to the ground.
“Marie!” This voice wasn’t the white zombie but Candace’s.
Marie felt hands rolling her over, fingers digging into her thick neck to check her pulse. She was sweating profusely and exhausted.
A fuzzy face appeared above her. Her eyes focused once more.
“Oh, Marie!” Candace exclaimed. “How are you? Are you well?”
“Y…yes,” Marie managed. “Takes much … energy for the ritual.”
Olivier brought her water, and Candace helped her sit. Marie sipped the water, wishing again it was her Sezarec. She needed a stiff drink after the exchange with the zombie.
The two were quiet. They were gazing at one another, not at her.
“What is it?” she asked. “What did they say?”
“The Red Man isn’t the only danger. A curse and a prophecy,” Candace answered. “We can’t stop what comes. Only they can.”
“The Chosen, the Devil, the Warriors,” Marie said. What was the connection between the Red Man and white zombie? Why had she been after Jayden?
“Yes,” Olivier said. “Our salvation rests in the Fourth House that bears the curse and the prophecy.”
“What else?” Marie asked anxiously.
Candace’s eyes were filled with tears. “They said many will die. People we love. The three Houses of New Orleans will fall before the prophecy is fulfilled.”
“Unless we find those who can stop it,” Marie whispered.
Olivier nodded.
Her heart racing with fear, Marie could think of nothing except Jayden. The spirits guided her to protect him at all costs even while warning her that many would die.
Jayden was special. She didn’t fully understand why, but she had to make sure he survived whatever evil was coming. If it took her all night, she had to finish the ritual to bind the protective spells to the dog tags before he came to visit the next morning.
Chapter One
“Lookin’ good, Jayden.”
“Got your daddy’s rich-boy smile and yo’ mama’s good looks.”
“He dresses like a magazine ad.”
Jayden forced a smile at his laughing uncles and cousins. He was doing his best to hide his irritation at his mother’s side of the family. He gently threw the football back and forth with one of his uncles, not wanting to injure his uncle’s pride or aggravate the back injury that left him on unemployment.
“You get scouted yet?” another uncle called from the sideline.
“Yeah, by a few places,” Jayden said, grunting as he threw the ball again. “Nothing big yet.” He wasn’t going to tell them he entered his senior year of high school with scholarship offers from two huge football colleges, the University of Georgia and Lousiana State University.
“Maybe your daddy can make a phone call.”
The resentment was killing him. He recalled why he didn’t like coming to the family barbecues, and it was more than the rundown house north of New Orleans. He didn’t wish bad upon anyone, but he didn’t know how his grandmother’s house had withstood the hurricanes. It was the only one for miles that hadn’t been destroyed.
She’d probably tell me it was the spirits protecting her.
His eyes went to the good-sized shed leaning against the back of the house. While the men were out back with him, barbecuing, drinking and tossing the football, most of the women in the family were gathered within the shed, listening to his crazy grandma talk to the spirits of their ancestors and cast voodoo luck spells that never seemed to work for his mama. Her family was what his wealthy father referred to as ignorant.
Caught between two families that couldn’t be more different, Jayden was grateful he wasn’t more screwed up than he was.
A commotion came from the direction of the house. Jayden’s mother slammed the screen door open. She was arguing with one of her sisters. They both held glasses of alcohol and cigarettes. Jayden was too far to hear what they fought over.
“So much for being sober. She never been able to stick to anything,” one of his uncles said.