Music and Malice in Hurricane Town, page 8
“Hello, Marietta. Yes, it’s me. I’m afraid I’m not quite done calling in favours. I need you to dress this girl and make her presentable enough to get into the Fang tonight.”
Marietta was middle-aged, her dark hair scraped back into a severe bun. She wore a red skirt and jacket two-piece, with scarlet lipstick to match. She couldn’t have looked more appalled if a zombie had just walked in. Tight-lipped, she said, “I’ll close the store. You can come through to the back.”
She locked the door and showed Jude to a fitting room. Her Royalty charm, like Ivory’s, was extremely ornate, dangling from the end of a chain that sparkled with rubies. Jude saw that her hands trembled slightly.
“How have you done this, Ivory?” she asked. “What devilry is this?”
“None of your concern,” the cajou queen snapped. “And you’d better not whisper a word of it to anyone either. I’ll come back for you if you do, I swear it.”
Marietta raised her hand. She’d gone white to the lips. “Please,” she said. “There’s no need for threats. I won’t tell a soul.” She looked Jude up and down and her mouth twisted in obvious displeasure. “The girl will wear a beauty charm, of course,” she said.
“The girl will not,” Jude replied, pushing the cajou queen aside before she could speak for her.
Let me choose what I wear, she warned Ivory inside her head. Or I’m not going.
Very well, she replied. Although you’d be a fool not to take a beauty charm from Marietta. She has some that are extremely powerful.
I don’t care.
Leeroy had tried to persuade Jude to wear a beauty charm several times while they’d been dating.
“All women wear some kind of beauty charm in Baton Noir,” he’d said one day in Jude’s bedroom. “It’s like wearing make-up.”
“I don’t wear make-up either,” Jude had replied.
Then he’d produced a beauty charm from his pocket and clipped it to the brace of Jude’s dungarees before she could stop him.
“There,” he’d said, looking delighted. “Isn’t that better?”
Jude’s eyes went to the mirror on the opposite wall and she saw how the charm had smoothed away her freckles, evened her pale skin tone, brightened her eyes, concealed several little blemishes and immediately made her look far more attractive. But it wasn’t real. It wasn’t her. She tore it off and thrust it back at Leeroy.
“I don’t want it,” she’d said. “I … you know how I feel about cajou.”
His eyes narrowed and his expression went suddenly cold. “Well, that’s a nice thank you. This cost a week’s wages.”
“I’m sorry, Leeroy, but I really don’t want it. Perhaps they’ll give you a refund if you take it back to the store?”
Leeroy stared at her for a moment, then slowly shook his head and gave a harsh laugh. “I never met a girl who thought she was above a beauty charm before. I hate to break it to you, Jude, but you’re not the looker you obviously think you are.”
How that comment had shrivelled her heart in her chest! The frustration of being so profoundly misunderstood. Jude didn’t think herself above beauty charms, it was simply that she was quite happy being plain. She had never wanted to be beautiful.
“I’ll wear a dress if I have to,” she said to Ivory. “But that’s it.”
“At least let me do something about your figure,” Marietta said. She flapped her hands at Jude and said, “Look at you. You’re all straight edges. Like a boy. Most of my gowns won’t fit you.”
Do you really think you can do better than me? Leeroy’s voice whispered, incredulous, inside her mind. Gods, Jude! My little brother’s got bigger tits than you.
Jude forced the memory away. Crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “That’s your problem,” she said. “I’d be quite happy going in dungarees.”
After a bit of fussing around, Marietta produced a long grey dress with a sweeping skirt and an open back that had a timeless look of elegance about it, especially when they added a pair of long white gloves. Once the dress had been sorted out, Marietta produced a pair of silver high heels but Jude shook her head.
“No can do,” she said. “Couldn’t walk in ’em, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”
Marietta sighed. “I suppose we could find you some flat satin slippers, as long as they’re strappy and sparkly—”
“I’m keeping my boots,” Jude cut her off.
The witch looked at her, aghast. Ivory sighed inside her head.
“You can’t!” Marietta said.
“Why not?” Jude replied. “The dress is so long that it hides my feet anyway, so what does it matter?”
“It … it just does!”
“Too bad,” Jude said. “I’m walking into a vampire’s lair. I’m wearing shoes I can rely on if I suddenly need to run away.”
She picked up Beau from his snoozing spot by the mirror and draped him over her shoulders before going to the counter and taking the bag from Marietta. She was almost out of the door when she paused, looked back and said, “Oh, and one other thing.” She gestured at the window. “Ivory wants you to release all these fairies. Immediately.”
Marietta scowled but gave a curt nod. Jude disappeared out of the door before Ivory could correct her. Fortunately, the cajou queen didn’t seem to care much what happened to the fairies either way and so as Jude walked away from Goblin Street, she was pleased that at least she’d been able to do some good with her shopping trip.
The shopping isn’t done yet, Ivory piped up inside her mind. We need to get the ingredients for a gris-gris bag.
I’m not doing any black magic, Jude protested.
You certainly are, Ivory replied. Only a fool would go walking into a vampire’s lair without magical protection. You need a concealment charm. Vampires have heightened senses. There’s always a chance he might sense me, somehow.
Sofia—
Sofia might be able to do a spell on your behalf but it will be more powerful if it comes from you. Ask her if you don’t believe me.
Jude went straight to Sofia’s store and asked the question.
“She’s right,” her friend said. “The spell will be more powerful if you do it yourself.”
Jude sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
She left Sofia at the counter and walked around the store, picking out all the items Ivory wanted her to get – nails, herbs, salt, roots, crystal and the hottest red pepper they had.
You must always put an odd number of objects in a gris-gris bag, Ivory said. No more than thirteen and no less than three—
I don’t care, Jude replied. Spare me the lesson. Just tell me what I need to do.
That’s everything apart from the graveyard dirt and the chicken, the cajou queen replied.
Chicken? What the hell do I need a goddamn chicken for?
Ivory sighed. After you’ve assembled the bag you need to cut out the chicken’s heart and—
No, Jude said.
The cajou queen paused. What do you mean, no?
I’m not killing a chicken.
A goat then.
No.
Why not?
I won’t do blood magic.
The thought of it disgusted Jude. She knew that it happened, of course. Sometimes it seemed it was impossible to walk through Cadence Square without seeing the evidence of some gruesome cajou rite that had been carried out the night before – a half-dead rooster, still tied to a tree, with nine silver pins sticking from its chest, or a skinned chicken weeping its guts out into the dirt. She had seen hundreds of gentle goats plodding placidly through the Hurricane Quarter alongside their handlers, en route to their doom. Animals had no say in the matter, no defence against cajou evil at all. And it wasn’t right. Jude felt her resolve hardening into a solid core of anger within her.
Ivory sighed. Most cajou magic is blood magic, girl. And you eat meat, don’t you? What’s the difference?
I’m not killing any animal for cajou spells, Jude said. There must be another way.
The gris-gris bag needs some kind of sacrifice, Ivory said. An animal sacrifice is the most powerful kind.
But not the only kind? Jude pushed.
No, Ivory admitted. There’s another method you can use to seal the gris-gris, but I expect you won’t like that either.
Tell me anyway.
You have to lie to a friend, Ivory said. Or break a promise. The bigger the lie, or the betrayal, the more powerful the spell.
Jude decided that was preferable to chicken-killing, so when Sofia asked her what she needed the ingredients for and whether there was anything she could do to help, Jude told her that she was performing a spell to aid Ivory’s memory of that night and they still had no idea what their next move should be.
Is that it? hissed Ivory. Such a feeble lie is next to useless.
It isn’t feeble to me, Jude replied. The invitation says you can bring a guest. I was thinking of asking Sofia to come with me tonight and now I can’t. I’ll have to go by myself.
I suppose it’ll have to do, Ivory sighed.
Jude said goodbye to Sofia and then went to the nearest cemetery, St Jacqueline’s, to gather some graveyard dirt. She filled the jar she’d brought from the store and then straightened up. Her eye fell immediately on a man a few feet away from her. He was tall and lanky, all knobbly elbows and strange angles. He wasn’t moving, just leaning against a shovel, staring at a nearby crypt.
Jude felt Ivory’s flash of alarm at the sight of him.
What is it?
That’s the Gravedigger, Ivory replied. One of the cool legba. Just back away from him slowly. Don’t touch him.
The Gravedigger tilted his head, as if he’d heard Ivory’s words somehow. He had bushy white hair that puffed out from a large bald spot on top of his head. It blew about in the warm breeze, although the man himself still didn’t move.
What happens if I touch—Jude began.
Girl, you don’t want to know.
Clutching the jar, Jude took a few slow steps back until her nerve broke and she turned and fled from the cemetery.
Back away SLOWLY, I said! Ivory hissed.
Behind her Jude could hear an odd high-pitched laugh that sounded as if it should come from a woman, but when she glanced behind her, she saw only the Gravedigger. To her relief, he was still bent over his shovel, staring at the crypt, although his shoulders shook with mirth.
You better not do that if we ever come across Garrow, Ivory scolded as Jude left the cemetery. If you ever turn your back on Garrow he’ll—
“I don’t want to know what he’d do!” Jude exclaimed. “I don’t want to know who he is. How can I even see them anyway?”
You can see them because I can, Ivory replied. And we’re both looking through the same pair of eyes at the moment.
“So that was really Baron Lukah I saw outside Sidney’s house yesterday?” Jude asked. She paused at a street corner to catch her breath. “The legba of death himself right there on the street, smoking a pipe?”
Baron Lukah is very fond of smoking, dear, Ivory replied. And he’s got to smoke somewhere after all.
Jude recalled those blank, smoked glasses and couldn’t help shuddering at the thought that she really had been that close to the legba of death. She’d felt his shadow looming over their home many times, but to actually look at his face was another matter altogether.
You’d better get on home, Ivory prompted her. There are things we must do to prepare.
Jude tried to push all thoughts of Baron Lukah from her mind as she headed for home.
As Jude walked, the laughter of the Gravedigger rang in her ears the entire way. When she arrived home, she made straight for her room before her pa could see her and start asking questions about the twelve-foot cajou python round her neck, the jar of graveyard dirt in her hand or the contents of any of the odd-smelling bags she carried. She closed her bedroom door, locking it behind her, and deposited Beau on her bed, where he promptly curled into a coil on her pillow.
“Right,” she said to Ivory. “You’d better tell me what to do.”
You need to set up the altar first, Ivory said. Can’t perform any spells or rituals without an altar.
Jude sighed. As someone who hated magic and cajou with a passion, the last thing she wanted in her bedroom was a black magic altar, but she proceeded to follow Ivory’s instructions.
You need to include the four elements, the cajou queen said. A bowl of water for water, a stick of incense for air, a black candle for fire and a jar of graveyard dirt for earth. Arrange them in a cross shape, with the incense at the top and the dirt at the bottom. The candle is in the east and the water in the west. I don’t suppose you care but the cross shape is very powerful in cajou. We used to make all our deals with devils at a cross in the road, after all. Before the swamp devils arrived and pushed the old devils out. Now you just need a grugii.
“A what?”
A grugii. It’s like a kind of guide to direct the magic. Beau will have been working on one for you. It’s probably ready by now.
Jude looked over at her bed, and the snake was already gliding down towards her. He stopped beside her knee and then opened his mouth wide and started to make a gurgling noise. Jude recoiled.
“Oh no, he’s not going to be sick, is he?” she asked. She dreaded to think what kind of things the python might puke up on her bedroom floor. “What does he eat anyway? Should I be feeding him?”
Don’t worry about that, the cajou queen replied. He gets his sustenance from the spirit world. And he isn’t going to be sick. He’s giving you your grugii.
The next second, an object slid from Beau’s jaws, landing on the floorboards with a clatter. Jude grabbed a handkerchief to wipe off the snake saliva before holding it up to examine it properly, and gasped.
When Jude was at her lowest, when her pa was being particularly difficult and she felt wrung out with the effort of trying to keep them going, she had often imagined her despair as a sort of octopus. A tentacled thing that clung to her back and refused to let go. And now here was another octopus in her hand – only it wasn’t dreadful and debilitating, it was weird and beautiful and lovely.
Despite herself, Jude was a little bewitched.
“She’s glorious,” she breathed.
The object in her hand was about the size of her palm and made from delicate china. Half girl, half octopus, she lay on her front, propped up on her elbows, gazing dreamily at something only she could see. Her top half was human, with red hair tied up on her head and red freckles dusting her pale face and shoulders. Her bottom half was a mass of octopus tentacles, black as night, shiny as oil. They looked as if they’d suddenly frozen mid-writhe. It was a peculiar, dark thing, but Jude loved it immediately.
Place it on the altar, Ivory said. Then you light the candle and the incense and put the gris-gris bag in the centre of the cross.
Jude did as she’d said. The gris-gris bag was a small velvet drawstring pouch, red for protection, with magic words inked on to the lining. Ivory had Jude bless each of the items she’d bought at Sofia’s store and put them into the bag one by one. Then she had to pick up the bag in both hands, raise it to her lips and breathe into it.
Now draw the cords tightly, Ivory said. At this point we would normally soak the bag in chicken blood but you’ll just have to hope that your lie does the trick instead. And pray that nothing untoward happens tonight.
Jude prepared a simple supper for her pa and then told him she was going to band practice. He didn’t think anything of it, and why should he? Musicians all across the city would be practising every evening in the days leading up to Cajou Night.
Jude couldn’t exactly walk out of the house in her evening gown, so she stuffed it into a bag and then went down to the wooden pier at the back of the house where she hopped on to the swamp boat. It was a relic from their life before, when her pa had still been able to work as a gator man and swamp guide. He never set foot in the boat now, of course, but Jude still loved it.
She had decorated it with the orange cajou beads and plastic trumpets her guardian angel had sent her over the last couple of years, and the necklaces clicked together as she got on board. The propellers started up their usual roar and Jude eased the stick forward to set off carefully down the swampy canal.
It was wide enough for a couple of boats to pass each other in opposite directions, but nowhere near large enough to be able to put the accelerator down full throttle and tear around, skimming over the water, as she had loved to do when they still lived in the Firefly Swamps.
There were no fireflies here but there were ancient, knotted trees that lined the banks, leaning their crooked trunks out over the water, with long tendrils of swamp moss and cajou ivy hanging down in thick curtains from their branches. You had to keep watch for the cajou ivy because it seemed to have a mind of its own and would move around in the shadows, reaching for you with its hairy branches.
The trees were thought to absorb evil and negativity so if a hex or a jinx was placed at their base, the tree was supposed to neutralize its power. This explained the dolls. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, resting against the base of every tree, their misshapen heads lolling on their shoulders, their bright button eyes staring without seeing.
Jude figured they were dolls that people had found hidden under their front porches or buried in their backyards. Not all cajou dolls were supposed to cause harm. Some, like Ivory Monette’s leapfrog poppet, were protective in nature. But the dolls here all seemed to have malicious intent behind them, as evidenced by their sewn-together lips or scorched hands, the nails driven into their stomachs or the needles in their eyes. After discovering these mutilated versions of themselves, people would offer them to the swamp trees in the hope that they would be able to absorb the evil from the dolls.
Leaving the poppets behind, Jude found a deserted side river to get changed in, then navigated the boat straight down Squid Ink Canal towards the Gargoyle Bridge. The old stone structure was hung with dozens of glass zombie bottles decorated with feathers and beads, with misshapen clay heads for corks. Most of the heads had lopsided eyes and lips that had been sewn shut. Zombie bottles were dark magic that had been illegal before the war but now hung here in plain sight, brazen and bold. People paid a great deal of money to cajou priestesses and conjurers to obtain these items, in the hope of turning the object of the spell into a zombie who would lose their free will entirely and do only the bottle owner’s bidding.
