As Henri reached Ava Ani, she reached down and picked him up by the scruff of his neck. A blade flashed, and in a moment Henri was dead, his belly opened. Ava Ani dusted fine powder around him in intricate patterns, and began to chant softly, in a strange dialect.
The chant grew louder and louder, until the sound seemed to come from inside Delice’s head. Her ears pounded. Her body no longer felt heavy and clumsy. She felt light and quick—and a fever began boiling in her veins. She rose up on her toes, threw her head back and opened her mouth.
A cool wind, light as a zephyr, sprang up. It circled around the cat, ruffling the blood-caked fur, barely disturbing the veves Ava Ani had designed around the sacrifice. It rustled through Delice’s red silk skirts. Suddenly Delice’s mouth snapped shut, and her body shuddered convulsively. Then she was still, and slowly turned her head toward Ava Ani, who bowed her head in fearful respect before the powerful djabo. A fierce, terrible beauty suffused Delice’s narrow face.
Delice spoke. “This cat pleases me. I will do as you ask. It will be my pleasure, oh yes indeed.” Delice laughed, a merry sound in the darkness, and with a swirl of red skirts was gone.
Ava Ani fled.
The rustle of silk was the only sound in the Maison DuPlessis that night. Silently, something moved through the house like an avenging angel. When the sun came up, the Vieux Carre pulsed with screams as more grotesque discoveries were made at the Maison DuPlessis.
Next to the well behind the house lay the bloody, disemboweled carcass of the DuPlessis’ cat. Fine flour had been carefully sprinkled around the body. In the ominous red early morning light, flies were already thick and buzzing on the cat’s exposed organs and its sightless china-blue eyes.
Denis DuPlessis was found in his bed. His throat was slashed, his eyeballs cut out and placed neatly, side by side, on his tongue, which had been pulled from his mouth and down over his chin. His hands had been cleanly amputated at the wrists, and lay on the gore-soaked coverlet, palms up as if in supplication.
Madame DuPlessis was also in bed with her throat cut, her nightgown pulled up around her waist, and the murder weapon sheathed to the hilt between her legs. It was a long, exquisitely sharp knife, of the kind used to cut sugar cane. Blood had spattered and splashed all over the walls and the ceiling, making glistening black rivulets as the drops rolled toward the floor.
No one in the house had heard anything except the faint sibilance of silk on the parquet tiles and the oriental carpet. But under the stench of the house, the smell of hot pennies and vomit, and sulfur, was the sweet fragrance of rose oil.
Ava Ani had been waiting. Delice arrived just at dawn, her dress stiff with blood, her eyes gleaming, her hands caked with gore. She had smiled broadly at Ava Ani.
“It was pleasant indeed, mambo. Now I return the girl to you.” Delice’s eyes rolled back and she had fallen to the floor, a limp small bundle.
Ava Ani picked her up and carried her to the fireplace. Even though the morning was stifling hot, a fire burned. In front of the fireplace there was a tub filled with the same scented water she had washed Delice with the night before. Ava Ani pulled off Delice’s red silk dress and threw it in the fire, where it smoldered, then suddenly blazed with a bright blue-and-white flame.
Delice’s eyes opened again to find herself once more at Ava Ani’s. How did she get here from the DuPlessis’? The fire caught her eye. Delice thought the flames looked clean and pure, not smudgy and orange like usual. Then she saw the remnants of her dress burning in the fire. Why was Ava Ani burning her new dress?
It was a shame to burn that pretty red dress, but Delice could not find the words to protest.
Ava Ani bathed Delice again, and the water turned red as it ran down her thin body.
“You see, ma fille. Erzulie came when Ava Ani called. Erzulie liked Madame’s fine Persian chat enough to ride you to justice. Yes, yes, it says in the Catholic Bible, justice, justice shalt thou pursue.” She poured clean water over Delice’s head as she stood in the tub.
Delice blinked. She remembered nothing of a woman named Erzulie. And what was this about liking Henri? She opened her mouth to ask, but no sound came out. Her voice was gone.
Ava Ani saw Delice’s mouth open and close, like a fish. “You cannot speak. But I think you wish to know what has happened. The DuPlessis, c’est mort. Erzulie killed them in their beds as they slept the sleep of the damned. And you, ma fille, you made a fine cheval for her. She used your feet, your hands, to do what needed to be done.” Ava Ani helped Delice step out of the tub and wrapped her in a length of white linen. She took Delice’s face in her hands and looked into her eyes.
“You remember, do you not? Madame chased you onto the roof. She had a pistol, no? She stopped there and pointed it at you, her hair all tumbling and looking like a devil from hell.”
Delice nodded. She was trembling. Her mind was so slow, her body so heavy. Her hands throbbed as though she had used them very hard. Ava Ani’s eyes searched her face.
“You ran, petite fille. You ran right off the roof and fell. Fell onto the stones in the courtyard. Fell hard.”
Delice finally understood. She was a zombi. Ava Ani had brought her back to life in order to avenge her own death. Her dark eyes widened in terror.
Now she was enslaved forever, mute and stupid. Ava Ani had stolen the blessed release of death that she had chosen for herself. The one thing she had been able to choose—denied her for eternity.
Delice tried to scream, but all she could do was breathe out a rusty croak. She tried to pull away from Ava Ani, but the mambo tightened her grip on Delice’s face and shook her head.
“Your work is done here, ma pauve. I have no more need for you. Soon you will sing again. This time, with the angels.” She began to chant low, swaying with the rhythm of the song. Delice swayed with her, her hands curled around Ava Ani’s wrists, her eyes shut. A white fog filled her mind and she thought she heard singing.
“Mambo Ava Ani?”
Ava Ani whirled, her white skirts flashing in the darkness. “Who wants to know?” she replied, hiding her fear under anger.
“Philippe LaPlace,” came the response. “Why are you here? Did the . . . information I gave you not serve?” Philippe came forth from behind a tomb.
“It served me very well,” Ava Ani replied, her teeth clenched. She did not like this bokor-man of the Cochon Gris. But she could not be rude. She had come to him, filled with rage and grief for the victims of the DuPlessis. He had helped her in her plan to rid New Orleans of them, and taught her the powerful dark voudou she would need to know. She knew Philippe was powerful, and he frightened her. Still, she did not care to be spied on. She turned away from him in order to place a linen-wrapped bundle into the tomb she had just opened.
“So I heard,” he said. A low chuckle echoed in the deep indigo shadows. “Erzulie is a creative one, is she not?”
Ava Ani shuddered. Philippe came forward and stood next to her. He ran his hand along the open edge of the tomb. “You sent the little girl back then?” he asked. “Pity.”