The vodou lady found me asleep on Jake’s floor. It was still dark outside. I checked my stalker watch. Three in the morning.
“I didn’t know you were back,” I said.
She had a big gym bag over her shoulder and the handle of a rolling suitcase in her other hand. She looked down at me.
“Did Veek give you a key?” I said.
“Anyone of Jake’s blood can get in, if they know how,” she said. “Did he give you a key?” she countered.
I sat up, scratching my scalp. “Why did you come back?”
She turned away. “It takes nine days to bury someone properly.” She dumped her gym bag on the floor, opened her suitcase, and calmly began unpacking things. She put a cloth over Jake’s card table. On it she put saints’ candles, empty coconut half-shells, a bunch of herbs, several empty dishes, sealed bottles and jars half full of things, trinkets and plastic toys. It looked fascinating.
I said, “What is vodou training like? How hard is it? How long does it take?”
With her back to me Mme Vulcaine replied, “It isn’t for everybody.”
“You mean, it is not for me? Why? Because I’m not African?”
“I mean, you may not be called by the lwas.”
“How would I know if I am called by the lwas?” I said.
The old woman said brusquely, “For those with ears to hear, they speak.” She did things with the objects on the tablecloth. “They belong to the earth. If you don’t know nature, you’ll have a hard time meeting them.”
I thought about the only place where I had really loved nature—at Montmorency, where I was safest and most at home. “How does one know when the lwas are speaking?”
Mme Vulcaine turned to look at me. “The lwas are with us in many ways. They arrange things so that we meet the same persons all the time. They come to us in dreams. They heighten our senses. They ask us to do things for them, things that perhaps cannot be done . . . and yet we must do them. And sometimes we find ourselves performing miracles.”
I didn’t know the right words, but I asked anyway. “And the possession?”
“That takes time, study, commitment, a pure heart, courage, and money.”
I nodded. Everything came down to money sooner or later, in my experience.
“Doesn’t it—” I began, looking inward, thinking of Jake becoming someone énorme there on his deathbed, and of Veek and his marvelous powers. “Does it sometimes happen all by itself?”
Her eyes were truly alight now. “You have someone in mind. One of the lwas has visited you?”
“Maybe.” The room was very quiet. “It—it changes the whole world, doesn’t it?”
Mme Vulcaine broke into a smile so warm that I thought she liked me, maybe. “Yes,” she said, “Yes, it does.”
I nodded. “So our Veek—is he a good witch or a bad witch?”
“Veek?”
I flapped a hand. “Jake’s friend. The one you scold. You call him a coward.”
Mme Vulcaine looked away as if I had challenged her at last. Bon. I had already decided that she must not scold Veek so much. “Then I’ve been too harsh. He backs into his bravery like a donkey backing up a staircase. But he’s no coward.”
That was so true, it made me smile. “But is he a good lwa or,” I flushed to the ears, “or is he evil?”
Mme Vulcaine shook her head. “That’s the wrong question.” She showed her teeth. It was like one of Veek’s non-smiles. “A lwa just is. He has his purpose, his place in the world.”
I thought about that. Veek called himself a sex demon. I wasn’t ready to ask Mme Vulcaine about sex demons.
She said, “What is good or bad is how you use his help, how you approach him, and for what purpose. A person may ask a lwa to do something for him—or her—which they should not ask. That’s one of my jobs, to test you for purity of heart, before you go asking the spirits to step into your skin.”
I thought about asking a lwa to step into my skin. “As long as it’s Veek, I don’t think I would mind. Can he be hurt?” I said.
“I don’t know. Can he? You’re in a better position to know than I am.” Her eyes quizzed me wickedly.
“What if you’re in love with him,” I said in a small voice. “With a lwa, I mean.”
“This is not uncommon. There is more danger if he is in love with you.” She stopped and said nothing. Was she thinking? Or probing me to the heart again? “This happens from time to time. There is a ceremony. It is very challenging, and it cannot be undone. Your life changes forever.”
I swallowed. “What’s it called?”
She smiled the real smile again. “It’s called a wedding.”
Something clanged inside me like a great door shutting, or opening.
It shocked me to realize I was seriously considering marrying Veek.
I was not some poor hungry little beggar girl, me. I expected to marry, someday in my thirties—marry a man of my own class. I had always hoped to marry someone who might not want me for money alone.
But as she said “wedding,” a great, shouted Yes! rang inside me.
I nearly fell off my chair.
Marriage to Veek, or whatever his name was, would not be such a marriage as that. Family board meetings, and choosing schools for our children, and attending charity dinners for carefully weighed reasons? No.
Would he go on the road again, as he did with Jake? So many stories Jake had told me in those few days. Fighting in bars in dusty villages out west. Sleeping among bears and wolves. Riding freight trains. Getting lost in snowstorms up in the mountains. Going to jail for bedding married women. Washing dishes for a meal.
I could save Veek from those things. But would he want me to?
Would he want me at all, in fact?
Why did I feel like he owned me?
“What,” I said, swallowing again, “if the lwa doesn’t want to marry you?”
“These things are the lwa’s choice.”
I could see why. Veek could vanish into air. One would not ask of him, Where have you been all night? like a fishwife. He said he was a sex demon. I blushed, thinking of how good he was at that. Would he give that up with everyone but me?
“Marriage to a lwa would not be like other marriages,” I said aloud this time.
“No,” she agreed.
I thought some more. “How do you know all this? Is that why you came, to fetch Jake’s body? And to see what Veek has become? To destroy him if he has been—been corrupted?”
She smiled a genuine smile again. “Oh, no. I was sent here for the same reason Jake was sent. Because I could be spared, in case your Veek destroyed me.”
My eyes grew round. “How could he do that?”
She turned her palms up and shrugged. “One never knows, with the lwas. I have become a part of my house’s investment in your friend. Now I’m expendable.”
That shocked me for two reasons. First, I couldn’t see Veek harming a soul. Second, I had thought her the wise woman of her people, full of experience and power. I narrowed my eyes at her. The puff of her lower eyelids showed that she saw things; the lines about her mouth warned that she said little. No, she had not been thrown away, like a soldier who becomes disposable the moment he puts on his uniform. They would miss her if she didn’t come back. I knew I would. I had never met anyone who could challenge my thoughts the way she did. She made me feel slow-witted.
“That’s quite an investment,” I said.
She gave me one of those looks again, as if to say, you might not be stupid.
I nodded. “Bon. Let’s get down to business. How do we find out what kind of lwa he is?”