Et voilà, the man before us was Sophie’s father again. He took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at it with interest. “Where did that come from?”
“You were possessed by Baron Samedi, Papa.” Sophie seemed awed. “He spoke. He laid commands on us. You have been a vodou horse!”
“Nonsense,” Henri said. But I noticed he looked toward the trees beyond his pile of shopping bags.
“He was—you were—he was huge!” Sophie’s eyes went round. I squinted at her in suspicion. She hadn’t been so impressed when Samedi spoke to us through Jake. She gasped, “You were magnificent, Papa! C’est incroyable!”
Then I saw what she was about. My clever Sophie!
My cousin Henri darted a glare between the two of us and the trees. He pointed at us with the cigar and then put it in his mouth again. “Stay here. Don’t move.”
We stood still. As before, I didn’t try to fight his compulsion—but I didn’t accept it, either.
He ran to the edge of the circle and stood on one of the stone slabs. From there he reached up into a tree and brought down a video camera festooned with duct tape. This he carried into the circle, thumbing the controls, with Samedi’s cigar sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
Sophie squeezed the back of my arm. I didn’t look at her. We waited while her father watched the playback.
A strange voice made small by the camera cried, “Who is this horse I am riding?”
The man who would be vicomte gasped. He nearly dropped the camera. He carried it under one of the bright lights and watched again, his face changing ludicrously from astonishment to alarm to delight. He ran to the limestone slab by the tree and examined it. His raincoat, which he had removed and laid in the grass, was half-trapped under the slab. He tugged at it futilely. There was no moving that slab. Then he ran from slab to slab, exclaiming as he found that each was a little off from its original place, turned or tilted or sunk deep in one corner where Samedi had dropped it.
“Mon Dieu. Mon Dieu. I did this. I did this,” he repeated.
Sophie and I exchanged glances now. I shrugged.
She said, “No, Papa, you did not. It was Baron Samedi. Veek called him, and he came.”
“But he possessed me,” her father breathed. “I thought it would be the nègre here. Mon Dieu.” He looked at me. “Do it again. I’ll put the camera back. We’ll do it again!”
I thought it was time to show my hand at last. “That’s not how you treat a gede.”
Henri put his free hand into his coat pocket. “Say the prayer. Do the thing with the spray paint.”
“The Baron doesn’t come when you ask. He comes when he wills.” I folded my arms.
“He’ll come when I will!”
I shook my head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But Henri didn’t seem to be paying attention. “I’ll learn. I’ll pay them to teach me to call your Baron, and he’ll come again. This power is mine! You can’t stop me from getting it! Then you’ll bend the knee to me, when I am Baron”—he snapped his fingers—“who you said—”
“The vodou people will teach you,” Sophie volunteered. “For a price.”
“Pff!” Her father waved the price away. “I can afford it. How long is the training?” He paced back and forth eagerly, holding the video camera in both hands, thumbing the controls. “Can I do it while I’m doing my work? Or must I go to New Orleans like my ancestor?” He told Sophie, “You can marry the banker’s son. He’ll run the companies for me. Then I’ll be free to—ah!” He broke off in satisfaction as a cell phone rang.
Sophie was sputtering indignantly. “I’m marrying Veek!” she cried, sending the hairs sticking straight up on the back of my neck.
“Nonsense.” Henri fished out his phone. “Yes? Yes, well, what’s the result?” His face darkened. “What?”
Sophie flung her hands in the air in triumph. “It’s a match!” She danced on her toes. “It’s a match! A match! Veek is the vicomte!” she shrieked.
“Go home to bed and be damned,” Henri snarled into the phone. To me he said, “I don’t care. I’m keeping Montmorency. And when I have this power”—he brandished the video camera—“when the gods speak through me, I’ll have even more!”
He tried to reach into his coat pocket, but he had his phone in one hand and the video camera in the other. Finally he flung the phone to the ground, panting, and plunged his hand into the pocket.
“Now,” he panted. “The spray paint. Say the prayer. Or I will strangle her.”