Enid’s face contorted into a frozen mask of outrage.
“No!” she hissed. Jude realized she was talking to Ivory when she said, “You promised the crown would be mine!”
She reached out towards Jude, as if half thinking of simply taking the snakes from her shoulders, but both pythons immediately reared up, hissing ferociously, exposing their fangs, which were dripping with cajou venom.
Enid snatched her hand back and an object soared through the sky from the crowd, landing at Jude’s feet. She looked down and saw it was the Phantom’s mask, and a thrill of excitement raced through her. She hadn’t even had to ask this time. She scooped it up from the floor and passed it wordlessly to the Phantom, who pressed it back to his face with trembling hands.
“You lying bitch!” Enid exclaimed up on the stage, still having some kind of argument with Ivory that they could only hear one side of.
Jude looked up and saw that she’d been joined by another person on the stage, someone that only she could see. It was Baron Lukah, leaning against the podium in a casual position, one hand in his pocket and the other holding the stopwatch in front of him.
“Any minute now, I’d say,” he murmured.
“I don’t care if you meant to trick me or not!” Enid exclaimed. “You’ve broken our agreement. The only reason I agreed to have you in the first place was for the crown. Without that you’re worth nothing to me!”
And then, before everyone’s eyes, Enid pushed Ivory’s spirit right out of her body. From the gasps around her, Jude realized that everyone else could see Ivory’s ghost too. She looked just as she had whenever Jude had glimpsed her in a mirror – an old woman, dressed in her finery, with blood running down her face in lines from her sliced scalp and gaping throat. To think that she had willingly allowed this to happen to herself made the sight even more horrible and Jude shuddered.
“You!” the cajou queen snarled, glaring at Jude with such a look of hatred that she had to force herself not to take a step back. “You stupid girl! You don’t know what you’ve done!”
Through Ivory’s transparent form, Jude saw Enid scramble from the stage and disappear into the crowd. The Phantom must have noticed too, because he took a step in her direction but then paused, seeming to hesitate.
“You think being queen is easy?” Ivory went on. Her ghost already seemed a little paler and thinner than it had before. “You think it’ll make you happy and solve your problems? Just you wait!” She let out a cruel laugh. “Just you wait!”
“Excuse me, madam.”
Ivory whirled round to see Baron Lukah standing behind her. The legba smiled at her. “You are late for our appointment,” he said in a soft voice.
Ivory recoiled from him. “No!” she cried. “I’m not… I’m not ready to go with you!”
“And yet you must,” Baron Lukah replied. “Just the same. No one escapes from me a second time.”
He wrapped his hand round Ivory’s wrist and although she struggled in his grip she didn’t seem to have any effect on the legba, and the effort only made her ghost fade even faster.
Finally she gave a dry sob, then her head snapped up and there was venom in her eyes as she looked at Jude.
“Very well,” she gasped. “If I must go then so be it. But with my last dead breath, I curse you, Jude Lomax!”
Her hand disappeared inside her own chest and when it came back out it was filled with a sticky black mass that seemed to writhe and wriggle in her hand like a pile of snakes. Before Jude could take in what was happening, Ivory threw this straight at her.
A large body curled round her as the Phantom yanked her back, putting himself between her and the dead cajou queen. The wriggling black mass hit him right between the shoulder blades and Jude felt his body shudder with the impact.
Icy air rushed past them and there was a noise, close by and yet out of sight, a clip-clop that sounded a bit like the sound of goat’s hooves on the cobbles as cajou priestesses shepherded them off for sacrifice. Only it was a bigger, louder sound than that, like the noise Jude expected a horse’s shoes might make. Then there was a warm snort of exhaled air on the back of her neck and she whipped her head round, fully expecting to see a horse standing right behind her. But there was nothing.
“Enough,” Baron Lukah said. “Time to go.”
He dragged Ivory Monette into the spirit world, impervious to the fact that she screamed the entire way, leaving the stage empty and everything quiet. Jude wriggled free of the Phantom’s grip and twisted him round on the spot, thinking there would be a bloody wound in his back, but there wasn’t a mark on him.
“What what was that?” she said. The snakes shifted restlessly on her shoulders. Jude could sense their disquiet and suddenly had a very bad feeling about what had just happened. She came back round to face the Phantom. “What did she do? Are you hurt?”
“I am fine,” he said, but his voice came out in a gasp.
“You’re lying,” Jude said.
And then she heard it – the soft, shivering beat-beat-beat of a heart that shouldn’t be there. The Phantom tried to draw his hands away but Jude tightened her grip and pulled off his gloves, and the cold shock of seeing what she had known all along she would see hit her like a blow.
The little black heart on the Phantom’s palm was misshapen, twisted and toxic, and they both knew what it meant: this was a fright hex, destined to one day bring about the victim’s greatest fear. Others in the nearby crowd saw it too, and there was more murmuring and whispering, an air of thrilled excitement and horrified fascination from the people around them. Jude hated them, absolutely hated them all for enjoying watching their lives get smashed into pieces.
She looked up as the Phantom yanked his gloves back on and she found herself suddenly meeting Etienne’s gaze across the crowd. There was an odd look in his blue eyes – something strange that she couldn’t quite place as he gazed at them. Then he was turning away from her, putting his top hat on his head and walking out of the square with his head down.
She realized that the Mayor was back on the stage, now that it was safe and Enid and Ivory had both gone. He was saying something about continuing with the celebrations of Cajou Night, but Jude had no interest in any of that.
“Let’s go,” she said to the Phantom.
“Your highness!” the Mayor’s voice rang after them. “Forgive me but you must stay for the celebration. It’s the custom—”
“I don’t care!” Jude cut him off. “Party all night if you want, but know that tomorrow a whole load of things are going to change around here.”