Angie Fox: Gentlemen Prefer Voodoo

Amie stuffed the keychain into her bag.

Let’s see, she had candles, water, Lisa Simpson, grave dust, a zombie. She glanced back at the man behind her. She’d give him one thing—he was the Don Juan of the zombie world.

She shook her head. It didn’t matter. He didn’t belong here.

“After you,” he said, as she led them out into the night.

Laughter and conversation from the party crowd erupted in waves on the other side of the wall of buildings as Amie and her zombie hurried down the alley that led to Canal Street. For the first time in her life, Amie wished she could be one of them, instead of running side by side with a dead Romeo through the back streets of New Orleans.

How had she gotten herself into this?

He actually believed he was going to marry her.

If he thought he was going to convince her based on something they’d find in a cemetery at one in the morning, he was even crazier than she’d imagined. No true love of hers would act this way.

This little trip through la-la land was her penance for thinking, believing, dreaming she could step out of her normal life and expect more than she had any right to expect. Hadn’t her mother taught her that? Her grandmother? The women of her line were destined to be alone. She had to stop listening to bossy red monsters and start behaving like a proper voodoo mambo.

Sweat trickled down her back. There was no escaping the humid heat of New Orleans, even after midnight.

Amie felt a familiar tug as the white stone walls of the graveyard came into view. Her calling as a voodoo mambo gave her a certain kinship with the dead. It was part of the job. Still, she didn’t like the way the ingredients in her bag began to stir.

St. Louis Cemetery Number One used to be located at the outskirts of the city, which now meant the edge of the French Quarter. The cemetery closed at dusk to keep vandals and criminals at bay. Visitors were often robbed in broad daylight. Drug deals went down day and night. Tourists were always encouraged to visit in groups.

More than one hundred thousand former New Orleans residents rested inside those walls. Most had been buried in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Entire extended families shared mausoleums separated by narrow pathways. Many of the dead had practiced voodoo. Their power called to her. She’d have to put her zombie down quietly and get the heck out.

Amie kept a hand on her bag as she followed the zombie down the deserted sidewalk past the front entrance, with its tall gate topped by a simple wrought-iron cross. She stiffened as they passed the crumbling tombs inside. A red spiral of energy curled from one of the graves closest to her, the filmy tendril reaching for her.

She’d never seen a red apparition before. Her breath hitched. She really didn’t want to learn anything new tonight.

“This way,” he said, leading her to an area at the north edge where the streetlights were widely spaced and foot traffic was nonexistent. He mounted the thick white stone wall like a Marine and reached down for her.

“Oh no,” she said, refusing his outstretched hand. While Amie was all for getting inside, she was even more interested in having a way out. “Can’t we find a back gate or something?”

“Do not argue, my love,” he said, his face obscured by shadows as he reached for her again. “This is the quickest.”

“I’m not your love.” She took a step backward. “And you can’t possibly expect me to— eek !” He caught her by the wrists and vaulted her up onto the top of the wall.

She pushed against his chest, but it was like fighting with a boulder. “Listen, Tarzan. I don’t know what century you’re from, but—”

“I told you, I don’t like to argue.” He wrapped an arm around her waist as they thundered to the ground. She felt the impact vibrate through his body as her toes scraped the rocky path on the other side of the wall.

She shoved away from him. This time, he let her. “You could have killed me!” she hissed. She could have broken her neck or smashed her head in or—

He shot her a withering look. “Death is not something to speak of lightly,” he said in a coarse whisper. “Now come. We are not alone.”

Lovely, just lovely.

Amie glanced back at the eight-foot-high wall. Last night, she’d been snuggled in bed with a book. Tonight, she was in a haunted cemetery with no way out and a dead guy telling her what to do.

Once they left the shadows of the trees, the moon lit their path. She followed him, cursing at his round, firm backside as he wound through mausoleums of all shapes and sizes. The place smelled like mold and concrete and New Orleans heat. Wrought-iron gates with thick spikes hugged some of the white stone vaults, while others lay neglected, their plaster falling away to expose redbrick skeletons. Still others had sunk into the ground, their inscriptions worn and barely visible as earth swallowed them whole.

Amie paused as she heard men’s voices a few rows away. They sounded tense and angry. Wonderful. Amie cringed. She just hoped they were grave robbers instead of muggers. Either way, she didn’t want to run into them.

The zombie touched a hand to her shoulder and silently bid her to continue. Amie nodded. They needed to keep moving.

The cemetery was alive. She caught another wisp spiraling skyward, like a paranormal spotlight. It was a fine time to be trapped.

She held her bag to her side, wishing she was hauling around a ferret instead of restless spell ingredients. The zombie moved silently ahead of her, like a bloodhound on a scent.

That was another problem. After she put him back to ground, what was she going to do? Avoid the muggers and the apparitions until the gates opened in the morning? She certainly couldn’t scale the wall.

“Stop.” He reached behind him to steady her.

“What?” she rasped, trying to keep her Maglite from clanking against the bottle of Florida water.

“Dominga Deloroso El Montenegro,” he said, bowing his head before a squat white vault. The plaster had crumbled away around the arched top, revealing brick and a small cropping of weeds.

Right, his grandmother.

He placed the geraniums on the uneven pavement at the front of the tomb. “ Que oró por mi segunda oportunidad ,” he said, “ y ahora está aquí .”

Amie fidgeted. He’d said something about second chances. Written Spanish she could do. Hearing it out loud could be tough. And she didn’t like to think of him having a grandma.

She studied the other names etched into the gray stone and stiffened as she read the curling inscription dedicated to the memory of DANTE MONTENEGRO 1779-1811. EL HOMBRE ADORO DEMASIADO.

He loved too much?

He’d also died too young. Well, she’d known that already. Her stomach quivered. Seeing it in stone made it real.

“Now I will show you,” he said. “You see?” He touched a circular area on the front of his tomb where some of the rock had been chipped away. “It is a symbol of the sun. Placed here when I decided to wait for voodoo to bring me back. You etched it deeper when you brought me back tonight.”

She’d never heard of anything like it. Of course, she didn’t know any zombie raisers. Amie squinted at the crude carving. It looked more like a squashed bug than a sun. “You think I’m going to fall in love with you because of a defaced piece of rock?”

He flinched as if he’d been slapped. “This is proof.”

“Not in my world.”

“You want more proof?” He turned back to the tomb and placed his hands on either side of the stone marker. “Fine. I will go get it.”