Angie Fox - Gentlemen Prefer Voodoo

Special thanks to intrepid readers Michelle McMurry and Julia Grace, who braved St. Louis Cemetery Number One as well as the back streets of New Orleans to take site pictures and answer lots of (rather odd) questions.

To Koren Cota and Sandie Grassino for the translations. Also to Jessa Slade for hanging out at RWA Nationals and brainstorming “the perfect word” to describe a rat. (Hey, these things are important.) You, my dear, are resplendent.

Amie could barely see her customer as the woman lurched toward the counter, arms loaded with a voodoo love spell kit, fat pink altar candles, a well-endowed Love Doll, a twelvepack of Fire of Love incense, and “breath mints,” the woman huffed. She dumped everything on the mosaic countertop and reached for the Altoids display, a nervous smile tickling her lips. “Not that I expect all of this to work right away.”

Amie couldn’t help laughing as she caught a supersize bottle of Heat Up the Bedroom linen mist before it rolled under an arrangement of Good Fortune charms. “You never know.”

Her customer couldn’t have been more than forty, with gorgeous green eyes, a warm, well-rounded face, and a lonely heart. Amie could see it as clearly as the glow-in-the-dark Find Your Lover charm at the top of the heap.

Well, Amie had just the thing.

She closed her eyes, blocking out the pink and green painted walls and loaded display tables.

Wind chimes at the back of the shop swung in circles. Their limbs, carved from bayou swamp trees, clacked together.

She let her magic well up inside her, vibrant and sweet. “Now.” She reached across the counter and found the woman’s hands. She braced herself as the power flowed through her. “You’ll find what you need.”

She squeezed once and let go. Once was all it took.

That’s when the growling started.

It began as a low rumbling at the back of the shop and continued until a thin line of smoke seeped from behind the Voodoo Wash Yourself Clean soap display.

“It’s a faulty heater,” Amie said, well aware that it was July. “Ignore it.”

“Sure,” the woman said, watching Amie pack her things in two overflowing bags. “Some of this is bound to work, right?”

“Voodoo can be very powerful,” Amie said, “if you believe.”

Amie smiled to herself as the door swung shut against the sweltering New Orleans heat.

Flower petals and grave dust sprinkled down from the spell bundle she’d hung from the vintage tin ceiling. Made from an old family recipe and wrapped in her lucky green scarf, it warded off evil spirits and helped cut down on shoplifting.

Amie scooted around the counter, her bracelets jangling as she smoothed back her thick black hair.

“Okay, you big, bad beast, you can come out now.”

A red leathery creature the size of a swamp cat burst out from behind a display of bath fizzies. He resembled a small flying dinosaur. “By thunder and lightning and Papa Limba,” he said with a thick Congo accent, blowing out a breath as a pink and white begonia threatened to land on the tip of his beak. “You are giving your magic away to people off the street?”

Isoke was small for a Kongamato. His wingspan was only about three feet. He had leathery skin, gorgeous blue eyelashes, and all the tact of a battering ram.

“You need to stay on your perch.” At least while customers were in the store. “What if that poor woman had gone back for another Mango Mamma bath melt?”

“Go dunk your head in the Jiundu swamp. I am not here to be a ceiling decoration.” He sniffed at his usual place, where he hung upside down near a display of rainbow-colored wind socks.

His eyes glowed yellow. “I am here to protect you,” he said, flaunting two rows of razor-sharp teeth. “Maybe next time I will bite the woman. That will keep her from robbing you.”

“My magic is freely given,” Amie insisted, straightening the bath fizzie display. She might not mind grave dust on her floor—that had a purpose. But the rest of her shop was immaculate.

The dragon watched her with a guarded expression. “Amiele Fanchon D’Honore Baptiste, you waste your magic. It’s bad juju. First, your mother and now you.”

Amie’s back stiffened at the insinuation. Her mother had lived fast, died young—and left Amie very much alone. Well, with one rather obnoxious exception.

“Your mother wasted her love magic on a legion of men. You give yours away to strangers. In three hundred and eighty-six years, I have never seen anything like it.”

“You’re being unfair.” She refused to look at him. Instead, she busied herself rearranging a sagging display of gris-gris bags near the front of the shop. The bright red and yellow bundles contrasted against the hot pink walls and silver posters of Erzulie, the spirit of love, and Papa Ghede, lord of the erotic. “Mom gave her love magic away to men who didn’t appreciate it,” she said, with more than a twinge of regret. There had been many, many men.

“And she received none of it back,” he replied, his voice low in his throat. “I watched her waste away. I’m not going to watch you too.”

Amie fingered a Fall in Love bag before stuffing it back down with the rest. “Ah, but there is a difference. I am getting bits of magic back. You don’t think I’m going to feel that woman’s happiness? She might not know what I did, but every time someone is grateful, it filters home.”

“Crumbs,” Isoke declared. “You need a man, someone who will take your love magic and give his to you tenfold.”

Amie’s stomach dropped as she tidied an already perfect row of voodoo history books. “I’ve tried that.”

She’d dated. None of the men fit the bill. New Orleans was a wild city, and she wasn’t going to lash herself to some beer-guzzling party boy just to save a little magic.

“When? When did you last see a man?” the Kongamato prodded.

Amie opened her mouth to answer.

“A man you trusted with your love magic?”

Her smart answer died on her lips.

“Nine years.” Her stomach twisted at the realization. Nine years since her last boyfriend. And, no, he hadn’t returned her love magic. If her mother was any indication, men never did.

Isoke cocked his head. She felt his hot breath against her leg, even through her gauzy yellow skirt.

“Look, I’m fine the way I am. I don’t want to worry about when some guy is going to call or how to act on a date or whether he’s going to turn into a cretin if I sleep with him.”

“Eeking out a life is not fine.” Isoke huffed like a blast furnace.

“Stop it,” Amie admonished, “you’re going to singe the floor again.” She couldn’t keep throwing rugs everywhere. Her landlord was suspicious enough when he found the hot tub in her back storage room full of muddy water, sticks, and Spanish moss. You could take the Kongamato out of the swamp, but you couldn’t take the swamp out of the Kongamato.

Just then, a group of giggling teenagers burst through the door. Isoke froze midsnarl while Amie went to help them. After they’d left, loaded down with passion fruit incense, Amie returned to her display. Isoke resumed his grumbling, his tail dragging along the floor.

“Stop it. You’re messing up the grave dirt.”

“Even your dirt is organized?”

“Yes.” It had to lay where it fell. “What kind of Kongamato are you?”

“One who is about to lose his tail.”