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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
"There are no angels in Baton Noir. Only devils." Jude Lomax scrapes a living playing the trumpet on the neon streets of Baton Noir. Then she is invited to play at the funeral of the infamous cajou queen, Ivory Monette. Passing through the cemetery gates, Jude finds herself possessed by the murdered queen's spirit. And Ivory won't rest until she's found the person responsible for her death. If Jude wants to be rid of the vengeful spirit, she must take a journey deep into the dangerous underbelly of the city, from the swampy depths of the Black Bayou to the velvet opulence of the vampires' secret jazz clubs. But as Jude untangles Ivory's web of secrets, she is confronted with a few dark truths from her own past… The first in an eagerly awaited series from the author of FROZEN CHARLOTTE, a WHS Zoella Book Club title in 2016, which is sure to enthral fans of Holly Black, Maggie Steifvater, Amanda Foody and Stephanie Garber.
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Seitenzahl: 393
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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For my parents, for taking me to New Orleans when I most needed to go. I hope we find ourselves on Bourbon Street again one day.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
“Are you Jude Lomax?”
Jude spat a mouthful of blood on to the cobbles and squinted up at the scruffy boy standing over her. “Who’s asking?” she grunted. She prodded cautiously at her tooth with her tongue, causing it to wobble in its socket.
“Benny sent me,” the boy said, waving an envelope around. “Said to look for a red-headed girl. Said she’d probably be in a fight or in the gutter.”
Jude scowled. She was in no mood for wise guys. “Just give me the message and clear off,” she snapped.
The boy shrugged and dropped the envelope on the dirty cobbles in front of her before turning on his heel and leaving. Jude managed to sit up and prop herself against the nearby wall. It smelled like someone had taken a pee against it but she couldn’t even be bothered to wrinkle her nose. Every part of her ached – her ribs, her head, her shoulders and her soul too, come to that. Blood dripped into her eye from a cut on her forehead, it hurt to breathe and nausea churned in her stomach. What a shit of a morning it had been. What a shit of a life, really.
She glanced around the street to make sure Sidney Blues Sampson had gone and wasn’t about to come out and take his boot to her again. There was no sign of him. It appeared her landlord had finally left, now that he’d delivered his threats and his kicking.
The night before, Jude had gone to play at Moonfleet Manor as usual but when she turned up at the front door, her trumpet case beneath her arm, she’d been turned away. The master was not having a good day, Paris had said, a familiar sneer on her perfect lips.
Jude’s heart had sunk straight into her boots, she’d been relying on that money, but there was nothing to be done except try to find work at short notice elsewhere. So she made her way to every jazz club and honkytonk in the Hurricane Quarter, every goodtime house and creep joint in the meatpacking district, every midnight supper club and gambling den in the vampire’s Ruby Quarter, and every steamship and pleasure boat moored at Paradise Pier. But nobody wanted a trumpet player.
Walking back through Cadence Square that night she’d noticed a plate of congri, black-eyed peas with rice, placed beneath the sycamore trees, surrounded by a circle of silver coins. Her stomach had rumbled at the sight of the food and her fingers itched at the sight of the money, but she’d walked right on past and left it there, just like every other sensible person in Baton Noir. They all knew it had been placed there by someone who practised cajou – that strange, dark, powerful magic no ordinary person dared mess with. To take that money, or food, would be to invite disaster into your life.
She had arrived home in the morning only to find her landlord waiting for her. And he’d been in no mood to listen to explanations about the late rent. No mood at all.
Once Jude’s head finally stopped spinning, she picked up the envelope the boy had dropped, tore it open and pulled out the letter. As she skimmed its contents her heart lifted. There was to be a jazz funeral, and the Done and Dusted Brass Band had been asked to play in it. That meant work, a pay cheque and not getting the living crap beaten out of you because you were behind on bills. But then Jude scanned down the letter for the details and her elation quickly vanished. The funeral was now, today. There were no canals in that part of town so she couldn’t even take the swamp boat. She’d have to run halfway across Baton Noir to have any hope of making it, and right now she felt as if she could barely manage to hobble back to her own front door.
She groaned and gritted her teeth. There was no choice. She couldn’t afford to miss this. Jazz funerals were only for Baton Noir’s more important and distinguished citizens, and who knew how much longer it might be until another one of them snuffed it?
She dragged herself to her feet and hurried back up the stairs to the tiny apartment. To her relief, her pa still hadn’t emerged from his bedroom and she was able to get changed, snatch up her trumpet and get out of the door in record time. Before she left the house, though, she scrubbed their front step with brick dust from the bucket kept by the door for that sole purpose. Such a practice was said to ward off any hexes or curses put on the home by an enemy. Jude didn’t know whether she completely believed it, but she scrubbed their porch each morning just the same. Even on a day like today, when every second counted.
And then it was simply a question of running as fast as she could. It was blisteringly hot and she could feel sweat trickling down the back of her shirt between her shoulder blades. The blue brass band uniform she wore was sticky and uncomfortable in the scorching heat. The military-style peaked black cap kept sliding into her eyes and her bow tie hung crooked, the lace-up St Jacques flats on her feet vigorously rubbing away the skin of her right ankle.
But if she let herself slow down or rest then she’d miss the funeral. She would just have to fight through the pain, that was all. She would damn well make that funeral, even if it killed her to get there. She let herself think of all the things she was so furious about, and the anger was like a flame that fuelled her determination and made her run faster.
“Girl, you gotta find some way of letting go of all that anger you carry around,” her best friend Sharkey kept saying to her. “It’s gonna get mighty heavy otherwise. Even going to get you killed, maybe.”
Jude knew that the anger was destructive but sometimes it felt like a wild beast she couldn’t control no matter how hard she tried, and other times it almost felt like a friend that helped her struggle past the point where she wouldn’t have been able to struggle any further otherwise. So her feet pounded along the ground, the sweat ran down her back and she was glad of the pain and the chance to burn.
She knew she’d reached the Hurricane Quarter by the music. Jazz lived in this part of the city day and night, spilling out from the doorway of every club and honkytonk. It played on juke boxes and phonographs, and scratched and crackled from radios in the barber shops and shoeshine stands. The air smelled of stale rum, the onions that were already sizzling on the greasy griddles of the hot-dog carts, cheap perfume and sweating oyster barrels that had been left out for too long in the smouldering sun.
Jude loved it all. She loved every cobble, every weathered plank of wood, every iron balcony and crooked street, every hot-dog stand and flower box, every neon sign and lamp post. For all that cajou had warped and corrupted Baton Noir, it was still the most wonderful city in the world, as far as Jude was concerned.
Finally she skidded round the corner to the Done and Dusted Brass Band headquarters. She was starving and had been hoping there might be a few spare minutes to scoot into the kitchen and grab a steaming cup of chicory coffee and a sugary beignet, but the funeral was ready to begin. Everyone was getting into position in lines before the coffin, which rested in a shiny black carriage. Like all of the carriages in Baton Noir, this one was horseless and had a long rope attached to the front for four strong human bearers to pull along.
Jude noticed that she didn’t seem to be the only one who was late. There were quite a few members of the band missing. Sharkey was there, however, dripping in cajou charms from head to toe, as usual. They hung from chains around his neck, were pinned to the front of his band jacket and dangled from bracelets on his skinny wrists. His skin was coal-black and his cheekbones were so striking that he normally had at least three girls lusting after him at any one time. Jude wasn’t one of them (despite what her ex-boyfriend had thought). She’d known Sharkey, or Kerwin as he’d been back then, since she was five and he was seven. He was like an annoying older brother to her.
Despite the fact that he was every bit as poor as she was, he had a distinguished way of carrying himself, soulful brown eyes and a straight patrician nose. His family had lived in Baton Noir for so long that even Sharkey’s accent was gumbo-flavoured. He played the saxophone in the row behind her, and Jude raised her hand in greeting as she took her place and gasped for air.
“Cutting it a bit close, darlin’?” Sharkey remarked, raising an eyebrow. Then he took in her appearance, frowned and added, “Barely even midday. Bit early for scrapping, ain’t it?”
“I wasn’t scrapping,” Jude replied, breathless. “This time.”
Sharkey gave her a doubtful look and Jude could hardly blame him. She got into fights a lot, and normally because she had sought them out herself. It wasn’t difficult to find a fight in Baton Noir. And a lot of the time, punching something seemed to be the only way to blank out the thoughts and worries inside her own mind, even if just temporarily.
“Honestly,” Jude said. “It wasn’t my fault. My landlord beat me up.”
Sharkey’s eyes narrowed. “You all right?”
She shrugged. “I’ve been better. Where is everyone anyway?”
“Some turned it down. Said it weren’t worth the risk, even with the danger pay thrown in.”
Jude frowned. “Danger pay?” she repeated, wiping sweat from her forehead. “But whose funeral is this?”
Sharkey looked startled. “Don’t you know?”
Jude shook her head. She hadn’t read the message properly in her haste.
Her friend leaned forward, causing his charms to jingle together. “It’s the cajou queen,” he said in a low tone.
“Ivory Monette?”
Sharkey nodded. “Went and got herself murdered last night.”
Jude was astonished. Ivory Monette was one of the city’s most powerful players and wielders of magic. Untouchable, or so she’d thought. She had seen her at Moonfleet Manor on more than one occasion.
“Where did it happen?” she asked.
“At the Blue Lady.”
The Blue Lady was a jazz club on Moonshine Boulevard where, by all accounts, the cocktails were strong, the clientele were dangerous and the jazz was hot.
“People are saying she won’t go to her grave quietly,” Sharkey went on. “That’s why half the band ain’t here.”
Jude snorted. “Cowards.”
A live cajou queen might be a force to be reckoned with, but a dead one was just a lump of meat like everyone else in Jude’s opinion. When she said as much to Sharkey he shook his head and said, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Like most people in Baton Noir he was a great believer in cajou. Two years ago he’d pawned the beloved diamond sock suspenders he’d inherited from his uncle in order to buy a powerful charm to make him into a better musician. After that, he was the only person in the band skilled enough to play the fiendishly difficult jazz piece, Sharkbite Sally – hence his nickname.
Unfortunately, Jude’s ex-boyfriend Leeroy Lamar was one of the band members who had decided to show up. A smug-faced and handsome drummer with pale skin and cruel eyes, Leeroy was the one and only boyfriend Jude had ever had. The relationship had been toxic and unhealthy from the start, a disaster, enough to make Jude feel that she never wanted to date anyone else ever again. She could still hear his voice inside her head sometimes, those words that had wormed their way beneath her skin and bitten down deep into her bones. The dawning realization that what she had first taken for love and concern was in fact nothing more than a determination to control every aspect of her life.
“Where the hell were you?” he’d hissed that final evening, stale beer strong on his breath, his fingers clamped too hard on her skin.
She felt a little bit sick every time she saw him now but there was no avoiding him unless she quit the band, which she absolutely refused to do. She would die before she gave him that satisfaction.
When Leeroy saw her, he leaned over to his friend Ollie and whispered something. The two of them worked together as clerks at the same fancy hospital in the Fountain District. They both laughed at Leeroy’s comment and then turned to look at Jude, smirking. She glared back, hating him, hating the way he was somehow able to make her feel so worthless and small, hating how he had scraped out her soul with his cruelty and chipped away at the self-confidence she’d always been able to rely on before.
Leeroy turned and whispered something else to Ollie and they both burst out laughing. Jude felt her ears burning, certain that Leeroy had probably just made some crass, lewd comment about her. Why the hell had she ever let him see her naked? What had she ever seen in him in the first place? How could she have been so unbelievably dumb?
Sharkey leaned forward from the row behind and said in his lazy drawl, “Say, fellas, I know you ain’t got no more class between you than a can of beans, but if you don’t stop that giggling you’re gonna feel the blunt end of my boot up your ass.”
Leeroy and Ollie stopped sniggering abruptly. Everyone knew that Sharkey boxed when he wasn’t in the band and that he somehow seemed to win every fight in the ring, despite his lanky frame and gentle nature. Perhaps he had a cajou charm for that too but either way no one really wanted to cross him in a fight. Leeroy and Ollie scowled but turned back round in their positions without saying anything more.
Jude threw Sharkey a grateful look and seconds later the bandmaster gave the signal and they were off. Although the band was reduced in numbers, the remaining musicians did their best to make up for it and the jazz funeral proceeded through the Hurricane Quarter in a noisy, boisterous group. First there was the brass band, then the coffin and then the mourners following on behind. As usual, there were plenty of bystanders lining the sidewalks to watch the procession pass by, but something felt a little different this time.
Normally the spectators would be dancing and singing and calling out to one another. Jazz funerals were a lively, vibrant, joyous affair after all. But today the people were mostly just standing in silence, staring with sullen eyes at the coffin as it passed by.
There was a taut, expectant feeling in the air, as if a violin string had been wound too tight. You could almost hear it whining and straining to snap. Jude supposed Ivory Monette had had her share of enemies. She’d been murdered after all. And it was well known that she dealt in hexes and curses just as much as love potions and good luck charms.
Some of the bystanders wore the red crown charm marking them out as members of the so-called magical Royalty. It was hard to tell what they were just by looking, except for the vampires who gave themselves away by lurking in the shade beneath the wrought-iron balconies. Other than that, they could be anything: witch doctors, cajou priests, conjurers, even descendants – people with the legba blood of cajou spirits in them somewhere.
Jude recognized some of the spectators. There was Doctor Herman, a renowned witch doctor, with his long hair in elaborate knots on top of his head. Within these he carried his various gris-gris – tiny bags filled with powders – as well as dried lizards, animal bones and even a small owl’s head. He was known to throw the owl’s head at people who displeased him, so Jude was glad to walk on past as quickly as possible.
As they marched on down the street, Jude began to find it more and more of an effort to lift her knees up high. It was terribly hot – the collar of her shirt seemed as if it was throttling her. Her stomach grumbled and she felt faded and thin, like a pencil drawing that was being slowly erased. The feeling only got worse when they marched past Cadence Square, where the food market was. The humid air was full of the smell of pecan pies and sticky, nutty, golden, delicious pralines filled with coconut or caramel popcorn.
Jude’s anger had fuelled her before but now it was like a firework that’d had its burst of colours and sparks and was fizzling away into thin trails of smoke. Sweat dripped into her eyes and she couldn’t clear her vision. The ground wobbled beneath her and all the strength ran out of her legs like water. Everything went slow and stretched as melting tar, and Jude sank forward on to her knees.
Sharkey was immediately beside her, gripping her by the collar and hauling her to her feet. He pulled her back into his row and gave her his arm to lean on.
“When did you last eat, girl?” he said, leaning close to Jude’s ear to be heard above the band.
Jude shook her head. She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t think straight.
Sharkey huffed at her. “You should’ve asked me for help. Now, listen, do you think you can make it through to the cemetery? If you can just keep up with everyone then you’ll still get paid. It ain’t that far.”
Jude nodded. She had to get paid. She just had to. She seemed to have lost the power of speech and her trumpet hung loosely from her hand. She was dangling right at the end of her rope, running on empty.
It seemed to take an age to reach the St Clémence Cemetery, where Ivory Monette was to be laid to rest in her family crypt. But finally the charm gates marking the entrance came into view. The twin iron gates were ten feet tall and completely covered in mojo hands, amulets and cajou poppets. Some were designed to ward off evil or silence the dead, while others were offerings to gain favour with the spirits. They were all different shapes and sizes and colours. An eclectic assortment of witchcraft and cajou. Jude breathed a sigh of relief because they were almost there, it was almost over.
But the moment the bandmaster passed through the charm gates at the front of the procession, a rotten and appalling scream started up. It cut through the band like a knife, silencing the music as the musicians all faltered to a stop, leaving only that blistering shriek filling the air. It was an insane sound, consumed with torment and rage, a scorching inferno of hatred and bile.
“Good gods, where is it coming from?” somebody gasped.
Everyone stared around, looking for the culprit. Most people immediately turned to the coffin itself, as if they thought perhaps Ivory Monette wasn’t dead at all and had suddenly woken to find herself entombed in a velvet-lined prison. But the scream wasn’t coming from the coffin. It was coming from the charm gates.
“There!” Sharkey cried, pointing.
They all followed the direction of his finger to a poppet that had been tied to one of the gate’s iron poles. It was, unmistakeably, supposed to represent Ivory Monette herself. The little doll was about the size of Jude’s palm and made from a sewn cloth bag adorned with colourful beads and buttons. It had many bright turbans wound around its head, long flowing skirts and big hoops in its ears. Cajou poppets usually had shapeless lumps for hands, but this one had actual fingers, with dozens of tiny rings sparkling from them. But what really identified the poppet as Ivory Monette was the big white snake on its shoulders.
The Monette women had been cajou queens of Baton Noir for generations. Every year, on the sacred evening, Cajou Night, a queen would be picked from the city’s inhabitants by a magical pair of cajou snakes – creatures from the spirit world who were said to represent Daa, the Snake-God himself, the sky father and original creator of the universe. Although Daa had long since left their world to be run by the legba, he still picked the one human on the planet who would be crowned and allowed to see and speak to the legba directly.
It was common for queens to rule for the duration of their lives, and this had been the case with Ivory. The Cajou Night ceremonies had mainly been a formality. She had owned the pair of snakes, until the black one mysteriously disappeared some twenty years ago. For the whole of Jude’s lifetime, Ivory had only appeared with one snake, a twelve-foot-long albino python named Beau. And this was the one draped around the poppet’s shoulders.
Cajou dolls were inanimate objects. Everyone knew that. They had no actual life of their own. And yet there the Ivory Monette poppet was, with its eyes bulging and its sack mouth open wide and the loudest scream in the world coming from its throat.
People were muttering and moving away from the cemetery, eager to put some distance between themselves and whatever dark magic this was.
“What do we do?” one of the band members asked.
“Keep going!” Benny, the bandmaster, called from the front.
He turned and marched through the charm gates, straight past the screaming poppet. After a moment’s hesitation, the rest of the band resumed playing and followed him. The music helped to drown out the scream to some extent, but you could still hear it.
When it was Jude and Sharkey’s turn to walk through, Jude saw that the poppet had bright green buttons sewn on to its face for eyes. As she met the doll’s gaze, those eyes seemed to get bigger and bigger until they filled Jude’s vision entirely. Everything else fell away – the cemetery, the band, the poppet, the gates. The entire world, in fact. Just melted away like fog, leaving only Jude and the poppet. Staring at each other.
Finally the poppet’s mouth snapped shut and the scream abruptly stopped.
CHAPTER TWO
Jude found herself sprawled on the dry, crumbly earth beneath one of the drooping ancient trees that filled the graveyard. Baton Noir preferred to bury its dead above ground and the space was filled with stone crypts and marble tombs. The air beneath the shade of the branches felt cooler and easier to breathe. She found herself sucking it in in big gulps.
“That’s it,” Sharkey said and Jude realized he was kneeling beside her. “You just take nice deep breaths.”
He helped her sit up and the tree trunk felt reassuringly solid behind her back.
“What happened?” Jude asked. “Where’s everyone else?”
“You keeled over, that’s what,” Sharkey replied. “As for everyone else, they’re off putting madam in her crypt before she can climb out of her coffin and start hexing everyone. Here, take this.”
He passed her his flask, which was full of sweet iced tea. Jude sipped it gratefully, feeling the cool, sugary liquid glide down her throat
“Did that poppet really start screaming?” Jude asked, lowering the flask. “Or did I dream it?”
“It happened, all right,” Sharkey replied. “Creepiest damned thing I ever saw.”
“What does it mean?” Jude asked.
Sharkey waved the question away. “Beats me,” he said. “And who cares anyhow? I’m more interested in you at the moment. Feelin’ any better?”
Jude nodded. She was feeling better, actually. The shade and the sweet tea and the rest had taken the edge off, even if she still felt like she was recovering from the flu.
“Got you a present yesterday,” Sharkey said, drawing a small pouch from his pocket and handing it to her.
“That better not be what I think it is,” Jude said, eyeing it with distaste.
Sharkey didn’t say anything so she opened the strings at the neck of the pouch and shook out the small object inside. It was a delicate silver bracelet with a single charm in the shape of a snowflake.
“It’s a cool-headed charm,” Sharkey said, an obstinate edge to his voice. “Meant for hotheads like you who can’t control their anger.”
Jude rolled her eyes. “I know what it is.” She thrust the bracelet back towards her friend. “I don’t wear cajou charms. You know that.”
In fact, she was the only person in the Done and Dusted Brass Band who didn’t own a single musical charm. From time to time she’d hear one of the others muttering that it was all an act and that she must keep her charms hidden, sewed into the lining of her jacket, filling her pockets or tucked into her panties. But Jude didn’t care what anyone else thought. She knew that her musical ability came from her and her alone, and that was enough.
“You’re your own worst enemy, you know,” Sharkey said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not an idiot,” he said. “I know this little charm probably ain’t enough by itself. But it can’t hurt, can it?”
Jude said nothing. The simmering anger she’d carried around for the last eight years had recently got worse and worse, almost without her even noticing. All her grievances bubbled up to the surface and she wasn’t able to control them. She picked fights she couldn’t win. She got hurt and she bled and she didn’t care.
Sharkey peered into her face. “I could just murder that Leeroy Lamar.”
“Don’t do that,” Jude said wearily. “I was angry long before he came along. He’s not responsible.”
And he’s not all bad, some small, treacherous part of her wanted to say. He made me feel special once.
That was the worst thing about it all, really. The fact that sometimes she still had confused feelings of affection for Leeroy mixed in with the dull ache of humiliation. It was still hard, even now, to accept that she could have got him so wrong.
“Didn’t help none, though, did he?” Sharkey grunted. “What with being a good-for-nothin’ asswipe.”
That boy’ll break your heart if you let him, Sharkey had warned Jude when she’d first started seeing Leeroy. And he’d been right.
“I wish you’d let me buy a conjure ball to roll across his yard,” Sharkey went on.
“No,” Jude said with a small smile. “No conjure balls.”
Sharkey returned her smile. Then he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
“Something has to change, beautiful one,” he said. “You’re getting dragged down to a no-good place. You gotta stop all this fighting and raging at the world.”
“I know,” Jude replied. “I want to change. It’s just that it’s harder … much harder than I ever expected it to be.” She saw herself through Sharkey’s eyes and it made her feel all used up and spat out. All of a sudden it was difficult to meet his gaze but Sharkey moved his hand to her chin and wouldn’t let her look away.
“No need for shame, darlin’,” he said softly. “Not with me. I can be every bit as much of a stubborn son-of-a-bitch as you can. And I ain’t letting you go down like this, you hear me? I ain’t.”
“I am trying,” Jude said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Sofia has been teaching me some exercises—”
“And that’s great,” Sharkey replied. “But it ain’t enough. You know it ain’t. Jude Lomax, you need all the help you can get, so you’re goddamn gonna let me help you any way I can.”
He pressed the snowflake charm back into her trembling palm. “Look at me,” he said, his dark brown eyes gazing into hers. “I’m on my knees begging you to wear it. Do it for me, even if you don’t wanna do it for yourself right now.”
Jude found herself taking the charm. Actually taking it. Something she never ever thought she’d do. But then, lots of things hadn’t gone to plan.
She put the bracelet in her pocket. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
Sharkey nodded. “That’ll have to do for now I guess.”
There was movement on the other side of the cemetery and they looked up to see that the mourners seemed to be dissipating. The funeral was over. Sharkey jogged over to get their pay packets from Benny and then returned to Jude. Her entire body still throbbed from the beating she’d taken earlier and she felt absolutely awful, but she was back on her feet, and that was a start.
“Late lunch?” Sharkey asked, tilting his head to indicate the Dead Duck café just over the road.
As they made their way back through the charm gates, Jude looked for the cajou queen poppet, but it had vanished. When she asked Sharkey what had happened to it, he shrugged.
“Probably got swiped by some ghoul,” he said. “Or one of the family. Perhaps they’ll keep it on the mantelpiece to remember her by.”
Jude didn’t know much about Ivory Monette’s family, apart from the fact that she’d had a daughter who’d rejected cajou and left Baton Noir, but Ivory’s granddaughter, Charity Monette, was still here.
They walked over to the Dead Duck, took a table by the window and ordered coffee and beignets.
“Looks like you took quite a battering,” Sharkey remarked, eyeing Jude across the table.
Jude shrugged and prodded her tooth with her tongue, hoping it might have magically re-rooted itself. Unfortunately it still wobbled in her gum, and stung like anything.
“No worse than I’ve had before,” she replied.
“Your landlord is a no-good piece of shit,” Sharkey said.
“Yeah.”
“Weren’t you supposed to be playing for the Monster of Moonfleet last night?”
Jude rolled her eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”
“Well, that’s what he is, ain’t he?”
Moonfleet Manor had a dire reputation in Baton Noir. Everyone knew that the Majstro family who owned the house were all mad. The blood of a cool legba flowed through their veins, and not just any cool legba, but Krag himself.
It would have been over-simplifying it to say that warm legba were good and cool legba were evil, but it was a pretty good starting point for people who were new to Baton Noir. Some people said that the legba were cajou spirits, while others claimed that warm legba had started off as angels and the cool legba had once been devils, before the world became godless.
Krag ruled over the cool legba and people were wary of his descendants because of the prophecy that, one day, one of them would unleash the chaos horses of the apocalypse and bring about the end of the world.
There was no denying that the Majstros were a warped and wicked family. Fifty years earlier, a police raid had uncovered a nightmarish scene. Terribly mutilated people tortured in the attic – several of them still alive, still breathing, although some had had limbs removed, while others had had additional limbs sewn on, the subjects of ghoulish experiments. Violetta Majstro was lynched for these crimes but there had been other Majstros living in the house at the time and, because of the strange way descendants aged, it was difficult to know whether any of them were still alive.
It wasn’t just that descendants had a longer potential lifespan, sometimes the aging process seemed to pause too. This could happen when they were anything from five years old to ninety, and could last for many years. It was therefore almost impossible to know exactly how old a descendant actually was.
André Majstro, otherwise known as the Phantom of Moonfleet, seemed to be the only one now left at the house. Everyone said he was disfigured and deformed, and he was rarely seen in public, hence his unfortunate nickname. Even Jude had never laid eyes on him, though she’d been working at Moonfleet for a month now.
Her pa had been livid when she’d received the offer. “Don’t you even think of going to that wretched place,” he’d said. “They’re devil people! He’ll want something from you. And how did he even find out where you live, eh?”
“He says he heard the Done and Dusted Brass Band play and he asked Benny for my address,” Jude had replied.
“You will not go to that place, Jude,” her pa had said. “Not while you live under this roof.”
So Jude had meekly agreed that of course she wouldn’t go, and then had lied about getting a job elsewhere and gone straight to Moonfleet anyway. She’d made many mistakes in her life, but she’d never been dumb enough to turn down paid work.
“This’ll tide us over for a while anyway,” Jude said now, pulling her pay packet from her pocket.
In her head she was already doing the mental calculations for how much money they needed to keep them going until Cajou Night in a few days’ time. She knew that she, and every other musician in the city, would have work then.
“How much is this danger pay anyway?” she asked. The envelope definitely looked fatter than usual.
“About half again,” Sharkey replied. He took a nail file from his pocket and began filing his already perfectly shaped nails. “Ivory Monette requested us special.”
“She did?”
Jude was surprised. They were a decent enough band, sure, but they couldn’t compete with the likes of the Ruby Red Brass Band, the Okey Poke Marching Band or the Drunken Devil.
“Perhaps she realized the fellas would be antsy about playing?” Sharkey suggested. “Worried about being cursed or hexed or the like. A poorer band like us is more likely to be swayed by the danger pay.”
“I guess that must be it.”
Jude looked down at the envelope in her hand. Having seen the way that poppet had come to life, she was starting to think that perhaps she shouldn’t have scoffed at the idea of being hexed from beyond the grave after all.
“I’m going to give Sidney the rent straight away,” she said, stuffing the envelope back in her pocket. “He’ll only demand more interest otherwise.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sharkey said, standing up.
“You don’t need to do that,” Jude replied.
“I ain’t got a thing to do for the rest of the day,” Sharkey said firmly. “I’m comin’ with you.”
So they made their way to the Fountain District, with its rows of elegant white-columned houses and manicured gardens. Sharkey waited on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets while Jude delivered the money to Sidney’s unsmiling butler.
When she rejoined her friend she immediately noticed a man standing a few yards away, leaning on a lamp post. It was the middle of the afternoon but he wore formal black evening wear, a silk top hat and a pair of smoked dark glasses. A watch chain hung from his pocket; he carried a jackal-topped cane in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It was hard to tell with the dark glasses but it very much looked as if he was watching them through the haze of his cigarette smoke. The moment Jude’s gaze fixed on his face, his mouth slowly stretched into a lazy grin.
Jude felt the skin at the back of her neck prickle.
“How long has he been there?” she asked.
“Who?” Sharkey replied.
“That man dressed up like—” Jude broke off. He had suddenly disappeared, leaving only cigarette smoke behind. “Oh. He’s gone.” She looked up and down the street but could see no sign of him. “There was a man there, dressed up like Baron Lukah.”
Sharkey pulled a face. “Why would anyone dress up like Baron Lukah?”
Baron Lukah was perhaps the most famous cool legba of them all, the legba of death. He was always depicted in evening wear with a top hat and smoked glasses. He loved cigarettes and swamp whisky and carried a pocket watch to keep track of when people’s time was up.
Ever since the Snake-God left, the world had been ruled over by identical twin brothers, Ollin and Krag. Ollin was the prince of the warm legba and controlled all the spirits of the day, and Krag commanded the cool legba, the spirits of the night. Known as the evil master of the crossroads, he was responsible for allowing the crossing of all bad luck, misfortune, destruction, injustice and suffering into the world.
The brothers were always depicted as two old black men, wearing suits that had seen better days and wide-brimmed straw hats. They both carried smoking pipes that they puffed on lazily. In paintings, they usually appeared on opposite sides of the spiritual crossroads.
One of the only noticeable differences between them was that Ollin was often accompanied by a faithful, grey-muzzled elderly dog, for dogs were sacred to Ollin. Krag had an owl on his shoulder and sometimes carried a horsewhip, with which to command the chaos horses of the apocalypse. The horses that would one day devour the world.
Jude was amazed that anyone in Baton Noir would have the nerve to dress as Baron Lukah. She shook her head and tried to dismiss the unease that still prickled over her skin as they walked back to the streetcar. As usual the Citizen section of the car was packed, forcing them to squash tightly in with all the other passengers. Jude ended up with her face practically buried in a large man’s armpit and couldn’t help casting resentful looks beyond the velvet rope to the Royalty section, which had actual seats and was half empty.
Sometimes, when Jude especially wanted a fight, she’d sit in the Royalty section to protest against the segregation of the streetcars. How many times had she witnessed a doddery old lady clutching one of the poles and trembling as she tried to stay upright, while perfectly strong and healthy vampires, witches or descendants sprawled comfortably on their chairs not giving a damn? It was hard not to be angry about stuff like that, hard for Jude anyway. And she didn’t understand how it could not be hard for everyone else too.
“It’s just the way things is,” Sharkey would say, whenever she brought it up. “And there ain’t a bit of use stressin’ and frettin’ about the way things is.”
When they returned to the Hurricane Quarter, Jude left her friend at the station.
“See you at HQ tomorrow,” he said, giving her a hug. Benny had called off their band practice tonight on account of the jazz funeral but from tomorrow, they would be practising at headquarters every night once again in preparation for Cajou Night. “Look after yourself, yeah?” Sharkey added.
Jude waved him goodbye and then walked down Moonshine Boulevard. It was permanently party central here, but especially busy in the run up to Cajou Night. People travelled from all over to join the city for the celebrations and they’d already started to arrive.
Locals and tourists alike danced in the street to the music of a brass band playing on a nearby corner, revellers sang heartily along from the wrought-iron balconies of the bars lining the streets and hundreds of multi-coloured plastic beads rolled around in the gaps between the cobbles, clogged up the gutters or hung in rainbow strings from the black lamp posts and bronze statues of jazz players. It seemed there was nothing a drunk enjoyed more than to hang their beads off something.
Jude walked on to her local grocery store, pausing to pick up the ingredients to make her pa’s favourite gumbo before heading home. Their tiny apartment was perched atop a gumbo store in a row of two-storey houses, all weathered with age and run down with neglect. The window shutters were rotting; the front porches were worn from the tread of feet; the beads hanging above the lintels were faded and grey. The apartment itself was cramped and muggy and the little wrought-iron balcony clinging to the side was rusted and probably unsafe. But it was a place to call home and as she climbed the rickety staircase Jude felt a great swell of satisfaction that she’d managed to keep a roof over their heads for another month.
When she reached the front door, she saw a box of food had been left on the doorstep again. There’d be no note with it. There never was. It was from her guardian angel – the mysterious benefactor who had helped on and off for the last eight years, ever since her pa’s accident. At least, that’s what her pa insisted on calling it even though it had, in fact, been an attack.
At first it was just food, always seeming to arrive at the time when they needed it most. But as the years passed, other things began to appear in the packages too: sheet music, books and little plastic trumpets dangling from orange cajou beads. It was as if the angel somehow knew Jude’s tastes and tried to provide her with the things she would most like.
Whoever this person was, Jude had never seen him or her. The parcels always appeared when she wasn’t in or during the night. But sometimes, when she sat out on her balcony playing her trumpet in the evening, she felt sure there was someone there, just out of sight on the street below, watching her…
She picked up the box and shouldered her way inside. “Guess what we’re having for dinner?” she called.
Then she froze in the doorway, staring into the room. Suddenly her heart was beating too hard against her bruised ribs and a familiar dread crept its long fingers right down her spine, making her shudder.
Was it going to be today?
Was this the day it finally happened?
The kitchen had been left in a mess and there was a broken mug with a bloody handle on the floor, a dark brown coffee stain soaking into the peeling lino. The bin hadn’t been emptied and a couple of bloated flies buzzed around it lethargically. The house was silent. And too still. Like the flies were the only living thing in the place, coming to feast on the death that Jude was so afraid she would find inside. Part of her wanted to turn and flee. To run straight back down the steps and never have to face it.
Instead she forced herself to step further into the kitchen. “Pa?” she shouted.
But still there was nothing except the deafening silence and the dull droning of the flies. Jude put down the box of food and her bag of groceries and then forced herself to take the short yet impossibly long walk down the corridor.
Finally she entered the living room where she found her pa slumped in his chair. There was blood on his clothes and a white-hot jolt of shock flooded through her. For a moment she was sure he was dead, that he’d actually done it. But then she realized he was breathing and staring at the wall, his one remaining hand held loosely in his lap, smearing blood on to his tattered robe. Not dead yet, for what that was worth. It was her greatest fear that one day he would take it upon himself to end it all but it seemed she could breathe easy for one more day at least.
His hair was unbrushed and too long and he hadn’t shaved. He was still a large man but he tended to curl in on himself these days. When he had leaped into the swamp eight years ago, the gator had taken off his right arm at the elbow, as well as a big chunk from his right thigh. By the time he was pulled from the water, two of the fingers on his left hand had gone and a slash ran from behind his left ear right down to his collarbone.
“Never run near the water,” he’d always warned Jude and her little brother Daryl, when they lived at the edge of the Firefly Swamps. “You might fall in. Them gators are beautiful creatures but they’re also wild beasts who’ll tear you limb from limb.”
Jude and Daryl had always been careful around the swamp and there had never been any incidents. Until the day of Jude’s ninth birthday party, when the stranger came to their home. Jude could still hear his voice sometimes, inside her head.
“Well, well. Is it somebody’s birthday?”
All she had to do was close her eyes and she was back there. She could feel the moss on the trunk of the ancient tree she leaned against. See the fireflies winking and blinking their soft golden glow over the murky water, smell the shrimp grilling on the barbecue. Hear Daryl calling her name from the pier behind her…
Jude shook her head and tried to banish the memory as she turned her attention back to her pa. A gator man all his life, he’d once seemed big and strong and invincible. Now his body was a ravaged mess of scars, his hair had turned prematurely grey and he was constantly hounded by pain that only the green fairy could soothe. But they both knew it could have been worse. Daryl had not been so lucky. Whatever remained of him had long ago rotted into the swamp.
“Pa?” Jude said from the doorway. “Can I—”
“Don’t need your help,” he grunted. “Leave me in peace.”
She took a tentative step into the room and tried to keep her voice steady. “At least let me bandage your—”
“I said I DON’ T NEED YOUR HELP!” he roared, grabbing a nearby glass and throwing it at Jude so hard and fast that she instinctively ducked.
