When she told the witch about moving to New Orleans, that was when things got weird. The woman asked her, “Are you sure you want to do that? They call this town ‘the Big Easy,’ but it’s not going to be easy for you.”
Nora remembered that warning since it was the one part of the reading that had proved false. Apart from the heat, she and The Big Easy had greeted each other like old friends. She loved the history, the people, the beignets, the music, the laissez-faire attitude. Nothing not to love.
Cyrus held up his phone to show her red dots on Google maps. “Which shop was it?”
She read the names, the locations.
Voodoo Alley.
Gris-Gris’s.
The Black Cat Corner Shop.
House of Voodoo.
“None of those ring a bell, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t one of them.”
Nora returned Cyrus’s phone to him. That day had been almost three years ago. The shop could be closed down now.
“And you’re sure the witch had your card?” Cyrus asked.
“I am one-hundred percent certain she had my card. I can still see her holding it.” Nora put her palms flat together in a prayer position to mime how the witch had held her red business card.
“And she didn’t give it back?” Cyrus asked.
“No. I don’t remember her giving it back. I tipped her twenty dollars. I can see the twenty on top of the card.” Nora pictured it now, the little room, not much bigger than a closet, the small round table with the paisley tablecloth, the tarot cards spread out like a fan before them. And the witch…yes, Nora remembered the witch. She’d been very beautiful. Strange serious eyes, like she really believed in what she was doing, like it was real to her even if she knew the dumb tourist across from her at the table didn’t believe a word of it.
The witch had made Nora almost believe.
Cyrus stood up.
“All right, come on.” He waved at her to follow him.
“Where are we going?”
“On a witch hunt.”
“I should probably change first.”
“For the French Quarter?” he asked.
“Ah, good point.” She’d fit right into the French Quarter after dark. Then again, these particular boots of hers were not, in fact, made for walking.
Nora left Cyrus in her dungeon lobby and changed clothes in her bathroom, replacing her boots with black heels and switching her stockings and skirt for jeans. She kept the bustier top on.
“No other shirt?” Cyrus asked, glancing at her over his phone. No, not glancing at her. Glancing at her mounds of cleavage.
“Look, you want answers from strangers, my tits will get us answers.”
“True,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
“I don’t mind driving.”
“Can you see the road over your tits?”
Nora glanced down at her rather out-of-control cleavage.
“Okay,” Nora said. “You drive.”
Nora rode shotgun in Cyrus’s Honda. It was getting late and were they in any other city, she might have worried that the shops would be closed by the time they arrived. But not in New Orleans. The Quarter woke up around noon and didn’t go to bed again until dawn. With the bars on Bourbon Street open all night, most shops in the area stayed open late. Sure enough, when Cyrus parked on Barracks, the streets were alive with hundreds of people, soaking up the evening breeze off the water, already looking for good times and big trouble.
“Where to?” Nora asked when they reached the corner of Barracks and Chartres.
“You tell me. Where’d you go on your walk?”
“All right, well, let’s start on Bourbon. First, I know I definitely walked down Bourbon that day. And second, let’s get a drink. I’m buying.”
“Yeah, you are.”
Cyrus got a boring old beer, and Nora loaded up on rum and Coke, a double. They wandered down to Voodoo Alley, but nothing about the place seemed familiar. The turned a corner and found The Black Cat closing up for the night. Nora remembered going in there, but the man working the shop said they’d never offered psychic readings—no room. The man gave them a list of all the other witchcraft and voodoo shops in the neighborhood. Google didn’t list them all, and a couple had changed names when they changed owners.
They walked down the other side of Bourbon Street when Nora looked up and saw her.
“What?” Cyrus asked.
“That’s her.” She pointed at a woman’s face painted on a hanging shop sign.
Cyrus stood at her side and stared up.
“Marie Laveau,” Cyrus said. “You sure?”
“Definitely.”
“You’re telling me that Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, who has been dead for a hundred fifty years, gave you a tarot card reading.”
“I’m not saying it was the real Marie Laveau. I don’t believe in ghosts, okay? At least I’ve never met one. But she looked just like that and dressed just like that.” She pointed up at the woman on the sign. “But younger. Maybe thirty.”
“So, early thirties, light-skinned female in an old-timey dress and headscarf. You remember anything else about her? Name or anything?”
“She said her name was Marie. But if she led historical tours, she would, right?”
“Right.” Cyrus nodded. “Anything else you remember about her?”
Nora stared up at the sign again.
“Earthquake eyes,” Nora said.
“What?”
“I remember thinking the woman had earthquake eyes. You look in them and shake a little.”
“Scary witch?”
“Not quite scary,” Nora said. “I don’t know. Powerful maybe. She made me a little nervous.”
“Hell, if she made you nervous…” Cyrus said, then whistled. “Let’s keep looking. If the voodoo store folk don’t know her, maybe the other tour guides do. Come on.”
“Where are we going now?”
“To interview a vampire.” Cyrus headed into the crowd.
Nora didn’t follow at first.
“You know vampires?” Nora called out. Cyrus only raised his hand and waved it, indicating she needed to get her ass in gear and follow him. Nora ran a little to catch up with him.
“If you know vampires and you’ve been holding out on me,” she said, “I’m not going to be friends with you anymore.”
“Vampire tours,” Cyrus said. “Witch tours. Ghost tours. Gotta be a voodoo tour, right? There’s one vampire guide who’s been doing this forever. He’ll know your witch if she even once ran a voodoo tour ’round here.”
Cyrus started forward, but Nora was separated from him by a sudden crush of drunk frat boys leaving a bar en masse. One of them bumped into Nora, hard, and her foot slipped out of her shoe.
When she stumbled, the glassy-eyed frat kid grabbed her around the waist, not to steady her like a good guy, but just to grab her.
“Hey, there,” he said, grinning. He smelled like an overpriced Hurricane (the drink, not the storm). “What’s your hurry, baby?”
“I’m thirty-eight,” Nora said. “I’m not a baby, baby. Let me go.” She started to walk away, but the dumb drunk who didn’t know what he was getting himself into, slid his arm around her waist and pulled her back against him.