Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [7]
Marcus wanted to feel something real. He wanted to be taxi-driven away from the city’s most famous streets, through the swampy morass of the outlining parishes, to the temple of a voodoo priestess known only as The Queen. As Marcus had been told by those who know, The Queen was blessed (or cursed) with unrivaled gifts in the necromantic arts, as well as widely considered to be the best of all such practitioners of black magic in a city that boasted more licensed shamans than schoolteachers. He was told that The Queen wasn’t much of a show-woman, having dispensed with the ornamental masks, orgiastic dances, and other tropes of the trade that were attractive to tourists. She didn’t even advertise her talents, relying solely on word-of-mouth recommendation. Her demeanor was brisk and no-nonsense, so much so that she never let customers inside her home, and she always made it very clear that she wanted nothing other than to get them off her porch as soon as possible. A true artist, The Queen refused to take money from just anyone, only from those who were approved by the Loa, or spirits who watch over earth. Her services—divination, mostly, with some faith healing and spell-casting on the side when the spirits moved her—could not be validated by any on-or offline guidebook. But if the Loa vouched for Marcus, The Queen would give him the most profound spiritual reading he would ever receive … just by holding his hands.
It was this last bit that really sucked Marcus in. It was preposterous. He was in on her shtick, and he knew that this out-of-the-way place was as much of a tourist trap as any jazz bar or strip club in the French Quarter, just one that required slightly more effort than a less adventurous visitor would give. In fact, for that reason alone, his feeble quest for authenticity was a cliché far worse than the French Quarter frat boys, because at least the brothers of Sigma Chi weren’t puking in the alleys under the pretense of keepin’ it real. And yet for someone who had spent countless hours seeking enlightenment through silent meditation, even a false promise of instantaneous truth was too much for Marcus to resist.
It should be noted that he had been drinking the night of his visit to The Queen. After years of post-teen-in-rehab teetotaling, he had reacquainted himself with alcohol in his freshman year of college at the age of twenty-three. He didn’t indulge very often, and he never set out to get drunk, but his years of abstinence had affected his body’s ability to metabolize booze, making him a lightweight, a cheap date. The disorienting buzz Marcus felt after one or two beers was similar to that which would be expected from someone a foot shorter, fifty pounds lighter, and female.
So it was in such a delicately soused state that Marcus paid audience to The Queen. Even in retrospect, he couldn’t decide whether a response to the alcohol or a genuine spiritual crisis had brought him to this neighborhood of off-the-map shotgun shacks, some of which appeared to have been semi-condemned since the first bitch—Hurricane Betsy—hit in 1965. But once he found himself in front of The Queen’s one-story home, painted a magisterial purple worthy of her reputation, he was glad he had listened to the NOLA local who had tipped him off earlier that afternoon over the spray of dust exploding from the circular saw. Natty was not impressed, however, and chose to stay inside the idling cab so the driver wouldn’t take off without them.
“We ah gone dah hee-yah,” Natty twanged. His accent always came back whenever he drank too much or spent time below the Mason-Dixon Line. On this evening, both qualifications had been met.
“We are not going to die here,” Marcus assured him as he gingerly made his way up the battered stairs leading to a lopsided doorstep. He was about to ring the bell when he heard the metal-on-metal slide of multiple locks. The inside door swung open, first releasing the sweet pungency of dried