Page 35 of Sacrifice

“Mmm,” Laveau sighed, took Eve's hand, turned it over and ran a fingertip across her palm. “Enchanté, daughter of Venus,” she said.

Laveau’s hands were warm and soft and the manner in which she held Eve’s made her feel like she was being studied in a way that she never had before. It was as if Madame Laveau could read her soul. The thought was not a comforting one.

“Come,” Laveau said and rose from her stool.

They followed her through the crowd. Laveau's broad, lolloping gate clearing a path through the partygoers who were otherwise lost in the pleasure of the moment. Couples entwined in dark corners and the smell of liquor and sweat rode the air. The beat of the music buzzed in Eve's chest, and she wondered if she might be in just a tad over her head.

“We shall take our business,” Laveau shouted over her shoulder, “somewhere a little more private.” She motioned toward a small archway whose unsmiling guardian moved aside for just long enough to let them through. A spiral staircase on the other side climbed to a room overflowing with exotic artefacts, textiles, and trinkets. An illicit Aladdin’s cave.

It was another chamber honed from Paris’ bedrock, this one in the round, the circular wall almost entirely shelved from top to bottom. Every shelf groaned with items, but the haphazard manner of display marked it out, not so much as a collection, but more as the storehouse of a black marketeer.

In the center of the room four leather armchairs faced inward to a low circular table which was already laden with food: bite-sized pasties, crudites and thick, brightly colored dips.

Lucien wandered along the shelves, his fingers lingering on various objects. “You’ve been busy,” he said, picking up an ancient-looking statuette Eve recognized to be Osiris.

Laveau laughed. “Papa Legba has been kind.” She stroked the face of a wooden effigy that stood in a tidier section ofthe shelves, surrounded by candles, and extracted a bottle of rum from its vicinity to pour four golden measures into crystal cut glasses. She rested one beside the effigy and pinched the remaining three in a triangular grip to bring them to the table.

Eve knew that name. She'd read about Papa Legba in her research for the exhibition. He was a loa in Louisiana Voodoo, the intermediary between the human and spirit worlds with immense power over life and death.

Laveau dropped into a chair, knees spread wide. “Sit, share a rum with me. Spiced Bayou.” She held a glass out across the table and when Eve took hers, Laveau brushed over her fingers and smiled that toothy smile.

Unnerving.

Eve took a sip of the rum as a reason to look away. It was rich and sweet and sent a warm wave through her body. “This is good,” she said, surprised.

Laveau leaned back in her chair and took a long draw on her cigar. “The best in all of New Orleans,” she said. Smoke poured from her nostrils.

Lucien cleared his throat. “We didn't come here for the rum, Marie.”

Laveau chuckled. “Of course, of course.” She leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. “I have found what you need, at great personal expense and enormous inconvenience.” She levered herself up to her feet and headed for the only section of the shelving obscured by Gothic dark wooden doors. A twist of the key, seemingly magicked from thin air, and the cabinet opened to reveal row upon row of glass flasks containing the preserved bodies of pale creatures, as unidentifiable from Eve’s seat across the room, as they were bizarre.

She opened and closed various drawers before pulling free something wrapped in a leather cloth.

“It was not easy to find,” she began, her voice deep and her fingers rubbing together. “Cost me a pretty penny.”

“You’ll be compensated,” Lucien replied. He leaned forward to grasp the package from her outstretched hand.

Slowly, reverentially, he unwrapped the cloth to reveal a blade. It was another of the Akkadian daggers, this one with a blood red crystal set into the tip of its hilt.

Eve goggled at it. “The last one,” she whispered, “However did you find it?”

“Venus,” Laveau breathed, “Lost for more than three hundred years.”

Lucien’s face split into a grin. He ran his thumb along the inscription on the blade. “Wheredidyou find it?”

Laveau tutted and waved one heavily ringed hand at him. “You know better than to ask. The spirits don’t like such talk.”

“I don't suppose they do,’ Lucien murmured.

Eve held out her hand, and Lucien laid it gently on her palm. The metal was warm, and her hand automatically spun it to grip the hilt, blade pointing down. A blood red crystal sparkled in its tip. The hairs went up on the back of her neck.

Lucien reached out his hand to take it back. For a moment, the urge to keep it overwhelmed her. The urge towield itswelled in the muscles of her arm.

Laveau let out a single excited chuckle, like a child, and it snapped Eve back into the room and to the outstretched waiting hand of Lucien. She let him take the dagger, shaking her head and blinking away the feeling, but the loss felt odd. It dried her throat, and she reached for the rum to swallow it down, bemused.

Lucien re-wrapped the knife and slid it into his jacket’s inner pocket. From the other side, he pulled a glass vial, five inches in length, the blown glass - twisted and bulging. It was slimand encased in an ornate mesh of gold. Whatever it was inside glowed faintly blue and swirled of its own accord.

Laveau reached out to take it, hungry eyed, and cradled it in her palm. “A dybbuk? You got me one?”

---