Prologue
A hundred and three years ago
In hindsight, dying had been easier than coming back from the dead. Living as an undead person was an entirely different matter and a lot more difficult than opening one’s eyes again after they had presumably closed forever—but dying itself was easy. Jon didn’t like to remember the days of agony that had led to his death, because he could have done without them, thank you very much. Perhaps that was the reason he welcomed death. Living had become much too painful.
The Spanish flu had swept through New Orleans like a tidal wave, taking with it not only the poor, but instead killing indiscriminately. Before the Reaper, all people were equal, a thought less comforting than Jon had hoped. As the estranged son of a famous doctor, Jon had had the advantage of knowing a thing or two about diseases, but no amount of care could battle the cramped living conditions in a poor house, not to mention the utter lack of hygiene. He’d ended up in one of the fabric halls they had turned into emergency hospitals, quickly succumbing to the virus. His malnourished body had fought for three days—at least that was what he remembered before it had given out and peace had come. No pain. No screams. No fever. No hallucinations. Blessed silence and darkness.
Until a voice had cut through it.
Mwen sipliye ou, Papa Legba, mennen sèvitè fidèl ou a tounen nan kò a.
Jon’s Haitian Creole wasn’t the best—though better than the nonexistent version his stuck-up family didn’t speak—but he was fairly sure it meant something along the lines of I beg thee, Papa Legba, bring back your faithful servant to the flesh.
He wondered about that, since he didn’t believe that he’d ever been a faithful servant to anybody, because he didn’t like to answer to other people, which was something else his father did not look favorably upon. Then there was a creaking sound, as if cheap wood was being moved aside, scraping over more cheap wood along the way. It made Jon wonder where exactly he was, and he felt a panic attack rising when he realized he was currently lying in a flimsy wooden box he was able to identify as a coffin. Had they stuffed him in there without checking to see if he was truly dead? How sloppy! If he had to die of the Spanish flu under horrible circumstances, he felt he was at least entitled to people making sure he was dead before placing him inside a coffin.
Outside, the voice continued, now interrupted by another one.
“Are you sure this is working, Amede? We’ve been chanting for hours.” The voice sounded like that of a professional whiner. Jon could instantly relate. Anything that required repetition for hours was probably not worth it.
“We haven’t been here for hours, Gaspar. I’d say it was no more than thirty minutes.” This voice was impatient, if with the whiner or because whatever they were doing didn’t work, Jon wasn’t sure.
“Thirty minutes is half an hour,” the whiner, Gaspar, huffed. “I get it, Amede, I really do. I miss her as well, but face it, she’s dead. She’s an ancestor now.”
“I don’t care! We need her. Grann is the only one left. We need a priestess. I’m not ready to take on the mantle.” The sheer despair in the voice woke feelings of pity in Jon. The conversation also distracted him from the fact that he was still in a coffin so cheaply made that he could feel the splinters digging into his back—which really shouldn’t be his main priority at the moment. What he also realized was that splinters had a way of becoming a priority when they were poking into your flesh.
“You’re doing it now, Amede. Killing a cock, drawing symbols with his blood and begging Papa Legba to bring Grann back. That’s priesting.”
A dead cock? Eww. Jon cringed. He’d never been good with blood, much to his father’s dismay.
“And I’m not doing it right! Otherwise, she’d be awake by now!” Amede, the wannabe priest, sounded hysterical now.
The scraping sounded again, then a clattering, probably a coffin lid falling to the ground, Jon guessed. Two gasps and a collective, “Grann!” More shuffling, the sound of clothes catching on splinters and ripping, then a slap, another one, followed by two Ouch! and the stern voice of a woman.
“What did I tell you about raising the dead, enbesil yo?”
“Uh, you said to never do it?” Jon was sure that was Amede, his voice no longer hysterical but that of a child facing punishment for stealing the cookies from the jar, yet, at the same time, immensely relieved to have been caught.
“Exactly. And why do you think I said it?”
“Because it’s dangerous?” Gaspar had obviously broken the jar and knew it.
There was a huff. “Dangerous doesn’t even begin to describe it. And you did it in a room full of corpses!” Two more slaps followed, administered with enough force that Jon winced in his own coffin. He was starting to understand, though, and he didn’t like what his brain was trying to explain to him.
“Let’s see how much damage you caused. Dakò, is there anybody in here who has been woken by my grandsons’ blabbering?” The female sounded all business-like and very commanding. Jon decided it was better to not contradict her by hiding. He couldn’t be sure if she wouldn’t start searching all the coffins. In fact, she sounded like somebody who never left a job half done, and if she did inspect them, he just knew he wouldn’t like being found.
“Uhm, I’m here, though I’m not sure where here is exactly.”
“Don’t you worry, mezanmi. You just keep making some noise and my two idiot grandsons will have you out in no time at all.”
Since he didn’t know what to say, Jon decided hitting the coffin lid with his fist was a good compromise. He must have been quite to the back because it took some serious shuffling, cursing and thumping until he felt his coffin being moved, presumably to the ground. One particularly large splinter lodged itself firmly in his lower back when Amede and Gaspar put his coffin down quite carelessly. Jon couldn’t suppress a whine, even though there was no real pain, as he realized with amazing clarity. He could feel the splinter, it wasn’t nice, but there wasn’t pain, per se—more something along the lines of pressure he knew to associate with pain.
A barked order in Creole cut through the air, and the next moment, the lid of his coffin broke and was lifted off. Jon blinked into the dim light of a room with a high ceiling, which had been white a long, long time ago. He could only see part of it because there were three faces staring down on him. Two belonged to young men, not older than he, both of them looking guilty as hell. The third was that of a woman who had lived a long and rich life, filled with lots of laughter if the web of wrinkles around her eyes was anything to go by. She was dead, just like him, though Jon didn’t know how he knew. There was something about her, about the way she moved—or not moved, really—that told him she must be Grann. She extended her hand to him. Without thinking, he gripped it and let himself be yanked out of the coffin.
“My name is Batilda Honoré, former witch queen of New Orleans.” She looked at her grandsons. “And apparently the new witch queen as well.”
The two young men flinched under her stare. Jon looked around. They were in some kind of storage room, filled with rows and stacks of coffins. All of them were shut, which meant they were occupied. He suppressed a shudder. There was a reason he had refused to follow in his father’s footsteps. To distract himself, Jon bowed his head to Batilda.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Honoré. I’m Jon Levard.”
