Avery shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I just felt like you had it. I assume you know that I?—”
“Conduct Voodoo rituals under the table at your shop while I look the other way for tax purposes?”
“Yeah, that.” Avery’s eyes glinted with mischief.
“I knew. I just didn’t know it was allreal. I guess I just thought it was one of those things where if you believe in it and it helps you to find peace, what’s the harm? I didn’t really understand the magical component. To be honest, I still don’t.”
“We’re all a little blind here in the magical community,” explained Avery. “Things are changing with modern technology and the internet, but there’s still so much that we don’t know.”
“Well, I want to talk more about that, but first —” Ophelia took a deep breath “— I think I’m somehow connected to Delphine’s killer.”
Ophelia recounted every tiger episode she had and detailed the concern she had around the Exodus verse. “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.” She also told Avery that she had reached out to Detective Lewis from the NYPD this morning to find out the name of her NYC attacker. Previously, she thought that knowing who he was, humanizing him, and potentially finding out he had family would have been too much for her. She saw him as a monster and had wanted to keep it that way. However, now she needed to know who he was. Maybe he could provide a link.
“This is a tough situation,” commented Avery. “There is definitely enough of a connection to be freaked out, but not enough to bring to the cops.”
“Right. So this morning I researched all the victims to see if there were any connections.” Ophelia pulled out a notepad. “As I said, there was a potential fourth victim that occurred Friday night or Saturday in the early morning. The police have notmade a public announcement yet, but some Facebook posts point to Lauren Cash as the fourth victim. Lots of friends and family posting about mourning her loss over social media. She was a twenty-eight-year-old graphic designer and professional tarot and palm reader for hire at events.”
Cash’s online presence didn’t reveal much in Ophelia’s search. She had a freelance business website filled with intricate illustrations and bold designs. Her personal social media accounts didn’t provide any more information.
Ophelia looked at Avery to gauge his response to these details. He seemed okay, but quiet, lost in his own thoughts. “Do you want me to keep going? If it’s too much, I can stop,” she offered.
“No, keep going.”
“So yeah, Lauren is likely the fourth victim. The first victim was Daniella Devillier, an OBGYN, who had an office out in Metairie. There was nothing else I could find about her.”
Avery nodded, and Ophelia flipped the page in her notebook.
“Then we have the second victim, Franklin Sonnier. Formerly a Catholic priest. He worked closely with Planned Parenthood to provide birth control to the underprivileged. He also found counseling support for women going through pregnancy or abortions.”
“The Catholic Church asked him to stop promoting such services, claiming that as a priest he was representing the church’s beliefs, but he didn’t stop. So they excommunicated him. He was living alone in New Orleans when he was murdered in his house.”
She paused. A neighbor was walking on the sidewalk with her baby in a stroller, and they waved. Ophelia waited for her to pass before continuing.
“Do you want me to skip over Delphine’s notes?” she asked.
“No. Don’t sugarcoat nuthin’.”
“Okay,” she said and passed him her phone to show him an article from ten years earlier detailing a break-in that occurred at Delphine’s shop in the Quarter. The photos revealed smashedwindows and glass cases, destroyed goods for sale on the ground, and in the background, someone had spray-painted obscenities on the walls.
Witch
Devil’s Whore
Heretic
Avery closed his eyes and let his head hit the back of the rocking chair. “I remember this. It shook her up. She was already planning on retiring, and then this happened. She closed the shop right after. It was an awful end to her career.”
Ophelia hummed in agreement. “There’s something about the writing in red spray paint, the hate crime itself, that gives me pause. I know there’s no direct correlation to the Cutthroat Killer that we can see from this article, but it feels eerily similar. Can you remember anything else from that time?”
“Not really,” said Avery as he scrubbed a palm down his face. “Mrs. Beulah had a vision about this, though. Remember when she came into the shop a while ago and told me about her vision and the underlined Exodus quote?”
“Holy shit, yes. I forgot about that. What are the odds?”
“I don’t think odds have anything to do with it. Mrs. Beulah really does have visions.”
Ophelia shook her head. It was still so hard to believe that magic was real. Ophelia hummed, her mind whirling through possibilities. “What else can you remember about the break-in? Do you remember the verse at all?”
“No, I just remember being angry for her. You know, people did random shit like that over the years. Most of the time, it was kids breaking in on a dare, but that’s also the life of a business owner in the Quarter.”
