October 10th

The engulfing obsidian made me momentarily panic, but as soon as I became conscious of the muggy air around me, I remembered I was home. I waved a hand in front of my face. Nothing. The storm boards on the windows blocked even the slightest crack of light from entering, masking any hints about what time it was. I had agreed to sleep in the living room to appease my father's fear that the back of the house might have structural damage, although I wasn't sure it would have made a difference where we slept if the house did cave in. Now, lying in a heap of blankets and cushions on the floor, I felt better than I had in weeks. Just being home brought on a small smile.

The smile induced a groan. I reached for the bandage on my cheek. The entire right side of my face throbbed when I moved.

"Stupid bird."

Based on how stiff I was, I guessed I'd slept for at least ten hours. My phone told me twelve. Nice.

The quick glow from the screen also showed me I was alone. My father was no longer snoring on the love seat. How did I sleep later than him, especially considering I am on Paris time?

Curiosity pulled me up and to the front door. I squinted as the morning light poured into the cave-like foyer. Stepping out onto the stoop, I let my forehead rest on the iron gate. The metal was cool. A breeze pricked my skin. Has the season already turned? Maybe we'll have a cold Halloween . . . ? If we even have Halloween this year. The only thing harder for me to imagine would be a year without carnival season.

A wave of guilt swept over me. There were tens of thousands of families who had lost everything, including each other, and I was worrying whether all the hours I had put into my costume would be in vain. I pushed the thought away, double-checked the bolt on the gate, and left the door open to maximize the natural light.

***

The sliding doors separating my father's bedroom and studio were wide open. A squirrel bounced across the room, scavenging through the wreckage. I chased it through the gaping hole and out into the courtyard.

It looked like a tornado had spun through. I guess one kind of had.

Hundreds of sketches, inks, paintings, and brushes littered the studio space. Colorful dried pools of paint, resin, and other chemicals patched the wooden floor. A large oxygen tank had smashed into a wall and cracked the plaster all the way up to the ceiling. Iron patio furniture and a mass of leaves and other garden debris had blown inside. Then there was the culprit: the giant column lying in the middle. How the hell are we going to move this thing?

"Zeus, I think you dropped something," I joked halfheartedly. A small smile made my claw wound ache beneath the bandage.

My father was sleeping on an old couch in the corner. My nose turned up, considering how the upholstery had surely been drenched. At least he had bothered to put a blanket down first. He rolled his back to me, revealing a half-drunk bottle of whiskey wedged between the cushion cracks.

"Ugh, Dad . . ." I yanked the bottle free.

He barely stirred.

The only thing that truly seemed to make my father happy was his art. His schedule was erratic because of the bar, so it was hard for him to meet people outside of the nightlife, which he tried to avoid since he was solely responsible for me. Looking around the room again, I decided to let him sleep it off. I pulled an afghan to his shoulders and tiptoed back to the kitchen to sort out more pressing things. Coffee.

Thank God we had a gas stove, and thank God we used a French press—I had to leave the broken kitchen door open to let in light—but no electricity was required for the brew.

As I waited for the grinds to steep, I quietly cleaned up the mess of broken glass and bird feathers, oscillating between guilt and relief that my bedroom had been spared by the Storm. Every one of my things suddenly seemed precious.

Just as the rich smells of coffee 'n' chicory filled the air, in walked my father like a perfectly timed commercial. Only in this version his cheery tone served to overcompensate for his hangover. He broke from rubbing his head to kiss my cheek.

"Morning. It's almost like being a normal person, being awake at this hour."

"I know. I'm so used to your vampire hours." At that moment I realized how much I'd missed him. "It's nice." I wiped down a mug and poured him the first cup. He took a giant swig and nearly choked.

"Jeez, Adele, trying to put more hair on my chest?"

"Gross." My nose wrinkled. "I forgot we wouldn't have milk to steam." Chuckling, I added more hot water to our cups. "What's the plan for today?"

He took another sip before answering. "Find someone to check out the back wall and fix the kitchen door. Sort through what's salvageable in my studio, take photos, and begin the mountain of paperwork to file an insurance claim. Exciting stuff. Oh, then I'll go down to the bar and start the process all over. How 'bout you?"

"The house is like a cave. Can you take down the storm boards first?"

He nodded.

"And set up the generator?"

A yawn interrupted his second nod.

"I'll do an inventory of our food and water and find out which grocers are back in business. Then I have school stuff. And I want to stop by Café Orléans to see if the Michels are back in town—"

"You've obviously had more coffee than me." He drained his cup.

"Oh, and I was thinking I'd move all of my stuff to the room upstairs, but I'll have to clean it out first." Before our quick inspection last night, I hadn't been up there in ages.

"Why would you move your stuff upstairs?"

"So you can move into my bedroom."

"You don't have to do that, sweetheart. I want you to get settled. I can move the studio to the second floor."

"No, it just makes more sense for me to move upstairs. Your studio can be right next to your bedroom, and if you decide to work when you get home from the bar, you won't wake me up going up and down the stairs."

"You're the best." He kissed my forehead. "I'm going to start unboarding the windows."

***

In a cloud of steam, I stepped out of the dark bathroom and into the dark hallway, hair dripping, candle in hand. After all the hours in transit, the hot shower felt glorious, even if beforehand I had to wait for the brown water to run clear and was subsequently freaked out the entire time because, in the candlelight, I couldn't tell whether it had turned murky again.

When I got to my bedroom, I blew out the candle with a smile—the boards were gone from the ten-foot-high windows. A small win for normalcy.

Everything got a sniff test for mustiness as I dug through my closet. After tossing four different dresses on the floor, I decided everything needed to be washed.

Thanks to ma grand-mère (who I'd just met for the first time in Paris), there was certainly no shortage of things to wear in my suitcase. She'd been appalled by the lack of designer names in my wardrobe and had not held back on our shopping spree. I pulled out the simplest thing: a plain black Chanel frock. Walking through the devastated city in a six-hundred-euro dress was deplorable, but there weren't really any better options. At least it lacked embellishments.

I tied the matching silk sash around my waist and dug through my luggage for shoes. I tossed aside ballet flats and dainty booties and went back to my closet for my deep-burgundy Doc Martens—my shit-kickers, as Brooke called them. My feet slipped easily into the molds of the worn boots, making me instantly happy. Familiarity.

I rebandaged my wound, grabbed a small blue-fringed bag, keys, and sunglasses, and was out the door.

The shrill of a power tool unscrewing the boards came from the side of the house.

"Dad, I'm going for a walk! Be back soon!"

The drill stopped, and my father's head popped through the side gate. "Please be careful. Cell service is spotty, so text me if you need anything, and be back before lunchtime."

"Uh, okay." My father hadn't told me to be back home by lunchtime since I was about nine years old. In fact, he was rarely awake before lunchtime.

Two blocks later, signs of life began to emerge: a lady walking her dog, a couple of gutter punks kicking a can, an elderly man shouting expletives while taking photos of his property damage.

I turned onto another residential block and came across a shop hidden among the boarded-up homes. A monstrous white SUV was illegally parked on the curb out front. The doors were propped open, and the sign for Vodou Pourvoyeur gently swung in the breeze, making a faint creaking sound. Incense wafted out to the street. I'd never been inside the shop, but I'd referred many tourists from the café where I worked part-time. Now, for no real reason, I found myself crossing the threshold.

Inside, everything was so vivid, colorful, and foreign I couldn't decide what to focus on first. The front room was filled with tourist thrills: make-your-own-Voodoo-doll kits, spell books, premixed bottles labeled "Love Potion #9," vintage Ouija boards, and bright rabbit-foot key chains. To the right was a painting of Marie Laveau affixed atop an altar of flowers, melted candles, and prayer cards. Visitors had adorned it with cigarettes, coins, candies, and a plethora of other small tokens to please the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.

The earthy smell of incense grew more pungent—floral, with a hint of something sweet, like vanilla. The shop was very long, a former shotgun house, and the deeper I walked, the more exotic the inventory became. Alligator skulls. Necklaces made of cowrie shells, bones, and claws. Statues of Catholic saints carved from wax, wood, and ivory. And a variety of other oddities that appeared to have originated from the local swampland, the Caribbean, or Africa. Both walls of the next room were covered by a sea of rainbow-colored Voodoo dolls decorated with neon feathers, sequins, and Spanish moss. The back of the shop was lit by candles, more reminiscent of an old apothecary.

How have I never been inside this place before?

I stood mesmerized by the floor-to-ceiling shelves of antique books and jars of all shapes and sizes, filled with herbs, powders, salts, and oils. Indigo. Ylang-Ylang. Wormwood. I recognized some of the names on the labels, but most completely escaped me.

Two women were near the rear of the room at the wooden counter. Behind the antique register sat an elderly women in a sleeveless white linen dress whose wild gray curls were half tied up into a traditional tignon headdress—it was obvious she'd been a beauty in her time. A tall girl with her back turned to me stood in front of the counter, trying to coax the old woman into eating something from a bowl and was growing increasingly impatient.

My gaze shifted to a shelf displaying an assortment of gemstone-encrusted daggers next to a "Do Not Touch" sign.

"Fine, Gran, don't eat. I'm still not going to the gathering."

Trying to give them some privacy, I focused on the daggers. They looked ancient. I was imagining them having been used in some kind of sacrificial ritual, when suddenly the two nearest my elbow shifted and clattered onto the floor.

The girl dropped the bowl onto the counter and spun around.

"I swear I didn't touch anything!" I mumbled, double-checking the proximity of my arms.

The girl shot me a glare that meant either she was embarrassed to have been overheard or I should leave. Probably both.

"Child," the old woman called out to me. "Child, you need to protect yourself. You need protection."

The girl let out an exasperated sigh.

I brought the fallen daggers to the girl and gently placed them in her hands. "It's okay," I said. "My dad has been super worried about the crime around here too."

The girl looked at me with annoyance and left the daggers on the counter for the old woman to deal with.

To say the girl was stunning was a major understatement. Long, black, pin-straight hair hung past her waist, and her toffee-colored skin was flawless. She towered over my average frame and could have easily passed for early twenties, but judging from the private school uniform and her attitude, she must have been closer to my age. Immediately, I became self-conscious about the giant bandage across my cheek.

"So, your school has reopened?" I asked. The words came out rushed and slightly desperate sounding. "Do you go to school down here?"

"As if. I attend Sacred Heart Preparatory Academy. Uptown."

Historically, Americans who had migrated down the Mississippi River settled uptown, away from the wilder and more superstitious European, African, and Caribbean Creoles who ruled downtown.

Sacred Heart Preparatory Academy was the most prestigious all-girls school in the state, possibly the entire South. The Academy, as they called it. The campus was only a couple miles away, in the Garden District, but it might as well have been a world away. Supposedly, couples put their progeny on the waiting list as soon as the birth certificates were inked. The school was chock-full of carefully curated pedigrees—a mix of old money and nouveau riche, southern debutantes, daughters of politicians and oil tycoons, and even the offspring of celebrities who made New Orleans their home to escape the limelight of Hollywood.

"So Sacred Heart has reopened?"

"Obviously. In fact, it's better than ever. Holy Cross was decimated, and we graciously took in their student body." Holy Cross was an all-boys school in the Ninth Ward.

The girl was now fully scoping me out. Her blatant gaze started at my feet, where my worn boots got her utter disapproval, and then moved up to my Chanel.

"Nice dress," she muttered, her disapproval fading to befuddlement.

After navigating a Parisian boarding school for the last two months, I was a professional in these kinds of situations. "Merci beaucoup, I bought it in Paris. Just got back in town late last night," I said, as if I flew to Paris every Saturday for shopping and croissants. As soon as the words came out of my mouth I wanted to slap myself, but I had her attention now. Her left eyebrow rose, perplexed.

"I'm late." She flipped her hair and grabbed her bag.

"How did your family make out with the Storm?" I tried to change the subject but had maxed out the quota of attention she was willing to allocate to me.

"We don't have problems with storms." She smirked and pivoted out of the room.

The front door slammed shut; I stiffened, a little stunned by her resolute manner.

"Don't worry about Désirée, my dear. She doesn't understand yet."

I turned to the old woman. "Understand what?"

"Her importance in the world," she answered tenderly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe.

The comment caught me off guard. My paternal grandmother had died when I was little, and ma grand-mère certainly didn't think I had any importance in the world. All she cared about was my French accent and cramming me into smaller and smaller dress sizes.

The old woman began to open and close jars, making meticulous selections. She held one under my nose.

"Lavender, my favorite." I inhaled deeply. "By the way, I'm Adele—"

"Le Moyne," a resonant female voice finished for me.

I turned to find a middle-aged woman standing behind me. She had the same long hair and almond-shaped brown eyes as Désirée, but she exuded authority. With her tailored turquoise dress, navy blazer, and gold bangles, she was more Jackie O than new age Voodoo priestess.

"You're Mac and Gidget's daughter," she said.

"Gidget?" Trying to imagine my mother with a girlish nickname almost made me snicker. Even hearing the Americanized version of her name, Bridget, sounded weird. To me, she was only Madame Brigitte Dupré.

"Your mother was—is an amazing woman."

"Ugh . . ." I fumbled.

Everyone in the French Quarter knew my father, and most knew me, but very few people knew my mother. She'd lived here for only a few years before her sudden departure more than a decade ago. Or maybe people did know her and just never spoke about her. At least not to me.

"I'm Ana Marie Borges, Désirée's mother, and this is my mother-in-law, Ritha."

The old woman came out from behind the counter.

"Borges? As in Morgan Borges?" I asked.

Ritha smiled in the way only a mother could as she drew close beside me.

"Ow!" I flinched when she plucked a few strands of hair from my head, my scalp still sore from the bird attack.

She quickly retreated behind the counter to her herbs, muttering something indiscernible.

Borges was a household name in Louisiana, with deep roots in the political history of New Orleans, and like most political families, people tended to love or hate them. Morgan Borges had been elected mayor earlier this year. Most of his campaign had revolved around bridging the socioeconomic divide. It's pretty apparent which side of the divide his daughter stands on.

"It's nice to see you again, honey," old Ritha said.

Again?

"Take this." She leaned over the counter and curled my fingers around a scratchy fabric pouch. "It's a gris-gris." She had a wide grin and seemed a little kooky. I liked her.

Ana Marie moved directly in front of me and examined my face. Before I could protest, she peeled back the bandage and smeared something from an unmarked jar across my cut. I winced as it tingled.

Overcome with awkwardness from all the matriarchal attention, I searched for purpose by inspecting a basket of herbs at my feet. I grabbed a few bundles.

"Sage," said Ana Marie. "Smart choice. Wards off evil."

"Right . . ." I produced a few dollars, which they refused to accept. "Well, it was nice to meet the both of you."

"Send our regards to your father," said Ana Marie, handing me the unmarked jar of ointment. "It's been far too long."

Is she just being polite? I hoped she meant it.

I exited the shop and paused out front to examine the object that Ritha had slipped me: a small red muslin satchel attached to a long white ribbon. When I pressed my fingers against the fabric pouch, I could feel dried herbs and stones. And apparently my hair, I thought, rubbing my scalp. Ritha's warning about protection echoed in my head.

"What's the harm?" I whispered as I tied the ribbon around my neck and hid the gris-gris underneath my dress.