Sweet Jesus, my girl died last night and she's only alive now because de t'ing dat I tried to hide from her all dese years, tried to keep from awakening within her, kept her missing soul safe. Looks like her mama did her an unintended favor.

All because of one man's misdirected need for vengeance.

With a soft sigh, Divinity lifted her cup to her lips again, but this time the cherries-and-honey aroma only made her belly clench.

Dat ain't de whole truth, now, be it? One man's misdirected need for vengeance and yo' desire to keep dem children safe. But you grabbed de wrong identity, you.

Gabrielle halted her recounting of the invocation gone wrong. "Want me to stop? You're looking awful grim," she commented from her rocker.

Divinity snorted. "Dat be de pot calling de kettle black."

And that was the absolute truth. The trim mambo in her red blouse and tan cords seemed to have aged since Divinity had sleep-tricked herself onto the sofa. Lines had deepened beside the woman's mouth, creased her forehead; worry and regret haunted her dark eyes.

No wonder. Her invocation to Baron Samedi hadn't fared any better than Divinity's go-to-sleep potion had on Cash, and the loa of death had poured himself into Cash's pride- and hate-poisoned heart. Now both, man and loa, hunted her nephew.

Divinity shook her head. As if being buried in the deep, dark ground weren't bad enough.

Her troubled thoughts returned to the magic back-fires-her potion and Gabrielle's invocation. Had they been due to a hex placed on the house by Doctor Heron? Or something else entirely? Something darker and deadlier than a final shard of bitter laughter from a dead man?

And dat would be ...?

Nothing useful popped into mind, but a deep sense of unease glided through her like a partially submerged gator and her gaze slid over to her worktable and the poppet with the violet button eyes and brown yarn hair.

No, de loa still be sleeping. Dat much I'm sure of. Awake, it would take over de girl, maybe even destroy her mind, force her to do evil t'ings. She sure as hell wouldn't be searching for Jackson. Awake, de loa would eventually cast her body aside, a ruptured cocoon. No, de loa still be sleeping, for true.

Yet her unease threaded dark roots into her heart and anchored itself deep.

Divinity set her cup of tea aside on the coffee table, next to the flame-snuffed remains of a white candle. The faint odor of rum, tobacco smoke, and hot peppers still spiced the air.

"How long's it been since de girls left?" Divinity asked, rising to her feet and walking to the front window. The old oak floor creaked comfortably beneath her feet, familiar and solid.

Rain streaked the double-paned glass, the beads of water rippling with the deep green of the weeping willows and oaks and lawn beyond. Thunder muttered, but the storm seemed to be passing.

Divinity's heart gave a hard and painful pulse. Had the girls reached Jackson before the storm?

"Nearly two hours," Gabrielle replied. "They could be on their way back."

But what neither of them voiced lingered in the air nonetheless, like black smoke heavy with tension and dark possibilities: Then why haven't they called to let us know one way or another?

Divinity unlatched the window and pushed it up. The mingled rain-fresh scents of roses and tree bark and rich, wet soil flowed into the room. She studied the empty driveway-no Dodge Ram truck, no Siberian husky chasing squirrels, no niece or nephew arguing or blasting music-and felt just as empty inside.

"I'm gonna give Kallie a call, see if everyt'ing be okay," she said. "Den we need to cleanse dis house of dat man's evil, top to bottom, inside and out, and break his damned hex."

"Agreed," Gabrielle said, then paused, a troubled expression shadowing her face. She set her teacup on the candle-cluttered end table between the cherrywood rockers, then leaned forward, holding Divinity's gaze. "But we need to consider one very important thing before we begin."

"And dat very important t'ing would be?"

"What if a cleansing backfires just like the tricks did and we end up inviting more evil in?"

Sweet Jesus. Divinity hadn't even considered that possibility. Refused to consider it. "We'll use holy water first. Ain't no way dat can backfire."

"I used holy water during my invocation," Gabrielle said, casting a pointed glance at the makeshift altar on the coffee table.

Tapping a finger against her lips, Divinity mulled over the problem, perusing the sad altar and its remnants-candles, brazier, cup of coffee, small wood penis, symbols etched in dragon's blood ink on the back of a magazine.

Were prayers of the same weave as spells, a novena and offering the same as laying a trick? She hated to think about what a backfiring prayer might cost a person ... or their soul.

"You be a priestess," Divinity said finally, shifting her attention back to Gabrielle's watchful face. "Do prayers use de same kind o' magic as hoodoo tricks?"

The mambo leaned back in her chair, frowning and tugging absentmindedly at the edge of her carnation-red scarf. "I think it has more to do with power, with inner energy, than magic, but-" The phone's sudden ringing stopped Gabrielle's words.

Kallie, praise de Lord! Relief flooded Divinity.

Holding up a Just a second finger, she whirled and hurried into the kitchen. She snagged the cream-colored wall phone's handset and pressed it to her ear. "Tell me what be happening, girl," she said just a trifle breathlessly into the receiver. "You okay? You find yo' cousin?"

"Umm ... no," a female voice decidedly not Kallie's, but familiar all the same, replied, and disappointment scratched thorn-sharp through Divinity. "This ain't your niece, Miz LaRue. It's Addie Thompson in Crowley. And we've got beaucoup big trouble over here."

Miz LaRue. Hmmm. Dis could get awkward now that de real Gabrielle LaRue is back in Louisiana.

"Talk fast, Addie, I be expecting an important call from Kallie. What be de problem over dere?"

As Divinity listened to the Crowley-based hoodoo spill eye-widening news, the dread coiled ever tighter around her spine, showing no sign of letting go or slithering away anytime soon. No sooner had Addie finished speaking in a breathless rush than Divinity heard the double click on the line that indicated a call waiting.

Putting the Crowley hoodoo on hold, Divinity switched over to the incoming call, but again, it wasn't Kallie or even Belladonna.

"Woman, you ain't gonna believe what's been happening here the last hour or so," a deep and currently very tense masculine voice proclaimed-a root doctor in Jean-erette known as Doctor Coyote.

The call-waiting double click sounded again. And again.

A strong sense of urgency quivered in Divinity's muscles and pooled in her chest as she listened to every hoodoo and root doctor she knew-no, wait, only those she knew in Louisiana-recite a litany of magic gone suddenly awry.

And the thought that filled her mind was: An eye for an eye is never enough.

What kinda evil crossing did dat man lay down? And how did we set it off? More important, how do we uncross it?

She tried to imagine the power it would take to lay down a crossing that, when triggered, rippled outward in all directions, shredding magic like deadly shrapnel from a massive bomb.

And sniffing along behind those thoughts came another: Doctor Heron's own power? Maybe he hadn't acted alone, after all. Or maybe he'd made some dark crossroads deal in de event of his sudden demise ...

When the flood of stunned and frantic voices finally ran dry and the phone quit ringing, Divinity fetched two bottles of Abita from the fridge, then returned slowly to the living room, the phone's handset tucked into a pocket of her purple skirt.

Alarm flashed across Gabrielle's face. She perched at the rocker's end. "Divinity?" she asked.

Wordlessly handing the mambo one of the cold bottles of beer, Divinity plopped down onto the sofa across from the other woman. She leaned back into its cushions with a weary sigh. "We be in deep shit," she said, twisting off the beer's cap, then meeting and holding Gabrielle's eyes.

"How deep?"

Divinity took a long drink of the cold amber pale brew, then told her what the rattled hoodoos and root doctors had funneled into her ear.

"A silence-the-witness trick I performed for a client to help him win his court case ended up with the fool confessing to a bunch of crimes he didn't even commit."

"You ain't gonna believe ... I don't even know where to begin ... but the short of it is, a client wants to marry a gator instead of the woman I fixed to fall in love with him. And the gator seems agreeable."

Spontaneously combusting mojo bags.

Poppets that stitch together companion poppets to run away with, taking sewing needles and thread with them.

Some of the backfiring tricks had landed on the good side of wonderful, others had decidedly not, and still others had landed squarely in the bizarre and inexplicable category-gators in love and runaway poppets.

"Jesus Christ," Gabrielle breathed. She took a long, throat-stretching pull from the Abita. When she lowered the bottle again, she asked, "What in Bon Dieu's name is going on? Could this have anything to do with Doctor Heron's death? With what your niece ... did ... to him?"

Divinity's gaze slid almost unwillingly to her worktable at the room's end and the unfinished poppet with the purple button eyes. "I t'ink de loa inside Kallie had more to do with dat man's soul unraveling dan Kallie herself did," she said, a hint of defensiveness threading through her voice-even to her own ears. "Man killed her, after all. Girl ain't got dat kind o' power on her own. De loa mighta roused long enough to teach de fi' de garce a well-deserved lesson."

"And then went back to sleep?" Gabrielle questioned dubiously, one eyebrow arched. "Does this loa have a name? A purpose?"

Just as Divinity opened her mouth to answer, the phone rang again, the shrill sound grating against already touchy nerves. She yanked the handset out of her pocket and thumbed the talk button.

"Addie," she murmured, "I still be waiting to hear from Kallie-"

"Just called to tell you one more thing. Turn your TV to the Weather Channel."

Divinity frowned. "Why?"

"You been keeping up with that tropical storm in the Caribbean? Evelyn?"

"Oui, of course, but it ain't aimed at us. Dem poor folks in de Honduras and Belize are de ones in de storm's path."

"Evelyn's grown up," Addie said. "And more."

Spotting the remote on the floor beside the coffee table, Divinity grabbed it and powered on the flat-screen TV Jackson had given her a couple of years ago, then flipped through the channels until she found the one Addie mentioned.

"You see what I'm talking about?" Addie asked.

"Yup, but-" Then Divinity saw it scrolling across the bottom of the screen in bold letters over and over. HURRICANE WATCH. "Sweet Jesus."

Gabrielle swiveled around in her chair to look at the TV screen, then her brow furrowed in a frown. "May's early for a blowdown, but not unheard-of."

"True, dat," Divinity said, voice grim. She thumbed up the TV's volume, then wished she hadn't, the talking head's somber words frosting her from the inside out.

"I repeat, Tropical Storm Evelyn is now a category two hurricane and her projected trajectory has changed. Landfall is no longer expected in Belize. The hurricane's sudden shift in direction will take it into the Gulf of Mexico."

Divinity listened as the forecaster talked about Evelyn's record low pressure system and her ever-increasing wind speeds. Grim excitement vibrated through his voice as he speculated on how Hurricane Evelyn was shaping up to be a monster storm as she powered her way toward the Gulf of Mexico.

"And this storm is still picking up steam, Jim. If it keeps up at this rate, I predict Evelyn will be bigger than Katrina and more powerful than Gaspard."

"You see?" Addie repeated. "And it's headed into the Gulf."

"But it don't mean de storm be headed here," Divinity said. "If it comes dis far, it could still blow into Mexico or Texas. Hell, it could blow itself out over de sea or loop back for de Honduras. And even if it do get over dis way, we be safe. We got de wards guarding Louzeann. So take a deep breath and calm yo'self down, woman."

After the devastation, loss of life, and heartbreak wreaked by Katrina, the local conjurers had joined forces to create a protective network, a magical levee system and shield that spanned the entire Louisiana coastline, protecting people, land, and cities-including the land's music-steeped heart, New Orleans-from a hurricane's worst. In all the years that had followed, the wards had failed only once.

Hurricane Gaspard.

"About that," Addie said, her voice graveyard grim. "I've got even worse news."

"I t'ought you just wanted to tell me one more t'ing," Divinity grumped.

"Well, it's really more of a two-parter, but still just one thing."

A dark and chilling possibility occurred to Divinity. She desperately hoped she was wrong. "I be betting you're gonna tell me dat wit' all de trouble with magic today, de damned wards have fallen."

"No. Not fallen. Much worse." Something in Addie's tone, choked and scared, a child watching a closet door slowly open on its own, made Divinity pause.

"I be listening," she said quietly.

"The wards are still in place, but their feel-the energy and juju fueling them-has ... changed." Addie stopped talking and Divinity heard her swallow before continuing. "Some of us are a little worried that, given Evelyn's change in course, maybe instead of protecting from hurricanes, the wards are drawing the storm in. Summoning it."

"Sweet Jesus," Divinity breathed. "You sure?"

"No. No, we're not-not one hundred percent-but that's the word from the hoodoos maintaining the protection system."

"Dey need to undo de wards," Divinity said. "If de wards no longer exist, den dey can't summon anyt'ing."

"Yup, I agree. But a couple of New Orleans hoodoos are arguing that we wait until we're positive the wards are malfunctioning before undoing them."

"And?"

"The ward hoodoos aren't going to wait," Addie replied. "No one wants to chance bringing a hurricane to Louisiana."

"Dat good. Keep me posted, y'hear?" Divinity said.

"Will do. Talk to you soon." Addie ended the call.

Divinity looked at the TV screen, at the Doppler radar image of the rapidly growing storm. If it shaped itself into an unstoppable monster like Hurricane Gaspard, then the Louisiana coastline along with all of its cities, towns, and fragile ecosystems would be virtually defenseless. If tainted, the wards would guarantee catastrophic destruction.

History be repeating itself. Sweet Jesus.

But, unlike the last time nine years ago, at least Divinity knew why. Or thought she did, anyway.

An eye for an eye is never enough. Never, never, never.

Those words had set everything into motion-a murdered nomad, Kallie's death and resurrection and, more than likely, Jackson's disappearance and burial, the twisted magic. Words given to Kallie by Doctor Heron's daughter and passed on to Divinity.

An eye for an eye is never enough.

Could a man hate so much that it transformed his very soul into a bitter and poisoned pool? One that warped everything he touched, everything he thought, every word spoken-including spells? And imbued his hexes with a dark and seething power beyond imagining?

Sweet Jesus and Holy Mary.