To my surprise, my next breath brought with it a brief whiff of scent. Some sharp, delicious spice overlaying the briny smell of seafood. The sensation faded quickly, as my sensations always did, and I groaned softly. Once again I felt that all-too-familiar rush of satisfaction and frustration.

Hearing my groan, Joshua turned back to me with a concerned expression. I shook my head, indicating that I was fine.

Still, his steps slowed and he looked around the street … to make sure it wasn’t too crowded, apparently, because he reached back to take my hand. As he guided me into another alley, I held tight, letting the fire of our touch spread up the veins of my wrist.

I enjoyed the electric tingle so much, I almost didn’t notice that Joshua and I had left the busiest sector of the Quarter. When I started to pay better attention, I saw that our surroundings had shifted from flashy and eclectic to dusty and worn. Here, the shops looked grayer, shabbier. Nor did they boast crowds of onlookers and shoppers. In fact, only two other people were walking on this street. And judging by how they hurried along, they weren’t here on a leisurely stroll.

So I was more than a little surprised when Joshua stopped suddenly in front of a diner with a dirty, cracked front window. Inside, I could just make out the sputter of a neon light, sending off its death glow above several rows of empty tables. The place made me think of a few choice words, “sketchy” and “shady” being the forerunners.

Joshua pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and frowned down at a bunch of scribbles. He looked up at the diner—the Conjure Café, according to the chipped red paint on the window—then back at the paper.

“Um, Joshua?” I prompted. “What are we doing here?”

“I don’t want to tell you, but maybe I need to warn you in advance …?” he mused, more to himself than to me.

“Warn me about what?” I demanded warily.

He flashed me an anxious, close-lipped smile. Then he flicked his head in the direction of the diner.

“Well … your present—it’s kind of inside.”

I blanched. “In there? What are you trying to give me, the Plague?”

He shook his head, snickering nervously. “We’re not hanging out in the diner, Amelia. We’re going to the back. In the kitchen, I think.”

“Joshua, honey, I appreciate the effort, but I don’t really think I need to see the Conjure Café’s culinary masterpieces in the making.”

“I promise this isn’t about the food,” he insisted. “We’re supposed to meet someone in there is all.”

“Who?” I gasped, trying not to imagine someone holding my present in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other.

Joshua hesitated, about to say something. Then he shook his head again, obviously reversing course. “Please, Amelia. Just trust me.”

I pulled my eyes from his and peered into the dim interior of the diner. When I turned back to Joshua, I practically had to rip my bottom lip from my teeth to answer him.

“Against my better judgment, I trust you. But if I see Sweeney Todd back there, so help me God I’m running in the opposite direction, and you can fend for yourself.”

“Deal,” Joshua said, letting out a strangled laugh that made me wonder what made him more nervous: my possible reaction to his gift, or the fact that he’d have to go inside this place to get it.

Before I had the chance to ask him, he crossed in front of me and walked up the two crumbling steps to the front door of the Conjure Café. He pushed on the door, holding it wide-open for me since we didn’t have much of an audience. I took a little gulp for courage, sent up a silent request that I wouldn’t regain my sense of smell when we were inside, and followed Joshua into the diner.

The bell above the entrance gave a weak chime as the door shut behind us. I glanced up quickly, worried that a patron might notice Joshua holding the door open for thin air. But no one occupied the tables scattered haphazardly near the windows.

As Joshua and I moved cautiously toward the back of the dining area, I studied the place further. Besides the fact that this had to be the least-populated restaurant in New Orleans, something about the café felt … off.

The few tables held none of the “extras” you saw in normal diners: no napkin holders, no bin of sugar packets, no salt and pepper shakers. In fact, there didn’t seem to be enough chairs to serve a small dinner crowd. I couldn’t see a cash register anywhere, either. Not even on the long counter in the back, where a bored attendant stood flipping through a tattered magazine.

Something told me that, if people patronized this café at all, it certainly wasn’t for food. My suspicion only grew stronger when Joshua and I approached the back counter.

The attendant, an acne-scarred man who looked well past fifty, hardly stirred when Joshua leaned against the counter directly in front of him. Finally, after being ignored for longer than reasonable, Joshua cleared his throat.

“Um, excuse me?” he said, checking the slip of paper one more time. “I’m looking for … Marie?”

Still silent, the attendant raised one arm and pointed to a curtained doorway at the very back of the restaurant.

“Can we … I mean, can I just go on in?” Joshua asked.

The attendant merely nodded without looking up from his magazine. Joshua caught my gaze and shrugged. I could see my own discomfort reflected in his eyes, but I could also see his determination to follow through with this project. Gnawing wildly on my lip, I nodded reluctantly.

We walked toward the curtain together, and my misgivings intensified with each step.

“Will you just give me a little hint about what we’re doing here?” I murmured, grateful that the attendant completely ignored us.

My question must have made Joshua uncomfortable, because he paused with his hand only inches from drawing aside the curtain. In the softest whisper he could manage, he said, “I’ll tell you if you promise not to be mad.”

“I could never be mad at you,” I whispered back. “But you have this uncanny ability to seriously freak me out.”

Joshua bit his bottom lip—a bad habit he’d obviously picked up from me—and his gaze shifted to the closed curtain. He was silent for so long, I became impatient.

“Could you at least tell me where we are? I mean, where we really are?”

His hand lingered beside the curtain a moment longer, and then as if to answer me, he tugged back the fabric.

For nearly a full minute I had no idea what I was seeing. Instead of a sterile, brightly lit kitchen, this café had some kind of cavelike storage room in the back. At least that’s what it looked like at first.

The room had low ceilings and narrow walls painted dark brown and lined with endless rows of shelves, which were stocked with jars and books and little statues. Roughly hewn candelabra flickered through the dark haze of smoke pouring out of several incense burners.

I peered closer at the strange powders and liquids swimming in the jars, and at the skeletal-faced statues surrounding them. Then I recoiled.

“Oh my God,” I whispered through clenched teeth. “You brought me to a Voodoo shop.”

Chapter

FIFTEEN

My brain was in the process of sending a “run away” signal to my muscles when Joshua began to spill forth a rush of words, half of which made no sense.

“I know you’re mad,” he sputtered, “but I just had to tell Annabel about all the problems you’ve been having with materializing, and about all your bad dreams and worries and stuff, and then she told me about this place and how they might be able to help you feel better, or more ‘at peace,’ or something. And maybe it was a bad idea, but I’ve wanted to help you so badly that I sort of—”