She screamed something in Creole and hurled the stick to sea. They saw it arc in a flash of lightning, and as it struck the ebony water, they heard Thea shriek inside.

Ellen whirled and ran in. She froze.

Thea was sitting on the sofa. As Ellen stared, she yawned, got up, and strode into her room.

Incredulously Ellen followed. The little girl had crawled into her bed, beneath the covers. Now she was tucking her teddy in beside her.

"Thea?" murmured Ellen. "Thea, baby?"

"Will you read me a story?" Thea yawned. "Will you, Grandma Ellen?"

"Oh, darling." Ellen sobbed. "My darling..."

But by the time she bent to kiss her, Thea was asleep.

***

They sat in the kitchen drinking beer. The rain was stopping, the drumming on the rooftop had ceased, and a pale moon was peeking from the scudding clouds outside.

Ellen had been into the child's bedroom half a dozen times. "She's sleeping like an angel."

Louisa nodded. "She is very, very tired. Give her chicken for breakfast when she wakes."

"Chicken?" Hoagie smiled.

"Yes, pourquoi pas non?"

"Seems odd, is all."

"Oui." She shrugged. "My mama would have sacrificed a chicken in the living room. Michael and Carla are lucky I am not a real mambo, like her."

"You seemed to do the trick," Hoagie grinned.

"It is not a trick. It is a religion. It has bad and it has good."

"And you believe in it?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I am a Catholic, and the Church does not approve. But one cannot deny what happens. If there was an evil loa in l'enfant, then it is gone."

"Well, there was," said Ellen positively. "We all know that."

"The question is," murmured Louisa, "who put it there?"

"She hears those things from Deenie," Ellen said. "Thea's an impressionable child."

"Deenie did not put it there," mused Louisa. "Why would she? And she cannot know enough." Louisa spread out her cards. "I feel a hatred."

She began to play with them, trading one for another, straightening them, shuffling them again. "Papa Jacques hates Michael."

"Mike tried to run him off the island last month," said Hoagie. "For charging Clarence fees."

"I feel this hatred very close...."

She looked into Ellen's eyes and got suddenly up from the table. She opened the screen door slowly and gasped. "There he is," she whispered.

Ellen joined her at the door. In the moonlight, by the water, stood a man. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that it was Papa Jacques. Slowly, the man turned. He drifted up the pathway between the painted rocks, his gourd rattling in his hand with every step.

Hoagie was behind them. He brushed through and yelled, "Hey, you!"

Papa Jacques ignored him and nodded to Louisa. "Bonsoir, ma'mselle."

"What are you doing here?" Louisa piped up. She sounded scared.