The witch had made Nora almost believe.

Cyrus stood up.

“All right, come on.” He waved at her to follow him.

“Where are we going?”

“On a witch hunt.”

“I should probably change first.”

“For the French Quarter?” he asked.

“Ah, good point.” She’d fit right into the French Quarter after dark. Then again, these particular boots of hers were not, in fact, made for walking.

Nora left Cyrus in her dungeon lobby and changed clothes in her bathroom, replacing her boots with black heels and switching her stockings and skirt for jeans. She kept the bustier top on.

“No other shirt?” Cyrus asked, glancing at her over his phone. No, not glancing at her. Glancing at her mounds of cleavage.

“Look, you want answers from strangers, my tits will get us answers.”

“True,” he said. “I’ll drive.”

“I don’t mind driving.”

“Can you see the road over your tits?”

Nora glanced down at her rather out-of-control cleavage.

“Okay,” Nora said. “You drive.”

Nora rode shotgun in Cyrus’s Honda. It was getting late and were they in any other city, she might have worried that the shops would be closed by the time they arrived. But not in New Orleans. The Quarter woke up around noon and didn’t go to bed again until dawn. With the bars on Bourbon Street open all night, most shops in the area stayed open late. Sure enough, when Cyrus parked on Barracks, the streets were alive with hundreds of people, soaking up the evening breeze off the water, already looking for good times and big trouble.

“Where to?” Nora asked when they reached the corner of Barracks and Chartres.

“You tell me. Where’d you go on your walk?”

“All right, well, let’s start on Bourbon. First, I know I definitely walked down Bourbon that day. And second, let’s get a drink. I’m buying.”

“Yeah, you are.”

Cyrus got a boring old beer, and Nora loaded up on rum and Coke, a double. They wandered down to Voodoo Alley, but nothing about the place seemed familiar. The turned a corner and found The Black Cat closing up for the night. Nora remembered going in there, but the man working the shop said they’d never offered psychic readings—no room. The man gave them a list of all the other witchcraft and voodoo shops in the neighborhood. Google didn’t list them all, and a couple had changed names when they changed owners.

They walked down the other side of Bourbon Street when Nora looked up and saw her.

“What?” Cyrus asked.

“That’s her.” She pointed at a woman’s face painted on a hanging shop sign.

Cyrus stood at her side and stared up.

“Marie Laveau,” Cyrus said. “You sure?”

“Definitely.”

“You’re telling me that Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, who has been dead for a hundred fifty years, gave you a tarot card reading.”

“I’m not saying it was the real Marie Laveau. I don’t believe in ghosts, okay? At least I’ve never met one. But she looked just like that and dressed just like that.” She pointed up at the woman on the sign. “But younger. Maybe thirty.”