Page 73 of She's Like the Wind

Delphi smirked, looking after the couple as they walked away. “Tourists love a little voodoo and jazzand hot sauce. Think they’re gonna leave here enlightened?”

I sipped my beer. “Maybe they will.”

“Speaking of voodoo,” he continued casually, “You ever go see my aunt’s shop on Dumaine?”

I gave him a look. “Man, don’t start.”

“She’s legit,” he protested. “No tourist crap. Real Haitian roots. She does readings, cleansings. You need more than beer to get that curse of heartbreak off your back.”

“I’m not cursed.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re in love with a woman who won’t talk to you,andyou’re still sleeping with the ghost of your first love who died next to you. That sounds like a curse to me.”

I sent him a sideways glance that could’ve lit a fuse.

He didn’t exactly harangue me, but after we polished off our beers, Delphi managed to drag me to see his aunt, like I was having a spiritual emergency.

There were three kinds of people in New Orleans at any given time: the skeptics, the believers, and the tourists too drunk to know which one they were.

Delphi was firmly in the second camp.

He lived in a converted condo inside St. Elizabeth’s Chapel—a red-brick Gothic Revival church-turned-luxury residence in the Garden District. Originally built in the mid-1800s as part of a Catholic orphanage, the chapel had long been deconsecrated and rehabbed into high-end units with soaring ceilings, archedwindows, and just enough lingering eeriness to keep the ghost stories alive.

Delphi swore his place was haunted—not in a doors-slamming, dishes-breaking manner, but a gentle haint who he was sure was someone’s granddaddy. He said the presence mostly just turned on lights, shuffled papers, and occasionally changed the channel when Delphi was watching something where there was too much swearing or sex.

He had his palm read monthly, got his aura cleansed with smudge sticks, and once dated a woman who made custom gris-gris bags out of recycled Mardi Gras beads.

And yet, he was the most level-headed guy on my crew.

That was New Orleans for you.

His aunt’s shop didn’t have a name, just a sign out front that said: ‘Now go do that Voodoo that you do so well.’

“Blazing Saddles,” I remarked mockingly.

“Auntie Griselle is a big Mel Brooks fan,” Delphi explained.

“Griselle? I thought her name was Mama Lune?”

Delphi shrugged. “Branding…she felt like she needed a change. So Griselle from gris-gris, you get it?”

What I was getting was that I was an idiot for letting Delphi bring me to a freaking con artist.

I ran a hand down my face. “What’s her real name?”

“Jane,” he said on a cackle.

Inside, Auntie Griselle’s shop was a cave of velvet, bone, and shadow. We were greeted by a flickering candle, and a faint scent of clove, myrrh, and smoke.

“Enh, my boy!” Auntie Griselle wrapped her arms around her nephew, kissed his cheek with a loud smack. “Delphi,chéri, you been keepin’ outta trouble, hmm?”

She wore layers of black and red, silver rings on every finger, and a head wrap tied like a crown. Her skin was deep brown and smooth as carved stone.

“I brought my friend…my boss, Gage, over.” Delphi gently peeled himself out of the velvet-and-incense hug and nudged me forward like he was handing me over to the spirits.

“Gage, meet my Auntie Griselle.”

She was barefoot on the wooden floor, her long skirt brushing the tops of her toes. Bracelets clinked on both wrists. A scarf the color of blood oranges wrapped her hair in a towering crown, and her eyes—dark, knowing, amused—sparkled like she was already three steps ahead of whatever I came in thinking.