Voodoo Queens of New Orleans - Vol. II | In Progress

Chapter Nine: Clairvoyance in the Night

**

The most important thing to do was to figure out what happened to Lisa.

Not no name nonsense like—what's the name of our group going to be? Coterie II? None of that. Sure, we was all thinking that somewhere in our heads. But the main thing we needed to focus on was figuring out where Lisa had went.

We all had sat around my dining table, not drinking or eating nothing. Just sitting there in the quiet. Imani had just finished her crying, but was looking down at her fingers, just thinking. Was I supposed to say something? Probably. But I could barely come to terms with what happened myself. Now, I got these kids sitting around waiting for me to give them something to hold on to. Ben was there with me, which was a surprise, considering how he felt about the whole situation. But he sat next to me, waiting for me to say something like the rest of the kids.

I cleared my throat, similar to how people do it when they about to give a big speech. "I know you took a big risk with coming here with me. I owe it to y'all to be honest and say that I don't know what the next step is for us. My only concern right now is figuring out what happened to Lisa."

"Do you really think Hezekiah had anything to do with her disappearance?" Kizzy asked me.

I shrugged. "I...I don't wanna believe he had something to do with it." I pulled out his locket, hoping it would fade into dust in my hands from not being real. But it didn't go nowhere. "It would make sense to blame him."

"It almost makes too much sense," Kizzy said. "It's almost too easy."

"I agree," said Esther. "After everything that happened at the Council's party, it's easy to blame Abraham for Lisa going missing."

"What if she's dead?" Imani said, and it went quiet again. That soft, innocent look in that baby's eyes broke my heart into a million pieces when she said that.

"She not dead," Ben said, standing up and pacing around the table. "She's too important to be killed by no one, 'specially with all these eyes on her. No, someone took her."

"And left Hezekiah's locket at the scene to frame him?" Mikael's tone was skeptical, like he should have stayed back with Rocio and the Coterie. But I saw the way Ben looked at Mikael—like they both didn't believe Hezekiah didn't do this. They both felt the same way about 'Kiah; they both hated him. But Mikael felt a lot for Lisa, and Ben cared about me, so they were both here. But I felt that hatred through them; it reminded me of how the Coterie made me feel back at Mambo Nene's house, when Sajida told them all that me and Hezekiah were related.

I stood up, too. I wasn't nearly as tall as Ben, but I wanted him to see how serious I was. "Hezekiah didn't do this. He wouldn't."

"He wouldn't?" Ben laughed a tired laugh, like he knew we were starting this shit up all over again. "Just like you swore he wouldn't turn you into a bloodsucker?"

"That was different! He had no choice!"

"So, what make you think he got a choice now?"

"You know what, Ben? If you gone keep fighting me on this, then I don't know why you even came here in the first place?"

"'Cause I care about you, Cami!" Ben yelled. "You're my sister and I love you. Don't mean I always got to agree with everything you say, though. And if you think loving somebody mean agreeing with everything they do and say, then you let Alize and the Coterie poison your head more than I thought. Hell, if I didn't care 'bout you, I wouldn't give a rat's ass about 'Kiah and what he doing!"

"If you loved me, you'd stop and listen to me instead of laughing at everything I got to say!"

Ben's face fell, like his skin suddenly got really heavy. The kids were looking at us with big, almost "entertained" eyes, watching a brother and sister's quarrel. I hated fighting with Ben, which probably one of the reasons why me and him didn't talk no more; we always ended up fighting. About Hezekiah, or our daddy, or the Coterie. It was always something. Ben saw the world for what it was, and I saw the world for what it could be; I was a dreamer, he was a believer. Being this way got us in our own different types of trouble, I suppose.