The Curse of the Crescent

By Roberta Bliss

Discover a secret world of voodoo and witchcraft as a grief stricken villain goes to any length to bring back the love of his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amazon
• Release date: Dec 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781729801734

Book preview

Chapter One

New Orleans, Good Friday, 1788

The heat was overwhelming, as it always was this time of year, just before the onset of summer, according to the locals that had lived in the city longer than Lala or her sister. The layers upon layers of petticoats paired with stockings seemed ridiculous considering how humid it was.

She had come with her mother and sister to start a new life, with promises of riches beyond their wildest dreams. After her father passed away, it was true that they had a comfortable amount of money to live on, but her mother, who worried more than she should, wanted to make sure the girls had a better life.

Lottie, her sister and her mother traveled together on an ocean liner halfway across the earth. It was the farthest they had ever collectively dreamed of traveling. France had been home to their family for hundreds of years. They procured a successful bakery in the small village of Yvoire, Rhône-Alpes on the banks of the Lake Geneva. Although her family was never formally trained, they had passed down recipes and techniques for generations, maintaining the success of their business. It was hard to make the decision to come to New Orleans, but their mother left the French bakery in the very capable hands of a nephew that had been baking scones since the age of three. They would always have France to come back to, but she thought that thier mother just needed a change of scenery after their father died.

Her mother had purchased a defunct bakery before arriving to New Orleans. Their fully furnished apartment was upstairs. Since they had traveled aboard a ship, they opted to leave their belongings, except for some fine French linens, and start anew. Their apartment was sparse, unlike their lavish French apartment sprawling nearly one city block over their bakery in Yvoire.

They were content and comfortable. Through the years, their apartment didn’t change much, it remained quaint and relaxed and her mother seemed to be happy again, baking and putting smiles on customers faces.

New Orleans was much different than the old-world village in France. Lala was younger than her sister and had nearly forgotten what it was like back home. Many of their friends had made the exodus before them and sent tales of sinful adventures and uncharted wealth luring thier mother to the new land. They had lived in New Orleans for about ten years now, before the Treaty of Paris gave control of New Orleans to Spain. Since then, less people emigrated from France which left Lala’s family as one of the few original French pastry shops still operating in New Orleans.

It was Lala’s kind of town, people scurried to and fro, rarely saying a word or two as they passed. The streets were crowded with vendors selling everything from farm raised fruits and vegetables to hand-stitched linens and sows dripping with blood hanging from rafters. It was noisy, dirty and corrupt, but Lala had a taste for it and loved the freedom.

Lala! Lottie beckoned from the stairwell leading to the bakery. It’s time to head to market!

She bustled her way through the cramped Quarters, kissing her mother goodbye and holding her older sister’s hand as they scurried through the foul smelling streets of New Orleans. Hygiene was not a priority in New Orleans, it seemed. Last night’s garbage mingled with the contents of the morning chamber pots creating a muddy slush in the center of the narrow streets that horse drawn buggies trudged through, adding to the stench.

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There were no fire brigades to extinguish the massive flames that enveloped entire city blocks in the blink of an eye. Thousands of displaced residents stood in the streets and cried as they watched everything they owned turn to ash. Lala and Lottie had been gathering goods at the market near the riverfront. Once the fires began, it spread so swiftly, they had no opportunity to return to find their mother.

When all was said and done, nearly 800 of the 1000 buildings in the French Quarter were burned to the ground, including the pastry shop that was their only solace in this foreign new world. The Governor called it an arid and horrible wilderness that took only five hours to destroy 70 years of work.

Lala couldn’t recall all the events of day, just that it seemed she was completely lost and terrified. After the smoke cleared, she and her sister tried to make their way home to find their mother, but the debris field was so treacherous, it was impossible and even more insurmountable to believe that their mother could have survived.

It went without mention that all of their possessions were buried in ash. Lottie was the unshakable sort, she had already begun to ascertain what they would do now that they had no money to return to France.

Intense sorrow swelled her heart. Lala could not stop searching for her mother in the rubble of what was once the French Quarter. Lottie had set off to send a letter back to France to get money sent their way, but that would take weeks, maybe months, to hear anything and that would still leave them homeless and penniless, except the few coins she had taken to market before the fire began. They would have scarcely enough to find a boarding house for the night and breakfast the next morning, if there were any vacancies. Trying to find work would be nearly impossible, now that everyone in the city was unemployed with nowhere to go to work.

A frequent customer from the bakery stumbled into Lottie on her journey to the shipyard. A strange following of stray cats meandered behind him as he swatted at them to leave him alone. I’m so sorry for your loss, is there anything I can do to help. The man