Fever Moon by Carolyn Haines Page A

regular.”
    Raymond made a note. Bernadette’s life had been hard, made harder by the public spectacle that her sisters had each created, deliberately or not. “Do you know if Adele had a reason to want Henri Bastion dead?”
    “Why don’t you ask Veedal Lawrence, the overseer at the Bastion plantation, what happened to Armand Dugas? That might answer your questions about Adele and then you wouldn’t have to come here and bother me. Now you better leave before my husband gets back. He wouldn’t think kindly of a man sitting in his rocker in his home.”

6
     
    J OLENE paced the small office, her face flushed with anger. “We drove all the way out there, and she wasn’t home. All of that food! We couldn’t leave it on the porch. There were ants everywhere. The high water had them out. We had to feed everything to the prisoners, and let me just say they looked like they hadn’t eaten in a week of Sundays.”
    Michael wanted to sigh, but he kept his expression neutral. “Mrs. Bastion has suffered a terrible loss. She isn’t herself, Jolene. You can’t hold her to standards of conduct when the situation is so difficult. Her husband was torn apart in the middle of the road, for heaven’s sake.”
    “Where in the world could she be? There wasn’t a trace of her. Do you think she’s okay? Folks are saying Henri was meeting the devil, walking so far from home on a stormy night.” Jolene’s pale brown eyes, almost golden, glittered with fear.
    Michael blinked. Even he was beginning to be affected by all the wild talk of werewolves. “Probably, he walked to assist his digestion. People with money …” He didn’t finish his thought, which went to eccentricities.
    “There are those who say he traded his soul for wealth.” Jolene had stopped pacing and stood in front of him. “What do you think of that, Father Michael? Do you believe the dark master walks the night, his hooves striking sparks on the gravel?”
    Ever since Rosa, questions of belief had become difficult. Satan was a reality, and the line dividing angels and demons was clearly defined in his mind and bolstered by the rules of the Bible. When he’d chosen to enter the Dominican Order, he’d done so because he wanted to be a soldier of God, not a teacher or a scribe or a monk who spent his life tending animals and praying. He wanted to wage war against Satan and his demons, against the evil that afflicted mankind.
    “If only Satan showed himself with his forked tail and cloven hooves, my work would be so much easier.” He forced a smile. “He’s a master of disguise, Jolene, but you have nothing to fear. Not from Satan or the
loup-garou.”
    “I heard Henri Bastion was a wicked man—”
    “Jolene, let us not speak ill of the dead. It does no good.” He felt a prick of hypocrisy. Henri Bastion had sat in the first pew of the church each Sunday, his wife and children beside him, but Michael had never seen evidence that the Lord had been able to touch Henri. The prisoners working the fields were evidence of that.
    Jolene started to say more but continued her pacing instead. He could see the anger was dissipating, and he spoke softly. “I want to thank you for all the help you’ve given me this past year. I don’t know what I would have done without you. Especially with poor Rosa.”
    Jolene walked to the chair in front of his desk and placed her hands on the back of it. “Was she a real stigmatic, Father Michael?”
    He could so clearly see her desire to believe. In this land where superstitions were the principal religion, people wanted a sign. They needed God to show them that he’d not left them to rot in the mosquito-infested swamps. The months of the past year followed a series of nature’s obstacles, from the first spring plague of insects to the snakes and malarial infestations of summer, and on to the latest epidemic of fever that had claimed the lives of at least forty of his parishioners. Many of the young men were dead on the