In the past year, Jazz Stephenson’s lost an eye, her job, and her Canadian status. She’s had to move back to Nassau, Bahamas to live with her father, and to take up a job at a local paper. There’s no way her life can get any worse. The only thing that keeps her sane is the renovation of her grandmother’s house, a rundown but beautiful building in the historic part of town. But when Haitian labourers begin to die on the work site, Jazz faces bankruptcy, arrest, and her own death. Can her new affiliation with Trim Romer, one of the construction crew, help her or hurt her? Is he an enemy or a friend? And can Jazz find the killer before she loses everything?
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OPENING
They were laughing, and they shouldn’t have been. He was dying. Wasn’t he? He was laid on his back on a cold concrete floor, so close to the grave he could smell the grains of sand and earth that would cover him too soon, too soon, and they were laughing.
The lwa weren’t supposed to laugh. Not at the faithful. Not at him. Yet there was Ezili, taller than she should have been and spare, spare like a skeleton, her body rangy and masculine. Only her face was unchanged, that beautiful, mantrap face. Where was her softness, her coquettery? And there was Ghede, behind her, in full Samedi costume, top hat, tails, eyepatch and cigar, twice as tall as Ezili, tall as a moko jumbi.
Their eyes burned his chest. Their laughing mouths opened it up. Or was that the wound? How many times had they shot him? He’d heard a pop, pops, and then the world had collapsed into different senses: the smell of concrete and iron, the sounds of life crashing in his ears like waves on a beach, the taste of metal in the back of his throat, something thick as honey rushing into his windpipe, choking him. He coughed, and it bubbled out.
And the lwa were laughing.
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