Baron Midnight: Unearthed

Mama Noire’s parlor pulsed with the scent of copal and cinnamon — a thick, sweet veil curling through the room like the breath of ancient spirits. Candlelight flickered across walls adorned with relics: withered black roses sealed in glass bottles, faded photographs pinned within hand-carved frames, bone beads looped around wooden crucifixes. At her feet, chalked veves glowed faintly, humming with old power.

The two customers had paid upfront, arriving together but with different energies. Tanya radiated eager uncertainty, while the man behind her — tall, broad-shouldered, and silent — seemed carved from suspicion and tension. The young blonde, her face caked in makeup and cloaked in cloying perfume, sat first. She called herself Tanya.

Of course she’s a Tanya, Mama Noire thought, lips twitching with dry amusement. The girl giggled, tugging at the sleeves of her low-cut dress like they could shield her from years of self-doubt and fractured confidence.

“So, like… is this gonna be scary?” Tanya asked, voice too bright, too brittle. As if waiting for a magic trick instead of an unraveling.

Mama Noire met her with a weary glance and a practiced smile — the kind kept for moments like these. “The spirits don’t care about your fear, chère,” she said, her voice carrying the weight of years beyond her age. “Only your truth.”

Her fingers dipped into the jasmine water, its scented coolness offering clarity. As she let its touch steady her, her gaze lingered on Tanya a moment too long, thoughts swirling behind her still expression. She vexes me, Mama Noire thought — not for who she is, but for what she represents: another soul squandering her potential, chasing validation from men who’d never see her worth. So many passed through this parlor — starved for love, draped in glitter, hiding bruised hearts behind nervous laughter.

Exhaling slowly, Mama Noire let Tanya’s fate settle in her chest like stirred dust. Without ceremony, she rolled the bones. Cowrie shells and vertebrae clattered across the table, trailing a dusting of graveyard dirt.

Tanya’s eyes widened. She squealed — too loud, too eager — mistaking prophecy for a parlor trick. Her reading unfolded just as Mama Noire expected: a litany of daddy issues, jealousy, and addictive vices. A life spiraling, with only a few bad choices left before it shattered entirely.

Mama Noire delivered her warnings, offered perfunctory advice, and dismissed Tanya with a flick of her fingers. Her pipe’s embers glowed as she drew deeply. But Tanya lingered, her silhouette wreathed in smoke, her face suddenly still. Mama Noire tilted her head, watching the shift with measured curiosity. This was the moment the mask cracked — a soul remembered itself.

“Is it all bad?” she asked, voice small, like someone bracing for rejection. Her shoulders hunched slightly, and her fingers fidgeted with the strap of her purse, eyes darting to Mama Noire’s face as if searching for a lifeline.

“It’s you, chère,” Mama Noire said flatly. Then, softened by a flicker of pity, she added, “In matters of love, something new stirs. There’ll be loss, yes, but renewal too. And with it, a measure of joy.”

A faint smile bloomed on Tanya’s lips — hesitant but real. A glimpse of the woman she might’ve been had someone guided her sooner. She rose, heels wobbling as she crossed to the exit, carrying the quiet tremor of being truly seen.

The parlor exhaled as Tanya vanished behind the thin curtain separating the reading room from the foyer. Voices drifted through — low, tense. Tanya’s tone turned syrupy, insistent. A growl answered, rough and reluctant: “Fine. I’ll go see the witch.”

Witch. Mama Noire’s lips curved. She’d take it as a compliment.

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Dblkrose is the founder and creative mind behind Black Spyder Publishing-a digital storytelling platform where dark…

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She sat motionless, pipe smoldering between her fingers, eyes tracing the lazy swirl of smoke toward the low-beamed ceiling.

Mama Noire watched the curtain settle behind Tanya, her mind drifting not to the girl, but to her own youth — when the air smelled just as thick with incense, and she sat on the other side of the table, desperate to make sense of her grandmother’s murmured riddles and cryptic smiles. That memory slipped away. The last traces of Tanya’s perfume lingered in the air — sweet, sharp, and vanishing — like a fading sigh. The parlor held its breath for a beat, caught between endings and beginnings.

Then he stepped forward from the foyer, replacing Tanya’s exit with approaching aggression — a forceful strut meant to mask the anxiety that twitched beneath his polished exterior: Detective Lieutenant Carl Mouton. Gray threaded his temples, crow’s feet cracked around eyes that held no warmth. His grin aimed for charm but fell short, a mask that widened only when he sensed fear. Even now, the swish of his dinner jacket betrayed the badge and sidearm beneath — his sword and shield, worn like a knight who’d forgotten his cause.

He pulled out the chair opposite her, its feet scraping the floor with deliberate slowness. He settled into it, exuding the confidence of a man who believed he owned every room he entered. Mama Noire’s grip on her pipe tightened, the old lacquer cracking faintly beneath her thumb. She drew deeply, exhaling a dense curtain of smoke that curled between them. Mouton coughed, adjusted.

He eyed Mama Noire, taking in the sharp lines of her cheekbones, the obsidian silk of her headwrap, and the way her deep-set eyes glimmered like coals in the dim light. Her skin, rich and smooth as aged mahogany, bore the grace of resilience. There was an aged beauty to her, a testament that Black doesn’t crack — her aunties used to say it with a laugh and a knowing look. Time had told, as if the ancestors themselves had kissed her skin with permanence, etched in the way time seemed to revere rather than weather her. Her robes followed, draping around her like woven shadow and smoke, adding a quiet elegance cloaked in ritual and weight.

“You know this wasn’t my idea, Miss Claudine,” he said, voice smooth but laced with stale whiskey. “Tanya dragged me here. After everything, I was content to leave you in peace.”

“My peace,” Mama Noire replied, tone cool and even, “has little to do with your comings and goings, Detective Mouton.”

He chuckled, a brittle sound. “Hell, I didn’t think you’d still be working this corner of Treme,” he said. “But I’ll admit, I’ve been curious. Folks say you’ve got… a touch of the sight.”

She didn’t blink. Another draw, held like a withheld judgment, then released to drift between them. “You never believed that.”

His smirk twitched. “Your son did,” he said, sharp and deliberate.

For a moment, Mama Noire’s hand paused at her pipe. The memory of Isiah’s laughter — warm and full — echoed behind her stern gaze, and her heart twisted with a quiet ache she didn’t show. She met Mouton’s eyes, her voice even: “He said it made him a better cop.”

Mouton’s smile thinned. “Then why didn’t you see his fall?” A jab. Mouton knew it. Mama Noire knew it. There was history here — shadowed history, heavy with unspoken pain. But the reaction he sought — a crack in her composure, a flare of grief — never came. She didn’t flinch.

The room did.

A low hum vibrated through the floorboards. Candles guttered. Crucifixes trembled on their hooks. Bone beads clinked like chimes at a graveside. On a shelf, a faded photograph flipped face-up, revealing a man in uniform, his solemn gaze catching the light like an accusation.

Mama Noire inhaled, and the room held its breath with her. Mouton’s eyes darted, unsettled. His hand twitched toward the silver flask in his pocket — but stilled.

Her voice, when it came, was velvet-wrapped steel. “Let’s leave the past buried, shall we, Detective?” Her voice caught — soft, but heavy with memory. A breath longer than necessary followed — measured, controlled — as if grief had stirred but she refused to let it surface. She let the silence stretch. “I wish he’d listened when I told him you were no kind of partner. No kind of friend.”

Mouton’s sneer twisted, predatory now. He leaned back, as if drawing a blade beneath the table. “Wasn’t my fault he got tangled with a streetwalker,” he said, tone casual as bourbon. “He knew the rules. That sort of thing didn’t sit well with the powers that be.”

Mama Noire’s stem clicked against her teeth. Her reply came slow, deliberate. “He was trying to save her.”

Mouton leaned forward, expression sharpening. “By giving her a child she couldn’t handle?” His eyes narrowed. “How’s Gabriel, by the way?”

Her gaze held steady. “Thriving. Second year in college. Dean’s list.”

Mouton’s chuckle lacked warmth. “I hear he wants to be a cop.” He didn’t say it kindly. “Just like his old man.”

Tanya’s voice pierced the curtain. “Wow, mine was a lot quicker than yours. What’s she telling you in there?”

“That you deserve better, chère,” Mama Noire called back, dry but pointed — a barb aimed at Mouton as much as Tanya. “He sets fire to things just to watch them burn, and when asked, he says he does it for warmth. But there’s no warming this man’s soul — he just… cold.”

“Tell me something I didn’t know,” Tanya said, but her laugh wavered — uncertain now, thinner. Was that warning meant for her too? Was she just another spark waiting to catch, nothing more than kindling to a man like Mouton?

Mouton sighed, settling back with a nod of grudging respect. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Let’s,” Mama Noire agreed. She set the stem beside the veves, dipped her fingers into the jasmine water, and rolled the bones — again. A moment passed, then another, as her gaze fixed on the pattern they formed. Her breath hitched almost imperceptibly. The air thickened, and for the first time that night, her hand hovered over the bones with hesitation, as if the spirits themselves had leaned closer, in expectation.

Author's Note

Countdown to Midnight has already begun. Baron Midnight: Unearthed is in Presale on Amazon Kindle Unlimited. You can find it here if you wish to continue reading my first kindle drop!

Baron Midnight: Unearthed Presale

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