John Everett's conservative Boston publishing house has agreed to print a history of Mardi Gras. But when the author, a scion of one of the oldest and richest families of Creole aristocracy, begins to receive doom-laden letters, Penny and Sir Toby are called upon to investigate. Preceding the pair to New Orleans, Everett awakes to find he is not alone in his hotel room. He shares it with the corpse of a beautiful call girl, garroted with her own necklace and impaled with a stake bearing the veve of Ghede, voodoo god of death and destruction. Other macabre events ensue, and as Penny and Toby race to clear Everett, their research uncovers connections to Arab real estate deals, the dread Tonton Macoute, and sordid details in the backgrounds of the Creole gentry.