Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the Princess and the Frog movie, nor do I have any rights to "And She Sang," by the Puppini Sisters. (The song is on Youtube, however, and I encourage you to give it a listen while reading this, because it's the premise of this piece and heavily quoted.)

Homages go to Billie Holiday (the woman singing on the record), and Baron Samedi with his gin and cigars.

La Pièce de Tarot

"The Tarot Card Play."

Once the masquerade ball was through and he was once again behind the doors of his emporium, Dr. Facilier called upon his Friends for another favor. There was a setback, he said, but minor, very minor. All that he needed was some assistance finding the slippery frog prince who had escaped his prison. It took some bartering and reassurances and more promises Facilier was not keen on making, but make them he did.

After the candles were lit and the Shadows were sent on their search, the witch doctor took some time to mull over his plan. While his own shadow pushed the table back up onto the center of the stage and put the three chairs in their proper places, he paced and thought.

The plan was simple enough, certainly still well within his capabilities. Lawrence, once Prince Naveen's lackey and now his, would continue masquerading as His Highness until the marriage was secured and completed. Then.... Facilier walked over to one of the bureaus that was pushed up against the side wall, pulled open one of the drawers, and took out a voodoo doll.

It was a carefully crafted version of Eli La Bouff that Facilier himself had sewn, with a pink heart stitched over his left breast. From a pincushion on top of the bureau Facilier neatly plucked a needle, and traced the seam of the heart smoothly. "Big Daddy" would be disposed of as soon as the marriage was official, along with Lawrence and Naveen, and just like that, he, Dr. Facilier, would be the most powerful man in New Orleans.

A great temptation to plunge the needle into the heart of the doll made Facilier's skeletal fingers twitch, but he calmly stuck the pin back in its cushion instead and tossed the doll back into its special place, shutting the drawer. He turned to gaze up at the masks hanging high on the wall of his emporium, a wicked smile curling his thin lips.

"Soon, New Orleans and all the souls in it will practically be all yours, boys," he said, sweeping his hat off and giving them a sly little bow. He straightened, twirled his top hat, and replaced it on his head, feeling his mood steadily improving as he thought about the future. Why not let this feeling last, given the unforeseen trouble from earlier in the evening? After all, Facilier reasoned to the masks out loud, nothing more could be done until he was reported back to, and he was not a man who sat around. Sleep? He felt no desire to.

So, Facilier thoughtfully tapped his finger on the bureau, wondering how to best make use of this situation. After a moment, he sidestepped and pulled the sheet off of a record player that was perched on a stack of old tomes. Above it was a shelf, and sitting on top was a stack of records. He picked the one from the top, swept the dust from it, and put it on.

As the needle dropped and the first static sounds filled the air, Facilier sauntered back to his newly reset table, a half-empty – no, half-full, for tonight - bottle of gin finding its way into his hands. His seat was pulled out for him by his shadow, and when he pushed his coat lapels out of the way and sat down, his seat was pushed in. The bottle of gin was politely taken from his hand, uncorked, and poured into a floating glass.

While his shadow obediently catered to him, Facilier opened his jacket and from an inside pocket pulled his prized deck of tarot cards, which he set down on the table. He casually held out one hand, and was given his glass of gin; he held out his other hand, and a faintly smoking cigar was curled between his fingers and an ashtray pushed onto the table.

"Much obliged," he said smoothly, and idly waved his shadow away, leaving a trail of cigar smoke in his wake. His shadow stowed the bottle of gin away in an open cabinet and then went to lurk by the out-of-tune piano in one corner, leaving Facilier to his thoughts once more.

Facilier closed his eyes briefly, breathing in the thick smoke from the cigar, then slowly exhaling. As soon as that slimy little frog prince was recovered, he would lock him up and keep the key this time, like he had done for the fool who had caused this snag in the plan in the first place. Facilier rolled the cigar between his thumb and index fingers and cast a dark look over his shoulder to the corner of the room by the piano, where there was a small door. To prevent another mishap, he had locked Lawrence up in the back room and pocketed the talisman with Naveen's blood until morning time. Lawrence would not be needing it until then, and Facilier did not want any more...incidents.

Listening briefly, and hearing no commotion coming from the room, Facilier turned away, tapped the cigar out onto the ashtray, and set it down. After a relaxing sip of gin, he set his glass aside and his deck of Tarot cards came into his hands. He shuffled them with a practiced ease – an overhand shuffle, the bridge – and smiled up from under the brim of his hat to another set of voodoo masks above him.

"How many, Friends?" he asked them, the cards flying through his fingers. "Ten? Six? Eight?" There was no observable answer, but Facilier let out a grand laugh. "Ah, an excellent choice. A six card tarot spread will do."

He arranged the first three cards in an upward triangle pattern, and the last three in a downwards triangle, creating a six-sided star shape. "I have a story for you, Friends," he said. "A little insight into the other players in our little game." In the background, the record played the faint and crackly voice of a woman singing a slow, melancholy scat, and his shadow tinkered idly on an old piano. Facilier overturned the first card and began.

"There was a girl who thought the world was filled with gold and pearls." The illustration on the card was of a young woman, blonde and fair and blue-eyed. She was dressed in a pink petticoat, a white cat entwined around her ankles and golden coins and silver pearls falling into her hand. Facilier waved a hand over the card face, and the scene around the young woman changed. She was now standing at a balcony, her hands clasped together and her face upturned hopefully towards the night sky.

"She smiled with the bright eyes of those who trust in life."

"Please, please, puh-lease, evenin' star," Charlotte La Bouff implored from the balcony of her room, palms together. "Tomorrow, bring back that handsome prince Naveen with a marriage proposal just for me."

From inside the emporium, the smoke from an idle cigar circled up into the air in ghostly patterns, casting clouds over the painted star. Facilier's hand drifted to the second card. The young lady now sat in a gilded chair, hands clasped in her lap, daydreaming. He tapped the card knowingly, and behind him, his shadow tapped a few more keys on the piano.

"She had been taught she should believe in all that's good and fair, and at the end of each day she sat contented in her chair."

To Charlotte's eyes, the evening star glimmered knowingly, so she happily swept up her cat by her feet and walked back inside. "All right, I'll be waitin' for him tomorrow," she hummed. A cushioned stair was stationed near the balcony doors, and she sat down on it with her cat in her lap. She plucked a book from a nearby table – The Frog Prince - and flipped it open, pretending to read it, but her eyes kept straying hopefully to the bright star shining outside.

"I just know he's comin' for me," she whispered. "I've been waitin' all my life, I just know it."

Facilier moved onto the next card, disinterested. This card, the third, was revealed and completed the first triangle in the tarot card spread. It depicted a human Prince Naveen, grinning, a crown resting crookedly atop his head, an enamored girl in one arm and a mandolin held aloft in his other hand."He was the type who thought he had a right to everything he liked." Facilier steepled his fingers and leaned forward, his eyes cold but his voice never losing its confidence. "He had an easy air, was confident, and pleasing to the eye."

At the mention of Naveen, the masks subtly glowered. Facilier paused to pick up his cigar again and leaned back in his chair, looking up at them carefully. "Now now, there ain't no reason to be upset," he said, placing one leg over the other up on the table. "We'll have him back by tomorrow." He breathed in the smoke of the cigar once more and exhaled it through his teeth with a wicked smile, and the masks reluctantly settled.

"Yes. Let's move on, shall we, gentlemen?" There was a general nod of consensus. Facilier set his feet back on the floor, replaced the cigar in the ashtray, and reached for the fourth card. There was Lawrence illustrated next to Charlotte. "He thought that she looked fine..."

The image shimmered and changed into Naveen and Charlotte, with wedding bells and girls in white gaily throwing flower petals. A teary and proud Daddy La Bouff stood in the background. "And as they kissed, she felt the bliss of love for the first time." Facilier's lips curled into a malevolent smile and he gave a glance to the small pincushion resting in the shadow of the bureau. "We'll have to change that now, won't we."

His shadow tilted its head in the same direction, and with its curiosity piqued, it abandoned the piano and came over to the table. It reached out with a clawed hand, and with a nod from Facilier, it turned over the second to last card. "She gave herself without reserve, with eagerness and joy." An ecstatic Charlotte grasping onto Naveen's arm juxtaposed was with the girl sleeping in her chair, clutching The Frog Prince book to her chest and mumbling.

"Foolish girl," Facilier said dismissively, and without delay, he picked up the last card and threw it down on top of the previous one. It was an image of himself with New Orleans in the palms of his hands, the ghostly shades of The Other Side surrounding him eagerly, waving off his debt. "...He cast her off like a broken toy." He nodded to his illustrated self's feet, and there lay a voodoo doll of Charlotte, along with ones of Naveen, Lawrence, and Daddy La Bouff, all with little stitched hearts that were impaled straight through with gleaming pins.

Laughing softly, Facilier swept all the cards into his hand and replaced them on top of the deck, his palm resting there. "And that is their story, Friends. Or at least, that's what it soon will be." The masks all glanced each other and murmured with interest and, to Facilier's ears, agreement.

Smiling with satisfaction, Facilier gracefully raised his glass to them and his shadow lurked closely behind his chair. "A toast to you, and a toast to tomorrow. Y'all have what you want, and I'll have what I want. I'd wager it's a win-win situation on our side." He drank to the bottom of his glass, the masks smiled with their teeth, and the audience quietly clapped on the record as the last song ended.