Cagnard Samdi is not a true loa, but a mortal bokor — a powerful Creole sorcerer who, many years ago, took for himself the name and power of Baron Samdi. He smokes strong cigars laced with special herbs, drinks rum, and collects human souls. The bokor heals when it suits him and destroys when he is bored. For a decade he has kept an underground den on Bourbon Street — a place where opium, laudanum, jazz, and voodoo bleed into one another.