“Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Took the words right outta my mouth, Doc.”
“Good save, Doc,” Nora said. “But can you explain male submission to women that succinctly?”
“Mr. Tremont, have you ever had a pretty girl in a short plaid skirt and white cotton panties stand over your head and piss through them onto your face?”
Cyrus’s eyes went very wide. He couldn’t find the words to even respond to that.
“Not even fantasized about it?” Doc sounded astonished.
“Hell no.”
Doc threw his hands up in defeat. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t try, your majesty.”
“Any other questions, Cy?” Nora asked.
“Not a God damn one?” Cyrus said. “I mean, thanks, Doc. That helps.”
“I’ll go, majesty, but just one order? Please? Before I go? Kiss your boots? Lick the floor? Take a bullet for you right through this old heart?”
He tapped his chest.
“My order is this,” Nora began. “Go and do whatever sick, twisted, demented, perverted, deranged thing your old heart desires. Just don’t hurt anybody in the process. Well, forget that. Just don’t fuck anybody up in the process.”
“Ah, an it harm none, do what thou wilt. You recite the Witch’s Rede, majesty,” Doc said, apparently more enchanted with Nora than ever. “I should have known you had a little magic up your sleeve. You’ve certainly cast a spell on me.”
Cyrus waited for Nora to say something to Doc, tell him off, or send him packing. But she didn’t. Her eyes narrowed, she glanced off to the side.
“Nora?” Cyrus said.
She seemed to suddenly come back to the present.
“Thank you, Doc,” Nora said. “Now get your old ass out of here before I change my mind about putting you in the ER.”
“One of these days, Mistress. I’ll be your slave yet.”
Cyrus shook Doc’s hand again, and the old boy left them alone. Immediately Cyrus transferred from Nora’s chaise to Doc’s empty red armchair.
“That man is nuttier than a fruitcake,” Cyrus said. “Makes you look almost normal, and God damn, that’s saying something, isn’t it?”
“I remembered something.”
She sounded so serious that Cyrus sat up straighter. His heart pounded hard in his chest, the way it always did when he was about to make a break in a case.
“I remember who I gave my business card to down here,” she continued. “That week I was house-hunting. Doc reminded me.”
“Shit, who was it?”
Nora laughed a little.
“A witch.”
Chapter Eighteen
Cyrus stared at her like she’d grown a second head. Then he shrugged.
“New Orleans,” he said. “Shoulda guessed.”
“I can’t believe I’d forgotten it.” Nora remembered it all now. “It was the day my real estate agent was negotiating for my house. I didn’t know if I’d get it since I put in a low-ball bid. I was getting nutty waiting for the phone to ring, so I went for a walk. Stopped in some little stores to shop. One was some kind of witchy store.”
“You remember the name?”
“No,” she said. “I might know it if I saw it, though.”
“Go on.”
“Anyway, there was a woman in the shop, she worked there. She asked if I was there for a reading. I said I hadn’t planned on it, but I had time to kill. The girl said the witch who did the readings—”
“She called her ‘a witch’? Not a psychic?”
“Definitely called her a witch, like it was her job. ‘Our witch is in today, and she does great readings if you want one.’ Obviously, trying to sell me something, but I said okay. Why not, right? Thought it would keep me from checking my phone every ten seconds to see if I had the house or not. I gave the girl at the counter my card. She said she’d call me when it was my turn. I left to walk around some more. I got the call. I went back, had my reading. The psychic, the witch, I mean, she had my card on her little table. I asked her if I’d get the house. She said I would. And I did.”
Of course, there was more to it than that. Nora had received a half-hour tarot card reading. The topics had ranged from her writing career—“continued success”—to her love life—“about to get very complicated.” Both turned out to be true, though Nora knew the statements were purposefully vague enough they could apply to nearly any situation.
When she told the witch about moving to New Orleans, that was when things got weird. The woman asked her, “Are you sure you want to do that? They call this town ‘the Big Easy,’ but it’s not going to be easy for you.”
Nora remembered that warning since it was the one part of the reading that had proved false. Apart from the heat, she and The Big Easy had greeted each other like old friends. She loved the history, the people, the beignets, the music, the laissez-faire attitude. Nothing not to love.
Cyrus held up his phone to show her red dots on Google maps. “Which shop was it?”
She read the names, the locations.
Voodoo Alley.
Gris-Gris’s.
The Black Cat Corner Shop.
House of Voodoo.
“None of those ring a bell, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t one of them.”
Nora returned Cyrus’s phone to him. That day had been almost three years ago. The shop could be closed down now.
“And you’re sure the witch had your card?” Cyrus asked.
“I am one-hundred percent certain she had my card. I can still see her holding it.” Nora put her palms flat together in a prayer position to mime how the witch had held her red business card.
“And she didn’t give it back?” Cyrus asked.
“No. I don’t remember her giving it back. I tipped her twenty dollars. I can see the twenty on top of the card.” Nora pictured it now, the little room, not much bigger than a closet, the small round table with the paisley tablecloth, the tarot cards spread out like a fan before them. And the witch…yes, Nora remembered the witch. She’d been very beautiful. Strange serious eyes, like she really believed in what she was doing, like it was real to her even if she knew the dumb tourist across from her at the table didn’t believe a word of it.
The witch had made Nora almost believe.
Cyrus stood up.
“All right, come on.” He waved at her to follow him.
“Where are we going?”
“On a witch hunt.”
“I should probably change first.”
“For the French Quarter?” he asked.
“Ah, good point.” She’d fit right into the French Quarter after dark. Then again, these particular boots of hers were not, in fact, made for walking.
Nora left Cyrus in her dungeon lobby and changed clothes in her bathroom, replacing her boots with black heels and switching her stockings and skirt for jeans. She kept the bustier top on.
“No other shirt?” Cyrus asked, glancing at her over his phone. No, not glancing at her. Glancing at her mounds of cleavage.
“Look, you want answers from strangers, my tits will get us answers.”
“True,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
“I don’t mind driving.”
“Can you see the road over your tits?”
Nora glanced down at her rather out-of-control cleavage.
“Okay,” Nora said. “You drive.”
Nora rode shotgun in Cyrus’s Honda. It was getting late and were they in any other city, she might have worried that the shops would be closed by the time they arrived. But not in New Orleans. The Quarter woke up around noon and didn’t go to bed again until dawn. With the bars on Bourbon Street open all night, most shops in the area stayed open late. Sure enough, when Cyrus parked on Barracks, the streets were alive with hundreds of people, soaking up the evening breeze off the water, already looking for good times and big trouble.
“Where to?” Nora asked when they reached the corner of Barracks and Chartres.
“Y
ou tell me. Where’d you go on your walk?”
“All right, well, let’s start on Bourbon. First, I know I definitely walked down Bourbon that day. And second, let’s get a drink. I’m buying.”
“Yeah, you are.”
Cyrus got a boring old beer, and Nora loaded up on rum and Coke, a double. They wandered down to Voodoo Alley, but nothing about the place seemed familiar. The turned a corner and found The Black Cat closing up for the night. Nora remembered going in there, but the man working the shop said they’d never offered psychic readings—no room. The man gave them a list of all the other witchcraft and voodoo shops in the neighborhood. Google didn’t list them all, and a couple had changed names when they changed owners.
They walked down the other side of Bourbon Street when Nora looked up and saw her.
“What?” Cyrus asked.
“That’s her.” She pointed at a woman’s face painted on a hanging shop sign.
Cyrus stood at her side and stared up.
“Marie Laveau,” Cyrus said. “You sure?”
“Definitely.”
“You’re telling me that Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, who has been dead for a hundred fifty years, gave you a tarot card reading.”
“I’m not saying it was the real Marie Laveau. I don’t believe in ghosts, okay? At least I’ve never met one. But she looked just like that and dressed just like that.” She pointed up at the woman on the sign. “But younger. Maybe thirty.”
“So, early thirties, light-skinned female in an old-timey dress and headscarf. You remember anything else about her? Name or anything?”
“She said her name was Marie. But if she led historical tours, she would, right?”
“Right.” Cyrus nodded. “Anything else you remember about her?”
Nora stared up at the sign again.
“Earthquake eyes,” Nora said.
“What?”
“I remember thinking the woman had earthquake eyes. You look in them and shake a little.”
“Scary witch?”
“Not quite scary,” Nora said. “I don’t know. Powerful maybe. She made me a little nervous.”
“Hell, if she made you nervous…” Cyrus said, then whistled. “Let’s keep looking. If the voodoo store folk don’t know her, maybe the other tour guides do. Come on.”
“Where are we going now?”
“To interview a vampire.” Cyrus headed into the crowd.
Nora didn’t follow at first.
“You know vampires?” Nora called out. Cyrus only raised his hand and waved it, indicating she needed to get her ass in gear and follow him. Nora ran a little to catch up with him.
“If you know vampires and you’ve been holding out on me,” she said, “I’m not going to be friends with you anymore.”
“Vampire tours,” Cyrus said. “Witch tours. Ghost tours. Gotta be a voodoo tour, right? There’s one vampire guide who’s been doing this forever. He’ll know your witch if she even once ran a voodoo tour ’round here.”
Cyrus started forward, but Nora was separated from him by a sudden crush of drunk frat boys leaving a bar en masse. One of them bumped into Nora, hard, and her foot slipped out of her shoe.
When she stumbled, the glassy-eyed frat kid grabbed her around the waist, not to steady her like a good guy, but just to grab her.
“Hey, there,” he said, grinning. He smelled like an overpriced Hurricane (the drink, not the storm). “What’s your hurry, baby?”
“I’m thirty-eight,” Nora said. “I’m not a baby, baby. Let me go.” She started to walk away, but the dumb drunk who didn’t know what he was getting himself into, slid his arm around her waist and pulled her back against him.
“Don’t leave me,” he said. “We just met.”
“Fuck, please don’t make me kill you tonight,” Nora said. “I’m busy.”
Unfortunately, the kid was strong. And he had a whole lotta liquid courage in him. He pulled her back against him once more, and Nora decided she was ready to break a law or two—especially when two of the boy’s “boys” noticed what was happening and started to cheer him on.
“Nice catch, man,” one said.
“Dude, don’t get us arrested,” a slightly sober one said.
Arrest was the least of their troubles. Nora raised her foot, fully intending to bring her high heel down on the boy’s toe.
And break it.
In many pieces.
She hoped he played football or soccer, that he was a prodigy, in fact…just so she could ruin his future.
Then one of the frat boys went flying.
Really, seriously, flying. One second, he was standing. The next second, he traveled through the air at a high velocity and landed a good ten feet away on the street. Bourbon Street. Which meant he was about to get a very nasty bacterial infection just from touching the concrete.
The frat boy let Nora go so fast, she stumbled again, this time against Cyrus who threw a protective arm around her.
“She fell, man,” the frat boy said. “I was just helping her.”
“Nora?”
“He grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go even after I told him twice,” Nora said.
Cyrus reached for the frat boy who tried to duck away but was just too drunk. Cyrus had him by the arms. “Where you from, jackass?” Cyrus demanded. He gave the boy a little shake.
“Back off, fuck. She fell.”
“You fall, Nora?”
“He hit me by accident, grabbed me on purpose.”
Cyrus shook the boy again.
“Where. You. From. Jack. Ass.” Cyrus spoke in terrifyingly calm and deliberate tones. Even Nora was a little nervous at what he’d do. She wished she had popcorn. This was a good show. A small crowd had gathered to watch it. Luckily they seemed to be on her and Cyrus’s side.
“California, man. Pasadena. Back the fuck off me!”
“Pasadena in the house!” Cyrus said. “Let me ask you something, Pasadena. You ever see me in California fucking with your California girls?”
“What?” The question didn’t seem to penetrate the boy’s brain.
“Did you? Ever. See me in California? Fucking with your California girls?”
“I never seen you,” the boy said.
“Right. Cause I don’t go to other towns and fuck with their ladies. So you don’t come to my town and fuck with our ladies. You come to my town and fuck with our ladies, we fuck you up. We fuck you up New Orleans-style. We fuck you up until you can’t get un-fucked. You got it?”
“Fuck off, bro.”
Nora slapped the boy on his sweaty pink cheek.
“That’s fuck off, sir, to you,” she said. Cyrus cackled a little.
“I’ll let you go,” Cyrus said. “But I see you fuck with one more New Orleans lady, I will absolutely kill you. Kill you all the way gone. They gonna find you floating in the Mississippi, and when the cops ask me why I did it, I’ll tell ’em you got rough with one of our ladies. And then they’ll say, ‘Sorry to bother you.’ That’s how we do it down here. You got it, son? You got it?”
“I got it, I got it.”
Cyrus let the boy go.
Nora, however, did not. Before he could take one drunken step away, she brought her heel down on his toe.
And the jackass was wearing Birkenstocks. On Bourbon Street. Where public urination was nearly as common as public intoxication. Kid had it coming.
The boy screamed redrum, and there was no doubt in Nora’s mind she had broken the holy living shit out of his toe.
Cyrus looked at her, his eyes wide as two shot glasses.
“I was just trying to scare him,” Cyrus said.
“Yeah, well, I was just trying to break his fucking foot so he can never walk straight again.”
“You fucking bitch,” the boy keened in his delightful agony. His face was blood red and he was writhing in pain. “What’s wrong with you, you psycho?”
“Do you have all night?” Nora asked him. “Five bucks says he
calls me a cunt next,” Nora said. “Wait for it.”
She won the bet.
Cyrus oh-so graciously allowed Pasadena’s two drunk friends to pick him up and cart him off.
“Bye, boys,” Nora called after them.
Cyrus couldn’t help himself. He’d been wanting to try it since yesterday. As the boys carted their limping comrade off, he made the “shooing” hand gesture.
“It does work,” he said, nodding.
When they walked off, nobody got in their way.
Chapter Nineteen
The bartender told them the vampire in question was on a tour right now, but would be back in fifteen or twenty minutes. In the meantime, Cyrus bought them a second round. He had another beer, and Nora had another rum and Coke, hold the Coke.
Cyrus took a long deep draw on his beer.
“Can I say something?” He put his beer bottle on the bar.
“Say it,” she said.
“You are one crazy bitch.”
Nora laughed deep and low and hard. She took his statement in the spirit intended—as a compliment.
“Weren’t you scared back there?” he asked.
“In the moment, you’re more mad than scared. That’s all adrenaline.”
“You scared now?”
“I’m glad they’re gone, I’ll say that. I’ve been manhandled a lot in my life. You never get used to it. And it’s never fun.”
He picked up his beer again. “Fuck is wrong with kids these days.”
“You were really good there.” Nora rested her head on her fist, elbow on the bar. “They teach you that in cop school? How to scare the shit out of drunk frat boys?”
“We learn a few tricks. Not your tricks. That was a helluva trick.”
“It was either his foot or his balls. Which would you rather have busted?”
The Priest: An Original Sinners Novel Page 15