I’d left on the bathroom light as I always did when sleeping in a strange place. I hated walking into walls half-asleep.
The reflection in the vanity mirror revealed there was no one inside. Just as there was nothing in the closet.
I turned toward the window. The curtains, meant to block the sun so Mardi Gras partiers could sleep away the day, also blocked everything else. Unable to bear not knowing, I strode across the room and whipped them back.
Then stared past the empty balcony, studying the flickering neon across the street My room was on the fifth floor. How could anyone have scaled the hotel without being seen from below?
Would the drunks even notice? If they had, would they care or merely cheer? Except, if they’d cheered, I’d have heard them.
Someone had been here. But who? How? Why?
All questions for a time when the sun was shining. Too bad they kept me up for the rest of the night
Dawn found me dressed and swilling coffee from the complimentary urn in the lobby. If I could have positioned my mouth directly beneath the spigot without undue notice, I would have. I was so tired.
I showed the concierge the address on my handy dandy sheet of paper. Contrary to the opinion of the sexy-voiced Cajun with an attitude, the concierge confirmed it as the location of a trustworthy guide service—CW Swamp Tours. I retraced my route to the dock where a man waited on an airboat.
“Deanna Malone?”
I guess he was waiting for me.
“Diana,” I corrected, and he grinned.
I wished that he hadn’t. His teeth were nothing to write home about. They’d make a short letter since there were so few left. A shame. He didn’t appear a day over twenty.
“Mr. Tallient sent me.”
The accent was Deep South—not a hint of France, and I missed it
“I was here yesterday,” I said.
His face, which resembled both Howdy Doody and Richie Cunningham, despite the bright white hair that shone beneath the morning sun like a reflector, crumpled with the effort of thought. “Was I supposed to come yeste’day? I get confused.”
I hoped he didn’t get confused in the middle of the swamp.
“I met someone—” I began.
“No one but me comes to this place.”
“Tall, dark.” I left out “handsome,” fearing I’d sound too much like Snow White. “Long hair.”
“Don’t bring no one to mind.”
I wondered if this was Adam Ruelle, except Ruelle was mysteriously missing. Besides, I doubted a man who had been raised in a mansion, however broken down, would let his teeth rot out of his head. Then again, I could be wrong.
“What’s your name?”
“Charlie Wagner.”
“Did Frank—Mr. Tallient—tell you why I’m here?”
“You want to look for the wolf.”
“Have you seen one?”
Charlie’s gaze slid from mine. “Can’t say I have.”
I found his choice of words interesting. He couldn’t say. Didn’t mean he hadn’t seen it.
“You gonna meet me here at dusk?” he asked.
“Dusk?” The last time I’d come at dusk I’d nearly been eaten by an alligator, and that had been the best part.
I remembered the voice, the scent of smoke, breath in my hair, an arm cradling my breasts. A long, long time had passed since a man’s anything had been near them. Maybe the alligator hadn’t been the best part, after all.
“You wanna look for the wolf, right?”
I nodded.
“Wolves don’t come out in the light,” Charlie explained.
I knew that. “All right. Dusk.”
He made no move to leave. After several silent moments, I asked the question that still plagued me. “Do you know Adam Ruelle?”
Charlie had been peering into my face, and now he glanced away. “Neva met him.”
“Know where he lives?”
“No one does.”
“What about the Ruelle place?”
Charlie pointed to the far side of the water and the waving grass.
I had nothing else to do. Tallient had already hired Charlie. And I was curious.
“Take me there.”
Charlie’s boat was a smooth, fast ride. I probably should have been wary. Airboats flipped in the swamp all the time. But the whip of the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, was too enjoyable to ruin with what-ifs. In the daylight, the swamp was beautiful. A riot of colors, hardly any alligators, not a nutria rat to be had. I doubted the area would be as appealing tonight.
The red, stalklike flower grew everywhere. I jabbed my finger at a clump as we scooted past, but since we both wore earphones to drown out the blare of the boat, Charlie wasn’t going to be answering my questions anytime soon. He merely flashed me his un-teeth and kept driving.
The Ruelle Mansion became visible as we slid wide around a small island. The place would fit perfectly on a Halloween card. The boards had gone gray; the windows were broken; the porch listed to one side. Despite its condition and obvious age, the word stately came to mind. In days past, music, laughter, life, had filled the rooms. If I concentrated very hard, I could imagine the Ruelle Mansion coming alive again.
Most plantations in this part of Louisiana were located on the Great River Road, which ran from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Finding one here was as mysterious as it was fascinating. I felt as if I’d stepped through a time warp and into another century.
Charlie cut the engine, and we bumped against the decaying dock.
“How long since someone lived here?” I asked.
“Used to be a lot of transients in and out. But no one lately.”
“Why not?”
“People got spooked. Ha’nts and such. Heard tell a few folks disappeared and no one ever saw ’em again.”
I stared at the building. If any place looked haunted, the Ruelle Mansion did.
“I’d think the walls would have rotted in the damp.”
“Made of cypress wood from the swamp. Never rots. House’ll stand 'til the end of time.”
While I should have been reassured that the structure was sound, instead I was a bit creeped out that the house would be standing here when the rest of the world had passed away.
“Come with me.”
I wasn’t afraid of ghosts, but I had a hard time believing every homeless person in the area had been scared off by the rumors. I didn’t relish running into a transient as I wandered through the place.
Charlie shrugged, tied up the boat, and followed.
“What’re those flowers?” I indicated a patch that seemed to mark the end of the yard and the beginning of the swamp. “The tall red ones.”
“Fire iris.”
“Pretty.” I took a step in their direction.
“Don’t touch ’em!”
“Why?” I had visions of hives, rashes, swamp warts. Hell. The thing had been on my bed.
“Bad luck.”
“What kind of bad luck?”
“Hoodoo and such.”
Hoodoo was an old-time, backwoods version of—
“Voodoo?”
His only answer was another shrug.
This was the second time voodoo had entered the conversation since I’d gotten here. Of course I was in New Orleans, the voodoo capital of America. I shouldn’t be surprised. However, I decided it might behoove me to visit Priestess Cassandra after all.
Charlie climbed the steps, his boots thunking against the worn wood like distant thunder. The sun threatened to cook everything well done, yet he wore jeans, a long- sleeved shirt and work boots. I suspected the latter had something to do with snakes. Glancing at my sneakers, I made a mental note to buy heavier shoes.
He opened the door, and I followed him in. Someone had stayed here once. Several hundred someones, by the size of the garbage pile. The scent of old food, new dirt, and...
I could have sworn I smelled blood.
I shook my head. The place was dim, dusty,
dirty, but there wasn’t any blood that I could see. Why would there be?
If there’d ever been any furniture, it was gone now, either stolen or maybe used as kindling—although I couldn’t imagine the weather ever being cold enough to warrant a bonfire. There weren’t any holes in the roof or the floor, only the windows. With some elbow grease and a few pounds of soap and water, the place could be habitable again. Hey, I’d seen worse.
A board creaked overhead, as if someone had accidentally stepped on a crack, then frozen at the sound.
“Hello?” Charlie called.
No one answered.
I jerked my head toward the stairs and together we climbed them, splitting up on the second floor. Charlie took the right side; I took the left. I didn’t find anything but dirt until I reached the last room near the back of the house.
There wasn’t anyone there—at least no one alive. Ha- ha. But there was a picture on the wall. A very old, very interesting picture. I was still looking at it five minutes later, trying not to hyperventilate, when Charlie found me.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“Ruelle.”
“I thought you’d never met him.”
Charlie cut me a quick glance. “Not Adam. That there’s his granddaddy, several generations back.”
He tapped the corner where a tiny notation read: 1857. I’d been too flipped out to notice.
“Name’s Henri.” Charlie spoke the name with a French twist, dropping the h, putting the accent on the second syllable. “He’s been dead nearly a hundred and fifty years.”
Charlie’s words reached me from a long way off. I couldn’t stop staring at the photo.
The face was that of the man in my dream.
Chapter 5
“I guess New Orleans really is the most haunted city in America.”
“Ye think it was a ghost up here?” Charlie’s voice wavered, and he inched toward the door.
“Maybe.”
What did I know? I’d dreamed the face of a man who’d been dead for a century and a half. I’d found a bad-luck voodoo flower in my bed. I was in Louisiana searching for a werewolf, for crying out loud. I shouldn’t be let loose without a keeper.
Charlie tugged on my arm. “Let’s get outta here.”
His hands were ice-cold. Poor kid. I took pity on him and went.
“The photo was the only thing left in the house,” I said as we hurried across the grass. “Wouldn’t someone have stolen it by now?”
Charlie leaped from the dock to the boat. “I dunno.”
Neither did I.
He drove back the way we’d come as if we were being chased, then dumped me where he’d found me.
“We still on for tonight?’ I asked.
“Sure. Swamp I got no problem with.” Charlie left with a roar of the motor, sending a huge wave over both the dock and my sneakers.
I returned to the hotel, where I discovered my flower was gone. I’d have figured the maid disposed of the thing, except my room hadn’t been cleaned yet.
“No, ma’am,” the girl insisted when I tracked her down. “I haven’t gotten to your floor.”
“Did anyone else?’
“No. That’s my responsibility.”
She could be lying, but why?
As I let myself back into my room, my cell phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID. Frank. I’d been meaning to call him but kept getting distracted.
“What did you find?’ he demanded without the courtesy of a hello.
I wasn’t sure what to say. I hadn’t found anything except a voodoo flower and a picture of a ghost. Neither one had any bearing on what Frank had hired me to do. So instead of answering his question, I asked one of my own.
“Why did you write the name Adam Ruelle next to the guide’s information?’
“I didn’t tell you?’ Frank sighed. “My mind is not what it used to be, I’m afraid. Ruelle land has been the favored territory for the loup-garou.”
Considering Ruelle land was basically a swamp, except for the small area where the house had been built I could see why.
“Could you rent the mansion?” I asked “I’d like to use it as my base of operations.”
“I bet I could,” Frank said slowly. “Great idea. You’re going to find the loup-garou; I’m sure of it.”
“You understand, don’t you, that the possibility of discovering a werewolf is pretty slim?”
“I understand. But there’s something there. Something new and exciting. Can’t you feel it?”
I could and I was both frightened and fascinated.
“Did you see Ruelle?” he asked.
“According to the locals, he’s been missing for years.”
“Bullshit! He’s there, and he knows something.”
“Have you met this guy?” I asked
“Not him. His... father.”
“Maybe I should talk to him.”
“He’s dead.”
“That seems to be going around.”
“Find me the werewolf, Diana. I need it.”
Frank hung up, and when I redialed his number, I got voice mail. I wondered again about the accident that had made him a recluse. Had he fallen on his head? Why would he need a werewolf?
I shrugged and pocketed my cell phone. Until his checks became as bent as he was, I’d just keep doing what Frank had hired me to do.
With several hours until I met Charlie, I took a stroll down Bourbon. My feet led me to Royal Street, and from there to a tiny shop tucked back from the others.
Cassandra’s.
I stepped inside. The contrast between heated sunshine and cool shadow, frantic noise and a certain peace, made me dizzy. I caught the scent of herbs, spice, heard the trickle of water somewhere in the distance, and music. Not jazz or even the blues. Something folksy with drums. A tune that was as ancient as time.
“Hello?”
No answer.
I had a sense someone was watching me, which seemed to happen a lot lately, and was making me increasingly paranoid.
A doorway covered with beads of many colors led into the back. I saw nothing beyond their plastic sheen, which was, I’m sure, the whole idea. I turned toward the retail section of the store, took three steps, and stopped.
Someone wasn’t watching me; something was.
A huge, coiled snake occupied a cage in the corner, its eyes dark and unblinking. Eyes of the dead. Long, brown, with uneven black circles all over its body, the reptile appeared to be a python. Was that even legal?
I inched away. The cage looked secure enough, but I didn’t want to get him excited. There were plenty of other items to view in the snake-free section of the store. Shelves full of bottles, bowls, which were in turn full of... stuff. With none of it marked, I was clueless.
Several mini cloth sacks stuffed with Lord knows what lay on the countertop. I brushed my fingertip across one of them, and I could have sworn it shimmied on its own.
“Gris-gris."
A woman stood in front of the beaded doorway. How had she come through without making them go clackety-clack?
“I’m sorry?” I said.
She moved behind the counter, picking up one of the bags. “A gris-gris, meaning charm or talisman. For good luck.”
Her lack of an accent revealed her to be as much a stranger here as I was.
“Not bad luck?” In my memory banks gris-gris meant “cursed.”
“Not in my shop.”
My shop. This was Priestess Cassandra?
I’d expected her to be African-American, or perhaps Haitian, since voodoo had taken root and grown there. She’d wear a turban, a flowing dress, bangles on her wrists, huge hoops in her ears.
Instead, Cassandra was a tiny blue-eyed white girl with a single streak of gray marring the right temple of her short, black hair. Hair that appeared to have been hacked off recently, by someone who did not know what they were doing. The style complemented Cassandra’s high cheekbones and pointed chin, softening them just enough to nudge
her toward stunning.
She was dressed in ratty jeans, a pink T-shirt, and her feet were bare, except for the rings on two of her toes. If not for the premature gray, I would have mistaken her for a coed at Tulane.
“You have a question?” she asked. “Something bugging you?”
“You psychic?”
Her smile was sweet, as if I were a child, though I had to be older than her by several years. “Everyone is at times.”
I snorted, then realized bow rude that was. “Sorry.”
Even if I was in town searching for a werewolf, that didn’t mean I bought into voodoo and other mind games. I had my standards.
She spread her hands. “We believe what we believe.”
“I do have questions."
“Doesn’t everyone? How can I help you... ?” She tilted her head, waiting for me to introduce myself.
“I’m Diana.”
“Moon goddess.”
I’d heard that before, or something like it, in my dream last night
Cassandra studied my face. “You didn’t know the meaning?”
“I do, but my parents named me after my grandmother. Knowing them, there wasn’t any discussion of the moon involved.”
“Names have power and purpose. Cassandra means prophet.”
“How convenient.”
She laughed, as if I were the funniest person to come into her shop in years. I took in the herbs, the beads, the snake. Maybe I was.
Hissing erupted from beyond the chicken wire.
“Relax, Lazarus. She’s a friend.”
“Lazarus? As in risen from the dead?”
“Names have power,” was all she said. “What’s your question?”
The snake was staring at me again. The idea that the reptile might not die or, if dead, would rise, was a very creepy thought indeed. Weren’t zombies a part of the whole voodoo thing? And snake zombies... I didn’t even want to go there.
“There’s a flower in the swamp,” I said. “A fire iris?”
“Yes.” Cassandra moved down the row of shelves and began to pull out a little of this and a little of that, sprinkling the unknown items into a gris-gris bag. “Very powerful.”
“What does it mean when someone leaves one on your bed?”
She paused, fingers poised over a basket of what appeared to be dried chicken bones. Then, as if she’d had second thoughts, she took a pinch of red dust instead and scattered it on top.
Crescent Moon Page 3