“Not ‘welcome to the neighborhood,’ ” she murmured. “Can you bring me the flower?”
“It’s gone.”
“Hmm.” She turned to a completely different set of shelves and continued to mix and match. “Another question?”
She hadn’t answered the first. Not really.
“Do you know anything about a wolf in the area?”
Her hand froze above a glass jar of what looked like black olives but probably weren’t. “Who are you?”
“I told you. Di—”
“Not your name. Why are you here? In New Orleans?”
I had no reason not to tell her, so I did. “I’m a cryptozoologist. I was hired to find the wolf in the swamp.”
“Why?’
“That’s my job. Finding unknown animals.”
“A wolf isn’t unknown.”
“In Louisiana it is.”
“What if there isn’t a wolf? Or at least not a wolf as you know them?”
“Even better.”
She cast me a quick glance, then busied herself tying a string around the top of the gris-gris. “There’s a legend about the Honey Island Swamp.”
“The swamp monster?”
The snake in the cage echoed her derisive hiss. “Nothing more than an overgrown nutria rat, which scared some half-wits over two decades ago.”
Interesting theory—and one that explained the legend nicely. Cassandra was both refreshingly levelheaded and disturbingly strange.
“I meant the legend of the loup-garou,” she continued.
Now we were getting somewhere.
“The werewolf.”
She stared at me for a long moment. “You don’t believe there’s any such thing, do you?”
I ignored her question to ask one of my own: “Have you seen a wolf?”
Cassandra moved to the front window and peered at the street. “There’s something out there. Something that comes and goes. Something that kills and is never caught.”
“Wolves don’t kill people.”
She turned, and her now-sober eyes met mine. “Exactly.”
“What’s the legend?”
In my world, legends often skirted the truth. I needed to listen, to analyze, to pick and choose what was real and what was not.
“Over a hundred years ago a man was cursed.”
“Why?”
“He was a man. Isn’t that enough?”
My lips twitched. I really shouldn’t like her so much. If she wasn’t nuts, she was at least a charlatan.
“Every crescent moon he runs as a wolf.”
That much I knew. “Why not the full moon?”
“A loup-garou is special.”
“Why?”
“You have an awful lot of questions for someone who doesn’t believe.”
“I’m curious.”
“He was cursed,” she repeated.
“Why?” I sounded like a broken record.
“Because he owned people, and he would not set them free.”
I should have known. Voodoo came to this country with those who were brought here in chains. I had to say, if anyone had bought and sold me, I’d have cursed their ass, too.
“So his slaves voodoo-cursed him to become a wolf under the crescent moon?”
“Not a wolf, a werewolf.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A wolf is an animal, but a werewolf is monster. An evil thing, ruled by the moon and possessed by bloodlust. They’re given life, but they can’t live. They can hate, but they can’t love. They think like a human and kill like a beast, no longer caring about anything or anyone but themselves.”
I guess I didn’t want to meet one in a dark alley.
“Why the crescent moon and not the full?” I repeated. “Besides the fact that this is the Crescent City?”
I’d thought the name and the legend nothing more than an interesting coincidence. However, when dealing with curses, coincidences weren’t always so coincidental. Not that I believed in curses, but some people did. Obviously Cassandra was one of them.
“The full moon comes but once a month,” she said. “The crescent arrives twice.”
“Double your cursing pleasure.”
Cassandra nodded. “A full moon is technically one night only, but each crescent lasts several days, bestowing multiple madness every lunar cycle.”
“Who was this guy? Simon Legree?”
I hated that the first name of my beloved husband and that of the legendary bad guy from Uncle Tom’s Cabin were the same, but I hadn’t written the book and Harriet Beecher Stowe had died long before I had a chance to complain.
“Nobody knows for certain who the man was,” Cassandra said. “In the way of legends, he was probably an amalgamation of every slave owner. Doomed to be damned for eternity by their own greed.”
“Do you believe a werewolf is running around the Honey Island Swamp?”
“Maybe there is; maybe there isn’t. But a wolf’s been seen. People have been killed.”
“What do the police think?”
“They’re like you. Never believe until they see. No wolves in Louisiana, so the culprit has to be a wild dog, or a coyote.”
I remembered something Simon had told me. “Wolves won’t tolerate coyotes in their territory. Drives ’em nuts.”
“Okay.” Cassandra appeared puzzled by my seemingly random thought. “But what about werewolves and coyotes?”
That I wasn’t sure about.
“Don’t those bitten by a werewolf become werewolves themselves?” I asked.
“So the legends say.”
“Then if there’s a werewolf in New Orleans—and has been for over a hundred years—shouldn’t there be more than one?”
Cassandra pressed the gris-gris into my hand. “Who says there aren’t?”
Chapter 6
The tinkling of the shop bell interrupted our conversation.
“Excuse me,” Cassandra said.
“I need to go anyway.”
I tried to return the gris-gris, but she wouldn’t take it.
“That’s for you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’ll protect you against the mojo from the flower.”
“Sure it will.”
She tilted her head. “What can it hurt?”
“Depends on what you put in here. Bats’ wings? Puppy dog tails? I’m allergic.”
Cassandra laughed. “Nothing so ominous. Some herbs, red pepper. Dust from the grave of a believer.”
I made a face.
“Kidding,” she said. “I also put in a little something to keep the beasts of the swamp away.”
“That oughta work.” Along with a gun and a baseball bat.
“If you’re going to be working in the swamp, I doubt you’ll want the alligators hanging around.”
I shoved the gris-gris into my pocket.
“In the old days, people placed charms in their left shoes,” Cassandra continued. “But the old days are the reason a lot of folks wound up lame.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Keep the gris-gris on you by day and under your pillow by night. Make sure you take it out before the maid sees. Some tend to get a little freaked if they find them.”
I couldn’t tell if she was teasing. Probably not.
“Let me know how things work out,” she said. “I enjoyed talking to you.”
I’d enjoyed talking to her, too. I didn’t have many friends. Hell, I didn’t have any. Once I’d found Simon, I’d let the few I had drift away. I was in a bizarre profession, which didn’t lend itself to camaraderie. I disappeared at the ring of the phone, never knew when I’d come back, forgot lunch dates, could care less about movies. And the other cryptozoologists ...
Well, they’d as soon steal your Loch Ness Monster as look at you.
Arriving back at the hotel, I discovered the maid had cleaned my room and departed. I dropped my clothes on the floor, set my phone alarm for an hour before d
usk, then shoved the gris-gris beneath my pillow. After the dream I’d had last night ... Well, as Cassandra said—couldn’t hurt.
I slept like the dead, waking with a yelp when my phone shrilled. No gifts on the bed. My gris-gris was right where I’d left it.
I got dressed, pocketed the charm, grabbed my camera, my cell phone, and a tote bag to put them in, then went to meet Charlie.
He was waiting when I pulled up at the dock. The sun cast orange rays through the trees and across his face. For an instant the light took on the shade of fresh blood.
I pushed aside the disturbing thought. I was the moon goddess, not a prophet if I believed Cassandra’s name-dropping. But what did a moon goddess do?
The gris-gris weighed heavily in my pocket, and I was tempted to throw the talisman into the drink. Except I didn’t want Charlie to see it. The way he’d behaved this afternoon at the mansion, anything weird might spook him away for good.
“Ready?” he asked.
I climbed into the boat, and we headed off. Night settled over us like a cool velvet curtain. The stars came out, and the crescent moon rose.
Charlie turned on the spotlight attached to the front of the boat, and I stared, transfixed, at what seemed like a hundred shining orbs in the water.
“Gators,” he said. “They like the dark.”
In the daytime it was easy to believe the alligators were slow and unthreatening. Not very many of them out here at all. But in the night, surrounded by their glowing eyes, every one of which seemed to stare directly at me, they seemed very threatening indeed. I longed to be back on solid ground.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Thought I’d take you to the place where the last body was found.” Charlie pointed straight ahead. “Right up there.”
“Who discovered it?”
“Me.”
“You said you hadn’t seen the wolf.”
“Didn’t. Friend of mine did.”
“So it didn’t necessarily kill the man.”
“Guy’s throat was torn. Paw prints all around him.”
“Not a coyote?”
“Coyotes are scavengers and cowards. They wouldn’t kill a man.”
“Neither would a wolf.”
Charlie shrugged. “Me and my friend was huntin’ nutrias, found the body. I stayed, while he looked around. Said he saw a wolf disappearing into the tall grass.”
“He’s sure he saw a wolf?”
“Huge, black, big head, long legs. He shot it, but the thing disappeared.”
“He’s sure he hit something?”
“Found a bit of blood. Nothin’ else.”
“Isn’t it illegal to shoot a wolf?”
The species was still endangered in some areas, threatened or protected in others, though their numbers had increased sufficiently in a few northern states for them to be delisted. In other words, wolves could be killed by certain people, with good cause, but not by any old person whenever they felt like it.
“No law around here like that,” Charlie said. “Ain’t no wolves.”
“I should probably take a peek at that body.”
“Already in the crypt, I’m sure.”
“Crypt?”
“Whole city’s below sea level.”
Ah, the singular burial practices of New Orleans. While I wasn’t an expert, I had read something in the guidebook that I’d bought at O’Hare before getting on the plane. For hundreds of years, the citizens of the Crescent City had stacked their dead on shelves inside brick monuments known as ovens. After a year and a day, the body was decomposed enough to dump into a well with all the others who had gone before, making room for the next entrant on the assembly line of death.
Most people choose to be buried in a family crypt. Better to spend eternity mixed with Gramma than the psycho next door.
The boat bumped against the embankment.
“You stay here,” Charlie said. “I’m gonna clear the gators out of the way.”
I contemplated the staring eyes. “What if one of them wants to climb aboard?”
My hand crept to the pocket that held my gris-gris. I sure hoped the thing worked, and wasn’t that a change in attitude?
“I doubt they could, but—” He leaned over, flicked the catch on the cabinet beneath his seat, and pulled out a handgun. “There ye go.”
Picking up a bat, he strode into the night.
The weight of the gun in my palm felt good. Not only had I taken self-defense classes, but I’d learned how to fire both a rifle and a handgun. I wasn’t half-bad.
Water lapped against the boat in a rhythm that would have been peaceful if it weren’t for the bobbing army of eyes. I began to feel chilled, and it wasn’t lack of the sun. Something was watching me again.
I glanced at the tributary. A lot of somethings.
A rustle from the bank made me start. “Charlie?”
Charlie didn’t appear.
“Charlie?” I called a little louder, startling the alligators that had swum in close.
The brush seemed to be waving in a nonexistent breeze. I crept to the front of the boat and shifted the spotlight. The glare blazed across the top of the grass, splashed off the crooked limbs of the cypress trees, and revealed an indentation in the flora, as if a large body was moving steadily toward...
“Charlie!”
His answer was a scream, a gurgle, then silence.
I jumped out of the boat, not even thinking about the alligators, not even caring. At least I remembered the gun.
The spotlight lit my way as I headed in the direction of the scream. Charlie must have gotten rid of all the alligators in the vicinity, unless they’d smelled my gris-gris, or maybe slithered back into the water to avoid whatever the hell had come after Charlie.
I paused, listened, caught a faint rumble to my left. Tightening my fingers on the gun, I barreled through the overgrowth, shouting Charlie’s name.
Some animals will run if you startle them. Some won’t.
I’d come far enough that the light from the boat was fading. When I burst through a tangle of weeds and into a small clearing, I had to squint to see. Or maybe I just had to squint because I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Charlie lay on the ground, dead from the appearance of the throat wound. A man knelt next to him, fingers pressed to Charlie’s neck.
At first I thought he’d been attacked, too. Blood all over a bare chest will give that impression. But with that much blood, I should see a gap, a tear, a great big hole. He definitely shouldn’t have been able to stand, to move, to walk toward me. I panicked and lifted the gun.
“Stop.” My voice sounded thick, as if I were speaking through swamp water.
The man kept coming—fast—his long, dark hair flying around his face, giving me tantalizing glimpses of a nose, a chin, teeth. He snatched the pistol, and the bronze bracelet on his wrist shimmered as he tossed the weapon aside. I’d never flicked off the safety, but he didn’t know that.
Then he shook back his hair, and I couldn’t think beyond the sight of the face I’d seen twice—in the picture on the wall of the Ruelle Mansion and in my erotic dream of the night before.
“You’re—” I meant to say dead, but the word froze on my tongue when he grabbed me.
Solid, warm, real. He wasn’t a ghost.
So what in hell was he?
Chapter 7
This close I could smell the blood. Not his, I realized. Charlie’s.
The thought caused me to stiffen, then attempt to pull away. He only held on more tightly.
“Where you goin’, cher? The police will want to talk with you, I’m thinkin’.”
I couldn’t seem to put the pieces of the puzzle that was him together quite right. I knew his voice, remembered the way he’d called me cher, recognized the bracelet surrounding his wrist and the drift of his hair against his shoulders. But his face was that of a dream man long dead.
He gave me a little shake. “You okay? Think you might faint?”<
br />
“Wh-what—”
I couldn’t catch my breath to ask... Who was he? What was he?
“Happened?” I blurted
“What happened?”
I nodded. He shrugged. If he hadn’t been so bloody, I might have gone gooey at the sight of all those rippling chest muscles.
“Heard a scream. Found him. Tried CPR. Didn’t work.”
Emergency procedures could explain the blood. Made a lot more sense than this man having killed that one. Still, I was too spooked to trust him completely.
“You didn’t see anything?” I asked. “Anyone?”
His eyes were such a brilliant blue, I was reminded again of my dream. How could I have dreamed his face, his eyes, when, at the time, I’d never seen them?
That dream was starting to creep me out almost as much as the dead Charlie.
“Something big went crashing that way.” He let me go to point into the depths of the swamp.
“How big?” My voice shook.
He didn’t answer, instead moving across the grass, then kneeling to get a better view of the body. I didn’t want to, but I followed.
“Animal, most like.” He tilted his head, staring at the torn throat. “Men don’t do that.”
True, but—“What kind of animal would attack a man? Tear out his throat?”
“One you don’t want to meet.”
I was beginning to get used to his compact sentences and the cadence of his accent.
“Got a cell phone, cher?”
“Huh?” That voice did funny things to my insides.
He smiled. Or at least I thought he did. His lips turned up, but his teeth never made an appearance and the sadness in his eyes didn’t lighten. Then again, what could lighten this situation?
Charlie was dead.
“A phone. To call the police.”
Good idea. Except—
“I left it on the boat. In my bag.”
I didn’t want to admit I was afraid to go back there alone, but I didn’t have to. He strode off toward the sound of the idling motor and the blare of the spotlight.
Darkness closed in without him. The swamp was both damp and chilly. Even if it had been hotter than a Louisiana July, I’d have shivered. There was something out there, and as Cassandra had said, it killed.
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