Crescent Moon

by Lori Handeland

  “I know.”

  From the expression on her face, she did know, and I wanted to ask who she’d lost, how long it had been. After all, we’d bonded. But she shook off the sadness, smiling brightly, and I got the distinct impression her past was off-limits.

  “You want to tell me why you came careening in here like something was chasing you?”

  “Oh, yeah! Charlie Wagner.”

  Cassandra’s smile faded. “How did you—?”

  “What?”

  “His body is the one that’s missing.”

  “Which might be why I saw him on Jackson Square.”

  Her gaze sharpened. “Did you use the powder?”

  “He took off. Disappeared.” I paused. “Can a zombie disappear?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Was I having this conversation?

  “Where did you lose him?” Cassandra asked.

  “Frenchmen Street.”

  She grabbed a huge purse from under the counter, then chose items from the shelves and shoved them inside. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Frenchmen Street”

  “Because...?”

  “Zombies aren’t the smartest beings on the planet. They follow orders, then return to their master.”

  “I don’t believe this,” I muttered.

  “You do, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  The woman was right too often for her own good.

  “You have the powder?” She locked the door behind us.

  “Yep.”

  “Okay. We find him, reveal him, put him back where he belongs.”

  “Which is?”

  “Good question. I’ve never heard of a zombie being raised before they were buried. But then again, bodies aren’t exactly buried around here. They’re encrypted. Is that a word?”

  “Got me.”

  Cassandra moved at a fast clip down Royal Street, turning on St Peter and heading for Jackson Square. Night had fallen; the moon that rose was just over half-full. I’d need to wait over a week to search for the loup-garou again.

  Was I really adjusting my job because of the phases of the moon? Yes. The unbelievable became more believable with every passing hour.

  “Can’t we do this in the daytime?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “I saw him in the daytime. Well, not exactly daytime, but it wasn’t night, either.”

  Cassandra stopped, turned, and put a hand on my shoulder. “It isn’t that we can’t wait; it’s that we shouldn’t. Zombies are rarely raised for the good of mankind. The longer Charlie’s waltzing around, the more trouble he’ll cause.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  We started walking again.

  “What did he look like?” she asked.

  “Charlie.”

  “I mean was there any decay? What about his throat wound?”

  I shook my head. “He looked the same as the day I met him.”

  She stopped again, right inside Jackson Square. The artisans and psychics were still there; the music had stopped. “You’re saying his throat wasn’t bloody and gaping? His body hadn’t started to rot?”

  “I think I’d have noticed.” Along with everyone else on the street.

  She bit her lip and stared at the ground. “Weird.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  Cassandra lifted her troubled gaze to mine. “Ever seen Night of the Living Dead?”

  “No.”

  “Zombies aren’t supposed to appear alive. A zombie is a walking corpse.”

  “The movie could be wrong. And wouldn’t that be a shock?”

  She didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

  “You don’t think so.”

  “No.” She cut past the cathedral, and I followed. “Maybe Charlie is too newly dead to decay.”

  “Then how did he heal his throat wound?”

  “Yeah.” She glanced at me. “How did he?”

  “You’re the voodoo priestess.”

  “Whoever did this has power beyond anything we can imagine. Not only was Charlie raised; he was healed.” She shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

  I had to say I wasn’t crazy about it, either.

  Chapter 19

  Frenchmen Street was deserted except for bartenders, waitresses, and local musicians ready to play a set for tips.

  “Won’t get busy here until after nine or ten,” Cassandra said. “If you like, once we’re done, we can hang out and listen to the best jazz in town.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. We’d come after a zombie, and once we put him back... wherever... Cassandra wanted to listen to music and drink wine spritzers.

  When in Rome . . . By then I probably would need a drink.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now we start walking through alleys, peeking in bars.”

  “Seems a little half-assed to me.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  Actually, I did.

  “Hey, Charlie!” I shouted. “Chaaaaaaarlie!”

  One bartender and two waitresses stepped onto the sidewalk, saw us, shrugged, and went back to work.

  I glanced at Cassandra. “You said names have power.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” She took a deep breath and shouted, “Charlie!”

  Farther down, past the jazz clubs, a head poked out between a grocery store and an abandoned building. I recognized that head even before Charlie stepped into the flare of a streetlight.

  “That’s him,” I whispered.

  “Get the powder.”

  I did as she said, and each of us took a little into our hand.

  “Remember, blow it right into his face.”

  We took one step in Charlie’s direction and he ran.

  “Hell!” Cassandra started to run, too. “He isn’t supposed to run.”

  I hustled after her. I had longer legs, but Cassandra had less weight on hers. “Why not?”

  “Because it should be all he can do to shuffle. This guy is weird.”

  “This guy is dead.”

  She didn’t bother to answer. Charlie was too fast to keep up a conversation and keep up with him.

  He led us away from the dewy lights of Frenchmen Street, down roads I couldn’t name without a sign, past signs I couldn’t see without a light. Cassandra didn’t seem disturbed, but she probably knew where we were going. Nevertheless, I didn’t think it was a good idea to chase a corpse all over New Orleans when all we had for protection was a zombie-revealing powder that might or might not work.

  “Maybe we should let him go.” I wheezed.

  “Not on your life.” Cassandra wasn’t wheezing. “This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a zombie. I’m not giving up the chance to—”

  Ah, she did have to take a deep breath. I felt so much better. “To what?”

  Her gaze flicked past me. “That’s Louis Armstrong Park.”

  I stopped running.

  Louis Armstrong Park was not a place we wanted to be after the dark. The only place worse was—

  “He’s going into St. Louis Cemetery Number One.”

  That.

  All the guidebooks said, in big, bold, red letters, not to enter any of the cemeteries at night. And not because of a zombie problem. There was a certain diceyness, even in the daytime, that made it best to visit in groups.

  Up until about eighty years ago, this part of New Orleans had been known as Storyville and was the only legal red-light district in the country. Customers could peruse a book that listed the bordellos and even had pictures of the prostitutes. Jazz flourished, too, since the musical movement was not considered legitimate until much later. Even after prostitution became illegal again, Storyville remained the place to find a certain kind of girl well into the 1960s.

  A police station had been built nearby. However, the area still had a dangerous aura that never seemed to go away.

  “Let’s go back to your place.” I tugged on Cassandra’s arm.

 
“No.” Her mouth thinned into a stubborn line.

  “Why are you so obsessed with this?”

  Her face took on a faraway expression, and for an instant I thought she might confide in me; then the stubbornness returned. “I have my reasons. You still have your powder?”

  “Yes. But I’d feel better if I had a gun.” The one Adam had given me was still locked in the trunk of my car, where it was going to be of so much use to us.

  Without commenting, Cassandra reached into her bag and withdrew a very long knife. I gaped. Who was this woman?

  “It probably isn’t a good idea to walk around with that.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Believe me, in this neighborhood, it is.”

  “There’s no one here but us.”

  “You’re wrong. They’re all over the place.” She headed for the cemetery.

  The back of my neck tingled. Who were “they”?

  Not wanting to be left alone, I scurried to catch up just as Cassandra reached the front of St. Louis Cemetery Number One. Barbed wire lined the top of the stone fence. The front gate was iron and sported a big lock. I breathed a sigh of relief, then Cassandra reached out and gave it a shove. The gate slid open.

  “Damn it,” I muttered.

  She cast me an amused glance. “How do you think Charlie got in?”

  “He couldn’t just slide through the walls?”

  “He’s a zombie, not a ghost.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  Cassandra lifted a palm filled with powder. “Let’s find out.”

  Without waiting for me to agree or disagree, she slipped through the gate. I glanced longingly at the street, which was lit up like the Superdome on Super Sunday. There were lots of cars and even a few non-zombie people; I wanted to stay. But I couldn’t let Cassandra go alone, so I followed her inside.

  The half-moon only shone enough light into St. Louis Cemetery Number One to make the shadows dance and the white stone gleam. Other than that, darkness reigned.

  “Watch your step,” Cassandra said. “A lot of the old markers are crumbling. Easy to trip.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Best place to look for a zombie would be Marie Laveau’s tomb.”

  “If you say so.”

  The crypt of the New Orleans voodoo queen wasn’t very far from the front gate. Tall but otherwise unimpressive, it was tucked among many others. I wouldn’t have taken the white boxy monument for anything special if not for the flowers in front of the door and the Xs drawn on the walls.

  “What are those?” I whispered.

  “People believe if they mark three Xs on Marie’s tomb, scratch the ground three times with their feet, or rap three times on the grave, their wish will be granted.”

  I started to hum “Knock Three Times.”

  Cassandra made a soft sound of amusement, then moved closer to the tomb and rapped on the door. Once. Twice. Three times.

  I froze as the sound echoed in the stillness of the night. As I half-expected someone to answer, my head snapped around when a bell began to ring somewhere in the cemetery.

  “Dead ringer.” Cassandra started in the direction of the sound. Since I had no desire to stay behind and see if her rapping had woken the voodoo queen, I did too.

  “What the hell is a dead ringer?”

  “You never heard the expression?”

  “Sure. But it means someone who resembles someone else. What does that have to do with a bell in the cemetery?” I rubbed my arms against a sudden chill. “In the dark, in the night.”

  “This place was opened in 1789, back when they didn’t know yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes. People thought it could be passed from person to person, be they living or dead.”

  “Understandable.”

  “They placed the cemetery outside the city limits in an attempt to keep the fever away. But so many died, and so many panicked, sometimes people got buried before they were dead.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Times ten. Because of the unique burial practices here, the tombs are opened to inter new bodies. When they started to find fingernail furrows in the doors, they came up with a brilliant idea.”

  The bell stopped ringing, and the ensuing silence was so loud, I heard both of us breathing.

  Cassandra pointed to a crypt. “They installed a bell on top, with a string leading inside. People were told if they suddenly awoke in a dark, enclosed space all they had to do was find the string and ring the bell. The cemetery attendant would come and let them out.”

  “Pretty smart.”

  “Except when people began to see the folks they’d only buried a few days ago walking around on the street they were understandably freaked. They coined the term dead ringer to explain the phenomenon.”

  I contemplated the now-silent bell. “Who was ringing this one?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  “Let’s not.” I grabbed at her arm, but she was already gone.

  The door to the tomb faced away from us. Before we could turn the corner, a loud thunk split the night. Cassandra stopped so fast, I ran into her back.

  “Sounded like a door,” she whispered.

  “Are there still cemetery attendants?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  Together we peeked around the corner and discovered Charlie helping a woman out of the crypt. The name on the tomb read: Favreau. I filed that away for later use.

  “You take him; I’ll take her.” Cassandra stepped out of hiding.

  Both Charlie and the woman growled at us.

  “Mrs. Beasly,” I blurted.

  She gave no indication that she heard me or that she knew her name, just continued to snarl in tandem with Charlie. I hadn’t thought a person could snarl, and while Cassandra and I were too far away to be sure, I could swear both of them had fangs.

  Cassandra cut a quick glance in my direction. “You know her?”

  “Missing librarian.”

  No wonder they couldn’t find her. Why search in a crypt marked: Favreau?

  “Is she dead?” I asked.

  “You see a lot of live people climb out of tombs snarling?”

  “Not lately.”

  When the two stalked in our direction, Cassandra lifted her palm and put her lips near her wrist. I did the same.

  “Now,” Cassandra ordered.

  We exhaled; the powder flew, coating their faces in pale yellow particles. My arm dropped to my side as Charlie and Mrs. Beasly stopped walking and started coughing. I waited for them to shrivel, disintegrate, disappear. But they didn’t.

  Charlie smacked me in the chest with the flat of his hand. Any air I had left in my lungs rushed out as I sailed backward and slammed into a crypt wall. I collapsed, too stunned to move.

  Cassandra’s knife flashed; Mrs. Beasly hissed as smoke rose from the cut in her forearm. She recovered quickly, backhanding Cassandra hard enough that she joined me on the ground. Mrs. Beasly was far too strong to be a live little old lady.

  The two advanced. I tried to get up, but I was still loopy. Cassandra didn’t look much better; she was going to have a shiner in the morning. She glanced around for her knife, but the weapon had clattered in another direction when she was hit. Not that it had done her any good against the superhuman zombie librarian.

  Was that redundant?

  The two paused a few feet away, their bodies blotting out the light of the half-moon so that a silver halo appeared behind their heads. I couldn’t see their faces, but the mumbles coming from their mouths were more animal than human.

  “I don’t think that zombie powder works,” Cassandra said.

  Two sharp reports split the night. Charlie and Mrs. Beasly jerked once and then exploded in blazing balls of fire.

  “I don’t think they’re zombies,” I said.

  Chapter 20

  Cassandra and I managed to get to our feet with the aid of the tomb at our backs. My head felt as if it might split in
two. The scent of burning flesh wasn’t helping. I tried to catch a glimpse of whoever had shot Charlie and Mrs. Beasly, but I saw no one.

  The moon shadowed more than illuminated, and the graveyard was chock-full of tombs. Go figure. The shooter could be hiding anywhere. However, if he or she had meant us harm, he or she wouldn’t have stopped at two bullets.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Cassandra snatched her knife out of the gravel.

  “Now she wants to leave.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I never wanted to come here in the first place.”

  She tugged me toward the rear of the burial ground. I hung back, peering longingly at the streetlights. “What’s wrong with the front door?”

  “Those gunshots are going to bring cops, if not thugs. I know a less public way out.”

  “Of course you do.” I went with her. I didn’t want to explain why there were two flaming dead people in the middle of St. Louis Cemetery Number One either. I doubted I could.

  If the police found Cassandra here they’d think she’d been stealing bodies, and then some. I needed her free and able to help me figure out what was going on, not locked up for body snatching and desecration of the dead. If they even locked people up for that anymore, although I kind of thought they did.

  She led me past a huge monument, which I recognized from the film Easy Rider. Peter Fonda had climbed up to sit in the lap of an angel. I’d thought the scene a bit sacrilegious even then. Now, in the silver-tinged night, I thought it more so. This was a sacred place, a haunted place, a place where the living did not belong, and I wanted out of here as fast as I could go.

  We left the white stone monuments behind and stepped into a small rectangle filled with more traditional markers.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Protestant section.”

  No wonder it was so small.

  “There.” Cassandra pointed to a path that seemed to cut through someone’s backyard.

  ‘We probably shouldn’t—” I began.

  “What the hell!”

  An exclamation from the front of the cemetery was followed by more voices and the patter of feet. Flashlight beams began to flicker round and round. I practically dived out of the city of the dead.

  Cassandra and I emerged onto Robertson Street, which divided St. Louis Number One and St. Louis Number Two. From the guidebooks, I knew that where we were now was even rougher than where we’d been. But after what I’d just seen, I had a hard time caring.