I’ve gone past that old place many times throughout the years, and every time I’d stop and stare, feeling drawn to it. I could never get close, though, because it sat back from the road with a long driveway leading up to it, and a huge iron gate across the entrance. A fence surrounded the property, and huge old oak trees lined the driveway, all of them leaning in to loom over the pavement. All of that contributed to the eeriness of the place, but I craved to see the inside of the house, no matter how spooky it was. It looked as if I was finally getting my chance now, so maybe I’d get over that obsession once I got to go in today. The Captain was standing there waiting for me to answer, and I realized that I’d kind of zoned out.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I know where Ravenwood is. What happened?”
“Somebody killed the old man who lived there, Abel Delessard.”
“You’re kidding. Looks like they could have just waited for natural causes—he must have been about a hundred and fifty.”
The Captain snorted and said, “Get the hell out of here. And let me know what you find. I’ll get a message to Broussard, and he can just meet you there instead of coming here.” Lucien Broussard was my partner, and he was also my best friend. Four years ago, the powers that be had decided to partner us up since we were the only two out and proud gays in the department.
Now nobody came right out and said that, of course. They didn’t want to be sued. But homophobia still reigned in most police departments in the country, and ours was no exception, though it was getting much better—with ice-age slowness, but still getting there. We both figured the higher-ups decided the other guys might be uncomfortable partnered up with us, despite the fact that neither of us would have any interest in their ugly asses.
It still could have blown up in their faces if we’d been attracted to each other, but we decided early on that we’d be better friends than lovers. It wasn’t that he was unattractive. There just didn’t seem to be that kind of spark between us—that certain chemistry or indefinable thing you feel when you meet a potential lover, so we became best friends instead, and everything worked out for the best. As I pulled into the circular driveway in front of Ravenwood, the four ibuprofen and two bottles of water I’d had on the way seemed to be taking effect, finally, and I was feeling marginally better. Not at all great, but better. The Crime Scene Investigators were already there, and I parked behind their van.
I got out of the car and took a minute to gaze up at the old house. Up close like this, it was even more badly in need of a paint job, and the second-floor porch was sagging a bit on one side. Still, it must have been magnificent at one time — it had good bones, as real estate agents would say. It was two stories—what was known as a double gallery, which meant that there was a wide porch on the top floor as well as the bottom. It had the traditional Greek columns found in most of the antebellum homes in the South, but Ravenwood was also decorated with the lacy ironworks so characteristic of the French Quarter.
The pull I’d always felt to it was even stronger as I stood there looking up at it. It was a strange feeling that I’d never had before—not unpleasant or frightening, just odd. It was only an old house, after all. What was there about this one that fascinated me so? I shook off the feeling and walked up to the front door, lifting the heavy cast iron door knocker that was adorned with a raven.
I only knocked a couple of times, and the door was opened almost immediately by….damn, was I seeing things? Rafe was standing there, the guy from the bar the night before. The gorgeous one. He looked almost as shocked as I felt. I flashed my badge at him.
“Uh…hello. Detective Arceneau, Jefferson Parish PD.” God, the attraction I felt for him was so strong. I flashed my badge at him, and tried to push those feelings down and be a professional. Unfortunately, I think I overdid it and came off cold toward him.
Some kind of emotion flashed over his face, gone before I could really register what it was. “Hello. Detective Arceneau, Jefferson Parish PD.”
“Oh, yes, of course. Come in. I don’t know if you remember me or not. I’m Rafe Delessard.”
“I remember.”
“Oh. Well, the other, um, people with the police are downstairs in the cellar with my—uh, with Abel. Let me show you the way.”
I followed Rafe to a door with a patrol officer standing beside it and he turned toward me. “You don’t need me to go down there, do you?”
“No, but I’ll have a few questions I’ll need to ask you when I come back up.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll wait in the library, then.” He pointed to a door on his left. “It’s right there. I’ll leave the door open and listen out for you.” I hesitated for a few seconds, unsure if I should say something about what happened between us the night before, and hesitant to bring it up. Of all the fucked-up ways for us to meet again…I was so interested in him and had already been planning how I could find him again. Now whatever was going to happen would have to wait until after this investigation.
“Fine,” I finally said, hoping he didn’t notice those damn starts and stops in the conversation. If only my head would stop pounding. “And if you’ll let anyone else who was here last night and this morning know that I’ll need to speak to them also, I’d appreciate it.” He nodded, wringing his hands a little. Nervous. That was only natural with a dead body in the house, and this Abel guy was his grandfather, he’d said.
I nodded at him, resisting the urge to take him in my arms and comfort him and tell him everything would be okay, and then walked down the stairs to the basement to see what the crime scene guys had for me.
The coroner, Gabrielle Bernard, looked up and saw me. Lowering her voice, she sidled over to me. “You know everyone says this is a family of witches—very powerful ones.”
I laughed and shook my head in disbelief. “Surely you don’t believe that crap.”
“Well, my grandmother always said…”
I interrupted her. “Yeah, mine, too, but that’s just the old people talking.”
“I don’t know, cher, this is New Orleans. Lots of strange things go on around here, and you know it as well as I do.”
“Yeah, I do, but witches? Real witches? I can’t wrap my head around that.” This conversation wasn’t helping my headache, so I decided to drop it and move on. “So, listen, if that’s everything you have so far, I’ll go back up and talk to the family members.”
“Okay, but to quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet—‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Whatever. That was never my favorite play anyway.”
I left then and headed toward the stairs, skirting the body of the late and it seemed not so terribly lamented Abel Delessard. Rafe hadn’t seemed too broken up over the old man’s death, and I had to wonder why. In my experience, there were three main motives for murder—robbery, jealousy, and vengeance, with robbery being right up there at the top. I sure didn’t peg Rafe as a thief, but that could just be the attraction talking. It would be interesting to see how this one played out.
Chapter Two
Rafe
I’d been waiting in the library for the detective to do whatever he had to do in the cellar. I was relieved that he hadn’t wanted or needed me to go down there with him, because after finding my grandfather, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to go down in that cellar again.
I’d been restless last night, probably because of the strong connection I’d made with the guy at the bar, who I’d just discovered to be the man in the basement now investigating the death of my grandfather. Awkward, to say the least. Coincidence? Maybe, or else the universe had been trying to warn me.
I admit I can be a bit of a flirt, and damn, he was hot, but it’s rare for me to feel drawn like that to someone so quickly. Or to come onto someone so blatantly. It was more than just a flirtation, somehow, in a way I couldn’t explain. Although, all that hotness sure as hell didn’t hurt. He was taller than me by about four in
ches, which would put his height at about six feet, two. He had dark hair and a dark complexion like so many of us in this part of the country, our roots steeped in the Cajun and Creole bloodlines. He didn’t have the dark eyes so prevalent here, though. Oh, no, he had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen—no, not blue. More like turquoise. It made you wonder what recessive gene created that color while thanking the powers that be for it at the same time. I didn’t think he had any idea how attractive he was.
As soon as I spoke to him, and he turned to look at me, I felt myself getting lost in those eyes, but I’d had to leave too soon—thanks to a call from a friend who has to be the drama king of New Orleans and surrounding parishes. He had some sort of dire emergency and needed me to come help him immediately, and so, reluctantly, I’d left while Gage was breaking up an argument at a table in the back of the bar. I was almost out the door when I happened to glance back and saw Henri Vitienne, a vampire from an old and well-established coven in New Orleans, after my detective. Before I could get back in there, he was beside him, putting his moves on him. Gage was about three minutes away from going to a dark alleyway with him when I arrived back beside him. Henri wouldn’t have killed the detective. Probably. But he would have drained him until he lost consciousness and left him with a craving for more, making him his thrall.
I couldn’t allow that to happen. After the detective left, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see him again, yet, there he was the very next morning, in my basement attempting to get to the bottom of the murder of my grandfather. Don’t tell me the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor, sick and dark though it may be.
Anyway, I was perched on the edge of my seat, going over in my head the sequence of events from the night before. I wanted to get my story straight before I talked to the police. Not that I had a “story.” But hell, I was nervous about talking to the cops. I’d gone down around midnight or so to check on some wine that we kept stored at one end of the cellar. I’d been invited to a friend’s house for a dinner party the next night to celebrate his birthday and thought I’d grab a bottle of wine for him. My grandfather, Abel, had always been a bit of a wine connoisseur and had indulged himself in that one hobby, so there was a good supply down there. Of course, I knew that Abel would be pissed if he found out I’d “borrowed” a bottle, so I was sneaking around, hoping he wouldn’t even notice one was missing. After all, I wasn’t planning on taking the most expensive bottle down there.
I had never liked it down in the cellar. It was dark and creepy, and it had always scared me when I was a kid. My brother, Beau, and sister, Sophie, had thought it was funny and had teased me about it growing up. It used to piss me off royally, but now that I was an adult, I could see the humor. Or maybe irony would be a better word, since we were all witches, and pretty powerful ones at that. Not only was I a witch, but sometimes I also saw spirits. Not often and nothing too scary. But my family was an old family of witches, and each of us had an aptitude for different things. Some were better at spellcasting, some at scrying. My thing was calling up spirits. We had a resident ghost in the house, a great grandmother who liked to wander the halls, and occasionally, I’d see some other dead relative. It was never pleasant and used to scare me, but I’d gotten pretty used to it through the years.
I also would get feelings when bad things were going to happen. I’d learned to pay close attention to these feelings, and as I walked down the steps, I had a terrible sense of foreboding, a feeling that got worse the closer I got to the cellar. I just knew that something really bad was about to happen. I tried to push the feeling away, but it only intensified with each step down that I took. The air felt thick and oppressive and smelled a little funky, like copper. I wished I’d brought a flashlight with me. I didn’t see anything at first, because I was looking at the row of light switches at the bottom of the stairs, trying to remember which one would light the other end of the basement where the wine was kept.
I caught something in my peripheral vision that made me look in that direction. I saw that the door to the vault, where Abel kept God knew what, and where I’d never been allowed to enter, was open and the light was on. I assumed that my grandfather was down there looking for something and thought, Fuck! Caught in the act!
It had to be him, because he would never leave that door open when he went back upstairs. Besides, even though the vault was always locked, he kept protective wards up around it as well, even to keep the family out, and I couldn’t detect any now. The only reason that the door would be standing open and the wards would be down was if the old man was in there.
Just my luck. Now all I had to do was come up with a plausible explanation for what I was doing wandering to the cellar in the middle of the night. I decided to tell him that I couldn’t sleep, so I’d gone to the kitchen to get something to drink. That I’d heard a noise that sounded like it was coming from downstairs, so I’d gone down to check it out.
I turned and started walking toward the vault, calling out to him. He didn’t answer, but I didn’t think anything about that since he was a little hard of hearing. As I got close to the vault, I suddenly saw him, his body illuminated by the light streaming from inside the safe. He was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. I’m sure I gasped or something and ran over and knelt down beside him, noticing several wounds that looked like they might be stab wounds, but there was no knife that I could see. There was also blood already congealing beneath his head. Staring down at him, with blood everywhere, I knew he had to be dead.
I stood and looked around, both hoping and dreading I’d make contact with my grandfather’s spirit. Sometimes, but not always, a person’s spirit would linger close to his body for a while before moving on. Being witches, my family had always been able to see spirits and interact with them, but Abel had always said that the ability was stronger in me than in any of my siblings.
Though I feared seeing his ghost, I was hoping at the same time to contact him and see if he could tell me who it was that murdered him,
I wasn’t able to, though, even when I called out to him again and again. I knew it was a longshot, but I had to try. I even tried to pull some of my magic from the etheric flow to reach out to him, but it didn’t work—probably because I was too close to the situation. My feelings of disbelief and numbness were interfering with my magic. I knew I was probably in shock.
Or he was—sometimes the spirit of someone who died in a traumatic way went into a kind of stasis—just shut down at first, so that communication with the spirit wasn’t possible.
Once I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to contact him until my emotions settled down a bit, I tried to think about what I should do, but my mind was just blank, so I backed away from the body and shouted for my older brother, Thibeau, who was asleep in his room upstairs.
I backed out of there as fast as I could then, and I have to say it was a relief to get out of that basement even for a few minutes. It was so oppressive, and the smell of blood was sickening. I kept thinking about a line from when I played the lead role in our high school version of Macbeth. “Who would have thought the old man would have had so much blood in him?”
Lady Macbeth said that, and come to think of it, how the fuck did I remember that? An image flashed in my mind of Sallie Adrieux, the cute redhead who played Lady Macbeth in our school play, holding up her hands drenched in our high school version of stage blood, a mixture of corn syrup and red food coloring.
Shock, hell. I must have been hysterical.
I shuddered and ran up the cellar stairs, intent on getting to Beau’s room as fast as I could. I was greeted at the top of the steps by my cat, Loki. When I was a senior in high school, he’d wandered up to the house out of nowhere and adopted me as his human that day, and I’d belonged to him ever since. He was a tiny black furball kitten back then, but he’d grown into a big Maine coon cat with great presence. When I was home, he was rarely far from my side and he seemed to be able to read my mind—like now. It was as if he could sense I needed
him. He’d been my comfort when Beau had disappeared that time and I’d been unable to find him. Even scrying couldn’t locate him. I was worried and miserable, but Loki seemed to sense it and never left my side when I was at home.
I reached down and rubbed Loki behind his ears. He loved that, nuzzling my hand and purring loudly. “You always know when I need you, don’t you bebe?” I shut the cellar door. “I’m going up to get Beau and I’ll be right back down.”
I went after Beau, who took charge of things, like I knew he would and called the police. The rest, as they say, was history and about what I’d expect to happen after you call the cops. Except for one important difference—the cop that had walked through the door a few minutes ago. Damn, why of all people did it have to be him? I’d seen enough TV to know he wouldn’t want to pursue anything with me until the case was solved. Not exactly what I had in mind for the man.
I came back to my current “situation” as my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of someone coming back up the stairs. I knew it was Gage Arceneau, the hot detective. I hadn’t met anyone I was even remotely attracted to in months and when I finally did, he had to be the one investigating my grandfather’s murder. Like I said, the universe has a fucked-up sense of humor.
I didn’t expect there to be many clues left behind because whoever did this must have been powerful in his own right to overpower my grandfather and the wards he had in place all over the house.
Anyway, it was probably all part of that fucking curse that hung around all our necks like an albatross. And just how was I supposed to explain any of that to Detective Hot Stuff? He didn’t strike me as someone who believed in witches and magic and curses and things that go bump in the night, but I could be wrong. I’d just have to wait and see. I was pondering that as I stepped out of the library and saw him emerging from the basement. I stood there for a minute just staring at him, and couldn’t help myself. He was like movie star good-looking.
Haunted (Witches of the Big Easy Book 3) Page 2