by P. C. Cast
“Tessa, this isn’t funny.”
“I know it isn’t.”
“Okay. Then…then someone’s messing with us.” Tricia swallowed hard. “I’m going to see the manager. If they think they can sneak around our rooms in the middle of the night just to perpetrate their ghost stories and increase business, they’d better think again.” Tricia stomped back into the bathroom to put her clothes on.
But Tessa could only sit and stare at the final photograph in the stack. There was a mirror behind the bed, and while the camera had been aimed at her, herself, asleep, that mirror had been captured in the shot as well. And in it was a vague image in the darkness. A woman’s face, all white, pale, and luminescent. Thin and transparent. It looked like Tessa’s own face, painted in pale mists on the darkness.
8
The hotel management, naturally, denied any knowledge of the photos, or how they had come to be. Tricia said they had attempted to prove their case by showing her reams of videotape taken by the surveillance cameras in the third-floor hallway. No one had come in through the door all night.
That only left the balcony.
Tessa swallowed hard. “It’s New Orleans. People party hard. Probably some kid decided to play a practical joke and climbed up the trellis or fire escape or something. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Maybe we should go to another hotel.”
Tessa couldn’t do that. She needed to be here, though she didn’t know just why. “Everything’s booked,” she said softly. “I already checked.” She realized that she had just done something she never, ever did. She had lied to her sister. She covered it quickly, plastering a smile onto her face. “Come on, let’s go out. I want to take the trolley into the Garden District today, and explore. And at the end of the run there’s a restaurant I want to try for dinner. Then we’ll come back and go play at that karaoke bar on Bourbon Street, all right?”
“You’re going to make me drop from sheer exhaustion before we get back home, aren’t you?”
Tessa took her sister’s hand. She really wished she could send her home, get her out of here. Something was going on, she could feel it right to her toes. She was coming alive inside, in ways she could not explain.
They toured, and walked, and took the obligatory photos of Anne Rice’s house. They visited shops and museums and spent more money than was probably wise. They visited Lafayette Cemetery without a tour guide, something they had been warned not to do. While there, Tessa suffered a dizzy spell that left her weak and queasy. But she recovered soon enough, and blamed it on the heat. They walked along the sidewalks of Canal Street, looking up at the Mardi Gras beads that dangled from every tree and power line in sight, even months after the party. When they found some hanging low enough to reach, Tricia insisted on snatching them from the tree as a souvenir. Beads tossed during the parade were way better than the ones you could buy in any shop in New Orleans, she insisted. They had dinner very late, and then rode back to the French Quarter, and did some drinking and bar hopping on Bourbon Street.
When they finally returned to the hotel it was just after eleven, and the message light on the phone was blinking. Tricia didn’t notice it as she headed straight for the shower. As soon as the water was running, Tessa picked up the phone and retrieved the message. Victor’s tape-recorded voice played in her ear. “He says he’ll meet you at midnight in the street below your balcony. That’s the best I can do.”
9
She waited until her sister was sound asleep, then slipped out of the room as quietly as she could manage. She hated leaving Tricia, knowing how nervous the room made her. Especially given the odd photos that had been taken of them sleeping last night. But she left the balcony doors open. If anything happened to frighten Tricia, Tessa would be able to hear her. And she could be at her side within a few seconds.
She tiptoed through the hall, took the stairs instead of the elevator, and then moved through the deserted lobby as soundlessly as if she were the ghost. When she opened the heavy, ornate wooden door, she could smell the night. She stepped out into its hot, sticky embrace, silently loving it. But there was no one in sight. Tessa walked a few steps along the sidewalk, looking in either direction, seeing no one. But then far in the distance, she heard the slow, steady clip-clop of hooves over stone.
Straining her eyes to see, she stared down the street, unsure of the direction, because the sound seemed to echo from everywhere at once. But then an ebony horse seemed to emerge from the darkness, slowly taking shape as it came closer. The carriage was as black as the horse that pulled it, covered and closed, not open like the buggies she’d seen traversing the Quarter by day. This was different.
Her heart hammered in her chest, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath as she stepped out of the street, up onto the sidewalk, and waited. It moved so slowly. As if the man in control was enjoying his power over her. Drawing her tension taut as a bowstring. Plucking it with every step of his horse’s hooves. It was right in front of her now. The black horse stopped and shook its mane, tossing its head and blowing hot air from flared nostrils. The form sitting in the driver’s seat, high above, was completely swathed in black. She couldn’t even make him out.
Then the carriage’s door swung open, and a deep, hauntingly familiar voice said, “Get in.” She looked into the darkness inside the carriage. She couldn’t see him. “I can’t. I can’t leave my sister alone in that room.”
“It’s not your sister the spirits want, Tessa. She’ll sleep peacefully and undisturbed until you return.”
“How can you be sure of that?” She blinked rapidly. “And…and how do you know my name?”
“I will answer all your questions if you will come with me.”
“But—”
“Come.” A gloved hand emerged from the inky darkness within the carriage, reached toward her and drew itself slowly back in. She felt as if it was pulling her along with it, and she obeyed, stepping into the carriage, into the heart of darkness. She got in, turning and sinking automatically into a soft velvet seat. The door slammed behind her, and the carriage lurched into motion as she looked up and straight into his eyes.
10
“I have waited a very long time for this night.”
Swallowing her fear, Tessa held his piercing black gaze, unable to look away. He sat in the seat across from her, staring into her eyes. She felt him probing the depths of her mind, her soul, though she had no idea how. Why did just being near him make her tremble this way? Why?
“H-how could you have been waiting? You only met me two nights ago.”
“We met more than a century ago.”
She shook her head in denial, not questioning what he meant by that, maybe because she was afraid of what his answers would be. “I saw you last night. Below the balcony.”
“And yet you didn’t come to me. You wanted to. Why did you resist your own soul’s yearnings, Tessa?”
Her stomach clenched into a knot. “I… Someone was in my room last night. Someone took photographs….”
“I know. I found a set of them in my bedroom this evening.”
She blinked. “How could that be?”
“The spirits. The ghosts who haunt that hotel wanted me to find you. As if I wouldn’t have known you from the moment I set eyes on you without their assistance.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.
“You will. Trust me, you will.” He reached a hand across to her, touched her cheek with his gloved hand, gently brushing her hair aside, and as he did, his eyes fell closed and a sigh stuttered from his lips. “Will you do me the honor of sitting here beside me?”
She blinked at him in the darkness, then at the seat he patted.
“I mean you no harm, Tessa, I swear it on my soul. But if I can’t touch you soon I think I may die.”
“T-touch me?” Her heart slammed her rib cage as if trying to break free.
“Hold you. Close to me. That’s all.” He drew an unsteady br
eath. “Please?”
She wanted nothing more than to feel him touching her. As the carriage rocked, she changed seats, joining him on the softness, sitting very close to his side. Her body stiffened in anticipation as he slid an arm around her shoulders, and then he sighed softly, leaning back, pulling her closer, so that she lay cradled in his arms, her head on his shoulder. With his free hand he stroked her hair. “Promise me something, ma cherie,” he whispered. “Promise me you will hear the story I have to tell you, all of it, before you make a choice.”
“A choice?”
His crooked finger came beneath her chin, lifting it, turning her face up to his. “Yes, there will be a choice. One that will alter your life forever. But not yet. Not yet.”
His lips were so close to hers she could feel the breath of each word. She wanted him to kiss her. She felt it suddenly, with everything in her. More than she wanted to draw another breath, she wanted to feel his lips on hers.
As if he knew her every thought, he bent just a little closer.
11
His lips brushed across hers, and every nerve in her body came to life at the sweet, brief contact. But then the carriage came to a halt, and he drew away. “Come. We are here.”
“Where?”
“Lafayette Cemetery. You were here today, but you didn’t see what you came to see. I thought you might stumble upon it. Led, perhaps, by sheer instinct. But, no. Perhaps you were not ready.”
She remembered the dizzy, sick feeling that had swamped her when she’d visited this place before. He got to his feet and climbed out of the carriage, reaching back in for her. He took her hand, helped her down. She felt oddly out of place in her jeans and simple blouse. She felt as if she should be wearing a bustled gown with a matching hat. He led her through the opening in the wall that surrounded the cemetery. Every tomb was a small crypt. No one was buried here, she had read, because the water table was simply too high. Instead the graves were above ground, tiny cement tombs with peaked roofs, ornate with carved angels or crosses, names arching across the tops. Rows of them, like miniature villages. Villages of the dead. He led her between the rows, toward the very depths of the place, the center, and there he showed her a tall narrow crypt. The name across the top was “Lemieux.”
Underneath were two other names. Marcus and Marie.
Tessa stared up at him, blinking, feeling a bit of the same dizziness she had felt here before. “The artist and the prostitute?”
“Then you know something of them already.”
She felt a death chill, standing there staring at a cement crypt that held the remains of a woman who could have been her twin. “I picked up the book. The one you wanted me to pick up. I read about them.”
“The book only tells you part of the story.”
“But you’re going to tell me the rest?”
He nodded. “Marcus was an artist. His father was a French noble who was driven out of his country in shame, and came to live here because it reminded him of home. But he lived in constant fear of being shamed again.”
She looked at her tour guide, into his eyes. “What shamed him in France?”
“He was cuckolded. His wife ran away with a commoner. It was the talk of Paris at the time. Quite the scandal. He was a proud man, too proud to live that way, so he came here, where he was treated almost as royalty.”
“And then his son fell in love with a prostitute.”
“The father forbade it, of course. Still, Marcus was a stubborn man. And he loved her deeply. Painted her often. He would sit for hours just staring at her image, when he couldn’t be with her. Some said he was obsessed, others that she had bewitched him.”
“He was in love,” Tessa whispered.
“Madly in love. They were secretly wed. Marcus had only to collect his things, slip away with a horse and a carriage, and pick her up. They were to run away together that very night.”
“The night of the fire?” Tessa asked, her breath catching in her throat.
Staring into her eyes, he nodded. “Marcus arrived to see the entire building engulfed in flames. He could hear his Maria’s screams.” He lowered his head, shuddering, and Tessa thought there were tears in his eyes.
12
“He went inside to try to get her out,” Tessa said, filling in the parts of the heartbreaking story that she already knew.
“Yes. But it was too late. He was nearly killed himself. Neighbors, firefighters, they came, pulled him out of the fire, doused him in water, saving his life. But he screamed, begged them to let him die with the woman he loved.”
Tessa’s eyes were wet now, her throat tight. “Marie died.”
“Yes. But there was another woman there that night. The most powerful woman in New Orleans, watching, weeping. Marie St. Claire’s mother had named her for this woman, because she had been unable to conceive a child until the elder Marie helped her.”
“The elder Marie?”
He nodded, his eyes intense. “Yes. Marie LaVeau.”
Tessa blinked in shock, backing up a step. “This is getting very difficult to believe.”
“Why?” he asked. “It shouldn’t. Helping barren women to conceive was a common request of voodoo practitioners. LaVeau was a queen, the best known, most in demand. And she was good at what she did. The woman had real power. Real power.”
“How do you know?” Tessa whispered.
He met her eyes. “Because I’m here. And you’re here. It’s just as she told me it would be.”
Blinking, Tessa shook her head. “Marie LaVeau died long before you were born.”
He shook his head slowly. “She was there that night,” he said. “And she shouted her curse and her blessing. She put her hands on Marcus, who was so distraught he was barely aware of the damage the fire had done to him, to his hands and arms.”
Tessa nodded. “I read that he could never paint again.”
“For a long time, he couldn’t. And by the time he could, he no longer wanted to. His inspiration, his muse, had been consumed by fire.”
Tessa swallowed back her tears. “What was Marie LaVeau’s curse?”
“Whether it was curse or blessing remains to be seen,” he said. “She raised up her hands, tipped back her head, and shouted above the roar of the flames and the cries of the dying, ‘My namesake shall live again! And her lover will live as well, never to age, nor die, nor leave this city, until that time when she returns to him and they find the love that was stolen from them this cursed night!’ Then she howled like the very voice of death.”
Tessa imagined she could hear the sound. There was wind, where there had been none before, and it seemed to carry that ghostly wail.
“The younger Marie’s cries stopped, dying with the witch’s howl,” Marcus said. “Most believe she died at that very moment, only able to release her hold on life once she had the promise that she would find her love again.” He lowered his head. “Then LaVeau went to Marcus, embraced him, and whispered that he must be strong, that he must be patient. She told him the other women who had died in the fire would guard the place as sacred, and would see to it that he knew when his wife returned for him.” He looked Tessa in the eyes. “That’s why they took the photos, and brought them to me, you see. To let me know that you had finally come back.”
13
He was holding her hands in his, staring deeply into her eyes. A passing breeze gently dried the dampness from her skin and her cheeks. She said, “What are you talking about? I’m not Marie.”
“No, you are Tessa. But in that lifetime, you were Marie. My precious Marie.”
She blinked, not understanding. “You’re talking about reincarnation?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Then you…you believe that you were reincarnated, too? That you were Marcus in that lifetime?” She knew the answer to the question before she asked it. Before he slowly shook his head left and then right.
“I told you LaVeau’s curse. That Marcus would live on, would never age, not until h
is Marie returned. And now you have.”
“Are you saying that you are Marcus? That you never died, that you’ve been living here waiting for me for more than a hundred years?”
“One hundred fifty-one years, two months, fifteen days.” He glanced at the watch he wore. “Seventeen and a half minutes.” When he looked at her face again, his wore a slight smile, sad humor tingeing his eyes. But when he saw the doubt in hers, his smile died. “I can prove it to you, my love. Please, you must give me that chance.”
Shaking her head, stepping backward again, she said, “I think I’ve had enough for one night. I’d like to go back to the hotel now.”
He closed his eyes, lowered his head. “You’re afraid of me now. You think me insane.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
He held up a hand. “No. It’s all right. I should have expected it. The story is far-fetched, particularly in this age when magic is seen as impossible superstition.”
“It’s just that—at the voodoo shop they told me your name was Rudy.”
He nodded. “I have changed my name many times. I’ve had to leave here for years at a time, although thanks to Madame LaVeau’s curse, I could never go far. But I would go into hiding and return years later, pretending to be another of my own relatives, taking up residence again in the family home, using another name.”
She blinked, her head spinning. “And what about the tomb? It has your name on it.”
“Look closer.” He ran his hand over the woman’s name, the dates carved beneath it. Born 1827, Died 1850. Then his own, or the name he claimed as his own. It had a date of birth, 1825, but there was no date of death chiseled into granite.
Swallowing hard, she lifted her gaze to his face. “I’m sorry. Even with that, it’s just too much to believe.”
“I know. But there is one more thing I can show you.…” Holding up his left hand, he slowly peeled off the glove that he wore to cover it. Clouds skittered away from the face of the moon, allowing its milky light to spill down on the badly scarred hand he held up before her. And even as she watched with her breath caught in her throat, he peeled off the other glove to reveal the right hand, which was even more damaged than the left.