by Chris Lowry
“You got to order in here,” he said. “But I’ll bring it out when you’re done.”
I shoved out of the chair and moved inside to the counter.
It was an old shotgun house, converted to commerce after the hurricane and serving up some fine cuisine to the locals.
One side was reserved for the grill and galley kitchen, six tables ran down the opposite wall. Everything scrubbed and polished and cared for.
My kind of place.
I studied the chalkboard menu and opted for a burger, loaded and an ice cold bottle of Turbodog.
“Go on out front,” said Mr. Friendly.
I paid him with the black card
He twisted off the top to the beer and handed me a stack of napkins to carry out with me.
I sat in the mid-day sun and sipped my local beer, letting the brown ale bite a little from the cold. It felt good.
Normal.
Not at all like a man on a witch hunt.
Then he brought the burger.
Hand patted, hand sliced onions and tomatoes, butter bun made at a bakery across town. I scarfed down three bites and notices Elvis slobbering as he stared at me.
“Would you believe that’s so good even I can smell it?” he leered at my sandwich.
I nodded and wiped the mayo mustard combo from the sides of my mouth.
Then the beer hit the taste remnants on my tongue and I moaned.
The ghost moaned with me.
I was really hungry or it was that good. I voted for the latter.
Hannah showed up ten minutes after I was done, a second beer in front of me, belly full and as content as a newborn sucking on a bottle.
I had even tipped triple on the second beer, just to piss off the Judge.
“I got a call to come pick you up,” she settled into the seat across from me. “Why didn’t you just come to my place?”
I pointed to the chair beside me.
“Someone couldn’t remember your address.”
Her eyes drifted over to the empty seat and back to mine.
“How many of those have you had? You’re talking about yourself in third person.”
“She can’t see me,” said Elvis.
“Can she hear you?”
“Are you drunk?” Hannah asked. “You’re doing that talk to yourself thing now.”
I grinned.
Nope, not drunk, not off two beers, but mellow for sure. Too tired to worry about it, the aches were disappearing as the food and alcohol worked their magic at the molecular level on my system.
“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” I told her.
“And I’ve got a lot to tell you. There’s something big going on,” her brown eyes grew wider, either in excitement or fear.
Maybe a little of both.
I finished the bottle and let her lead us back to her place so we could talk in private.
CHAPTER TEN
Hannah had a shotgun style home between two empty lots. She did the rehab herself, down to the plumbing and electric, then put a fence around all three to create a hidden oasis off the road.
The yellow siding looked like a splash of Caribbean lemon against the cool blue metal roof.
A wide porch stretched across the front.
It looked over green sod and a ground deck that was almost as long as the house, extending three quarters of the way down one side.
A well-used firepit occupied the center of the deck and even from here, I could sense the wards and spells.
There were protection spells interwoven with the fence, and ritual carvings etched into the deck wood. More lines sparkled in my mage sight as I studied the spells, for safety and comfort, for peace and knowledge, for serenity.
"Smart, Elvis observed. "I bet this neighborhood has the lowest crime in the city."
"Try no crime," said Hannah.
"Doesn't that attract attention," we had to wait for her to invite us to slip past the wards.
"Are you kidding? The NOPD want to give me community leadership awards. I'm tempted to take them but no room on my shelves for baubles."
She led us into the door, past more wards that I felt pop over my skin as we pushed through, like walking under a layer of humidity. The living room had plank floors, plank shelves, a rock fireplace and books. Everywhere.
All the flat surfaces were covered with them. Paperbacks, hard backs, research tomes and pulp novels were stacked on the shelves, the table, even the arms of the long sofa.
"Been doing some research," she grinned and shoved some aside so I could sit.
She perched in the overstuffed leather chair angled on the fireplace and stared at me with glistening eyes, pert and alert.
“You heard about Elvis," I said.
It happened quick, but word travelled at the speed of light in our paranormal world. She nodded.
"Comes with the territory," she said. "He shouldn't have gone in the field with you."
"He didn’t."
She didn't know the details.
"He was locked behind his wards at his home. The witches got in."
She sat a little straighter and didn't look nervous or scared, like I expected. She looked excited.
"You brought him here before," she said. "I just assumed he got killed following you. You know, once more into the breech."
"I can think for myself," Elvis spat.
Hannah shivered.
"Are you cold?" She asked. "I can start a fire."
I shook my head. A fire and this sofa on a full belly would make me lazy. Add to that the fitful sleep in a truck and it was a recipe for a nap.
"They had power," I told her. “I don’t know where it was coming from.”
“The Leyline,” Elvis said.
“It was more than that.”
“More than what?” she asked.
“The Leyline.”
She dug through a stack of books and pulled out a leather-bound volume she plopped into her lap.
“I’ll get started on some research,” she told me. “In the meantime, you look wiped. Why don’t you kick back and get ready for tonight?”
“What’s tonight?” My senses went on high alert.
I mean I knew what I had to do, what I was here to find, but I thought that might require a little old-fashioned foot work. The paranormal community in the Big Easy was spread out, with different communities operating on various levels.
And a vampire conclave.
But someone would have seen a zodiac demon roaming around.
It just might take a while to find it.
“I thought you knew,” she chewed on a strand of dirty blond hair she tucked between her lips as one hand flipped through crisp pages.
“I got a message that you were going to a graveyard tonight for a midnight meeting. Same time I got the word to pick you up.”
“No one told me.”
She shrugged her bony shoulders.
“Guess I was supposed to.”
She tucked the book in on her lap and buried her chin into it, eyes skimming as she searched for knowledge.
I searched the room to see if I could help, but decided everyone would be better served if I grabbed forty winks.
So, I lay back on the couch and don’t remember passing out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Marshal?"
"Yeah Elvis?"
"Am I the only one who thinks meeting this person in a graveyard is creepy?"
"Nope. But this is a cemetery."
The ghost screwed up his face in concentration and tried to figure out the difference.
“You were the one to tell me,” I reminded him.
That made it worse. His eyes squinted closed as he tried to force his mind to sift through whatever was going on up there and pull that memory to the front.
It made me feel sorry for him, but I couldn’t say that, since that would make him feel worse.
Nobody wants to hurt a ghost’s feelings.
Instead I looked away and tried to make it sound
like I was just thinking out loud.
“A graveyard is just where they put bodies. But a cemetery is a celebration of life. You told me I could tell by the monuments.”
“And mausoleum’s,” he added.
“That’s right.”
“I remember,” he said in a sigh. “I did tell you that.”
“Since you told me, I figure this is a cemetery and not just a boneyard.”
"I feel like there are ghosts all around us."
"Watching."
"Watching," agreed the Watcher.
"There are."
Elvis shivered.
"You're kidding me right?"
I shook my head and tipped the hat back. A Stetson would have been overkill, especially for that whole cowboy fetish the Marshal of the West and I had going.
So for me, it was a trucker cap from a small company in Arkansas that said Get After It.
I never asked what IT was, but it seemed like good advice, in a general sense.
"I don't know much about the ghost realm," I told him. "It's there, next to ours, the same but different."
"You just described every place in America," he hiccupped.
I almost asked him if he was hiding a flask, and if so, why was he hiding it when it would be much easier to share.
But we were on duty, and though magic marshaling duty was very different from normal law enforcement, it probably wouldn't look good to meet the woman we were supposed to meet with the smell of whiskey on my breath.
Unless she was into that sort of thing.
A shadow stepped out from behind one of the crumbling marble mausoleums.
Elvis chirped out a scream.
It made me jump and flick a finger in its general direction.
Sparks bounced off a protective shield and splattered into the black dirt of the cemetery.
“Stop,” said a high pitched voice with a nasal quality. “That tickles.”
And I was transported back.
A few years ago Elvis and I made the trip down here to help find a Watcher when the old one moved on.
Nothing nefarious about it, the guy was just old. He lived to eighty four and had a good life.
The Marshal of the West was on assignment and the Judge suggested the Memphis watcher and I make the trip.
We got into some trouble with a small medium at large, when a psychic Gnome masquerading as a fortune teller went up against the Dixie Mafia for something she saw in her crystal ball.
Like they say in the movies, it was the start of a friendship.
Nothing beautiful about it though for two reasons. First, we hardly spoke since then, because she was west of the river and it would better for her to work with the Marshal on this side of the muddy water.
Second she wasn’t beautiful.
I’m not trying to be cruel. She may have been once.
There were even hints of it in her playful eyes. But now she was a mass of wrinkles and lines, gray hair like a helmet on her tiny head.
Knu barely topped four feet, all arms and elbows, knees and shins, with little meat to her torso.
And she was literally a Gnome, one of the ancient creatures of Fae, left here on earth and surviving alongside humanity. Often hidden. Or like this one, hidden in plain sight with a shop off the French Quarter and a steady stream of client’s ready to part with silver in exchange for a glimpse of their future or lost loved ones.
“Sorry about that,” I called out to the dark shadow next to the crumbling marble wall.
Katrina did a lot of damage to the cemeteries, and rehabilitation dollars were more focused on the living than the monuments to long dead men and women.
“The last man to pop off that fast was so glad to see me,” she scrunched up her face in a smile showing still really strong white teeth. “What’s your excuse.”
“I’m glad to see you too,” I sputtered.
I forget the medium could have a dirty mind.
“Alright, infant,” she chided as she picked her way through the monuments and statues to where Elvis and I stood.
“I forgot just how prudish American minds can be when it comes to something so natural.”
“I’ve heard your dirty talk,” I reminded her. “Nothing natural about it.”
She snickered into the back of her hand, then threw her arms around me for a long hug.
“I’ve seen you,” Kun told me.
There was a whole world in those words and the sadness in her tone made me feel like sobbing.
Who knew comfort could come in fun size packages.
“Asshole,” she batted my chest and stepped away.
“Stop reading my mind,” I told her.
“Stop being so obvious.”
She told me once that reading minds takes little effort, so some of her magic goes into blocking off almost all of it.
Touch made it harder to block, which is why she normally kept her distance.
“That’s no pistol in my pocket,” I winked to let her know I was glad to see her.
And I could be just as far in the gutter as any other Gnome.
She cackled.
“I missed you Marshal,” she said. “Who’s your friend?”
She nodded over my shoulder.
“My Watcher.”
“Taking his job a little too literally,” she said in her accented voice.
She never told me where she was from, but Gnome meant old country, Germany or Ireland back before they were called Picts and Gaul’s.
“He’s tethered to me,” I told her.
Her eyes grew wide in the dark.
“Tethered to a human? That’s not possible.”
I indicated the ghost hanging around over my shoulder.
“It’s never happened,” she muttered. “Did you tell your Judge about this.”
I nodded.
“And he didn’t say anything, did he?”
I shook my head.
No need to talk if she can read my mind.
“Just like him,” she cursed under her breath. “Arrogant son of a-,”
“Whoa,” Elvis interrupted before she could call down the wrath of a man more powerful than some gods on all of us. “What do you mean never happened before?”
Her long fingers seemed an odd fit for her tiny body. That didn’t stop her from pointing one at me.
“He shouldn’t be strong enough for you to do it.”
“But I picked him,” Elvis answered. “Well not really picked. I was thinking of him when the witches got me. And abracadabra.”
She nodded, a thoughtful look on her wrinkled face.
“Nope, still shouldn’t do it.”
“A death curse?”
“From a Watcher?” she dismissed it with a sniff. “It’s a mystery Marshal, I’ll give you points for bringing me something fun to ponder.”
“You didn’t see it in my future?”
Her eyes grew cloudy and sad, and she blinked something out of them before her face took on a grim set.
“It’s something for me to think on while you get to work on the work that you do.”
“Thank you for the clarity,” I said.
“Follow me,” she curled up a finger and pushed past me.
Like I had a choice.
I followed her diminutive shadow through the cemetery to a wrought iron fence that bordered a greenspace full of cypress trees that ran along a creek behind the wall.
“I didn’t know there were woods in the City,” I said in wonder.
She responded by touching my chin and pulling my face to look at her.
“Sshh.”
I nodded. She pointed that long finger again.
And I could see through the woods to a clearing. Not too far away, just a couple of hundred yards at most.
Another alter.
Another ritual.
This one a couple hundred years old instead of a couple of thousand.
“Break it up,” said the Gnome.
She pressed a business card int
o my palm and stepped back into the darkness, so that all I could see were her overlarge eyes, glowing with a soft tint in the blackness.
“Find me when you’re done,” she said.
And disappeared.
“You know what that is?” Elvis asked from next to my ear.
I tried not to jump.
Mostly succeeded.
“I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E,” I whispered.
“Those are witches Marshal,” said the ghost. “I think we are F-U-C-”
CHAPTER TWELVE
A local coven was holding a shotgun wedding.
"Is this a case of wife or death?" Elvis whispered from my shoulder.
I snickered, which drew all the eyes in the clearing toward me.
Even the groom.
Wide brown cow eyes the size of cheese Danish, eyebrows practically touching the widow's peak of his hairline.
Not in a surprised way, but in a "please rescue me and I'll be your man-servant forever way."
He looked rough.
Ever heard the expression ridden hard and put up wet? He looked like twice that.
Big black circles under his eyes, pale complexion and thin wane lips compressed into a tight line as if he was holding back a scream.
"Spell bound," Elvis said.
That would explain the lips.
"Excuse me ladies, while I whip this out," I quoted my favorite line that drew a ton of laughs each time I said it as I shifted open my leather bomber.
The light from a disco ball sparkled off the silver star badge on my belt with the words MARSHAL magically enhanced so that all in the room could see.
No one laughed at my joke though.
There were a lot of glares.
Some minor hissing, like cats that get scared before they skedaddle.
"Tough crowd," I told Elvis.
"You get no respect."
I stepped into the clearing and moved to the edge of a salt circle.
"Ladies," I cleared my throat. "Wanna tell me why you've got a magical barrier around your special day?"
"You're not welcome here."
This from the wiccan looking one on the alter. She was a bouncy ball of rotund energy, practically vibrating from the magic she was pulling from the earth.
Whatever they had planned, I felt sorry for the groom.
"Welcome or not, I'm here to stop what you're doing."